Summer of the Wolves by Polly Carlson-Voiles

sleeping bag and sat down cross-legged, pulling the floppy bear next to her. “Hey, Khan, hey, little one, here, puppy, pup. Come here, Khan-boy.” She waited. She wondered if the next time Lorna came, Khan would be afraid of her, if he would remember her smell.
    â€œHere, puppy pup, here, Khan-boy, here, pup-pup,” repeated Ian, making lip-squeak noises.
    A sleepy pup slowly crawled from behind the kennel, step by step. Ian moved to give him room. Khan stretched and looked around, then skittered over to Nika’s bag, where he tried to squeeze between her back and the knee wall. She reached behind and stroked the soft folds of his ears and kept talking gently, “Good boy, Khan, good pup.” After a few minutes he backed out, crawled over her leg, and fell into her lap, where he settled, lowering his head on her knee. She wanted to pick him up and hug him, but she didn’t. Better to let him choose his moves. She reached over and placed the red lobster toy in front of him. He grabbed one of its legs and gave it a ferocious headshake. Ian said headshaking was a predatory skill wolves needed as adults, that a shake could snap the necks of small prey. After working over the lobster, Khan showed more confidence and jumped from her lap. He ran back and forth, relieved himself, then came back and climbed on top of the stuffed bear, kneading it with his paws.
    â€œHungry boy, huh, pup?” Nika got up, cleaned up his puddle, noted it on the chart, then climbed over the baby gate. She set some water on the stove to heat, keeping an eye on Lorna, who was busily explaining to Ian something about her uncle’s dog and how it bit people. The girl was a ditz, Nika decided. She wondered if Ian would admit he’d made a mistake in trusting her.
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    After dinner that night, Ian bugged Nika to get to work on the pup report she was supposed to write for school credit. He told her he’d watch the pup. So she spread out on Pearl’s big table, with note cards and the giant stack of Ian’s well-worn books and articles. She wrote that the “transition period” was over now and that Khan was starting the “socialization period”—the time, at about three weeks of age, when wild wolf pups first stick their noses out of the den. He weighed 5.2 pounds, and his hearing was beginning to develop. His ears were beginning to stand up. If he growled or snapped at someone, Ian and Nika quickly distracted him with a piece of food or a toy. He liked to hide under his stuffed bear with just his back legs sticking out.
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    A few days later Nika shared her idea with Thomas, and they made a plan. He got permission to take the fishing boat and they agreed to meet at the Camerons’ in the morning. Randall was mad at Nika for not including him, but she said something lame about how she missed Olivia and Zack and that she needed time with someone her own age. (Both true, really.) Randall had fired off a glare, marched back into the boys’ cabin, and slammed the door. Nika knew that he must be especially furious with her for horning in on his fishing time with Thomas. But she was really protecting Randall. It was enough that she and Thomas were going to cross a line.
    It was a perfect glassy-water morning when Thomas came puttering around the point in his small fishing boat powered by a 9½ horsepower motor. They loaded nets and poles to make it look like they were going to fish and headed toward Red Pine. The boat steadily worked its way across the calm surface of the lake, cutting through the shreds and layers of mist that peeled off the water like curtains lifting on a stage. As the motor hummed along, she could tell it was going to take longer to get to town than it had in Ian’s fast boat.
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    Before they tiptoed up to the skunks’ cage, Thomas told her, “Bristo drinks a lot, so he probably wouldn’t wake up this early even if a land mine went off in the