Lone Wolf

I wouldn’t have been drinking. And my father wouldn’t have had to come get me. And, well, you know the rest.

Mariah is in French class when I call her. I hear her whisper, “Hang on,” and then, over the drone of Madame Gallenaut conjugating the verb essayer, Mariah says, “May I go to the bathroom?”

J’essaie.

Tu essaies.

I try. You try.

“En francais,” Madame says.

“Puis-je aller aux toilettes?”

There is a flurry of static, and then Mariah’s voice. “Cara?” she says. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” I tell her. “Things are totally messed up. I need you to come pick me up at the Starbucks that’s on the corner before the turnoff to the hospital.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Long story. I need you to come now.”

“But I’m in the middle of French. I have a free period fifth-”

I hesitate, deploying the big guns: “I would do it for you,” I say, the same words Mariah used to convince me to go to that party in Bethlehem in the first place.

There is a beat of silence. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she answers.

“Mariah,” I say. “Fill up the gas tank.”

The county attorney’s office looks nothing like the way law offices look on TV. It’s got crappy furniture and a secretary punching away at a computer so old it probably still runs BASIC. There’s a framed poster of Machu Picchu on the wall, and also two photographs-one of a serene Obama, and one with Danny Boyle shaking Governor Lynch’s hand. A rubbery plant is dying in the corner.

Mariah’s waiting in the parking lot in her car. She wasn’t thrilled about a road trip to North Haverhill, but she drove me all the same, and she even helped me figure out a ruse to get me into the county attorney’s office. “Danny Boyle,” she’d said. “Sounds like he ought to be dancing on a Lucky Charms box.”

That had gotten me thinking-someone whose name sounded like he had relatives in Killarney, and who built his political platform on saving unborn babies was most likely a devout Catholic. I couldn’t be sure, but it was a decent guess. And every Catholic kid I knew in my school seemed to have a thousand cousins.

So I approach the secretary’s desk and wait for her to finish her phone call. “Thanks, Margot,” she says. “Yes, it’s the Fox News segment about his recent conviction. DVD format would be great.”

When she hangs up, I try to give my most pathetic smile. After all, I’m standing there in a freaking arm sling. “Can I help you?” the secretary asks.

“Is Uncle Danny in?” I say. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

“Dear, did he know you were coming? Because he’s quite busy right now-”

I tighten my voice to the knife edge of hysteria. “Didn’t my uncle tell you I had a really bad car accident? And I just got into this huge fight with my mom and she told me I can’t drive again until I’m forty and I have to pay off the insurance premium and I might as well find someone else to fund my college education and oh, God, can’t I just please talk to Uncle Danny right now?” I start crying.

Seriously, I am becoming an Oscar contender.

The secretary blinks at the onslaught of words, then recovers and gets up to comfort me, gently patting me on my good shoulder. “You just go right on back to his office, honey,” she says. “I’ll buzz him and tell him his niece is here.”

When I knock on the door that says DANIEL BOYLE, COUNTY ATTORNEY in gold lettering on glass, he tells me to come in. He’s sitting behind a big desk stacked with files. His hair gleams, black like the wing of a crow, and his eyes look like he hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately. He stands up, assessing me as I walk through the door.

“You’re not as tall as you look on TV,” I blurt out.

“And you don’t look like any of my nieces,” he replies. “Look, kid, I don’t have time to help you do your extra- credit project in Civitas. Paula can give you a packet about local government on your way out-”

“My brother just tried to kill my father and I need your help,” I say.

Danny Boyle frowns. “What?”

“My father and I, we were in a car accident,” I explain. “He hasn’t regained consciousness. My brother left six years ago after a fight with my dad. He’s been living in Thailand but he came home after the accident. It’s only been seven days since the crash-my dad just needs time to get better-but my brother doesn’t see it that way. He wants to turn off the ventilator and donate my father’s organs and then go back to living his life. He managed to convince the hospital to do it, and when I freaked out and tried to stop them, Edward shoved a nurse out of the way and pulled the plug out himself.”

“What happened?”

“The nurse reset the ventilator. But the doctors still don’t know if being without oxygen hurt my dad even more.” I take a breath. “I’ve seen you on the news. You’re good at what you do. Can’t you prosecute Edward?”

He sits down on the edge of his desk. “Listen, honey-”

“Cara,” I say. “Cara Warren.”

“Cara. I’m really sorry-about your father, and about your brother’s behavior. But this is a family issue. I prosecute criminal cases.”

“It’s attempted murder!” I say. “I may just be a high school student, but I know that when you shove a nurse out of the way, and unplug someone who’s unconscious from a ventilator, you intend to kill him! What’s more murderous than that?”

“Intent to kill isn’t the only piece in the puzzle,” Boyle says. “You have to prove malice, too.”

“My brother hates my father. It’s why he walked out six years ago.”

“That may be,” Boyle says, “but pulling out a plug is significantly different than coming after someone with a knife or a gun. I’ll pray for your father, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

I stiffen my spine. “If you don’t, then my brother’s going to try again. He’ll go to court and say that my opinion doesn’t matter, because I’m younger than him. He’ll get the procedure rescheduled. But with a criminal charge against him, he can’t be named a legal guardian for my father.” When Boyle looks at me, surprised, I shrug. “Google,” I explain. I’d used Mariah’s iPhone on the drive over.

Boyle sighs. “All right. I’ll look into it,” he says. He reaches onto his desk and hands me a legal pad and a pen. “Give me your name and phone number.”

So I write these down for him. I hand back the pad. “My dad may not be doing so well right now,” I tell him. “But that doesn’t give my brother the right to play God. A life,” I say, parroting Boyle’s own words, “is still a life.”

As I walk down the hallway to the reception area again, I can feel Danny Boyle’s stare, like an arrow in my back.

LUKE

I have been asked repeatedly why a pack of wild wolves would accept a human into their ranks. Why bother with a creature that follows too slowly, stumbles in the dark, can’t speak their language fluently, and inadvertently disrespects their leaders? It was not as if the pack didn’t know I wasn’t a wolf, or didn’t realize that I couldn’t help bring down a kill for food, or protect them with teeth and claws. The only answer I can come up with is that they realized they needed to study a human as much as I needed to study them. The human world is encroaching closer and closer to the wolf world. Instead of just denying that fact, they wanted to find out as much as they could about people. From time to time you will find a feral dog adopted by a wolf pack for the same reason; accepting me into their ranks just brought them one step closer.

My goal, once they seemed to relax with me in their company, was to be allowed to follow them when they slipped between the trees and vanished. Now, this wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had-I could easily get lost; and if they’d started hunting, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. But I couldn’t let myself get this close and give up now, so when the wolves got up and left, I went with