I spend the week before enrollment getting to know Orsonville, establishing my routine. Waking up at seven o’clock in the morning, struggling with the treacherous floorboards. I’ve found that dividing my weight on the boards between steps while keeping my back perfectly straight helps with the worst of the racket, but I’m still not quite there. Mister Nomura yells at me from downstairs every time I miss a step. It's turned into a little game, for both of us.

On Wednesday morning, I find a small island of quiet in the middle of the cacophony: a tiny patch of hard wood, just two steps to the right of the bed. Another, half a step to the front. By Friday, I can make my way to the bathroom without making a sound. By the weekend, I’ve made it halfway to the door undetected. Mister Nomura tries his best not to look impressed.

I walk down Etchison road every afternoon to bring Mister Pettus his lunch. Tuesday, he shows me an old photo album. There are a lot of black and white pictures of him, with a head full of hair and a wolf’s grin on his face. ‘This one’ he tells me ‘is from Mityushikha Bay, just after they dropped the Tsar Bomb. And this, this is in Brazzaville, where they found that natural nuclear reactor.’ Friday, I help Mister Pettus get out of a tangle of spiderweb that he’s spinning through a loom. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell me what it’s for. When he pulls up his sleeves, I see a string of numbers on his bicep. ‘From when I was in trouble.’ He tells me and I make sure not to push it. He’s going to tell me, eventually.

I spend my free time roaming Orsonville, walking up Ellison street, trekking across the perimeter of the town at the outskirts of the Edgarhorn. Down south, I look through the chainlink fence at the frakking industry, its chimneys breathing noxious fumes into the air and spilling a rainbow of industrial waste into Henderson Lake. From the corner of my eye, I catch glimpses of Gunda with some of her cronies. Billy is with her, too. She winks at me every time she sees me, flashes me a grin that’s all teeth and malice. I grin right back at her.

Mister Nomura pays me on Friday. I blow almost twelve bucks at King’s theater just so I can watch an old horror flick with a bucket of soda and half a kilo of popcorn. It makes me laugh, how the people in the research station can’t tell which one is the shapeshifter. The tells are all there, even though the director cheats a couple of times just to build tension. The rest, I spend on school supplies. I buy a sturdy backpack with thick straps and lots of pockets, wondering if I could sneak anything I might need in there. A knife, perhaps or a compact nightstick. The clerk eyes me funny so I buy a stack of ring-binders and notebooks and two handfuls of pens just to throw him off. I make sure to get two pairs of sneakers from the sporting goods store and hiking boots. ‘Never seen a girl your age so interested in hiking. Planning to scale the Edgarhorn?’ the sales lady asks and I laugh appropriately.

The few dollars that are left burn a hole in my pocket, so I make my way to the one place I have been avoiding: the convenience store on the other side of town, with the hawk-eyed man behind the counter. I hesitate in front of the double-doors for a while, attempt to make an excuse but the motion sensor slides them wide open, forces me to move on. The man’s eyes train on my back the minute I make my way to the U-Cook-It™ aisle.

“I’m watching you” he grumbles from behind the counter. I freeze for a second, struggle with a witty comeback but decide against it. Very carefully, I pick a piece of rye bread, smear it with mustard and ketchup and stack bits of bacon and slices of stir-fried chicken. Sneaking glances at the man behind the counter, I can see he’s making the effort to pretend like he is reading the newspaper.

“I don’t know what you took last time.” he says, pretending to shift through newspaper articles. “But it ain’t happening again.”

“I didn’t take anything.”

“That’s what they all say.”

I’m waiting for the microwave to reduce the slices of cheese in the sandwich into a congealed, homogenous mess when I tell the man behind the counter “I wanted to, though.”

“That’s new” he says, putting down the paper. “Most of you little crooks won’t admit it even after I’ve emptied your pockets.”

“Some boy stole my money as soon as I came here and I was hungry and angry, too. Wanted to take it out on someone. I chickened out though.”

Ding goes the microwave. I take out the sandwich and head for the counter.

“That’ll be 5.95” the man behind the counter says.

“I only used stuff for 3.95.” I protest.

“There’s a 2-dollar welcome tax. To keep you out of trouble. You sneak back in here again, I raise it to 6.”

“That’s not fair!”

“No. Neither is having to walk through half the damn Amazon to get out of country that wants to kill you for not liking its government and ending up in the Land of Opportunity, only to have snot-nosed brats try to steal the crappy merchandise that you had to scrub windshields for ten years just to cobble together. Here’s your receipt. Come again.”

I hand the man behind the counter the last of my money and leave the store, steaming sandwich still in hand. The mess of cheese and meat tastes like microwaved shoe soles, but I eat it all the same in the abandoned parking lot next to his store. I’m about to toss the crumpled wrapper in the bin, when I hear something rummaging around inside, smacking against the inside. I stay perfectly still, trying to gauge it by the muffled moans that it makes. After a while, it stops.

“Please don’t kick the bin again” the tiny muffled voice says.

“I’m not going to.” I say.

“Are they gone?”

“Who are you talking about?”

The lid opens just a crack and Anton’s face peers out into daylight. He smells like wet garbage. A candy wrapper hangs from his ear. His left eye is bruised over something fierce.

“Hi again.” he mumbles, as he awkwardly tries to get out of the bin. I reach my hand out to help, but he pushes it away “No, I’m fine.” He manages, before dropping down on the concrete on his back.

“Are you okay?” I ask him. Even in his current, beaten-up state, Anton has that doe-eyed look on his face. Can’t help but feel flattered.

“Yeah, I just…well there were five of them, but I think I put up a good fight…didn’t have my money in my wallet this time, so I guess it’s not a total loss.” he stutters, turning back to the garbage bin. “They threw my groceries in there too. I hope they didn’t spill out too much.”

“Do they do this often?” I ask, even as I am helping him sift through the trash. Anton tries to salvage a punctured bag of rice and a packet of crushed cookies.

“What? The bin thing? No, this one’s new.” He mumbles, while checking for any crushed packets of cereal, tuttting as he drains the split carton of milk from his bag. “It’s nothing, really.”

“No it isn’t. You can’t let them do that to you.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to get mad. I can stand up to them just fine.”

“No you can’t. How long have you been in that bin?”

Anton straps the plastic bags around his wrists and walks away from me, head held high. Like an idiot, I press on.

“Who were they? Was it Billy and Gunda with her cronies?”

“Just leave it, okay?”

“I only want to help.”

“They’ll beat you up, too. You think they’re going to back down because you are a girl?”

“I am going to kick their asses five ways from Sunday, just give the word!”

“Okay then, don’t.” Anton says, stopping dead in his tracks. The look on his face makes my heart sink down to my stomach.

“What?”

“I don’t want anyone fighting my battles for me. I don’t need anyone to swoop in and save me. If I do this, I’m going to do it on my own terms.”

“And how is that working out for you?” I say and I can tell exactly how spiteful that sounds.

“Have a good one, Finn.”

Anton walks away and I’m left alone, with my stupid little sandwich wrapper in my hand, feeling angry and stupid and useless. Mister Nomura can tell the second I walk inside.

“Contemplating revenge again? Should I get the spoiled fish?” he muses, breaks into a grin when he gets a good long look at my face.

“What the hell are we even doing here?”

“We keep the peace. Maintain order. Save as many lives as we can, when we can.”

“No, we aren’t. We just burned a few rat-things and then trudge around under Orsonville. And you won’t even show me half of the place! We don’t hunt monsters, we just…sit here and react to things!”

“And what exactly” Mister Nomura says, taking a long sip of coffee “did you expect we were going to do? Play dress up with spandex uniforms and fight crime? Climb on a magic carpet and fly around the world, righting wrongs?”

“I just…I just thought we could help people…” I trail off, before plopping down on a stool. “I thought we could do more than…bide our time.”

“For a girl who’s run away from home, you sure have a naïve view of the world, Finn.” Mister Nomura tells me. “Tell me, is this about that boy Billy again? Or that girl, what was her name? Gunda?”

“Sort of. It’s about a boy, his name is Anton. He lived next door to the rat-thing nest.”

“Scrawny boy? Long hair? Looks like a rat that got trapped in a washing machine?”

“Yes, him.”

“I knew his father, Ivan Deryabin. His heart pumped iron instead of blood. Anton takes after him.”

“No, he doesn’t. Someone beat him and they dumped him in a trash bin just outside the convenience store! They rushed him, five of them!”

“Yes, five. That’s how many it took. I have known Anton for a while. Tough as nails but a good boy, at heart.”

“Fat lot of good that did him, if they plan to bully him.”

“So Finn will swoop down from the Heavens to dole out divine retribution?” Mister Nomura muses. The look on his face makes me want to punch him.

“If that’s what it will take.”

“And what is he supposed to do, when you aren’t around? When you’re somewhere else, or at home? How long will it take before he’s ridiculed at school and he can’t even stand being seen around you? I know that you are angry enough to fool yourself into thinking that, but this isn’t a fairy tale. There are consequences to what you choose to do.”

I stare into Mister Nomura’s eyes and for the life of me, I can’t tell if he is being condescending. I struggle with finding the right words but end up staying silent before finally backing down. I’m no less mad at him, at Anton, at Gunda and the whole damn world for it but there’s nothing I can do about it, not right now anyway. Mister Nomura serves lunch without a word.

“We won’t be patrolling tonight. I suggest you sleep early, take the weekend off. I cleared it with the principal. You’re enrolling Monday morning.”

“What about you? Will you be okay with me gone in the mornings?”

“I might as well get used to scrubbing my own floors and cleaning my own kitchen again. As for Montgomery Pettus, I don’t think he would settle for me delivering his lunch personally anymore. He’s taken a liking to you.” Mister Nomura says, as he wolfs down his lunch.

“What did Miter Pettus used to do? When he was young? He showed me all those black and white pictures, but they seemed unreal…”

“He showed you his photo album? He never even let me set eyes on it and I have known him for a decade, the impossible bastard!”

“I think he was a spy.” I say, blushing. “He has all these pictures of strange places and they all seem like they were taken right out from a history book, except they’re all taken in those weird angles, like…”

“Like the backstage of history?” Mister Nomura said. It sounded appropriate enough. “Ask him if he was ever in Austin in the 60’s. See if he squirms.”

***

After Mister Nomura’s gone to bed, I get dressed and slip out of the apartment through the window. Since sliding down is not an option, I make sure to lean against the wall of GoodSushi to ease my fall. As soon as I’ve hit the ground I pull up my hood and wrap a handkerchief around my face, check my bag to make sure I got everything I need: old pipe pilfered from the basement, rusted bike chain from the dumpster behind the store, unbreakable umbrella taken from the bus stop. Yeah, I think I’m ready.

I walk up Etchison and move up Elisson, making a turn on Ashton. I’m walking through the empty streets of Orsonville for fifteen whole minutes when I realize that I don’t exactly know where I am going; that I am heading exactly nowhere, fast. What exactly was it I was hoping to achieve? Stop a mugging in the middle of the street? Maybe break up a robbery or three? The improvised weapons feel clumsy and heavy on my back. In the distance, the moon peers behind the Edgarhorn’s crooked peak. The wind carries the distant echo of wolves, howling.

Turning left, I head toward Anton’s house. Might as well make the most out of this brainless little excursion and check up on him. The roads seem to twist and turn, ever so slightly. The seniors look at me through the old folks' home windows, wrinkled faces wreathed in halogen halos. Their breath fogs the glass. I walk faster. That horrible plaster cat on top of the pet shop leers down at me.

No wonder Mister Nomura prefers to crawl underground than face this weirdness. Driven by horror movie logic, I don’t turn back and head for GoodSushi, pressing on toward Anton’s house instead. It’s barely a kilometer away, I tell myself you came all the way here didn’t you?

Ellis street is dark and deathly silent. The air smells like old fear and rust. I stand stock still as I wait for my night vision to kick in. When it does, I put down my backpack and very gently wrap the bike chain across my sleeve. I grasp the pipe in my hand for comfort and very carefully climb up the fence to land soundlessly in Anton’s front yard. There is no light coming from the windows.

I’m halfway to the house, when I hear something thumping into the ground. The sound of it makes my heart jump and I freeze, squinting to make out what caused it in the moonlight. From around the corner, a scrawny little figure slips into the backyard, tosses something over the fence and begins to climb.

“Anton?” I whisper without thinking. The figure stops, halfway up the fence, turns its eyes toward me so I drop to the ground, keep my head low. What the hell are you doing? I think to myself. The figure scans the darkness for a while, then jumps out the fence and moves up the old road heading east, toward the old Marsh place.

Against my better judgment, I follow suit. We skirt the northernmost part of Orsonville, bob and weave through the graveyard. A gnarled, ancient oak tree bridges the thick wall that divides the graveyard from the Marsh place. The figure grasps one of the branches, climbs up nimbly and lands on the other side. I make sure to linger in the branches, to scan the area. There’s light coming from a makeshift pit just behind the Marsh place, a jabbering of voices. In the dim light, I can see Anton hesitate for a while. There’s a crowbar in his hands that he grips tightly, gritting his teeth. He must be as scared as I am. From my perch, I try to think of a way I can swoop down and grab him before he can move. By the time I’ve come up with a plan, he’s gone.

I land and roll, inch my way into the darkness. Anton’s standing at the edge of the pit, talking over the crackle of the flame. He’s saying something that I can barely make out. It takes me a while to realize that it’s in Russian. Out from the pit, snarls and roars. A bark or two. I wrap the bike chain around my hand, very slowly remove the umbrella from my backpack. Anton shouts something, raises his crowbar high…

The big, bristling, black thing is on him in a heartbeat, ice-blue eyes radiating pure malice. Its teeth gleam like fresh steel, as it brings its jaws down on him. Anton whacks it with his crowbar. The thing’s teeth clatter on the rocks and I’m bolting out of cover, screaming bloody murder, bring the pipe down on its eye good and hard. I know what the thing is before it stands up on its feet, 3 meters of lean, wiry muscle. It looks sick, its fur is patchy in places and its eyes are glazed over, but the rage is there all the same. Anton says a word in Russian and I know exactly what it means.

“Werewolf”

Anton backs away as quickly as possible. I plunge the umbrella’s tip against the werewolf’s belly. Against my expectations, it doubles over, stumbles. Whatever it is that's infected it, it's got it bad.

“What are you doing here?” Anton hisses at me. Out from the pit, pairs of piercing blue eyes stare at us.

“I’m saving you.” I tell Anton. The werewolf leans down, clamps its teeth around the pipe, crushes it in half with its jaws. I bring my arm down again and again, crashing against its eyes, its snout, its nose. The chain bites into the skin, bleeds it but the flesh knits right back together the second I raise my arm. Letting go of what’s left of the pipe, I crack the umbrella across the werewolf’s head. It bends, even as I hear the dull sound of its skull cracking. The werewolf reels, fall to one knee. My forebrain is on fire, swimming in andrenaline. When Anton grabs my shoulder, I jump away from him.

“Run!” Anton mouths and we do just that. I’m still holding my bent, useless umbrella. Anton still has his crowbar. We’re halfway to the fence, when I notice the thin streak of blood, trickling down across Anton’s face and I know that we’re doomed.

“They have your scent.” I tell Anton. Behind us, the pack climbing out of the pit, getting ready to break into a sprint. If I’d been here a moment sooner, we might have had a chance; maybe we could skirt across town, try to find refuge in the tunnels. But now they knew Anton and they could track him down even if he boarded a shuttle and shot himself to Alpha Centauri.

“I’m sorry” Anton says and like an idiot, I turn back and look; the one of the werewolves is already bounding toward us, swallowing up the distance. It’s drawing a bead for the rest of the pack to follow, circle around us and trap us further down. There’s nothing we can do. We have nothing to fight them with.

Anton grasps me just before I plummet down the sheer precipice that plunges all the way down to the interstate. Without missing a beat, I turn around and throw the bent umbrella in an arc. It wobbles as it moves through the air, tangles around the chargins werewolf’s limbs, causes it to trip and fall. The rest of the pack seems to be stalling, taking far too long to come after us. They’re massed around the head werewolf, snarling and clawing at its massive frame.

No matter; as soon as the pup is back on its feet, we’re as good as dead.

“Heads up, Finn!”Anton tells me and he shoves me down the precipice. Dad’s training kicks in before I know it and I curl into a ball, roll down the hill. Wild brush lashes at my hands and feet. Anton slides down clumsily, keeps pace with grace. The pup follows suit, loses its footing and comes barreling down the slope.

We crash on the asphalt, right in the middle of the interstate. Truck headlights loom like twin moons, getting bigger. I keep rolling. From the corner of my eye I can see Anton’s face, a stop-motion of terror. He jumps back out of the truck’s way, just as the werewolf pup launches into the air, its limbs clutching at empty air.

The truck’s axles howl as the driver attempts to brake thirty tons of steel careening down the asphalt, before the entire eighteen-wheeler slams against the werewolf.

There’s a sound like a wet garbage bag tearing open.

A dozen knuckles pop loudly in the night under the axles.

Giant’s nails scratching the face of a chalkboard as big as the world.

I get up on my feet and scream Anton’s name. He comes running out of cover, jumps over the long, twitching smear across the asphalt. I make sure not to look at it. We keep running, the truck driver cursing at the world at the top of is lungs against the maddening howl of the pack at the top of Marsh Hill.

We don’t exchange a single word until we’ve scaled Anton’s fence. “I’m sorry” I say, still shivering as the andrenaline rush comes down.

“Thanks for saving my hide.” Anton says, teeth chattering.

“See you Monday?” I smirk and we burst out laughing until we’re on our knees, rolling in the dirt. We don’t stop even after Anton’s mother comes out, shotgun in hand, worried sick. He kisses her when she comes near, babbles reassuring nonsense in Russian. I slip away before she’s had a chance to notice me.

Mister Nomura is waiting for me, leaning against the shutters of GoodSushi. The look on his face cuts my laughter short.

“I just…I only wanted…”

“Come inside. Punishment first. You can tell me how stupid you were later.”

I nod and follow him, head bent low. The howling goes on, well into the wee hours of the morning.