Full Moon Hike by Julie Steimle (ebook e reader TXT) 📕

“Darn straight you’re not,” I said, and I crossed to where my hotdog was now laying on my bun with all my ketchup, though it was charred the way Travis liked his dogs. I took it up, feeling my stomach gurgle. I was really hungry. “I’m keeping watch tonight.”

My brothers and sister exhaled with relief. All of them staggered back to the campfire. Will went to get another hotdog. Dawn dug into my pack for marshmallows.

Sitting on his haunches, the wolf boy began to whimper. “Can I have a hotdog?”

Laughing, I reached into the package for a raw one. I held it up. “Do you want it cooked or just like this?”

He padded over to me then sat at my feet. “Cooked, if you don’t mind.”

I laughed again and stuck it on my empty coat hanger.

We sat up late roasting marshmallows and eating s’mores after we finished off the hotdogs. Halfway through the package of chocolate bars, we asked the hairy boy what his name was again, though I was sure he had said it before. When he told us who he was once more, I almost dropped my marshmallow into the fire.

“You’re the son of the man who owns this place?”

He nodded, sitting with a wolf half below but human hands and face up top, just munching on his s’mores like he hadn’t a care in the world. “Yeah. But call me Rick. I don’t go by Howard anymore.”

“Why not?” Travis asked with a snicker.

With a wolfish look, Rick said, “Besides it obviously being a really geeky name, when I was a kid before I even knew I was a werewolf, I went by Howie. Our school mascot from elementary school to high school was the timber wolf, so you can imagine me playing it up when we cheered at all our school sports, howling and all that. Howley Howie, they called me. I thought it was cool, but then I started puberty, getting all hairy in all the wrong places and I freaked my mother out….” He let his voice die as his mind focused on that. He shook his head. “Anyway, it stopped being fun when the hunters started to chase after me, and I had to end up at a New York private school for a while. I just wanted a new start as Rick.”

“That private school sounds great,” I said, picking up my charred marshmallow from the fire and digging a new one from the bag to replace it. “No one staring at me and calling me monster…. I’d love that.”

“But it is in New York,” Will said, gazing at me with a sad look I did not like to see on his face. “That is so far away.”

“But if I went, then you guys wouldn’t have to move. The mayor wouldn’t harass you anymore.” It really did sound like a good idea. I wondered how much it cost. Maybe Dad would be able to send me there. I’d write everyone letters daily, see the Statue of Liberty on my days off….

“I bet the surfing sucks in New York,” Dawn said with a wry glance, casting her eyes at me with that vixen glitter she sometimes had when she won games.

I moaned, closing my eyes. Of course. I totally forgot. It was East Coast and in the north. I didn’t think their beaches were the same.

“You surf?” Rick peered at me, chuckling. “I never would have thought it. Wouldn’t your skin burn in the sun?”

“She wears lots of sunblock,” Dawn said, smirking.

My brothers broke into laughs. However Will nodded to Rick and said, “She’s really good at it. Does it every morning.”

“She wanted to go to Hawaii for vacation to surf there,” Travis added.

“I wanted to go to Hawaii,” Dawn murmured, shaking her head as she dreamed of it.

“If would have been cool if we actually did go,” Will agreed, putting another marshmallow on his stick. “But you know the real reason we stayed here was because of money.”

Frowning, I looked to the ground. “Do you think they’ll put Dad out of business?”

Suddenly subdued, Will shook his head then shrugged. “I don’t know. I keep hoping someone will get a killer toothache and realize that Dad is the best dentist in the area no matter what. Then business will pick up again.”

“It’s not like I’m the one doing their dental work,” I muttered.

“We know,” Dawn said, and put an arm around my shoulders. “We know.”

Rick slept as a wolf near the fire. Apparently his hearing and sense of smell was better when he was in that form. Either that or he had no choice in the matter. I stayed up watching for the hunters, only resting my eyes after it was late into the night, with one hand on the wolf sleeping on the ground. Somehow it was easier with him like that anyway. Imaging him and me as two strangers alone outside would have creeped me out. I didn’t wake up again until Will nudged me and Travis shoved a cup of cocoa into my hands.

“Good morning,” Will said, and smiled at me.

I rubbed my head with a moan, squinting at the sun that was already rising over the trees. “Did last night really happen? I’m so tired.”

“You probably slept only a few hours,” Will said, and gestured over to the shirtless boy sitting on the log who had much less hair on him than last night. “Thank Rick for breakfast. He gathered the wood this morning and started the fire.”

Rick waved. Without all that hair, he was definitely cute. Dawn sat on the opposite log just staring at him as if she wasn’t sure that he was the same guy as last night. Rick had washed up some, combed his wet hair back, and the only proof that he had run from hunters last night was the bloody stain on his thigh.

I jumped up. “I’m sorry. We never treated that.”

Smiling, Rick shook his head at me, pointing to Dawn. “It’s ok. Your sister got me her first aid kit. It’s only a graze anyway.”

“Graze?” I walked over to peer at it. It was not grazed. I remembered how much blood I had smelled the night before. No graze would have bled that much.

But he just smiled at me, masking that he was still hurting. I rolled my eyes then shook my head at him.

“Whatever. We’re helping you downhill,” I said.

He grinned wider. “I was hoping you would, actually.”

Will exhaled loud and promptly undid the poles to his tent. Travis had already rolled up their sleeping bags and put them on their packs and was now opening the orange juice container, pouring some on his musli. In our family, we preferred OJ on our musli to milk and yogurt. It makes it tart and helps us wake up quicker. OJ also doesn’t go bad like milk does, perfect for hiking. He passed the carton to Dawn who was still staring at Rick.

“So,” I glanced to the others. “Are we going down from here or back up to the summit?”

Looking up at me, Will’s eyes expressed clear enough that he’d rather continue on our way as planned. “Come on, Eve. We didn’t come to quit. I know Rick has a hurt leg and all, but we can trade places to help him walk…”

“Make him a crutch,” Travis interjected.

“…Or we can walk slower,” Will continued, also looking to Dawn. “Mom and Dad would be waiting for us at the other end of the trail anyway. I don’t want to go back the way we came if those hunters are still searching the woods here.”

“That makes sense,” Rick said, nodding. He then looked to Travis. “I can make a crutch. I won’t be a burden to you.”

“You aren’t a burden,” Dawn said, practically making doe eyes at him.

I stifled a laugh and went back to our tent. Though I never got to sleep in it, I did make up my sleeping bag. Actually, I had to shake out wolf hair first then roll it up. By then Rick got up and limped over, apologizing for shedding so much.

“I can’t exactly help it,” he said. “When you have a lot of hair like I do, you just shed.”

Travis busted up, shaking his head. Both Rick and I looked at him, but Travis just waved us away, still laughing.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Rick murmured, but I cast Travis a chiding glance.

“He just thinks it’s a girly comment,” I said and went back to cleaning out the tent. “Guys don’t usually talk about shedding hair.”

Rick merely shrugged, taking up the other sleeping bag.

It was funny. Dawn had turned from freaked like she had been last night to all flirty that morning. She rushed over to help Rick roll up her bag as I swept out the hair from the tent. And when Rick took down the tent poles, packing up the pegs and doing a rather swift job of putting things away (which showed how much he really had gone camping in the past) Dawn was at his side trying to help him, though I thought she was getting in the way. But it didn’t matter. The tents were down, rolled up and back with our packs. All we had left to do was finish breakfast, pack our foodstuff and put out the fire. Each of those we did just as fast, and we were on the trail back up hill towards the summit where we hoped to be before lunch.

“So,” Rick asked me after he had managed to actually get a sturdy stick for a crutch like he had said he would, hobbling up the hill with us.  Dawn walked on his other side. “How did you manage to get by all these years without a hunter after you?”

I was rubbing more sunblock on my face, my long sleeve shirt back on but left unbuttoned as we hiked. “The town did hire a hunter—the History teacher I told you about. But Dad got a restraining order. Charged him with harassment. Since then he’s just been waiting for me to do something wrong, you know, make a misstep somewhere and bite somebody.”

“Yeah, but Mr. McDillan hasn’t had one legal reason to attack her.” Will walked up the hill backwards.

“But he tried last Halloween, remember,” I said with a nod.

They all nodded as Rick stared at me and then them. “He tried? How did you stop him? Or did your dad stop him?”

With a shrug, I said, “He couldn’t hit me with that crossbow, for starters. Then after all the vampires and imps left our house, we just invited him in for ice cream. He’s been acting weird ever since.”

Rick broke into laughter. His voice carried, stirring the birds nearby, though for us it was happy and yet sad, like one who had not laughed enough in the past and this was the first in a long time. “That whole thing you just said sounds funny. I don’t get you, Eve. Not at all, but obviously something is working right for you.”

To that, I just shrugged. There was no use arguing over the