Tell the Wolves I'm Home

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Book: Tell the Wolves I'm Home Read Free
Author: Carol Rifka Brunt
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said he wished things were like that now. I wanted him to know I understood—that I would do anything to go back in time—so I told him about the woods. He laughed and bumped his shoulder against mine and called me a nerdatroid and I called him a geek for spending all his time thinking about painting, and then we both laughed because we knew we were right. We both knew we were the biggest nerds in the whole world. Now that Finn’s gone, nobody knows that I go to the woods after school. Sometimes I think nobody even remembers those woods exist at all.

Three
    The portrait was never given to us. Not officially. Not with words.
    That’s because it was never finished. That’s what Finn said. We had to keep going back for just one more sitting and one more sitting after that. Nobody argued about it except Greta, who stopped going to Finn’s on Sundays. She said if Finn was only doing the background, he didn’t need all of us there. She said she had other things, better things, she could be doing with her Sunday afternoons.
    It was a cold cold morning in January, the first day back to school after Christmas vacation, and we were waiting outside our house for the school bus. Our house is on Phelps Street, which is one of the last streets on the bus route. We live on the south end of town, and school is a little way out of town on the north side. By road it’s about two miles, but if you cut through backyards and come in through the woods—which I sometimes do—it’s much less.
    Because our house is one of the last the bus gets to, it’s always hard to know exactly when it will show up. Over the years, Greta and I have spent a lot of time out there waiting, staring down the line of front lawns on our street. Phelps has a mix of capes and ranches, except for the Millers’ Tudor, which sits up a small hill on the cul-de-sac. It’s obviously a fake Tudor, because there was nobody in Westchester except for the Mohegan Indians in Tudor times, so I don’t know who the Millers think they’re fooling. Probably no one. Probably it never even crossed the Millers’ minds. But it crosses mine. Every single time I seeit. Ours is the light blue cape with black shutters and a sprawling red maple out front.
    That morning I was jogging in place to stay warm. Greta was leaning against the maple, studying a pair of new suede ankle boots she had on. She kept taking her glasses on and off, breathing on them, then cleaning off the steam.
    â€œGreta?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat better things do you do on Sundays?”
    I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. I wrapped my arms around my coat, pulling it in tighter.
    Greta turned her head slowly and gave me a big close-lipped smile. She shook her head and widened her eyes.
    â€œThings
you
can’t even imagine.”
    â€œYeah, right,” I said.
    Greta went to stand on the other side of the driveway.
    I figured she meant having sex. But, then again, maybe not, because I could imagine that. I didn’t want to, but I could.
    She took her glasses off again and turned the lenses white with her breath.
    â€œHey,” I called over to her. “We’re orphans again. It’s orphan season.”
    Greta knew what I meant. She knew I meant tax-season orphans. Every year it was the same. There’d be the buzz of Christmas and New Year, and then our parents disappeared for all the worst months of winter. They’d leave the house by six-thirty in the morning, and most nights they wouldn’t be back until at least seven. That’s what it’s like to be the offspring of two accountants. That’s how it’s been for as long as I can remember.
    In tax season, when our parents had to leave before the bus came, they used to have Mrs. Schegner across the street watch over us from her living room window. Nine-year-old Greta would stand waiting for the bus with seven-year-old me. Even though we knew Mrs.

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