Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt Page A

would be a chance to see the apartment again. My mother would call it scraping the bottom of the barrel. Looking for the very last crumbs. My mother would call it being greedy, but I didn’t care. If you think a story can be like a kind of cement, the sloppy kind that you put between bricks, the kind that looks like cake frosting before it dries hard, then maybe I thought it would be possible to use what Toby had to hold Finn together, to keep him here with me a little bit longer.

Nineteen
    â€œParty. Tomorrow night. One hundred percent. No cancellations.”
    Greta had come into the bathroom while I was in the shower and whispered through the coral pink shower curtain.
    â€œWhat?”
    Greta said it again, slower, as loud as she could without our parents hearing. I still couldn’t hear her right, so I turned the shower off and rubbed the water out of my ears with my palm. I stuck my head out from behind the curtain.
    â€œWhat?”
    She let out a frustrated breath, then said it one more time. That time I heard her.
    â€œMom and Dad will be at work until seven and then we can just tell them you’re helping with the play again. Okay?”
    I nodded, but my thoughts were racing. The party was the same day as the meeting with Toby.
    â€œOkay?” Greta said.
    â€œYeah … I guess. Okay.”
    â€œIt’s in the woods behind the school.”
    My woods. The party was going to be in my woods. I smiled to myself. For once I’d know more than Greta. I’d be the only one there who knew anything about the place.
    Greta stood there with her hands on her hips, looking at me likeshe was waiting for me to say something. “You know those woods, right?”
    â€œI … yeah. The ones you can see behind the cafeteria.”
    She waited another few seconds, then nodded.
    I turned the shower on to full again, letting it pound against my neck.
    I could see the shape of Greta’s forehead through the shower curtain, and I gave her a poke. She poked back, trying to nab my shoulder. We both laughed, poking blindly at each other through the pink plastic.
    â€œStop,” Greta said, but she was still poking.
    I reached a wet arm out from the side of the curtain and tickled Greta right under her armpit. We both couldn’t stop laughing.
    â€œGirls?” My dad’s voice boomed from downstairs.
    I pulled my arm back.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Greta hollered.
    Every once in a while it was like that with me and Greta. Just for a minute or two. Just a glimpse of what we used to be like.
    She stuck her head around the curtain, angling her face so she wouldn’t see me naked.
    â€œSo you’re still coming?”
    â€œYeah. Just go ahead. I’ll meet you in the woods.”

Twenty
    I wrote down some ways to hate Toby. I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t want to show up all weepy and dumb. I wanted to be hard. I wanted to be able to tell him what was what.
    Â Â Â Â 
1) Remember that he is the one who made Finn die. Maybe on purpose
.
    Â Â Â Â 
2) Remember that he is the one who sent the portrait, OUR portrait, to the paper without asking, even though it’s ours and it’s none of his business
.
    Â Â Â Â 
3) Remember that only someone very creepy would send a fourteen-year-old girl letters and tell her not to tell her parents
.
    I looked at the list, but I couldn’t make it work. I couldn’t seem to hate the guy. Finn didn’t hate Toby. Finn might have even loved Toby. And Toby was probably the very last person in the world who’d talked to Finn, who’d seen him alive. So I added this:
    Â Â Â Â 
4) Toby was the last one to talk to Finn. Toby was the last one to hold Finn’s hand. The last one to hug him. Not me. It was Toby
.
    That’s when the list started working.
I
wanted to be the last one. Not some gangly English guy with a watery voice.

Twenty-One
    If you stand on Sumac Avenue where it