Lone Wolf

hunters make the kill. I was settled in a little bowl dug out of the snow with the youngsters in the pack and the alpha, waiting for the big black wolf and the other adult female to run the quarry toward us.

We had been waiting for days-not moving because we’d disturb the snow and tip off the prey. Even with wolves on either side of me, I was cold, and I started to occupy myself by letting my mind run wild. These wolves were masters of camouflage. They knew the wind direction, and how to disguise their scent. But was the deer working on instinct, too? Would it know, from years of ancestral experience, that if a wolf chases you like this at this speed in this formation, it’s going to lead to an ambush rather than a straight chase? Would it know from some rogue change in the wind that there is trouble up ahead?

My thoughts abruptly scattered as the alpha started eating snow. The young male immediately followed her lead, burying his muzzle into the snow and chowing down. The young female reached up to a branch where an icicle was hanging like the ornament on a Christmas tree, and snapped it off between her teeth. She sucked on it like a lollipop.

Why on earth are they doing that? I wondered. It wasn’t anything I’d seen in the three days we’d been camped in this copse. Maybe the wolves just needed to move around a bit because we’d been in one place for so long. Maybe they were thirsty.

But the wolves never had been skittish before, and since I wasn’t thirsty, they probably weren’t, either.

I was wondering if the deep snow was dehydrating them in some way when the alpha snapped silently at me and wrinkled her muzzle, then buried it in the snow again. I got the hint. I began scooping up handfuls of snow and eating it like there was no tomorrow.

Then it hit me: the only thing the prey animal could see as it ran toward us in our hiding spot was our frozen breath on the air. Holding snow and ice on our tongues meant that even our breath was invisible.

A moment later, a deer came crashing into the copse.

Somehow, the alpha had known that the ambush was imminent. But then again, what’s the job of the alpha if not to hold the family together, so that, at the most crucial moment, its members all do as they’re told?

CARA

I am expecting World War III when I get back home, and I’m not disappointed. My mother runs up to Mariah’s car and starts to yank me out of the passenger seat, remembering too late that I’ve got an injured shoulder. I wince as she grabs my arm and see Mariah’s silently mouthed Good luck as she zips away. “You are grounded until you’re… until you’re ninety! For God’s sake, Cara, where have you been?”

I can’t tell my mom that. So instead, I look down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” I say. “After Edward did… you know… I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I just ran. Mariah came to pick me up.”

My mother flips an internal switch, and suddenly she’s hugging me so tightly I can’t breathe. “Oh, baby. I was so worried… By the time I got back upstairs, you were gone. Security looked everywhere. I didn’t know if I should stay at the hospital or come back here…”

The front door opens, and the twins poke their heads out into the cold, reminding me (1) why my mother wound up here instead of the hospital and (2) why I should never believe I might actually come first in her list of priorities.

“Elizabeth, Jackson, get back inside before you catch pneumonia,” she orders. Then she turns to me again. “Do you have any idea how frantic I’ve been? I even had the police out looking for you-”

“I bet you did. It would mean fewer cops focusing on Edward.”

My mother slaps me so fast I don’t have time to see it coming. She’s never done that to me in my life, and I think she’s just as shocked as I am. I wrench away from her, holding my hand to my cheek. “Go to your room, Cara,” she says, her voice trembling.

With tears in my eyes, I run away from her, into the house. Elizabeth and Jackson are sitting on the steps. “You got a timeout,” Jackson says.

I stare at him and say, “Remember when I told you there wasn’t a monster in your closet? I was totally lying.” Then I step over their little bodies and head to my room, where I slam the door and throw myself facedown on the bed.

When I start to cry, I know it’s not because my cheek stings-the humiliation hurt more than the slap. It’s because I feel like the only person left in the world. I’m not part of this nuclear family; my own mother has taken sides with my brother; my father is floating somewhere I can’t reach. I am truly, horribly on my own now which means I can’t just sit around and wait for someone to fix things.

It is not that I think the hospital will try to turn off my father’s life support again, even if Edward asks. It’s that if I can’t figure out a way to derail him, he’s going to take the next step and get himself legally appointed as my dad’s guardian-something I can’t be, because I’m only seventeen.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Pulling myself together, I wipe my face on the gauze from my sling and sit up, cross-legged. I reach for my laptop and turn it on for the first time in a week, bypassing the sixteen million emails from Mariah asking me if I’m all right that she must have sent before she knew I was in the hospital.

I type some words into the search engine and click on the first name that pops up on my screen.

Kate Adamson, completely paralyzed in 1995 by a double brain stem stroke, was unable to even blink her eyes. Her medical staff removed Kate’s feeding tube for eight days, before it was reinserted due to the intervention of her husband. Today, she is nearly completely recovered-still partially paralyzed on her left side, she has full control of her mental faculties, and is a motivational speaker.

I click on another link.

A victim of a car crash believed to be in a persistent vegetative state for 23 years, Rom Houben was actually conscious the entire time and unable to communicate. Doctors had originally used the Glasgow coma test to assess his eye, verbal, and motor responses and to describe his condition as unrecoverable, but in 2006, new scans were developed that suggested his brain was functioning fully. He now communicates via computer. “Medical advances caught up with him,” says his physician, Dr. Laureys, who believes that many patients are misdiagnosed in vegetative states.

And another:

Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, was in a vegetative state for over a year. A judge granted her family’s wish to remove her feeding tube. However, she regained consciousness unexpectedly, ate food by mouth, and conversed with others. Her case raises the question of how reliable a diagnosis of irreversible consciousness is-and legally, raises questions about when life-sustaining treatment should be discontinued.

I start to bookmark the documents. I’ll make a PowerPoint presentation, and I’ll go back to Danny Boyle’s office and prove to him why what Edward did is no different than holding a gun to my father’s head.

When my cell phone rings-it’s plugged in and happily recharging-I reach for it, assuming it’s Mariah asking me if I’ve been flayed alive by my mom. The caller ID, though, is a number I don’t recognize. “Please hold for the county attorney,” Paula’s voice says, and a moment later, Danny Boyle is on the line.

“You really want to do this?” he says.

I think of poor Kate Adamson and Rom Houben and Carrie Coons. “Yes,” I tell him.

“Tomorrow the grand jury’s convening in Plymouth. I want you to come to the courthouse so I can put you on the witness stand.”

I have no idea how I’m supposed to get all the way back to Plymouth. I can’t ask Mariah to miss school again. I don’t have a car, I’m virtually crippled, and oh, right, I’m also grounded.

“Is there any chance you’d be passing by Beresford on your way to Plymouth?” I ask as politely as possible.

“For the love of God,” Danny Boyle says. “Can’t your parents drive you?”