When I recovered from the shock and found my nerve, I hurried to look outside. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Had I really thought things through, I would have stayed far, far away from that window. Danger was lurking all around me.
But I wasn’t thinking. I was acting on impulse, and my impulse pushed me to investigate.
The whole window, it turned out, hadn’t broken. There was a small, fractured hole in the middle, which made a web of shattered glass across the pane.
With blood throbbing in my brain so hard I probably needed to see a doctor, I peered out the small open spot in the glass, careful not to cut myself.
My heart was pounding against my ribs. I had a slamming headache from the throbbing. Every hair on my head was standing up by the root. I was scared. And yet my curiosity was bigger than my fear.
I squinted into the darkness. By the light of the nearly full moon, I saw a slender figure on the grass, looking up at the window, eyes wide with a horror that matched mine.
It wasn’t Cassie. Or a werewolf.
To my great relief, it was Duke.
By the horrified look on his face, he clearly couldn’t believe he’d tossed a rock and broken Sam’s window.
And I couldn’t believe it was him. It took a few minutes for my brain to tell my body to relax. We stood like that, paralyzed, staring at each other.
“Duke!” I said at last. The window was broken, but I still managed to push the frame up without damaging it further. “I need your help,” I told Duke.
Once I had fully wrapped my head around him being there, I couldn’t control how happy I was to see him. It was like someone had thrown me a life vest in a rocky sea.
“Oh, it’s you, Emma.” He sounded so disappointed. “I thought you were Sam. I saw the shadow. I didn’t mean to break the glass. It was such a small stone.…” he said in an apologetic voice. “I just wanted her attention.” Then, “Where’s Sam?”
“Downstairs with the cousins,” I said. “I have a problem.” I looked out at the tree in front of Sam’s room. “Think you can climb up and talk to me?”
He stared at me as if I were the one who was a werewolf. “Are you nuts?” He waved his crutch in the air. “I’m not dumb enough to do that twice.”
I considered climbing down that tree, but seeing that crutch made me reconsider. The truth was, I was more likely to end up with a broken neck than a leg. Asking Cassie to drive me to the hospital wasn’t an option.
I decided calling down to him was worth the risk of Sam and the cousins overhearing below. Fingers crossed, they were all asleep anyway.
“So…” This was kind of hard to explain. “Duke, I think Sam is in danger.”
He moved closer to the bottom of the window. “Really?” His face was illuminated in the moonlight.
I blurted, “I think her cousin might be a werewolf.”
He didn’t start laughing, so that was a start. “What makes you think so?”
I was going to give him my list of clues but decided to go the direct route. I grabbed the journal and held it out so he could see it. “This book told me.”
“Huh?”
I should have expected that.
“The Scaremaster is the author of the journal. His stories appear, then disappear.”
“Go on,” he said, still not laughing.
“The first story was about a girl, who thought she was rescuing a puppy, only it wasn’t a dog at all. At the end, there was a big secret about it.” I paused, gauging his reaction, and, when he didn’t say anything, went on. “In this new story, the girl discovers it was a werewolf who bit her. The first time she transformed at a full moon, she prowled the neighborhood at night, terrorizing small animals, searching for prey. She didn’t catch anything and went to bed hungry.” I went on. “The next time she changed, her sister locked her into her room. When she snapped out of it the following morning, there was fresh blood on the carpet. No one could explain what had happened. One thing was sure: She wasn’t hungry anymore.” I shuddered. “She knows she’s a wolf, but she can’t remember what happens while she’s transformed—which makes it all even more dangerous.”
Retelling this was horrifying. The story was so eerie, I didn’t really want to say it out loud, but I really needed Duke to believe me.
“There was a second chapter to this one,” I told him. “It starts in the park—during a moonlit walk. Four girls are out, looking at the full moon. The girl transforms into the werewolf.”
I knew which one but didn’t say. Not yet.
“The werewolf chases everyone into a heavily wooded area, then corners them, one by one. First, the wolf bites her own cousin.” I repeated the word “cousin” so he’d understand I was talking about Sam. “She instantly changes into a werewolf too. The other girl goes for help, but she never comes back.”
I knew who that part referred to also. By the process of elimination, there was only one girl left. Not Sam. And not Cassie, who was the werewolf. That left Riley as the one who disappeared, because next was my part.
“Together, the two werewolf-cousins chase a girl called Emma into the basement.” I couldn’t see Duke’s face clearly but could tell he was listening, so I went on. “I’m not kidding. The only girl with a name in the story is me.” I leaned as far out the window as I could without falling and told him, “The whole story started ‘Once upon a time, there was a girl named Emma.…’” They all did. The Scaremaster wasn’t very creative about the way his stories began.
Duke stared at me. “So… based on a story in a supposedly magical book starring girls with no names, you think Sam is in danger?”
When he put it that way, it did sound like something I was making up.
“I’m telling you, Duke—it’s not a coincidence. I can easily guess the two girls are Sam and Riley and that the wolf is Cassie. Plus, the park sounds like the one nearby: trees on one side, playground on the other, with thick grass between.” I had one last bit of evidence. “And the basement in the story is the exact same as the one in this house!”
“What happens to the girl in the basement?” he asked.
“It’s awful,” I said, closing my eyes to keep from crying. “The werewolf corners Emma, I mean me, under the single hanging lightbulb. I scream and scream, but no one comes to save me.” My voice broke with the stress of it all.
That was the end.
In a long silence, I stared down at Duke. His face was pale in the light. He must have been afraid. I thought he’d go grab a weapon or something and rush back to help me.
But instead he said, “I saw that movie, Emma.”
“What movie?” I was baffled.
“The one about the book and the stories.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Closer Encounters of a Different Kind.” He said, “Funny joke, Emma. First you pelt me with oranges; then you try to sell me on some crazy story.” Duke backed away from the window, limping as he went. “No more tricks. Tell Sam I’ll pay for the window.”
“Tricks?” I called after him. “What tricks?” I wasn’t the tricky kind. Didn’t he know that? Not even on April Fools’ Day or Halloween. I NEVER PLAYED TRICKS!
Then again, I had screamed like a maniac when he came to the door earlier. With that in mind, I could see what he meant.
“Don’t go,” I begged. “I need you.” I added, “I’ll help you ask Sam to the dance!”
He didn’t turn around.
“Please…” I added. “It’s life or death.” I tried one last thing. “Save me,” I breathed. “This could be my last weekend ever.”
I heard the distinct sound of Duke’s back door shutting.
I was on my own.
Again.
I carefully shut the window and pulled down the blinds to make the room feel more safe and secure. Then I rushed down the stairs. Everyone was, as I expected, still asleep.
I lay down close to Sam, not in my sleeping bag, but on the floor next to her. I shook her shoulder. “Sam,” I whispered in a throaty voice. “We gotta go.” Where, I didn’t know. But we had to leave! “Come on.”
She didn’t budge.
“Sam.” My voice was a little louder. From the other side of me, Cassie snore-growled. “Wake up.” I shook her harder.
She didn’t even open one eye. It was like trying to wake the dead.
I scooted over to Riley. I’d start there instead.
“Riley!” My voice was getting louder and louder as I became more desperate. “Get up.” She rolled over, her back to me. “Come on, little friend.” I tried to push her out of the sleeping bag. I was getting pretty aggressive now. It was like shoving a log. Same as Sam, she wasn’t waking up—not for anything.
“Shhh…” The voice came from the next sleeping bag over. “Go back to sleep, Emma.”
“I—” I’d been caught by Cassie. Of all people in the room, of course, she was the one who wasn’t dead to the world. “Sorry,” I whispered to her.
“You will be really sorry if you don’t go back to sleep now,” she grunted in a low, guttural voice.
I didn’t say another word. Too terrified to do anything else, I crawled into my sleeping bag. I had twenty-four hours to figure out what to do.
Werewolf weekend was a nightmare come true.
I lay in my sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling.
I couldn’t sleep.