Lucas’s story was called “The Three Wolfs.”
Sometimes kids just rewrote stories they knew. They’d write about Iron Man or Jack Sparrow. She thought at first that Lucas had just retold Goldilocks, with wolfs.
But there was no Goldilocks in his story. There were only the Wolfs, who lived together in a cave above a town. Big Wolf, Middle Wolf, and Little Wolf. Big Wolf was a brute. Little Wolf was timid. Middle Wolf was the peacemaker.
“Every day Middle Wolf went out and got fish for them all. But one day he came back and Big Wolf and Little Wolf had rabeez. And all they wanted to do was go to town and eat people.”
So Middle Wolf blocked up the entrance to the cave with rocks and trapped the other two inside, where they growled all day and night. And every day, he caught fish for them, which he slipped between the rocks to sate their hunger. And every night, he slept by the entrance to make sure they never got out.
Lucas had drawn each of them. His illustrations were quick but thoughtlessly confident, like a painter’s sketches. The most extraordinary thing was how realistic they were, except that Middle Wolf had an oddly human face and Big Wolf had strange eyes. Little Wolf was just a pup.
It was a strange story for a kid to write. He’d said he lived with his dad and little brother, Todd. So Big Wolf was the father, Little Wolf was Todd, and Middle Wolf—the one who took care of everything, who kept the peace—was Lucas.
She guessed Lucas’s father was probably an alcoholic, maybe a bad one. And Lucas was probably one of those kids who have to parent the parent—clean up, put his brother to bed on nights when Dad stumbled in late or passed out early. And that thing about Little Wolf getting rabeez… Was Lucas afraid because his brother, probably younger and more impressionable, looked up to Dad? Might one day become him? Was she reading too much into it? She went to bed with the story kicking around her mind. Shapes of wolves slouched through her dreams, surly, with black, matted fur.
Julia went by Rite Aid on her way to school and bought sweatshirts and socks.
Before class, she looked at Lucas’s front office records. His home address was listed as 18 Perlmutter Road. The only parent listed was his father, Frank. Frank. She pictured a big man, rough, with a nimbus of liquor breath.
“What’re you interested in the Weaver kid for?” the secretary, Carole, asked.
Julia closed the file. “Mrs. Parsons mentioned a Board of Ed thing once, an art program for gifted students? County Arts Program, or—”
“Jefferson County Arts Mentorship Program,” Carole recited. “It’s Fed money. They pay special teachers, bring ’em in a couple times a week after school. One-on-one work.”
Julia thought, That would be perfect for Lucas.
At lunch, Julia kept Lucas behind and gave him the clothes. Two cheap grey sweatshirts and six pairs of white socks with red stripes. He seemed not to believe it at first. He didn’t want to let go of them.
“These will fit me,” he said, tentative.
“Good,” Julia said. Then she said, “You like drawing, don’t you? You like art?”
“I like drawing stuff.”
“I found out about a special program for kids like you,” she said. “You’d get to stay after school and work with a special art teacher for drawing. I talked to a man at the Board of Ed about it. Is that something you want to do?”
She saw something in his eyes then. Enthusiasm or hope, one of those quiet, thrilling things.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Great!” Julia said. “I just need to get your dad to sign a permission slip. I’d like to talk to him about it, too, and—”
Lucas’s face changed. A light went out.
“Actually, I don’t want to,” he said. He got up, hurried toward the door.
“Wait,” Julia said. “Lucas, you would get to—”
“I changed my mind,” he said, fleeing. She heard the sharp, echoing smacks of his sneakers in the hallway.
She thought about it that night, making dinner in the cottage. She could hear Elaine’s dogs—a mastiff and a Dalmatian—barking from the main house. Must be a rabbit in the yard. She thought about how Lucas had reacted so viscerally to the idea that she might talk to his father. Was he embarrassed by the idea of her meeting… Frank?
No, not embarrassed. There had been fear. He thought Frank would punish him for being singled out as gifted.
The next day at lunch, she tried to talk to Lucas again, but he resisted, saying only, “I changed my mind! I don’t want to do it!”
Later, she called his home phone number—the one listed in his file—but got “This number is not in service…”
It bothered her. She asked Mrs. Simms, the teacher who’d had Lucas last year, if she’d ever met Frank. Mrs. Simms didn’t think so, and she was surprised that Julia thought Lucas was gifted. Mrs. Simms had thought he was “challenged.”
None of the other teachers had ever seen Lucas’s father.
Well, this is what I’m here to do, isn’t it? Julia thought. If nobody else at this school has gone out of their way to help this kid, or reached out to Frank Weaver, it might as well be me.
She didn’t tell Lucas. Perlmutter Road was the last stop on his bus route, so he would get dropped off around 4. If she left school right away, she could get to his house by 3:40, which would give her twenty minutes to talk to Frank Weaver.
It was Friday. She left right after the last bell. She drove through town, past forlorn houses and big dogs chained to posts, past Judy’s Laundromat and Paul’s Pizza. Then down a pockmarked road to the dead train station. She crossed the tracks and drove down a short road, flanked by woods, that became another road. The sagging homes that lined it made her think of toothless faces.
This was Perlmutter Road. The Mudders. Lucas’s house, number 18, was a two-story grey trap. The porch was sunken. The driveway was so overgrown that there was no driveway.
Julia parked on the street. The house was even worse up close. The neighboring ones, at least, showed signs of life. Toys on porches, curtains in windows. But Lucas’s front yard hadn’t been mowed in years. And the windows were actually boarded up.
Had she made a mistake?
She looked around. It was quiet. She could hear insects. Birds in the woods. Dogs. There were no dogs. Every other yard in Rexford, it seemed, had a dog. But not here. Not in the Mudders. She remembered how Lucas smelled. Like pets. But he’d told her he didn’t have any.
Someone was looking at her.
She didn’t know how long he’d been there. A young man—a kid—on the next porch over. He had the hollow eyes of an oxycontin addict. High school age.
“What are you doing over there?” he said.
“I need to talk to Mr. Weaver,” Julia said. Her voice sounded too high. Weak. She tried again. “Frank Weaver. Do you know if he’s here?”
He just kept staring. Maybe he wasn’t such a kid. Maybe he was in his mid-twenties, or older. “You better get away from there,” he said.
“I’m from the school,” she said. “I’m Lucas’s teacher.”
“Well, I told you,” he said. He went into his house. She thought about knocking on his door, asking if he knew them. But she was scared of him. She was scared of Frank Weaver, too. She was scared that at any moment she’d lose her nerve.
She walked up on Lucas’s porch and rang the doorbell.
No sound from inside. She beat on the door with her open hand, hesitantly at first, then harder.