Mongrels: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones [Jones, Stephen Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-05-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Bark at the Moon

We didn’t know how she kept finding us.

Libby called her Darren’s secret admirer.

That was fine with Darren.

The love letters he sent her were sparkly. They were colorful.

It was all a big joke.

We were in South Carolina for the first time. Darren was driving back and forth from Tulsa, just delivering civilian goods for once—“mall runs,” he called them. Pallets of sweatshirts, boxes of mixed electronics, seasonal decorations. He’d had to get a Social Security number, even. It had somebody else’s name on it, but still, he was paying taxes. Because he wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, could work the holidays the other truckers shied away from, the company wanted him to stick around, maybe make a career of it. They leased him a shiny Peterbilt and gave him all the caps he could wear.

Darren played along. Even werewolves know a good gig when they’ve got it—Libby too. She was working the register at a lube place. It was out on the interstate. Some of the bays were caverns, for the big trucks to rumble through at all hours. The pits under the bays seemed to go for miles. Because truckers are around the clock, the lube place was too.

Like Darren, Libby pulled the night shift, when the rest of the crew wanted to be home.

This left me at our trailer alone most of the time.

I was going to school some—tenth grade still—but now it was just a place to walk through, a way to keep from turning a wrench in a dingy shop. I didn’t have anything against the pep rallies, and the cafeteria food was like a dream that happened on a schedule, but I knew not to let myself get too attached. I didn’t want to get in another Georgia situation. Another Brittany situation. Or maybe she really was Layla now. C’s were easy enough to pull in South Carolina, anyway. They didn’t attract attention. They worked for metal shop, for social studies, for history.

Mr. Brennan wouldn’t let me slide in English, though. He said he didn’t want me to fall through. That I had something the other kids didn’t.

A werewolf gene, yeah.

I didn’t say it out loud.

English was fourth period.

To be safe, I would skip it and fifth together.

Sorry, Mr. Brennan.

It worked out for the best, though. Because I didn’t have essays to write each night, I could walk out through the pastures and the trees, my hands open, the seed heads of the grass scraping my palms. And because I was out there, I was the first one to see her this time. Darren’s secret admirer.

She was driving a different RV, but it was definitely her. Who else would be out picking through the grass with a flashlight, her belt clinking with mason jars, her fingers long and chrome?

Not forceps, quite. They were closer to tongs, but sturdier and more delicate at the same time.

She moved like a water bird in the shallows, hunting frogs, and she moved so slow you could

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