WOLVES DON'T TALK

Chapter 1. LOST IN THE FOREST

Brock Baldwin attracted girls just like fly paper attracts bugs. He'd chased after every female in the eighth grade. Then, when he caught them (as he usually did), he had them bringing his lunch and straightening out his locker and racing off to satisfy his every command. Daphne Devine walked behind Brock for two weeks, traipsing in his footsteps because he said it made him look important. But a lot of good that did her. Before she even realized it, she was shadowing Brock right up to Ana Maria Lopez's locker and waiting patiently behind him while he flashed his white teeth and blue eyes at Ana.

Well, at least I hadn't chased after Brock and traipsed off into the woods with him because of his good looks. My troubles had nothing to do with his sleek blond hair, but that was absolutely no comfort to me as I stumbled around lost in the middle of an endless forest filled with ridiculously tall trees.

There I was, Carmen Pimentel, an eighth grade genius extraordinaire, totally surrounded by a mass of towering redwood trees and completely unable to find my way back to my summer camp.

My cell couldn't pick up a signal either. Believe me, I tried sending texts and even dialing a few of my contacts, but all I got back was a flashing message telling me service did not exist in the area.

And it was all Brock's fault and maybe a bit of mine, too, because I should have questioned his competence when he told me he knew the place like the back of his hand. Instead, I followed him deeper and deeper into the redwoods in hot pursuit of new plants for Camp Sequoia's annual botany class.

I should have known better, I muttered to myself as I plopped down on a pile of soft green moss under a particularly monstrous tree. I'd chased after Brock against all the laws of common sense. I know this sounds kind of stupid, but desperate people do desperate stuff and I was totally desperate.

A test had ruined my life. My mother had declared me a genius when she saw the results.

"You're so lucky. They're going to put you in the gifted class. You're so lucky," she gushed.

"Lucky! Nothing doing!" my father bellowed. "It's heredity. She gets it from her dad." He grinned at me as he said it and I answered his enthusiasm with a rather weak smile.

"I'm not sure I want to be in the gifted class," I said. Both my parents laughed.

"Of course you do, Carmen," my mother replied and the discussion ended.

My best friend, Ashley, declared me lucky too when I told her.

"That's great", she almost laughed when I dropped the news on her as we stuffed our books into our lockers between classes. "You sure are lucky. Isn't she, Daphne?" Ashley asked Daphne Devine, who was trying to keep the contents of her locker from falling out all over the floor.

"Yeah, lucky," she replied while furiously trying to jam a math book in and slam the door shut before it could tumble back out in the hallway. Then both girls just stood there staring at me. I shrugged and walked away, feeling their eyes on my nerd back as I slouched toward my new gifted science class.

My troubles began soon after that. Everybody started giving me the standard freak treatment. I knew what they were doing right away because I'd done it enough to other smart kids in the past. The treatment went like this: You didn't talk to nerds; you didn't even talk when they were around. You shut up when one approached you in the hall, then glared after his or her departing back until they disappeared, and only continued a conversation after the intelligent life form had faded away into oblivion. Safely beyond hearing range.

Believe me, I liked dishing that procedure out a lot more than getting it served back at me. Almost all my friends quit hanging around with me after that stupid test, like I could control my ability to multiply fractions and understand what didactic meant. I guess they thought other people would think they were nerds too if they were seen with me.

Even my best friend, Ashley, hardly spoke to me after the test, except when no one else was around. I quickly learned what a two-faced creature she really was but I got so lonesome sometimes, I didn't care. I missed hanging out with Ashley. Boy, did I miss her. Even a two-faced friend is better than none at all.

So, anyway, as I was saying, I followed Brock Baldwin into the forest because he excelled at stupidity. Kids laughed about his D Minus average and the time he spent in detention for not doing his school work. No one with any intelligence whatsoever associated with him. Only popular kids who liked having fun hung around with wretched Brock.

I figured no one would ever again think that old Carmen Pimentel could add or subtract after seeing me with him. Yep, Brock was my ticket back to popularity. If I played my cards really well, I reasoned, maybe even my teachers would begin to think I wasn't so smart either. I could get my friends back and escape from the gifted class all in one brilliant stroke of pure genius.

But I started to doubt the wisdom of my plan as I sat in the middle of all those huge old trees. A thick grey fog had crept into the forest, surrounding me in its cold damp arms. The moss beneath me squished with water. I shifted back and forth, trying to find a dry spot. When I failed, I shoved a bunch of old dried up redwood needles into a mound and plopped down on them instead.

Once settled onto my nest, I started to wonder if I might have been wrong about Brock all along. Just as the darkness finally surrounded me, I realized that he might even be smarter than me because I was there and he wasn't. For all I knew, Brock was stuffing his mouth with frankfurters and winking across the dinner table at Ana Maria and not thinking about how he'd left me behind on our hike or even wondering about my absence.

The idea of Brock being safely back at Camp Sequoia and flirting with Ana Maria depressed the tar out of me.

She was my idea of a lucky girl. She drew crowds of kids around her whenever she walked down the hall at school. She had the most beautiful golden-brown complexion and the prettiest hair I'd ever seen, pitch black and super thick and fabulous in the ponytail usually attached to the back of her perfectly empty head. No one gave her any credit for having brains, not like me. Everybody thought she was just fine, but they didn't want to associate with a freak like me.

"Nobody likes me!" I shouted to the forest, trying to introduce some humanity into the horrible silence that hung in the air. "Except maybe Ashley, just a little," I added, hoping beyond reason that she would walk up to me out of the blackness and agree with my analysis.

I would have been so happy to see her. Her friendly smile would have been a lot more comforting sight than the grins I imagined all around me in the dark.

Her warm brown eyes would have been much more reassuring than the shiny orange ones that glared at me in the night.