Fifteen

“ARE YOU ALL right?” The woman was leading Stacy to a camp chair. “You looked like you blacked out for a second there.”

Stacy took some deep breaths. In and out, she reminded herself. In and out. “I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t know about—”

“Aw, you must really love it here,” the woman said. “You’ve probably been coming here since you were little, yeah?”

“It might not even happen,” the man assured her. “We’re going to fight it, and a lot of people will join us. We can’t let greedy businesses destroy the whole planet.”

“You’ll join us, right?” the woman said to Stacy with a smile. “You’re going to leave your campsite as pristine as it was when you found it, yes? Take all your garbage out with you?”

Stacy would have laughed at the idea of her and the wolves messing up the forest if she wasn’t suddenly so worried about the wolf bounty and now this plan to steal the land. “Definitely,” she said. “Now I’d better get Page—”

“She really should have a collar,” the woman said. “With your contact info, in case she runs off again.”

“I . . . we . . . have one, but it’s at home,” Stacy said, lying again.

The woman took her belt from around Page’s neck and the dog danced over to Stacy wagging her tail.

“Feel free to come over here with your parents tonight,” the man said. “We’re going to make s’mores. We’ve got more than enough.”

“S’mores?”

“Oh my gosh, how have you never had s’mores?” the woman asked.

Stacy eyed her, confused.

“Graham crackers and chocolate bars and roasted marshmallows—put together like a sandwich,” the woman said. “They’re so good you want some more—s’mores! You have to come back with your parents tonight and try one.”

Stacy hesitated. How could she say yes and then show up without her imaginary parents?

The woman mistook Stacy’s hesitation for something else. “I’m Miriam, by the way,” she said, reaching her hand toward Stacy.

Stacy didn’t know what she was supposed to do at first. She nearly backed up. Then she remembered pictures in the newspaper of politicians shaking people’s hands. She wiped her hand on her jeans and reached out to shake.

“And that’s Jack,” the woman said, pointing to the guy who was likely her boyfriend or husband.

He came closer, ready to shake, too, but Miriam waved him back. “Stay out of smelling distance until you’ve had at least one more bath. Maybe two.”

He cupped his hands around his mouth like he was shouting from a great distance. “We’d love to have you and your family for s’mores,” he yelled.

Stacy smiled. These humans—no, people is the word I should use—are way different than I expected. They’re nice. And they fight for the forest.

Suddenly, more than anything, Stacy wanted to sit around a fire with them and talk about how to fight against wolf bounties and substations and plans to turn the forest into a playground while they ate these exotic-sounding graham cracker sandwiches with—what was in them again?—chocolate toastmallows. But there would be too many awkward questions about parents and campsites and what a young girl like her was doing out alone in the forest.

“I would,” Stacy said, her voice cracking, “but we’re leaving as soon as I get back with Page.”

“But I thought you just got here,” Jack said, his forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Didn’t you say that?”

Did she? Stacy felt her face getting hot again. She’d forgotten that she told them she had just arrived. “I . . . uh . . . we . . . just came for an afternoon hike,” Stacy stammered. “We have to be home tonight.”

The woman seemed to be studying her carefully and Stacy started to panic.

“I’d better get back. They’ll be worried,” she said, edging away.

“Okay, nice meeting you,” Miriam said.

“Bye,” Stacy answered. “C’mon, Page.” She turned and forced herself to move at a normal pace. There was something about the way Miriam was looking at her that made Stacy uneasy. It was like she knew there wasn’t a human family waiting for her. It was all Stacy could do not to run, but she was afraid that would make the woman even more suspicious.

“Hey, wait!” Jack yelled.

Stacy started to run.

“You didn’t tell us your name.”

“It’s Stacy!” she said over her shoulder.

“Bye, Stacy!”

Stacy had reached the edge of the clearing, Page scampering behind her. She stepped from the bright sunlight into the shade of the trees, blinking. Everest was nearby, ready to do whatever she needed. Stacy made sure Jack and Miriam couldn’t see her and then crouched for a moment, petting him and the other wolves while her pounding heart settled back to a normal rhythm.

She wasn’t sure why, but she found herself needing to know what Miriam and Jack were saying about her. She crept around the edge of the clearing, making sure she was hidden by the trees and the undergrowth, and found a spot within earshot of the couple.

The two humans were still in the middle of the clearing near their fire pit.

“Something’s off,” Miriam was saying. “Something is wrong and she didn’t want to tell us. Why is she wandering around in the woods alone? She looked like she hadn’t had a bath in a while, either.”

“She wasn’t alone. She was with her dog. I’m sure her parents were nearby.”

“Not so nearby that they could hear us talking,” Miriam said. “We could have been kidnappers. She was so awkward, though. And did you see the way she got scared when you talked about the developer?”

Jack shook his head. “She loves the forest like we do, and she’s a kid who was confronted by two strangers in the woods who had her dog. You’d be a little awkward, too, if that happened to you. Plus, she said she was homeschooled. Maybe she doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to adults beside her parents.”

“I don’t know . . .” Miriam said. “I have a weird feeling about the whole thing. Maybe we should look for her. Make sure there are parents. I want to be sure she’s taken care of.”

Stacy’s heart started hammering again. The first thing humans will do if they find out about me is make me leave my wolf family in the forest. If there’s still a forest to leave, anyway.

Jack shook his head. “Of course she has parents, Miriam, what are you talking about? And she looked perfectly clean to me. She was polite. She likes reading. She’s just a normal kid who’s a bit wary of strangers, that’s all. The only thing that was genuinely weird about her is that she’d never heard of s’mores. That’s just wrong.”

Miriam bit her lip and went back to starting their fire, seeming to accept Jack’s explanation for Stacy’s behavior.

Stacy crawled backward away from the clearing, confused and filled with conflicting feelings. She was relieved they hadn’t decided to come looking for her fake parents. She was also a little embarrassed that Miriam had thought her odd, but proud at the same time because even though she had been really uncomfortable, and a bit awkward, Stacy had survived her first human interaction (first in a long time, at least) and successfully retrieved Page. The feeling that confused her the most was that there was just a hint of a longing to spend more time with the couple. And it wasn’t only because she wanted to taste s’mores and find out more about the proposed development; she liked hearing the two of them talk. She liked the fact that they fought against the substation and had warned her about the bounty, and she liked that they loved animals, even skunks. And Stacy liked that they cleaned up the garbage other humans left behind. She liked them. And that was confusing because, up until this point, Stacy had been so sure that she didn’t like any of her own kind.

But the feeling Stacy felt that overtook all the others—bigger than the relief of getting Page back or the confusion over enjoying her interaction with the humans—was fear. Pure fear. The village vote to reinstate a wolf bounty had passed and that meant that in a few days’ time, hunters would be coming into the forest with the express purpose of killing wolves. And not just the wild wolves that were killing the farmer’s sheep . . . her wolves. At any moment, a hunter could shoot one of her wolves.