Нил Шустерман: Red Rider's Hood

I didn't take his money. "My pleasure."

I turned to go, but before I got too far, he called to me.

"If you talk to the right people, maybe your message will get through."

I turned to ask him who might the right people be―but he had already gone inside.

There were a few more folks on the street who had been around for thirty years or more, but they were all like the old man―afraid to talk, like maybe just talking about it would bring the bad times back. Still, I did find out some things. Like how every house on the block had once had silver doorknobs. And how the local playground had become overgrown with wolfsbane that someone had planted years ago. That is, until someone mysteriously torched it just a few months back. Then there was this one crazy old woman who showed me a little lock of hair she kept in a jar of formaldehyde.

"It came from a werewolf," she told me, her eyes big as golf balls. "It turns to wolf fur on the full moon."

The old woman also said it belonged to Frank Sinatra, but I had serious doubts.

It was as I rode down Bleakwood Avenue on my way to meet Marissa at the library that I heard the threatening roar of a motorcycle beside me. Before I knew what happened, a Harley, black as a moonless night, cut me off, clipped my front wheel, and sent me flying head over heels onto the pavement, skinning my palms and knees.

I looked up, fully ready to battle whoever it was, but was stopped by what I saw. There was a black medallion hanging around the cyclist's neck, dangling heavily against his leather jacket. I tried to get a glimpse of his face, but his visor was as dark as the motorcycle. Still, I could tell he was looking straight at me. This hadn't been an accident.

"I've been looking for you," I said, picking myself off the ground. "The Wolves are back. We need your help."

He didn't respond right away. He just stood there, sizing me up. And then a harsh whisper came from beneath his visor.

"Stay out of this!"

Then he gunned the Harley and disappeared down Bleakwood as quickly as he had come.

"It's all for the best, I suppose." Grandma had me sitting up on the dining-room table as she tended to my palms and knees. The stinging antiseptic solutions smelled worse than wolfsbane. It made me wonder what evil doctor decided that if it hurts it must be cleaning the wound. "At least we know the hunters are back, and on top of things."

"I only saw one of them," I told her.

"Well, one's better than none."

"Ow!"

"Now don't be a baby. It's not that bad."

Marissa, sitting across the room, snickered, so I bit my lip to keep myself from whining. I was never a very good patient.

"Does it hurt worse than when I clobbered you over the head?" Marissa asked.

"I don't know," I told her. "You knocked me half-unconscious, so I didn't feel much of anything at the time."

She snickered again. Fine, I thought. Let her. She was just jeal­ous because she hadn't been the one to find the hunter.

"If he thinks I'm just gonna back off and let Cedric Soames get away with stealing my wheels, he's wrong."

Grandma slapped a Band-Aid over one knee and moved to the other one. "You got a foolish streak in you, Red."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you should back off and leave wolf hunting to those who know how. I'm sure you'll get your car back in time. Now hold still."

"Marissa and I can help the hunters."

"Yeah," Marissa said. "We can be kind of like . . . apprentices."

Grandma looked at my hands, which weren't scratched enough for Band-Aids, and shook her head. "They gave you a warning today. You keep sticking your nose in this, you're gonna wind up part of the problem."

"Cedric took your money, and my car. I can't just sit around and wait for someone else to take care of it. That's just not the way I'm built."

"You keep it up, and you won't be 'built' at all. You'll be in pieces. The Wolves will see to that."

I squirmed a bit at the thought and hopped off the table.

"There," Grandma said. "Good as new. Now you both get on home―and Red, don't you dare tell your parents what you've been up to."

We left without another word about my run-in with the hunter―but even before we reached the bottom of Grandma's long stone stoop, Marissa and I were already making plans.

"You still remember it?" Marissa asked.

I nodded. "Four-L-Y-C-Nine," I told her. I had burned that license plate number into my memory as the black Harley had sped off. It wasn't something I was going to forget anytime soon―but it was also something I wasn't gonna tell Grandma. Some things she just didn't need to know.

"I've got an aunt who works at the Thirty-fifth Precinct," Marissa said. "She could run the license plate and tell us who owns that motorcycle. We'll have their name, address, every­thing we'd ever want to know about them."

"What do you think the hunters'll do when we show up at their door?"

Marissa grinned. She was up for this just as much as I was. "Maybe they'll be impressed that we actually managed to track them down. But then again, maybe they'll leave motorcycle tread marks on our faces."

"One thing's for sure," I told her. "If they don't want us to be part of the problem, then they'd better find a way to make us part of the solution."

After all that riding around town looking for my Mustang, it finally turned up just a block from my front door.

It was the very next day. Marissa was off trying to get her aunt to trace that license plate, and I was walking back from the supermarket with a bag of groceries for my mom, trying to pre­tend, if only for a few minutes, that this was an ordinary summer.

Then a glint of red caught my eye, and I saw it, right there at the intersection. My Mustang, with Cedric Soames behind the wheel. Even though I knew he had taken it, and knew he must have been driving it, seeing it with my own eyes made me crazy. It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right. The light changed, and he floored it, like he was drag-racing everyone in the city. It wasn't just him in the car. There were at least five or six other guys with him, squeezed in.

I dropped the groceries and took after them on foot. I didn't have a chance of keeping up with them, but the traffic and lights slowed them down just enough for me to keep the car in my sights. I was in pretty good shape, but not for this kind of sprinting. I must have rammed into half a dozen people on the sidewalk. What would I do if I caught up with him? I didn't know. He had almost killed me before. Closed off my windpipe until I had almost blacked out. All I knew was that I couldn't stop chasing him as long as I had that car in my sights.

He made a left turn far up ahead, and when I got to the cor­ner, I thought for sure he'd be long gone. But I was wrong. My red Mustang was parked on the street, just a block ahead. Cedric and the others weren't in it, but it was no mystery where they had gone. The car was parked in front of the Cave―a sleazy pool hall where my mama told me never to go. Well, she wasn't here now.

My heart pounding and my head light from all that running, I stormed toward the car. I'd never hot-wired a car before, but I knew how it was done. Usually people do it when they're stealing the car. I'd be doing it to get my car back.

I got close enough to see my reflection in the sideview mir­ror, when out of nowhere something dark and sleek pulled in front of me. A jet-black Harley. How did the hunter know I was here? Had he been following me? I tried to get around him, but he rolled his bike forward to block me.

"All I want is my car," I told him. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

Then came that same hoarse whisper I had heard the day before. Only this time it said, "Get on."