He was wearing shorts. It was summer. His face was sticky, and his hair was messy, and he was grinning at me. There was a hole in the dirt in front of him where he’d been digging. I told him it was the biggest hole I’d ever seen.
He looked down at it, then back up at me. “Biggest?”
“Yes. You’re a good digger.”
“Good digger,” he agreed.
Boys came. Other wolves. Cubs.
One said, “Carter, come play with us.”
I said “Okay” and “Sure” and “Can Kelly come too?”
And the boy said, “No. He’s just a baby. Babies are stupid.”
Kelly cried.
I tackled the boy for making my brother cry.
Mom pulled me off him.
His nose was bleeding.
“Carter,” Mom said, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“Kelly isn’t stupid,” I snarled at the boy as he pushed himself up from the ground. I tried to go after him again, but Mom held me back.
“I’m telling!” the boy shouted before he ran away, the other cubs chasing after him.
Mom turned me around, her face near mine. She was frowning. “We don’t hit other people.”
“He said Kelly was stupid.”
“Be that as it may, we don’t hit. It’s not nice.”
She was wrong. I didn’t say that out loud, but I thought it. I thought it hard. She was wrong, because if anyone called Kelly stupid, I would definitely hit them. I would hit them as hard as I could. I would hit them until they couldn’t say those words anymore.
I said, “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. You have to think before you act. You can’t use your fists to solve all your problems.” Then she grimaced, her hand going to her stomach as she stood upright. “Someone woke up. Oof.”
The baby in her belly.
I didn’t care about that baby.
It wasn’t real yet.
“Carter,” Kelly sniffled, and I went to him.
I picked him up. I was very strong.
He laid his head on my shoulder, and since I didn’t want to get in trouble again, I promised in my head that no one would call him stupid again.
“Dig with me?” he asked. “Biggest hole?”
I said, “Okay,” and that’s what we did. It was better than playing with other cubs.
IT WENT LIKE THIS: