The Wolves Are Waiting Read online

  For starters, he didn’t play sports. He painted huge, splattery canvases and sketched random objects with charcoal. He kept his hair long, sometimes in a ponytail, sometimes in a bandanna. He wore a silver hoop in his left ear, like a pirate. His eyes were brownish-gold. He was taller than Cam, and thin, but his arms and shoulders were as chiseled as an Olympic gymnast’s. From painting all the time? Or maybe he lifted weights in the garage. Who knew what he did out there all day? Cam had spent half her life at the Melchiondas’ house, but Nora’s brother was as much a mystery to her as a senior as he had been back in elementary school, when all he did was juggle and eat butter-and-bacon sandwiches.

  Was Asher attractive? Cam supposed he was, in an offbeat, bohemian banjo player sort of way. Nothing like his dad, though. It was kind of funny to admit, but it was true: Mr. M was Cam’s first crush. She wasn’t alone, either. Everyone loved Mr. M. All Nora’s friends, all Nora’s friends’ mothers. Even the eighty-year-old waitresses at the Blue Bird got a spring in their step when he walked in. Rhett Melchionda was Faber’s own force of nature. His hair was thicker, his smile was wider, his personality was bigger than anyone else’s. Asher wasn’t like that, which was why Cam had never thought of him as crush material. He was just… Asher. Nora’s big, weird brother.

  So the thing that had happened between them in Mrs. Tenhope’s closet—what was that? An accident, Cam decided. A party foul.

  And yet—her cheeks warmed at the thought—neither of them had been drinking. By the time Asher pulled up to the Tenhopes’ front stoop, everyone inside the house had been well on their way, but Cam had only had two sips of warm keg beer. In truth, she had been finding the party boring. She’d thought there would be games. Quarters, beer pong, something for her to compete in, but there was nothing.

  “Hey,” Asher said when he saw Cam sitting alone on the steps. “What are you doing here?”

  Cam shrugged. “Party hearty.”

  “Huh,” Asher said. He was straddling his bike.

  Since the last time Cam saw him riding, he’d added a wicker basket to the handlebars. A wicker basket. Like a grandma! She had to admire a guy who wore a pirate earring and rode a grandma bike and didn’t give a crap what anyone thought about it.

  “What are you doing here?” Cam asked.

  And Asher said, in all seriousness, “I’m having a paint emergency.”

  “A paint emergency,” she repeated.

  “Yup,” he said. “Is Mrs. T. home?”

  It had taken Cam a moment, but then she remembered that Kyle’s mother was not only the high school art teacher but also a professional painter. “She’s in Vermont,” Cam told Asher. “Hence the party.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “Rats.”

  Rats, he’d said. Any other guy would have dropped the f-bomb.

  “Just how serious is this paint emergency?” Cam asked—joking, of course, because it was a ridiculous question.

  But Asher answered, “Life-or-death.”

  So she said, “Well, then, I’ll help you.”

  And he said, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find me some Tahiti Blue acrylic paint.”

  And she said, “As always, should I or any of my force be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions.”

  Was that where it started, with the two of them quoting Mission: Impossible to each other like a couple of dorks? Cam didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d made Nora’s brother smile, which was something she had never done before. He was always so serious. Seeing the corners of Asher’s lips rise gave her a little jolt of pride.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find Kyle.”

  Asher parked his bike and followed Cam into the Tenhopes’ house. As they wove their way through the bodies—it seemed like half the high school was jammed into the living room—Asher shouted in Cam’s ear so she would hear him over Lady Gaga, “How many drunk teenagers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  “How many?” Cam shouted back.

  “Two! One to hold the bulb steady and another to drink until the room spins!”

  She laughed, not because the joke was so funny, but because she and Asher seemed to be the only sober people in the room. Aaron Mischke, the second-best pole vaulter in the state of New York, was wearing a yellow construction hat attached to two beer cans and was drinking through a tube. The Stampler twins had stripped off their shirts and were dancing on a coffee table. Someone was peeing out a window. Cam laughed because what she saw was so comical.

  She hadn’t known, then, what was happening on the other side of town. She hadn’t known about her best friend drinking from a red cup and losing an entire chunk of her night. She hadn’t known about the three guys or the ninth hole or Adam Xu or the shitstorm that would follow. She hadn’t known how her friendship would be tested. All she knew, in that moment, was that she had a mission: to find Tahiti Blue acrylic paint.

  They found Kyle in the far corner of the kitchen, pumping beer from a keg. His hair was freshly buzzed and he was wearing a “Faber Track & Field” tank top.

  “Speedy!” he crowed when he saw Cam. He’d given her the nickname the season before, after she’d won the 200-meter at the Sequoia Valley invitational.

  “Hey,” Cam said.

  Kyle grabbed her arm and pulled her into a hug. His skin was warm and damp. His breath smelled beery. “You look hot! Like Zendaya!”

  Cam looked nothing, nothing like Zendaya. But that’s what guys did sometimes. They tried to give compliments by comparing her to some black celebrity. Yara Shahidi. Amandla Stenberg.

  “You look drunk,” Cam said, pulling away.

  Kyle laughed. “Ha!” A steamy blast in her face. “I am!”

  “Where does your mom keep her paint?”

  “Huh?”

  Cam tried again. “Where. Does. Your. Mom. Keep. Her. Paint? Asher. Needs. Some.”

  “Hey, man,” Asher said, stepping forward to shake Kyle’s hand.

  “Anaconda!” Kyle laughed again, spit flying through the air. “Dude! I thought you didn’t party!”

  “I don’t. I’m working on an art project, and I ran out of paint. Your mom said I could—”

  “Dudes!” Kyle yelled across the room. “It’s Anaconda!”

  Drunken cheers erupted. “Anaconda!”

  “What’s with the anaconda?” Cam asked Asher when they’d finally communicated to Kyle what they needed, and he had directed them, vaguely and cheerfully, through a back door.

  “Melchionda Anaconda,” Asher said. “He’s called me that since third grade.”

  “He’s big on nicknames,” Cam said.

  “A real Shakespeare, that one,” Asher said. Then: “Careful on the steps. They’re steep.”

  There was a narrow flight of stairs that led up to the second floor. The light in the stairway was dim, and there was no railing.

  “Here,” Asher said, reaching back. “Just in case.”

  Cam took his hand. “Thanks.”

  Surely they’d held hands before, as kids. Playing blob tag. Jumping off the dock at Lake Moraine. But this—Asher’s eighteen-year-old fingers, strong and sure, wrapped around her own—made something happen in Cam’s throat. A catch of surprise. A rush of warmth. Then she caught herself: This was Nora’s brother.

  As though he’d read her mind, Asher asked, “Is Nora here?”

  “No,” Cam said. “She’s at the frat fair.” Instead of stopping there, she expelled breath she hadn’t known she was holding and said something she hadn’t known she was thinking: “We’re starting to want different things.”

  “Yeah?” Asher said.

  “Yeah. Completely.”

  As soon as she spoke the words, she realized they were true. Cam didn’t know how to explain it, the feeling of restlessness that had begun to nibble at her. Nora seemed content to keep doing what the two of them had always done: movie nights and baking nights and game nights. The same old boring traditions: marchin
g in the July Fourth parade, buying matching folders for school, riding the Yo-Yo. Cam used to like those things, too. But the sameness was beginning to wear on her. She had tried to inject some excitement into their lives once, at the end of ninth grade. It had been a boneheaded decision, in retrospect, to drink an entire bottle of Manischewitz from Becca Bomberg’s parents’ wine cellar—Nora had barfed her guts out—but at least it was something new and different. Novelty! That’s what Cam craved. Something unexpected. Something to set her on fire.

  She and Asher reached Mrs. Tenhope’s bedroom: half sleep space, half art studio. Cream-colored walls, track lighting, easels. Works of art in various stages of completion tacked up everywhere, including a sketch of a nude woman, hanging over the king-size bed. A nude woman! Cam wasn’t shocked by the nakedness—or by the reminder that, after Kyle’s father died, Kyle’s mother had suddenly come out as a lesbian (it had been the talk of Faber for a while)—but walking into Mrs. T’s private sanctuary without her permission felt wrong. Cam was a trespasser. A burglar. The thought made her giddy. She and Nora’s brother prowled around the room, sliding out drawers, lifting lids.

  “Aha!” Asher said finally. He had opened a closet, inside of which was a cabinet full of paint. Rows and rows of paint. Tubes, tubs, bottles. “Help me look,” he said.

  Cam joined him in the closet. The paint colors had great names. Juneberry. Aster. Nacho Cheese.

  Who knew how long they searched? Five minutes? Twenty? At some point Asher cried, “Jackpot!” and waved a bottle in the air. “Tahiti Blue, baby!” Then he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, which he placed on the shelf.

  “She would have just given it to me,” he said, “but… paint’s not cheap.”

  He looked around until he found a scrap of paper and a stub of charcoal. Desperate measures, Mrs. T, he scrawled. Needed some tahiti blue. Thx. —Asher. He placed the note on the shelf beside the money. Then he looked at Cam and grinned. Again!

  Cam stared at him. He was wearing a mustard-colored T-shirt with a ripped collar. It brought out the gold in his eyes.

  “What?” he said.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “I know this is weird,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Having a paint emergency on a Friday night.” He shrugged, tucked a hank of hair behind his ear. “I’m a freak. I admit it.”

  “No,” Cam said. “You’re a serious artist. I respect that.”

  Asher looked at her. Really looked at her with those tiger eyes.

  “Thanks,” he said. “For saying that. My dad thinks I’m wasting my life.”

  Cam had spent enough time at the Melchiondas’ to know that Mr. M and Asher didn’t always get along. But Mr. M wasn’t in Mrs. Tenhope’s closet, so Cam could speak freely.

  “You’re not wasting your life,” she said.

  “You don’t think?”

  “No.”

  His face was thoughtful now. He looked so quintessentially Asher that Cam was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to hug him. Hug Nora’s brother! Her brain gave the order, and her arms obeyed.

  It was a little awkward. Her nose rammed into his shoulder. She stepped away almost as quickly as she’d stepped toward him.

  But then. Then.

  Cam felt something warm on her face. It was… Asher’s hand, cupping her cheek. This was not a brotherly gesture. Cam was shocked, but she made herself keep breathing.

  Innnn. Ouuuut.

  Asher Melchionda’s hand on her cheek. Cupping it! This was crazy. And yet, it was happening. There, in Mrs. Tenhope’s closet full of paint, he bent down and pressed his lips to hers. Cam was 100 percent sober, but Asher’s kiss was like three slugs of Manischewitz straight from the bottle. When she came up for air, she felt warm and dizzy.

  “Was that okay?” he said.

  And she said, “Definitely.”

  They kissed again. And again.

  While they had been kissing, Nora had been passed out on the golf course, clueless to the three guys removing her underwear.

  Now, Cam’s guilt was a boulder in her gut. She should have gone to the frat fair!

  Nora was out of the bathroom and standing on Cam’s rug. She was fine, she said. She’d checked her body and hadn’t seen anything.

  “You sure?” Cam said.

  “I’m sure,” Nora said.

  Cam thought about the phone in her back pocket.

  Wow

  Still reeling

  No regrets

  Should she come clean about hooking up with Asher? She and Nora had promised each other, back in sixth grade, always to tell the brutal truth, even if it hurt. They had vowed to share every boy-related detail, which was how Cam knew that Nora had tongue-kissed a Jersey boy named Evan Fendelbaum at Becca Bomberg’s bat mitzvah, and Nora knew that Cam had seen Kyle Tenhope’s erection through his swim trunks at the track team’s end-of-season pool party freshman year. But those things were different. Who cared about Evan Fendelbaum’s lizard tongue or Kyle Tenhope’s boner? Asher was Nora’s brother. Cam had to tell her about the kiss, right? Of course she did. And at some point, she definitely would. But not now. Now, Cam decided, was not the right moment.

  “We should go to the police,” she said. “Or the hospital. They can test your blood or urine or whatever.”

  Nora looked at her like she had three heads. “Are you insane?”

  “No,” Cam said. “I’m logical.”

  “No freaking way.”

  “Nor,” Cam said, as gently as she could. “I’m pretty sure you got roofied. That’s why you can’t remember.”

  “So?”

  Now it was Cam’s turn to look horrified. “So?”

  “I told you I’m fine,” Nora said. “I don’t need the whole town knowing I was passed out on the golf course.”

  There were so many things Cam wanted to say, but Nora was being deaf to reason. “There is one person you need to see,” she said, “and that is nonnegotiable.”

  “Who?” Nora said.

  “Adam Xu. He deserves a thank-you.”

  ADAM XU

  THE DOORBELL RANG WHILE HE WAS SITTING AT THE DINING room table, studying for his chemistry test. His mother was in the kitchen. He knew, just from the smell, that she was making his favorite breakfast. Thick slices of warm tomato topped with scrambled eggs and zha cai. Scallion pancakes cooked in oil, perfectly crisp and salty. At school, he ate cheeseburgers in the cafeteria like everyone else, but at home he ate this: the best food in Faber.

  The doorbell rang a second time. Bao Bao started barking. His mom started yelling.

  Adam sighed and propped his chemistry book open with a pen. He walked to the front hall. Through the glass he saw two heads: one dark, one light. Wait—was that…? No. No possible way. And yet… this wasn’t completely unexpected, was it? Nora Melchionda on the golf course, clothes half-off? His cheeks flushed at the memory.

  He opened the door.

  “Hey, Adam Xu.”

  It wasn’t Nora who spoke; it was her friend Camille.

  There had been a time, years ago, when Adam thought that he and Camille Dodd might become friends. That her Blackness and his Asianness would somehow bond them together. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Instead, Adam had become friends with Tobias Muenker. The two of them met the summer before sixth grade, in a fantasy-fiction club at the town library, where they were the only members. During the course of their friendship, Tobias had not only dressed in full body armor to help Adam practice baseball, he had also introduced Adam to Dungeons & Dragons, which they played continuously in the Muenkers’ basement and sometimes in the school cafeteria. Guys like Kevin Hamm loved to mock them, but being called a “dungeon geek” hadn’t bothered Adam then. He and Tobias were a team—at least until last year, when the Muenkers moved to Cleveland and Adam went right back where he started. Playing D&D on FaceTime just wasn’t the same.

  “Can we come in?” Camille asked.
br />   Could they come in? Adam blanched at the thought. The last time Nora Melchionda and Camille Dodd had set foot in his house was on his tenth birthday, when his mother invited the whole class over to celebrate. The event had been an unmitigated disaster. Unlike the Shuang Wen School back in New York City, where all of Adam’s friends from kindergarten through third grade had been just like him, the kids in Faber knew nothing of Chinese traditions. When his mother brought out the longevity noodles for everyone to slurp, Kevin Hamm and Adam Courtmanche had deliberately bitten their noodles in half and joked that everyone in the room would die young.

  “Well?” Camille said. She widened her eyes.

  “Right,” Adam said. “Yeah. Come in.”

  He stepped backward into the hall and watched as both girls entered his house. This was unprecedented. This was… miraculous. Nora Melchionda was brushing past him, carrying with her the scent of grass and earth.

  Was this her natural scent, or the scent of the golf course? He noticed that she’d changed her clothes. Instead of the skirt, she was wearing baggy black sweatpants and a hoodie. Her hair was scraped up in a ponytail.

  He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. Instead, he concentrated on leading the way into the dining room, where his mother was setting a plate of food on the table, Bao Bao sniffing at her heels.

  “Hey, Mrs. Xu,” Camille said, smiling like they were old friends. “Cute dog.”

  Adam’s mother did not smile back. Adam’s mother thought American girls were “hen suibian de,” which was the Chinese equivalent of “easy.” She thought they showed too much skin and lived like pigs. She had gotten this impression from her job cleaning Faber University sorority houses. While Adam’s father was busy teaching Mandarin and writing academic papers for publication, his mother was vacuuming pulverized Cheetos out of the couches and scraping vomit off the carpets of Kappa Kappa Nu. Adam had tried to convince his mother, on more than one occasion, that not all American girls were party animals with loose morals, but she wouldn’t listen.