Page 17

CHAPTER 16

IN THE MORNING, Lacey and the chief feed us a hot breakfast and then take us somewhere even worse than jail.

High school.

The principal’s name is Mrs. Simon. She’s hugely tall, and she shakes my hand with a grip so strong I wince.

“So you want to be a Kokanee Creek Cougar,” she booms at me.

No, I can’t say I do.

But Mrs. Simon looks like she could wrestle a cougar and win, so instead of answering I shrug. There’s no need to get on her bad side on purpose; I’m pretty sure I’ll do it soon enough by mistake.

“The chief tells me you two have never been to school before.”

I shake my head no. My brother just stares at her. I can tell he’s trying hard not to snarl.

“And you are”—she glances down at a piece of paper covered in notes—“seventeen and fourteen?”

I nod. Sounds about right.

Mrs. Simon turns to the chief and Lacey. “They do speak , don’t they? When we talked on the phone, you said nothing about them being mutes.”

“Yes, ma’am, they speak,” says the chief. “They’re quiet on the whole, but if you piss ’em off, you’ll hear about it.”

“I’ll ask you to watch your language in my office, Chief Greene,” Mrs. Simon says briskly. “We must always be role models for our youth.” Then she walks over to the door and opens it. “And now I’d like to speak with Kai and Holo alone.”

Holo shoots me a fearful glance as the chief and Lacey obediently leave. I’m not worried, though. What’s the worst Mrs. Simon can do to us? Enroll us in school?

“I hear you’ve had an unusual upbringing,” Mrs. Simon says to us.

You don’t know the half of it, lady.

“Frankly, I don’t care about that. All I care about is how you act now, inside my halls. We are a high school, grades nine to twelve, and we are a community of— What are you doing, young man?”

Holo has grabbed a multicolored cube from her desk, and he’s turning it over in his hands, staring at it in fascination. “What’s this?” he says.

“So you can talk. That’s good,” Mrs. Simon says. Then, quick as a snake, she snatches the cube away from him. “It’s called a Rubik’s Cube, and you should never take it—or anything—off my desk without asking.”

If he weren’t so fascinated by the cube, Holo would’ve growled at her for sure. “What does it do?” he asks, unable to take his eyes off it.

“It’s a puzzle,” Mrs. Simon says. “You twist the blocks around in order to get only one color per side.”

Holo’s fingers reach for it. “Can I—”

“ May I.”

“May I hold it?”

Mrs. Simon gives the cube back, and Holo immediately starts twisting and spinning it. Then she hands me the newspaper off her desk. “Read this out loud, please.”

I open the paper and stare down at the tiny letters. I can hear Mrs. Simon’s heavy breathing. I stall. I sigh.

Unless I lie, she’s going to find out the truth. I feel like I’m spilling a secret when I open my mouth.

“‘The North Pines baseball team played a doubleheader last week,’” I read. “‘On March 28, they swept the Kokanee Cougars, 6–2 and 9–1.’” I look up from the paper. “I’m not really familiar with the sport, but it sounds like your baseball team sucks.”

If she’s surprised, Mrs. Simon doesn’t act like it. She takes the paper from me and throws it into a blue recycling bin. “Okay. The wolves taught Kai to read. Excellent. Holo, how’s your math?”

Holo shrugs and places the Rubik’s Cube back on her desk. He’s never seen one before, yet he’s solved it in about forty-five seconds.

“What’s the square root of 121?” she asks him.

“Eleven,” he says instantly. “Eleven is the fifth prime number, after two, three, five, and seven. A prime number is a number that has no divisor besides one and itself.” Then he looks at me nervously, like he’s afraid he’s said something wrong.

At first I’m annoyed. We’re freaks already, and now he’s going to start tossing out math facts?

But then I soften. If we want to stay in the human world, we’re going to have to go to school. The chief made that clear to us on the way over. Which means we need to prove to Mrs. Simon that we belong here.

“Very impressive,” Mrs. Simon says.

Holo smiles shyly. “Thank you very much,” he says. Every once in a while, the kid can really turn on the politeness.

She hands us each a pencil and a piece of paper covered in questions.

Evaluate 8x + 7 given that x ? 3 = 10

What are the three branches of the US government?

What is a preposition?

I don’t know if Holo gets the same questions as I do, but I race through mine.

When Mrs. Simon checks my answers, her eyes get narrow. Wary. “Do you know what I think?” she asks coolly.

“No, I haven’t learned how to read minds yet. Do you teach that here? Because that would be cool.”

Mrs. Simon scowls. She doesn’t appreciate my sarcasm. “I believe that you’re very clever, Kai. But I don’t believe you were raised by wolves, and I don’t think that anyone in their right mind would.”

Holo’s done with his test now, but instead of handing it to her, he starts ripping it into pieces. Mrs. Simon doesn’t seem to notice.

“I think you two are running away from something,” she says. “And I don’t know what it is, but I’ll find out.”