Lone Wolf

I stare at him. “You did.”

He tries to argue, but I pick up the remote control and turn on the sound on the television. There is a ringing as a contestant gets twelve hundred dollars for choosing a W. I push the buttons, so that the applause drowns out Edward’s voice.

I am behaving like a two-year-old. But maybe that’s okay, because, by definition, toddlers need their parents.

I stare at the Wheel of Fortune until Edward gives up and leaves the room. Under my breath, I solve the puzzle: Blood is thicker than water.

The next contestant guesses a P; the buzzer sounds.

People can be so stupid sometimes.

The first time I came face-to-face with a wolf, I was eleven years old. My father had just opened up the first enclosure at Redmond’s. He waited until after hours and then took me past the first safety fence, and up to the second one. Inside were Wazoli, Sikwla, and Kladen, the first captive wolves he’d brought to the park. He made me crouch down, with the chain-link safely separating me from the wolves, and hold up my fists so that the knuckles just grazed the wire. This way, the wolves would get used to my scent.

Wazoli, the alpha female, immediately darted to the far end of the enclosure. “She’s more afraid of you than you are of her,” my father said quietly.

Sikwla was the tester, and Kladen the enforcer wolf. Big, with strong black markings down his back and tail, as if someone had taken a Sharpie marker to him, he came right up to the fence and stared at me with his wide eyes. Instinctively, I backed away into my father, who was standing behind me. “They can smell your fear,” he told me. “So don’t give an inch.”

In a low, calm voice, he told me what was going to happen: he would open the outside gate that led into the enclosure, and then we would step into the little wire double gate and lock it behind us. Then he’d open the inside gate, and I would go in. I had to stay down low, and not move. The wolves might ignore me, or run away, but if I waited, they might also come closer.

“They can tell if your heart rate goes up,” my father whispered. “So don’t let them know you’re afraid.”

My mother did not want me inside the wolf enclosure, and with good reason-who would willingly put a child right smack in the middle of danger? But I had watched my father insinuate himself into this pack now for months. I might never take my position at a carcass and rip away the meat with my teeth, like he did, while two wolves snapped on either side of him-but he was hoping Wazoli would have pups, and I wanted to help raise them.

I wasn’t afraid of Wazoli. As the alpha, she would never come near me-she had all the knowledge of the pack and she would stay as far away from an unknown entity as possible. Kladen was big, 130 pounds of muscle, but he didn’t scare me as much as Sikwla, who just a month ago had sent a park employee to the hospital after biting down on his finger all the way to the bone. The guy was a groundskeeper who had reached through the chain-link to pat Sikwla, thinking he was rubbing up against the fence for a scratch, and before he knew it the wolf had turned and bitten him. Screaming, he tried to pull away, which only made Sikwla bite down harder. Had he just stayed perfectly still, Sikwla would have probably let go.

Every time I saw the groundskeeper walking around Redmond’s with his bandaged hand, I shuddered.

My father said that with himself in the enclosure, too, Sikwla would most likely leave me alone.

“Are you ready?” my father asked, and I nodded.

He opened the second gate, and we both went inside. I crouched down where my father had told me to crouch and waited as Kladen walked past me. I held my breath, but he just continued to lope toward the copse of trees in the back of the enclosure. Then Sikwla approached. “Steady,” my father whispered, and all of a sudden Kladen came barreling at him, knocking him onto the ground in greeting.

Because of that, because my attention flickered, Sikwla seized his moment and went for my throat.

I could feel the pierce of his incisors, feel the wet heat of his breath. His fur was wiry and coarse and damp. “Don’t move,” my father grunted, unable to free himself fast enough to rescue me.

Sikwla was a tester wolf; this was his job in the family. I was a threat until proven otherwise; just because I’d come into the enclosure with my father, whom they accepted, didn’t mean they wanted me around. Sikwla set the standards for this pack; this was his way of making sure I measured up.

At the time, though, I didn’t think of any of this. I thought: I am going to die.

I didn’t breathe. I didn’t swallow. I tried not to let my pulse show what I felt. Sikwla’s teeth pressed into the flesh of my neck. I wanted to shove at him with all my strength. Instead, I closed my eyes.

Sikwla let go.

By then my father had wrestled Kladen away and grabbed me into his arms. I didn’t start to cry until I saw that he had tears in his eyes.

This is what I am thinking of when, just after three in the morning, I crawl out of bed. It is not easy, with a single hand, and I am certain I am going to wake up my mother, who is sleeping on a pullout chair beside me. But she only rolls over and starts snoring lightly, and I slip into the hallway.

The nurses’ station is to the right, but the elevators are to the left, which means I don’t have to pass by them and be interrogated about why I’m out of bed at this hour of the night. Keeping to the shadows, I shuffle down the corridor, careful to hold my bandaged arm tight against my stomach to keep my shoulder from being jostled.

I already know my brother won’t be in my father’s room. My mom told me she gave him the key to our house- something that makes me feel uneasy. Most likely Edward won’t be poking around in my room-and it’s not like I have anything to hide-but still. I don’t like the thought of being here, while he is there.

The skeleton staff in the ICU doesn’t notice the girl in the robe with the bandaged arm and shoulder who gets off the elevator. This is a blessing, since I really didn’t know how to explain my migration from the orthopedic ward to this one.

My father is bathed in a blue light; the glow from the monitors surrounds him. He does not look any different to me than he did yesterday-surely this is a good thing? If he were, as Edward said, not coming back, wouldn’t he be getting worse?

There is just enough space for me to sit on the bed, to lie down on my good side. It makes my bad shoulder ache like hell. I realize I can’t hug him, because of the bandage, and he can’t hug me, either. So instead I just lie next to him, my face pressed against the scratchy cotton of his hospital gown. I stare at the computer screen that shows that steady, solid beat of his heart.

The night after I went into the wolf enclosure for the first time I woke up to find my father sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me. His face was outlined with moonlight. “When I was in the wild, I was chased by a bear. I was sure I was going to die. I didn’t think there could be anything more terrifying,” he said. “I was wrong.” He reached out one hand and tucked my hair behind my ear. “The scariest thing in the world is thinking that someone you love is going to die.”

Now, I feel tears coming, a feather at the back of my throat. With a steady breath, I blink them away.

They can smell your fear, he taught me. Don’t give an inch.

LUKE

Two weeks went by without any sign or sound of the wolf that had come so close to me when I was sick. And then one morning, when I was drinking from a stream, I suddenly saw an image rise in the reflection beside my own. The wolf was big and gray, with strong stripes of black on the top of his head and his ears. My heart started hammering, but I didn’t turn around. Instead, I met his yellow eyes in the mirror of the water and waited to see what he would do next.

He left.

Any doubts I’d had about what I was doing vanished. This was what I had hoped for. If the big animal that had approached me at the stream was truly wild, he may have been just as curious about me as I was about him. And if that was the case, I might be able to get close enough to understand their behavior from within, instead of observing from outside.

I wanted nothing more than to see that wolf again, but I wasn’t sure how to make that happen.