Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

little note that said,
You know you want to
 … next to a tiny pen sketch of my mother with a pencil in her hand. What was amazing was that even though the sketch was only half an inch high, you could tell instantly that it was my mother. That’s how good Finn was.
    That night everyone else was talking. My dad was having a quiet argument with Greta because she didn’t want to put her napkin on her lap. The whole time, Finn sat next to me, folding and twisting his napkin until all at once he lifted it out from under the table and we saw that he’d folded it into a butterfly. We watched as he flew it over to Greta and said, “Here, I have somebody who needs a lap to rest on.” Greta giggled and took the butterfly from Finn’s hand and put it straight on her lap, and my dad looked over at Finn and gave him a smile. I remember thinking that I wanted a butterfly napkin too. I wanted Finn to fold something for me. I was about to ask him, but when I turned I saw that he was staring across the table at my mother. She had the sketchbook open to the inside cover and she was gazing down at that little drawing of herself. After a while she looked up at Finn. She lifted her head slowly, and she didn’t smile or say thank you like you normally would if somebody gave you a present. No. She just sat there, giving him a kind of sad, hard look then shook her head at him, her lips pressed together tight. Then she slid the book back into the wrapping paper and shoved it under the table. That’s one of those snapshot moments. I don’t know why some memories are like that, where everything is perfectly preserved. Frozen. But that memory—Finn’s eyes locked on my mother’s, my mother slowly shaking her head—is exactly like that.
    When we got to Gasho, we followed the hostess to one of the high tables and climbed onto our stools. Each table seated maybe twelve people around a big grill, and the chef was at the other end hacking up some meat with a little hatchet. My dad ordered two glasses of Japanese beer. Then he looked at us and asked if we wanted Shirley Temples.
    â€œI’m not, like, three years old, you know,” Greta said. “I’ll have a Diet Coke.”
    â€œI guess I’ll have a Coke too,” I said, even though really I would have liked a Shirley Temple.
    And that’s about the most conversation we had all night. I don’t think anybody in that restaurant would have been able to guess that we were out having a birthday celebration. My dad asked Greta how the play was going, and all she could say was “Fine.” My mother remarked on a change in the menu, but that’s as good as it got. None of us were Finn sort of people. I tried to remember one of the Victorian games, but nothing came to me. Maybe more was said, maybe some words disappeared into the sizzling peppers and onions, but that’s how I remember it. I sat there watching the Japanese chef with his high white hat frying our dinner and wondered what would happen to me without Finn. Would I stay stupid for the rest of my life? Who would tell me the truth, the real story that was under what everybody else could see? How do you become someone who knows those things? How do you become someone with X-ray vision? How do you become Finn?
    On the way home, I thought about the note from Toby again. I thought about how March 6 was only three days away and how stupid it would be for me to go meet him. Again I thought that I should go to my parents and tell them all about it. Tell them that this guy came right up to our door. That he’d asked me to meet him. That he’d asked me to keep it a secret. It wasn’t too late to tell them everything.
    My parents trusted me. I knew they did. And they were right to. I was a girl who always did the right thing. But this was different. I knew Toby had stories. He had little pieces of Finn I’d never seen. And the apartment. Maybe there