His eyes were heavy and his legs felt a little weak, but he maintained his composure and ran it through his head again anyway.
Now that he knew there was another wolf in town, he was quite certain that he hadn’t attacked Mr. Poulton. He had been very angry at the man the day that it happened, but the rest didn’t line up. He had only had brief dreams about the woods that night—nothing that felt like an actual memory. And now that he thought about it, it seemed extremely unlikely that the entire event could have been thought out and acted upon without his mind being aware of any of it.
But then the question was, of course, who had done it? Patrick hadn’t even suspected in the slightest that anyone else in town might be having an experience similar to his own (or in the world, for that matter). It was technically possible that it may have simply been an actual wolf that had gotten sick and wandered into town, but until the authorities caught it and proved the theory right, Patrick would have to assume that there was another person in Hillward that could change, like him.
His initial reaction to this idea was that it didn’t make sense, but he quickly realized that none of it made sense, and therefore, in a way it made perfect sense. Why was any of this happening in the first place? And if he could change, why should there be any doubt in his mind that someone else could change too? Heck, maybe half the town was in on it.
Somehow, Patrick doubted that it ran that deep. But still, what single person in Hillward would find the need to commit such an act? The school was a likely place for Mr. Poulton to make enemies, but his pompous attitude may have earned him a reputation elsewhere in the town as well. What could he have done to someone to warrant a savage mauling? He had made Patrick very angry, but no forms of revenge that came to mind had involved the drawing of blood…
It was useless to think about it any more until he could find some new information. He had come to this conclusion over and over, yet he always found his mind wandering back to the subject and theorizing and analyzing and he would have to reign it in again. It was a tiresome cycle, but he couldn’t think of how to break it.
Mrs. Spotts walked in just as the clock turned to 8:20, and the worry that had haunted her face two days previous had faded, the comfortable cheeriness making a welcome return.
“Good morning, class.” She started pulling folders and books out of her bag, as per routine. “I spoke with Mr. Poulton last night, and you’ll be happy to know that he is doing much better now. The doctor said he is healing nicely and should make a full recovery with very minimal nerve damage. Though he still won’t be returning to school for quite some time.”
Mrs. Spotts’ comment about nerve damage shot a pang of unease through Patrick’s insides, and he suddenly found himself wondering if Mr. Poulton had a wife or any children. He was struck with the image of the man lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in bloodied bandages, his wife sitting beside him and holding his hand. There was no stern look in his eyes, and no sign of the man who had unleashed a mighty storm of detention bolts upon the three of them in the chemistry lab.
Patrick hoped that he got better soon.
*****
Mr. Vincent always amazed Patrick with his ability to somehow look worse every day. He always had graying hair and deep lines in his face, and he always looked like he hadn’t slept or even shaved since last week, but for some reason it always had a tendency of taking Patrick by surprise. Whenever he walked into the room and saw the man standing behind his desk it seemed as though his eyes had sunken deeper into his skull, the lines somehow even more pronounced. Patrick knew that this was not the case—for if it were, Mr. Vincent would look something like a mummy after these two weeks—but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his teacher’s tired look was progressing.
Today was no different. His half-lidded eyes suggested that he had gotten little or no sleep the night before (though his tousled hair said differently) and his five-o-clock shadow was somewhere around nine or ten the next morning. Patrick wondered why Mr. Vincent didn’t just grow out his beard and spare himself the perpetually-unshaven look.
When the class had settled, Mr. Vincent began the lesson.
“Now, as you are all aware, we have reached the wonderful subject of the agricultural revolution,” he said in his signature low, tired, yet pleasant voice. “There were lots of bloody battles and stuff during this time, but I’m sure none of you want to hear about any of that, so today we’re going to talk about the art.”
Mr. Vincent’s lesson was the most interesting of the day, as usual, and when he was done Patrick wished that the other teachers also opted to present the material in a way that was actually thought-provoking. He’d heard far too many dull, forced lectures in his sixteen short years on this Earth.
When the bell rang, Patrick and Rachel gathered their things and headed for the door.
“Is there a single piece of art from that era where the people aren’t naked?” Rachel asked.
“I’m pretty sure there isn’t,” Patrick replied. “I don’t think clothes were invented yet.”
Rachel giggled, and just before they reached the door Mr. Vincent’s voice came from behind.
“Patrick, could I have a quick word with you?”
They stopped and turned. Mr. Vincent was picking up papers and putting them into a folder. Patrick turned and shrugged at Rachel who shrugged back.
“I’ll see you at lunch,” Patrick said, and Rachel nodded and left the room. Patrick walked up to Mr. Vincent, and as the last few students were trickling out of the room he stood up straight and regarded Patrick with his hands on his hips.
“So how have your first couple of weeks been, Patrick?” Face-to-face his voice was even lower, and it sounded as though he might have been saying his first words of the day just after rolling out of bed.
“Uh, good.” If there were a way to sum up all of the fear and confusion and anger and jubilation he had experienced in the last two weeks, that probably wasn’t it, but he couldn’t quite think of a better way at the moment.
“That’s good,” his teacher replied. “It looks like you fit in really quick.” He smiled.
Up close the lines on Mr. Vincent’s face were even more pronounced, and his eyes seemed somehow brighter and more weary at the same time.
“Yeah.” Patrick smiled back, unable to think of anything else to say.
“You’re a smart guy. I can tell.” Mr. Vincent looked directly into Patrick’s eyes and thankfully spared him the task of thinking of a response to that by continuing immediately. “Well, I just wanted to say welcome to Hillward, and that I look forward to teaching you for a while.” He stuck out his hand for Patrick to shake.
This little transaction was certainly unexpected, but Patrick found himself oddly pleased by it. He wouldn’t be surprised if the man did this with every new student at Hillward High, but for a moment he entertained the thought that he had attracted special interest from Mr. Vincent. Whatever the case, it was a nice thing for a teacher to do.
He took his teacher’s hand and shook, but just before he opened his mouth to say “Thanks,” he was hit with an intense feeling of familiarity. In the closeness of their bodies he could smell the man clearly, and drifting from him like little tendrils of memory were the smells that Patrick had come to know so well over the last week: trees, dried leaves, soil, bushes…
He smelled like the woods.
Patrick could almost remember the colors but couldn’t see them, and for a moment it was as though he were feeling some piece of familiar food in his mouth without tasting it. But the smells only found his nose for a split second before dissipating, and just as quickly as they had come, they were gone. Patrick was left looking into the man’s eyes and shaking his hand, his mind and his body threatening to freeze with shock.
He let go of Mr. Vincent’s hand however, and somehow managed to give his “Thanks,” after what he hoped wasn’t too long a pause. The two continued to look at each othe
r for a moment, and Patrick wondered what Mr. Vincent was thinking.
“Well, I don’t want you to be late for your next class,” Mr. Vincent said finally, and turned back to the papers and books on his desk. “You have a good weekend, Patrick.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said dreamily, then added, “You too,” before leaving the room in a daze.
He walked down the hall, the surprise now visible on his face.
*****
It was him, he thought. It was Mr. Vincent.
Patrick wasn’t inclined to assume that the encounter was a simple welcoming gesture and in no way related to last night’s chase. As hard as it was to believe, the only conclusion he could come to was that Mr. Vincent was the mystery wolf, and also responsible for Mr. Poulton’s attack. Yet that conclusion didn’t come without a small bit of understandable doubt.
Apart from maybe Owen, Mrs. Spotts, and the small rabble of giggling girls that ate their lunch by the gym, the man seemed the least likely person in the entire school to do such a thing. He was so smart—always so calm and cool-headed. Apart from the persistent facial hair, Patrick could think of no feature of the man that would hint at a savage beast lurking inside, ready to go berserk when night fell.
But that smell. Patrick absolutely knew that it was the smell of the woods. Wasn’t it possible however that Mr. Vincent was simply the outdoorsy type? Perhaps he was one of the surprisingly large selection of townsfolk who lived somewhere off in the forest or up in the mountains and chose to drive for a half hour down a windy road to get to work every morning. Patrick had been hearing a lot about them recently; he had even overheard his mother telling Lizzy about how the man in the deli had to drive down Spear Point Road for upwards of forty-five minutes every weekday of the year, with chains to get through the snow any time it was the slightest bit wet down in town. He could imagine it now: Mr. Vincent would wake up early (much too early for his liking, as one might notice), the sun still climbing wearily from the valley below, the mountain air incredibly brisk. All the windows in his house would be thrown open and perpetually without blinds or curtains, the wind travelling freely through his home. He would eat his breakfast outside with the squirrels and the scrub jays, and as he stepped off his porch he would brush against the many low-hanging branches of surrounding trees. He would then trudge through mud and moss and animal droppings, maybe taking just a few moments to roll around in it a little before scaling the side of a mountain to get to his car.
Somehow it didn’t seem very likely. Patrick knew beyond a doubt that it was the woods he had smelled, though… It was so acute, so succinct. Plus, when trying to remember the smell in as much detail as possible, he thought he might have caught the tiniest hint of something other than trees and dirt and squirrel droppings; he thought he could smell the man himself.
Basically every animal on the planet (including humans) has a unique smell. Members of a particular species may smell similar, but each individual has their very own scent printed on them, like a fingerprint, or DNA. Patrick had always been aware of this concept, but only recently had he begun to truly understand it, mostly as demonstrated by the four or so opossums that he discerned had been frequenting the woods behind his house.
In the moment that he smelled what was hanging onto Mr. Vincent’s clothes and body, he thought he smelled the man’s own unique scent, if only a little. And what Patrick smelled seemed inexplicably familiar. He tried to remember it, and the memory seemed to originate from those long nights of running and smelling—seemed to lie somewhere within those tall trees, one of the many mysteries that beckoned to him each night. Had it been a random smell he came across on occasion, or even only once, and immediately overlooked for a lack of the frame of reference with which to identify it? Or had it been the scent Patrick had followed fervently down the trail two nights before, his heart hammering and his eyes darting expectantly around the dark wood, looking for any sign of movement?
Patrick was leaning toward the latter, but without seeing the colors, it was hard to tell.
*****
It was on Patrick’s mind for the rest of the day, but now that he had finally received at least one answer to this grand mystery he felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. By lunch he and Rachel were laughing again, and when the time came to walk home the whole affair began to drift slowly from his mind, making way once more for the magic that was the simple act of walking beside her. Patrick was thankful; obsessing over this sort of thing was completely exhausting. His mind needed a rest, if just for one night.
“How do you keep your papers so darn neat?” Patrick asked when they left the school grounds and the flow of students began to grow thinner.
She looked a little confused. “How do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, I was watching as you handed in your English homework this morning, and I noticed that the paper was completely clean, and without a single smudge or wrinkle.”
“Is that weird?” She smiled.
“I just know that usually by the time I’m done with an assignment the paper is all smudged and warped just from the heat of my hands. Especially during the warmer seasons.”
“I probably don’t press my hot, sweaty hands on my paper while I write on it.” She said mockingly.
“Maybe. But even so, after all the working and transferring takes place, by the time it gets to the teacher, it looks like it’s been through a machine.”
“It’s not like that’s abnormal.”
“I’m not saying it is!” Patrick laughed. “I’m saying your papers are abnormal!” He pointed at her book bag accusingly.
“What?” Rachel said with mock indignance. “What’s wrong with having neat work?”
“Nothing…” Patrick said with a pause for effect, then added, “if you’re a robot!”
“I am not a robot! I just like my work to look professional!”
“I don’t think I could get my work to look that neat if I wrote it with those mechanical arms surgeons use! You don’t even have smudges from erasing! Explain that!”
Rachel looked down to her shoes guiltily. Patrick noticed that she was wearing moccasins, and for some reason he found that really cute.
“Maybe I just… don’t make mistakes!”
“Everybody makes mistakes! Explain yourself, or I’ll assume you really are a robot!”
Rachel paused for a moment, then finally said quietly, “Alright. I’ll tell you. Sometimes—not all the time, mind you! Just sometimes… when it’s an assignment I want to look particularly nice, I’ll do the whole thing really lightly with pencil so I can erase without making a mark, and when I’m done and I’m sure that there aren’t any mistakes I fill it all in with my pen. Then I go over the entire paper with one of my dad’s nice gummy erasers to get rid of all the pencil.” She paused after she said it, playfully ashamed, looking around in every direction but Patrick’s.
Patrick laughed.
“Are you serious?! That’s hilarious!”
“It’s not funny!” She said with a pouty voice. “It’s just what I do when I want them to look extra nice!”
“Like a brief exercise in elementary school grammar, as given by Mrs. Spotts?” He chuckled madly.
“It’s just a mood I get in! It’s like when a normal lady wants to get all gussied up and slather herself in makeup every once in a while just to feel nice.”
Patrick laughed again at this comparison. “But you’re a little too robotic to be like a ‘normal’ lady?”
“Blech,” she said with a grimace. “If I ever become normal, throw me off a bridge. I’m weird and proud of it.”
“And that’s what I like about you.”
They continued to walk slowly, the wind gently rattling the yellowing leaves of the tall trees. After a few moments Patrick snuck a sideways glance at Rachel, who was looking at the ground in front of her and smiling. They were both silent now, but he couldn’t tell if it was because of what h
e said or if the conversation had simply come to a natural end.
Eventually they reached Rachel’s street. Patrick’s house was a few blocks further down, but as far as he was concerned, this was the end of the road—that little stretch of messily-paved asphalt between the school and Carter Lane that he wished would stretch on for miles. No single part of the day was ever as good as the walk home—not even lunchtime—and it was always over in a matter of minutes. There were barely any other kids on the street; most of the student body lived in the other direction, deeper into town, some too far away to walk. The ones that did live close by usually turned off down some other road after only a few short blocks. The neighborhood was quiet, and peaceful. It was the only time they ever spent away from all the voices and movement and homework and gossip… And it was ending just as it always did, like the massive dive of the log ride at an amusement park after a long day of slow yet exciting ascension.
And now the sudden realization that the weekend was upon them filled Patrick with a sort of panicky disappointment. Oh, but not only a weekend, he remembered from the marquee in front of the school, but a three-day one! Would he really have to endure the whole thing without seeing her? Would he really have to sit in his room staring at the ceiling for three days, able to do nothing but think about her when she lived just up the street? He frantically searched himself for the courage to ask if she wanted to do something tomorrow, but he couldn’t find it. Despite the strength and ease of their new friendship, he found himself freezing up.
Rachel stopped, but Patrick kept walking, as he usually did. “I’ll catch you later,” he said with a cheeriness that was suddenly false.
But just as he was about to turn away from her, Rachel said something he honestly hadn’t expected.
“Hey, Patrick…”
He stopped a few feet away from her and turned around.
“Um, my dad was wondering…” she started, fiddling with the strap of her book bag. Her eyes were moving around her busily, as if she couldn’t find it in herself to meet his gaze. “I mean, I was wondering, too, if maybe tonight…” A smile was growing on her lips. “…like, if you didn’t have plans or anything, or if you were hungry, if you’d like to come over and have dinner with us, maybe.” She finally looked at him, but still couldn’t seem to adjust her suddenly unwieldy shoulder strap.