This Is Not a Werewolf Story Read Online Free Page A

one of your last five teeth on it, dog.
    I set the helmet on a driftwood log so I remember to grab it on the way back.

    Sparrow doesn’t want to come out of the Blackout Tunnel.
    â€œCome on!” I yell. Even if I didn’t have Bobo, I wouldn’t go in there. It reeks. My nose sniffs. I don’t want to but I do, because that’s how my nose works. I smell wet cat, reptile cage, park toilet, and something else—something familiar. After a few more sniffs I smile.
    â€œGet out already, Sparrow,” I yell. “It smells like Tuffman’s breath in there!”
    Sparrow’s sputter of a laugh echoes off the walls and pings toward me like a bouncy ball. That’s all it takes with Sparrow. Make him laugh and his worries are over.
    He races out, drops to his knees. and throws his arms around Bobo. She licks his face like it’s the most important thing she’ll do all day long.
    â€œWhat took you so long?” he asks.
    All the way back to the school he won’t stop talking. It turns out it wasn’t just my joke that got him to come out. He’d also found an awesome bone.
    â€œIs it human?” he asks me for the fiftieth time as we head down from the fort to the beach. “I fink it’s someone’s pinkie finger bone. Maybe the monster ate all of someone but was too full for the pinkie. This is all that’s left. Poor guy. In heaven with no pinkie.” He looks at me and grins. “It’s a monster that only eats PE teachers.”
    We could use a monster like that around here.
    I think it’s the jawbone of a raccoon that a coyote must have dragged in there, but I let him ramble on and on about the very exclusive diet of his monster.
    Why burst his bubble? I’ve seen some things in White Deer Woods that nobody would believe.
    In fact, I am something that nobody would believe.
    I shake that thought away. It’s best to keep my worlds separate, even in my head. Look what happened with Tuffman. Just thinking about woods magic can get me in trouble.
    On the way up the zigzag path Sparrow wears the new kid’s helmet. He’s so small, it covers his head and rests on his shoulders.
    â€œI’m Darth Vader,” he says. He holds the bone like a lightsaber and waves it in front of me. “Raul,” he says in a gravelly voice. “I am your father.”
    I smile but I must look sad, because he takes the helmet off.
    â€œYou wanna hold the bone?” he asks after a second.
    I nod. Of course I wanna hold the bone.

Chapter 3
WHERE YOU DISCOVER PART OF THE FIRST SECRET AND LEARN ABOUT LOVE
    After I drop Sparrow off at the dean’s office to find out about the bone, I look at my watch. Twenty minutes left before the dining hall stops serving hot food.
    But to get to the dining hall you have to walk by the wood shop. Every day I do the same thing. I take one step into the wood shop, just to breathe in the smell of sawdust, and I’m hooked. I get busy carving or sanding, and before I know it an hour has slipped by.
    Dean Swift told me once about the scientific method.
    â€œEverything you need to know is in front of you, Raul,” he said. “You have to figure out the design. When a scientist wants to come up with a theory and prove it, he reads and wonders and observes. The truth is there all along, sitting hidden in the facts.”
    It’s the same with a carving. The carving is in the wood, waiting for my knife to free it.
    The fishing pole I’m making for Sparrow is almost done. This is my favorite part, where I take the fine-grain sandpaper and rub the birch wood until it’s soft as sugar.
    My mom’s hands felt that way when she would rub my back before I fell asleep. I miss her. It makes me feel bad to say that. I bet it makes you feel bad to read it. I don’t want my story to make anyone sad.
    So I’ll tell you part of my secret: I miss her a whole lot less now than when I first got