Xavier and the Wolf (Legends of Pinewood 1)

6. You shouldn't trash-talk

I'm worried about you and your poor luck sometimes, Xavier. smh

I grinned at Iris' reply to my message. I'd sent a warning out to the entire school, and I'd also posted a message in the public Pinewood Discord group that I'd seen a wolf near town.

It was pretty typical I was the one who'd ran into the animal. This was the first time I'd ever walked away from the bonfire, and I'd found myself face to face with a wolf. There had been plenty of people making out in the bushes who'd never run into anything more dangerous than nettles or Boris telling them to get out of his garden.

I typed a reply to Iris: you should be in class, before putting my phone away.

I'd moved into the library to prepare for tutoring later that day and Helmi, the librarian, didn't like it when students used their phone in an area that should be exclusively about books. The excuse that I no longer attended this school as a student wouldn't impress her—she'd still walk by with her red, glittery box and insist I put my 'technology' in it.

Usually, I'd choose to sit in the computer room because of these strict rules (it'd also been Helmi who insisted the computers were elsewhere and not near her library). But my interest had been piqued by the legends of Pinewood's wolves which Boris had told me about.

After I arrived home yesterday, I'd started thinking about the stories I was told as a kid, and I remembered more than I thought. In the stories, the wolves were human-sized. They were intelligent, didn't behave like wolves, and went out of their way to protect people from harm. That wasn't exactly what the wolf I saw yesterday had done, but it had certainly behaved strangely. Almost like it understood what a phone was.

Obviously, I didn't believe in fairytales and wolves who protected people, but I was curious now. My second-grade teachers had read the stories from a thin black book with drawn woodlands on the cover. If it was still in the school, and had survived Mrs. Bennet's purge because it was 'dangerous material for kids and made them look for wolves', it had to be in the library.

I walked beside the rows of books, looking left and right and wondering where I'd even begin searching for this small book. I didn't know the title or the author and despite Pinewood's school being small, we had an impressive collection of books stalled out in twelve rows.

After a few moments of walking around and randomly checking books, I was ready to walk to Helmi's desk and ask if she knew. But after I'd taken exactly two steps in Helmi's direction, my phone started ringing in my pocket.

Helmi glared at me with the intensity of a thousand suns. It was a very odd look on her, given that she looked like a sweet fairy godmother. With a flushed face I waved at her to convey I was sorry and hurried out of the room to pick up. It was Iris.

"Iris, why are you calling me?" I asked. "Aren't you in class?"

I heard crackling sounds coming from my phone, indicating Iris was outside. "You've got to come outside to the field right now!" she said.

I darted a glance at the window. "But it's raining."

"That doesn't matter," Iris hissed. "You're not made of sugar, are you? Seriously, come here right now!"

Iris ended the call before I could ask for an explanation. With a deep sigh, I grabbed my coat from the rack in the hallway and put it on.

With Iris, I was always left guessing whether her 'emergencies' were truly important. Sometimes she'd call me and told me to come right now because someone was wearing a beautiful coat and she wanted me to see it (and no, sending a picture wasn't enough). Sometimes, she called and told me to come right now because she had accidentally glued her hand to a mannequin and actually needed help to escape.