The Great Alone

“Maybe we should—”

“Don’t,” Mama said. “Just go to bed, okay?” She sat back, lit up one of her precious last cigarettes.

Leni gathered up the dice and scorecards and the little brown and yellow fake-leather shaker, and fit them all back into the red box.

She climbed up the loft ladder and crawled into her sleeping bag without even bothering to brush her teeth. Downstairs, she heard her mother pacing.

Leni rolled over for her paper and a pen. Since Matthew had been gone, she’d written him several letters, which Large Marge mailed for her. Matthew wrote back religiously, short notes about his new hockey team and how it felt to be in a school that actually had sports teams. His handwriting was so bad she could barely decipher it. She waited impatiently for each letter and ripped them open immediately. She read each one over and over, like a detective, looking for clues and hints of emotion. Neither she nor Matthew knew quite what to say, how to use something as impersonal as words to create a bridge between their disparate lives, but they kept writing. She didn’t yet know how he felt about himself or the move or the loss of his mother, but she knew that he was thinking about her. That was more than enough to begin with.

Dear Matthew,

Today we learned more about the Klondike Gold Rush in school. Ms. Rhodes actually mentioned your grandma as an example of the kind of woman who set out North with nothing and found—

She heard a scream.

Leni scrambled out of her sleeping bag and half slid down the ladder.

“There’s something out there,” Mama said, coming out of her bedroom, holding up a lantern. In its glow, she looked wild, pale.

A wolf howled. The wail undulated through the darkness.

Close.

Another wolf answered.

The goats screamed in response, a terrible keening cry that sounded human.

Leni grabbed the rifle from the rack and went to open the door.

“No!” Mama yelled, yanking her back. “We can’t go out there. They could attack us.”

They shoved the curtains aside and opened the window. Cold blasted them.

A sliver of moonlight shone down on the yard, weak and insubstantial but enough to show them glimmers of movement. Light on silver fur, yellow eyes, fangs. Wolves moving in a pack toward the goat pen.

“Get out of here!” Leni yelled. She pointed her rifle and aimed at something, movement, and fired.

The gunshot was a crack of sound. A wolf yelped, whined.

She shot again and again, heard the bullets thwack into trees, ping on metal.

The screaming and bleating of the goats went on and on.

* * *

QUIET.

Leni opened her eyes and found that she was sprawled on the sofa, with Mama beside her.

The fire had gone out.

Shivering, Leni pushed back the pile of woolen and fur blankets and restarted the fire.

“Mama, wake up,” Leni said. They were both wearing layers of clothing, but when they’d finally fallen asleep, they’d been so exhausted they’d forgotten the fire. “We have to check outside.”

Mama sat up. “We’ll go out when there’s light.”

Leni looked at the clock. Six A.M.