Red Rider's Hood by Neal Shusterman Page A

umbrella.
    â€œGood for you, Wolverine,” he said. “You’re one step closer.”
    â€œHe didn’t bleed! He didn’t bruise!” Marvin complained. “Not even a black eye!”
    â€œYou got a problem?” yelled Cedric. “Maybe you want to take a flying leap today?”
    That shut Marvin up. The other Wolves came up around me, to congratulate me for passing Cedric’s test—I guess the only rule for passing is that you survive. They patted me on the back, they gave me the secret handshake. It took the edge off the anger I felt toward Cedric. In fact, in spite of what I had just been through, I felt an odd sense of accomplishment. A sense of pride.
    But I’m just pretending to be one of them, aren’t I? Aren’t I?
    Still, I didn’t tell Grandma or Marissa about what happened on that roof.

    I didn’t see much of Marissa during my first two weeks as a Wolf pledge because Cedric kept me so busy. I went to the antique shop when I could, but the owner was there most of the time, or there were customers, so Marissa and I couldn’t really talk. We did get to sit and eat hot dogs one evening on the end of a pier. We had to meet there because it was the only place I knew I could go where a spying Wolf couldn’t get close enough to listen.
    â€œYour grandma is teaching me all the stuff you’re not getting to learn,” Marissa told me. She took another bite of her dog and spoke with her mouth full. I can respect a girl who talks with her mouth full. “Even if you don’t know something, I will, so by the time the moon gets full again, we’ll be ready.”
    â€œLike what stuff is she teaching you?” I was a bit jealous that she got to spend more time with Grandma than me.
    â€œYou know,” she said, like it was nothing. “How to track supernatural beasts with an ectoplasmic lens, how to slow their transformations with eye of newt and baking soda. Those kinds of things.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œTell me everything
you’ve
learned!” Marissa said. But I shook my head. “Nothing important. Nothing we’ll need.” She now knew ancient secrets from mysterious werewolf hunters of the past. So I would have some secrets, too.
    â€œEnough of that,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”
    â€œWhat else is there to talk about?”
    â€œAnything but werewolves,” I said. And so we talked about the upcoming year at school, movies we wanted to see, music that made you want to dance, and anything that came to mind.
    Spending time with Marissa, even though it was only half an hour or so, made everything feel normal just for a while. The fresh river air seemed to blow away all thoughts of dark and unnatural things. But when we left the pier, she went one way, I went another, and there I was again, in the shadows of buildings, facing the hard concrete reality of Wolves that hid within human flesh.
    Tonight would be the new moon, the darkest night of July. Only the stars would peer down from the sky above, so hard to see in the city. It was less than two weeks until the moon would be full again, but I was wasting my time with Marissa, talking about silly things instead of plotting werewolf doom.
    I took a shortcut, leaving the relative safety of the busy streets, and turned down an alley full of Dumpsters and deep shadows. It was the kind of place where you find police chalk outlines in the morning. It wasn’t too smart of me to walk down that way, but I’ve always been a little too bold for my own good. My mom would call it foolhardy. Grandma would call it just plain dumb.
    Maybe it was just that I felt kind of safe now, being a pledge to the Wolves. Lately, when I got the feeling I was being stalked, I knew it was one of them, tailing me on Cedric’s orders. Oddly enough, it gave me a feeling of security, because I was in with them now, and if some thugs ever did actually