The Wolves Are Waiting
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Natasha Friend
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Lucia Picerno
Cover design by Sasha Illingworth
Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: March 2022
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Friend, Natasha, 1972– author.
Title: The wolves are waiting / Natasha Friend.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. | Audience: Ages 12 & up. | Summary: Fifteen-year-old Nora sparks an investigation into institutional sexism in her small college town after she becomes the target of a fraternity game by athletes.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021004741 | ISBN 9780316045315 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316045384 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316045179 (ebook other)
Subjects: CYAC: Sexism—Fiction. | Sexual abuse—Fiction. | Universities and colleges—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F91535 Wo 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004741
ISBNs: 978-0-316-04531-5 (hardcover), 978-0-316-04538-4 (ebook)
E3-20220210-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Nora
Cam
Nora
Asher
Cam
Nora
Adam Xu
Cam
Nora
Part Two Nora
Cam
Nora
Asher
Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Nora
Cam
Nora
Cam
Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Cam
Adam Xu
Nora
Adam Xu
Part Three Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Cam
Nora
Cam
Adam Xu
Nora
Asher
Nora
Asher
Nora
Cam
Nora
Adam Xu
Cam
Nora
Asher
Nora
Cam
Nora
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
For Luna
Love, Stella
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Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
PART ONE
NORA
SHE WAS LYING ON THE GROUND, SPREAD-EAGLE, breathing in the scent of earth. There was a horrible taste in her mouth, like metal and olives. She turned her head to the side, gagging. Just thinking about olives made her want to hurl.
“I think you got it all out,” a voice said.
Who was talking? She tried to look, but light stabbed her eyeballs. She tried to swallow. Her tongue felt thick and furry. Weird. Could a tongue grow fur overnight? She needed water.
Thirsty?
Yeah.
Let me get you a drink.
I don’t drink.
Not a drink drink. A pop… Sprite? Coke?
A pop? Who said pop instead of soda? And what was this fragment of conversation?
“Nor. Open your eyes.”
She tried again. More daggers of light. Better to stay here, in the dark.
“Nora.” A hand on her shoulder, squeezing. “Wake up. You’re scaring me.”
That’s when she recognized the voice. It was her best friend, Cam.
Her thoughts began to crystallize. What was Cam doing here? They were mad at each other. They’d had a fight last night… about… something. There was a boy… in a red shirt. Or had Cam been wearing the red shirt? Now her brain was as furry as her tongue. A furry tongue, for eff’s sake. How was that possible? She really needed something to drink.
Mountain Dew? Root beer?
Root beer, please.
Ice or no ice?
Ice, s’il vous plaît.
You’re cute.
Merci.
“Nor. Please. Look at me.”
Why was root beer called beer anyway? It didn’t have alcohol. And was it actually made from roots?
“Nora.” A poke now. An actual poke in the ribs. And another.
She opened her eyes. “Stop that!”
“Good. You’re alive.”
Everything was so bright. Painfully bright. She had to squint to see Cam’s face looming over her. Cam’s hair was every which way. Her mascara was smudged.
“Oh, hey, raccoon eyes,” Nora murmured.
“Shut up,” Cam said. “It’s your fault. I’ve been sitting here all night making sure you weren’t dead.”
“Huh,” Nora said, lifting her chin. There was a dull ache at the base of her skull. “Where am I?”
“You’re on the Faber University golf course. Ninth hole.”
The Faber University golf course? Nora didn’t golf. And what was this pain? Had someone clubbed her on the head?
“I got a text,” Cam said, “from your phone. Saying you needed help. There were these guys—”
“Guys?” Nora sat up. The green grass swam in front of her eyes. “What guys?”
“I don’t know,” Cam said. “Adam Xu doesn’t know, either.”
“Adam Xu?”
“He’s the one who texted me. To say you were in trouble. He said there were these guys—”
“Adam Xu texted you.”
“Yeah. From your phone. He didn’t have my number.”
Nora felt her head bob. The motion made her dizzy.
“You need to thank him,” Cam said. “He chased the guys away with a baseball bat.”
Baseball bat. Adam Xu. Golf course. It was all so confusing.
“Also… I found your underwear hanging from the flagstick.”
Nora blinked. “What?”
“The flagstick.” Cam pointed. “That yellow thingy poking out of the hole. Your underwear was hanging off it.”
“My underwear.” Nora felt a little sick. She looked down at herself. Black scoop neck. Jean miniskirt.
“I put it back on you.”
“Oh.” Nora
nodded. Cam had put her underwear back on, like she was a baby or a grandma in a nursing home. She should be embarrassed. She was embarrassed.
“Nor,” Cam said gently.
“What?”
“Do you remember anything about last night?”
“The frat fair,” Nora said without hesitation. She was still wearing her blue wristband, the one that allowed unlimited rides.
“What did you do at the frat fair?”
“Rode the Yo-Yo.” That was an easy one, too. She remembered soaring over everyone’s heads, the wind in her hair. She remembered squeezing her knees together so no one could see up her skirt.
“What else?” Cam said.
“I ate funnel cake,” Nora said. She could picture it: the greasy disk of dough as big as her head, heaped with powdered sugar. “It made me really thirsty. I had to wait in line all over again to get a drink.”
Cam put a hand on Nora’s arm. Her raccoon eyes were comically wide. “What did you drink? Rum? Vodka?… Tequila?”
“No, Camille.” Nora was annoyed. Cam knew she didn’t drink alcohol. Ever since that sleepover at Becca Bomberg’s house the last day of ninth grade, when the three of them drank an entire bottle of Manischewitz and Nora projectile-vomited into a potted plant on Becca’s porch. “I had a root beer.”
“A root beer,” Cam repeated.
“Yes.” Nora raised her chin triumphantly. “In a red cup. With ice.” She remembered this clearly now, holding the drink in her hand, lifting it to her lips. The bubbles had tickled her nose.
Cam was looking at her funny.
“What? You think I’m lying?”
“No,” Cam said slowly. “I think you’re telling the truth. But…”
But. Nora did not like this but.
“When I got here… you were passed out.”
“Passed out,” Nora repeated.
“Like… comatose.”
“Ah,” Nora said. As though this explained everything, when, really, it explained nothing. Ah.
She turned her head and barfed onto the beautifully manicured grass.
CAM
THERE WERE THREE THINGS CAMILLE AISLING DODD knew for sure:
1) Sometime last night, her best friend passed out on the ninth hole of the Faber University golf course in the presence of three unidentified males, one of whom REMOVED HER STARS-AND-STRIPES UNDERWEAR and hung it on the flagstick.
2) Adam Xu chased the guys away with a baseball bat before texting Cam from Nora’s phone to say, Nora needs you. (Seriously, Adam Xu. Boy most likely to spend every Friday night of high school playing Dungeons & Dragons in his basement. Tragic. But hello? Fending off villains with a Louisville Slugger? Surprisingly badass.)
3) Nora swore all she drank was root beer—and Cam believed her, because best friends tell the brutal truth—and yet, Nora remembered nothing between drinking the root beer and waking up on the putting green. Which meant—holy shit—anything could have happened.
Anything.
It was crazy, because Nora Melchionda was literally the last person in Faber, New York, Cam would expect to find passed out on a golf course, pantyless, beside a puddle of her own puke. Chelsea Machado? Yes. Anna Golden? Definitely. But Nora was the girl in the front row of American lit with her hand in the air, or on the bleachers with her dad on a Saturday afternoon, eating kettle corn and cheering on the Blue Devils. Nora and her dad were insanely close. He would have stroked out if he’d seen her half-naked on the ninth hole, so it was a good thing Nora had told him she was sleeping over at Cam’s. Even though she’d never actually slept over. Because Cam and Nora had a fight.
It was stupid. Cam had wanted to go to a party at Kyle Tenhope’s house. Nora hadn’t. Nora had wanted to go to the frat fair, a fundraiser the Faber fraternities hosted every fall on the town green, to raise money for local charities. Cam thought the frat fair was lame. How many times could you play “smack the rat” before dying of boredom? But Nora insisted. Nora got up on her high-and-mighty give-back-to-the-community horse. Cam called Nora a goody-goody. Nora called Cam a social lemming.
Cam said, “I just want to have fun. Have you heard of fun?”
And Nora—classic Nora—said, “Riding the Yo-Yo is fun.”
And Cam said, “Fine, go to the stupid frat fair. I’m going to Kyle Tenhope’s rager.”
And Nora said fine. Which is why Cam hadn’t been there when Nora rode the Yo-Yo and ate funnel cake and drank root beer. Cam had only shown up later, on the ninth hole, after the text from Adam Xu.
Which didn’t mean Cam was a bad friend. She wasn’t. Cam and Nora had known each other their whole lives, literally. Cam’s mom, Imani, and Nora’s mom, Diane, had met in pregnancy yoga class back when Cam and Nora were the size of jelly beans. Cam and Nora had been born thirty-six hours apart in the same hospital. Besides the fact that Cam was biracial and Nora was white, they were basically twins. Because Cam didn’t have any siblings of her own, Nora was it. Who else was Cam going to fight with? That was just part of the package. But when it came down to it, Cam would do anything for Nora.
She would wipe the puke off her face.
She would rescue her underwear.
She would offer, when Nora finally woke up and made it back to Cam’s house, to inspect her best friend’s pubic area for bruising or forced entry.
Cam wasn’t squeamish about body parts. Her mom was an obstetrician-gynecologist. Imani had taught her, from a young age, to use the proper names for her anatomy. Vulva. Labia. Clitoris. Not “pee pee,” or “down there.” When Cam was in sixth grade, Imani had gone so far as to bust out a hand mirror, to show Cam which part was which. Yes, Cam knew this was weird. But she was glad she got a hippie feminist ob-gyn for a mother. Imani had taught her everything there was to know about the female body, so whenever Cam needed that information as a reference, she would have it.
And the time, apparently, had come.
ADAM XU
ADAM XU ATTENDED NEITHER KYLE TENHOPE’S PARTY nor the fraternity fair on the town green. He hadn’t even heard about the party. He had known about the fraternity fair—a person would have to be living on the moon not to know about the fraternity fair—but he didn’t go. He had felt no need to put himself in that position. Wandering the game booths would have been fine. Riding the Ali Baba and chucking candy apples from the top of the Ferris wheel would have been okay, too. But at some point in the night, one of the guys would bring out a bottle—whatever they could find in their parents’ liquor cabinets—and pass it around. To avoid drawing attention to himself, Adam would take a few sips. Fifteen minutes later—bam. His face would heat up and start to tingle. His eyes would go bloodshot.
It wouldn’t take long before someone would say, “Dude. What’s wrong with you?”
Then someone else would yell, “Look at Xu! He’s plastered!”
At which point, everyone would turn to stare at his red, pulsing face.
He hated when that happened.
It actually had a name; he’d googled it once. “Asian flush syndrome.” Technically it was a genetic condition that affected 36 percent of East Asian people. The reaction in Adam’s body was the result of an accumulation of acetaldehyde, a metabolic by-product of the catabolic metabolism of alcohol. Not that he would ever try to explain that to the guys on the baseball team. They had only just started asking him to hang out with them. He didn’t want to ruin it.
Adam often wondered if moving to Faber in fourth grade had been part of the problem. If he had started in kindergarten with everyone else, maybe he wouldn’t have had to work so hard to fit in. But by the time he arrived, groups had already formed. There was a reigning Adam—Adam Courtmanche—who was tall and blond and captain of every dodgeball game. Adam Xu, small and klutzy, could never be just “Adam.” He would forever be “Adam Xu.” The Adam on the sidelines. The lesser Adam. It didn’t help that 99 percent of the students at Faber Central School were white. Nine times out of ten, Adam Xu would be partnered with Fumi Ikemoto f
or class projects, even though Fumi was Japanese American, not Chinese American, and they had no more in common than their school and their town and the fact that no one ever invited them to parties.
All that changed freshman year, when Adam Xu shot up six inches, gained some muscle, and made the JV baseball team. Suddenly, people started to see him as someone other than a wimpy, uncoordinated nerd. Now he was an athlete, a role he took seriously. Instead of going to the fraternity fair or to Kyle Tenhope’s party, Adam spent Friday night alone, hitting baseballs on the Faber University golf course. Not real baseballs—those were too loud—but the Precision Impact Slugs he’d ordered online. They glowed in the dark. So did his bat. Whenever he made solid contact, the night-vision camcorder he’d jerry-rigged to the top of his bike helmet quivered, but it never fell off. The quality of the videos was decent.
Nobody, not even Adam’s parents, knew what he did in the middle of the night. They thought their son was in bed. Adam’s mother had been known to check on him at odd hours, opening his door and peering across the room to make sure he was sleeping. He always took the necessary precautions, stuffing his comforter with pillows before climbing out the window, leaving his phone behind.
Adam’s mother was obsessed with sleep. She wanted him to get ten uninterrupted hours a night so he could be his optimal self. He had tried once, after reading an article about adolescent brain development, to explain to her that the sleep cycles of teenagers were different from those of adults. He couldn’t go to bed early because he could not shut off his brain. But his mother wouldn’t listen. Sleep deficiency, she said, was linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke. Did he want to have a stroke at age fifteen?
Adam loved his mother. He respected her. But lately, her presence in his life had begun to chafe, like a too-tight necktie.
Hitting balls in the dark was only a minor rebellion, but it helped. With every swing, he felt looser. The Precision Impact Slugs were filled with sand. They didn’t make the satisfying crack of a baseball sailing through the air. Their sound was a heavy, labored wump. But Adam appreciated the wump. Because the Slugs traveled only a few feet, they forced him to hit dead center, with the barrel of the bat, to avoid cutting or rolling.