This Is Not a Werewolf Story Read Online Free PDF

of getting left behind and not afraid of me.
    Mary Anne lets out the laugh she’s been holding back. “You petrified her. She’s abandoning her child here and she has the gall to take Dean Swift to task over a word .” She makes a humph sound and lifts an eyebrow. “You sure can make your eyes look scary.”
    My cheeks feel hot. I don’t understand 95 percent of what Mary Anne says on any given day, but I think that was a compliment. You have scary eyes —the nicest thing a girl has ever said to me. Pathetic. But I’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? Another one from my dad.
    I shift around on my stool so Mary Anne doesn’t see me blush.
    My spine tingles. Gollum’s in here. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I know it. Mary Anne would like me even better if I put that snake back in its cage. Word would get to the new kid too. Yeah, they’d say, the kid over there with the shaggy hair. He caught a loose snake and saved the day. I scan the dining room.
    Sparrow is at the Cubs’ table. When he catches my eye, he lifts something up in the air.
    â€œRaul!” he shouts across the room. “Dean Swift says I can keep the bone!”
    I give him a thumbs-up.
    Mary Anne smiles. I feel proud. I’m glad she can see that the little kids like me, at least.
    â€œTell them,” Sparrow hollers. He waggles his hand at the boys sitting with him. “They don’t believe me. Tell them it’s a monster that eats PE teachers. Tell them how all I found was some tennis shoes and a whistle,” he says. “And a bone.”
    â€œA human bone?” Little John tilts his head and looks from me to Sparrow.
    Sparrows nods solemnly but says, “No. Dean Swift says it was a dog bone.”
    Sparrow doesn’t lie. He embellishes. “And, it is very stinky in that tunnel. Like the cat box at my granma’s house.” He crinkles his nose. “Ask Raul. He was there. He said it smells like Mr. Tuffman’s breath.”
    The Cubs love it. They laugh and laugh.
    Little John points at me. “You should talk more. You’re funny.”
    Mary Anne has been following the whole crazy conversation. “Yeah,” she says. “You should talk more.”
    I’m so happy, I can’t even smile. Mary Anne wants more words from me. Mary Anne.
    But then I freeze. I feel someone looking at me. And I know who it is before I even see him. When I check, he’s staring at me. Mr. Tuffman.
    Maybe he didn’t hear?
    His jaw moves. His eyes are small. He didn’t miss a word. And Mr. Tuffman doesn’t want any more of them.
    He starts walking toward me. Silence ripples across the room as everyone realizes that Mr. Tuffman heard what Sparrow said I said.
    I’m so scared I forget how to breathe. Coming from a kid who never talks, my ideas are getting me in trouble a lot today.
    At just that moment Dean Swift pushes open the swinging doors that lead from the kitchen. New kid and Pretty Lady are close behind.
    I glance over at Tuffman. His eyes get even smaller, but he stops dead in his tracks.
    â€œAh. Yes. This is our PE teacher,” Dean Swift says.
    The new kid looks left and right and everywhere but at Tuffman.
    But Pretty Lady puts her hand out to shake Mr. Tuffman’s. “I’m so sorry about earlier,” she says. “I hope you didn’t get hurt when you fell.” She stares at his hair the whole time she’s talking.
    Tuffman’s neck gets red, and then it spreads up his face in blotches.
    I almost feel bad for him. Nobody wants a pretty lady to have seen his hair sitting on a huckleberry bush without his head in it.
    â€œMr. Tuffman was in the Olympics,” Dean Swift says. “It still amazes me that an athlete of his caliber would forsake fame and fortune to join us here at the corner of nowhere and never-never land.”
    Dean Swift is starstruck. When he looks at Mr. Tuffman, all he