Once in a Full Moon(21)

The guys were handsome in their blue-and-gold jerseys and shorts. Nash began discussing plays with the coach while Jake and Dylan continued warming up. While Ivy told Abby my story, I scanned the crowd for Brandon.

“You were lost in the woods?” Abby asked, breaking me out of my trance. “Can I call you Red? Just like your costume on Halloween. You are so her.”

“What?” I asked.

“Little Red Riding Hood. But instead of one wolf, you encountered many.”

“Seems as if I did,” I said.

“Then how did you get out?” she asked. “They could have killed you!”

“I know.”

“Celeste says they just retreated,” Ivy answered for me.

“Just like that?” Abby asked.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Didn’t Dr. Meadows say something freaky about you and the woods and a wolf?” Abby remembered.

“She did!” Ivy said.

“That didn’t mean anything,” I insisted.

“She warned you!” Abby said with a voodoo glare. “She is psychic.”

As the buzzer sounded, the three of us climbed the bleachers and watched our beaux take on the Highland Valley Bears.

I wasn’t a big fan of basketball, but I did like the sport’s fast pace, and Legend’s Run High had a great team. Although my mind would occasionally drift from one free throw to another, I used some of that time to jot down ideas and thoughts in my spiral binder. But tonight, I had only three things on my mind—the woods, the wolves, and Brandon. I wasn’t even sure throughout the game which team was winning. All I could see was Brandon’s blue eyes shining through the snow when I thought I was on death’s doorstep; his fearless heroics and selfless humility; his coming to my aid like a brave knight does for a princess in peril.

The game finally came to an end, and the Legend’s Run Wolverines were victorious over the Bears. I couldn’t help but be disillusioned. Nash’s final swish got more fanfare than a guy in the woods who saved a girl’s life.

I watched Nash, Dylan, and Jake tear into chicken and sodas at Wings and Things while my friends and I listened to them retelling their final play of the game. But I didn’t have an appetite. I had butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I felt as if I’d never be able to eat again.

“What’s up?” Nash finally said to me.

Abby told him my story. By this time it was thirdhand. Even with her embellishments, the end was still the same—I’d been as close to a pack of wolves’ dinner as these chicken wings were to our boyfriends’ mouths.

“And that psychic predicted the whole thing?”

“Even what she was wearing,” Abby said.

“She did not—” I tried to tell them.

“What else did she say?” Jake prodded.

The gang waited for my answer. I wasn’t about to tell them the rest.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Something about an outsider,” Ivy chimed in.

“Yes, an outsider,” Abby repeated.

“Did you see an outsider there?” Jake asked. “I wonder what that means.”

I wasn’t about to tell them that I did see an outsider—that he was from the Westside and had the best eyes I’d ever seen.

“Your girlfriend was only moments from the clutches of death!” Jake teased Nash.

“It’s true,” Ivy defended. “She was surrounded by a pack of wolves.”

“Wolves?” The color washed out of Nash’s face.

“Yes, wolves,” Abby said, stressing the severity of the situation.

“The Big Bad Wolf?” Nash teased, recovering his cool. “So how did you get out?”

I could tell my friends right there and then that the wolves didn’t retreat but rather were fought off by someone who didn’t run away from wolves or wasn’t frightened by the mere mention of their species. But as the words came to my mouth, I saw that the story might hurt Nash. Once word spread throughout school that there was a real hero in Legend’s Run, the star of the football and basketball teams could never measure up to that feat. And once it was discovered that someone, especially an unpopular Westsider, saved Nash’s girlfriend’s life—something he didn’t do and possibly could never do—it could ruin Nash’s reputation and ego for the rest of our days at Legend’s Run High.

“So . . . how did you survive it?” Nash pressed.

“I raised my hands like they told me in school and the wolves eventually went away.”

“What woods were you in?” he asked.

“The ones in Riverside,” Abby answered.

“Why were you in Riverside?” Nash asked.