You'll Thank Me for This Nina Siegal (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📖

to stay together and work as a group, be patient with one another; help each other out, stay on track, and avoid wild animals. The kids all nodded in unison: Right, right. Sure, sure.

After that, they took their backpacks out of the trunk and double-checked their supplies. They drank water and refilled their bottles with the big jug Rutger had in the back of his minivan. Then they just stood around, waiting for a while at the clearing in the woods, awkwardly, not saying much, for the second car to arrive. Looking out across the hilly landscape, Karin saw lots of patches of purple heath and little tufts of grass, like beards of old men, everywhere.

After a little while, Rutger walked away from the group and fished his cell phone out of his bag—he had it only for emergency purposes, he said—and tried calling Martijn and Riekje. “Strange,” he said, coming back, his wisps of hair floating for a moment over his head. “No answer. But they’ll probably be along shortly.”

Dirk, impatient by now, said the group was losing time, and he wanted to get started. “They aren’t supposed to go with us anyway,” he said. “We can start.” Lotte and Margot were opposed. They didn’t really want to deviate from the plan. Karin was with Dirk. The point was to do it on their own, anyway, right? Rutger looked miffed. “Let’s just wait a little longer,” he said.

The kids stood around, kicking the dirt, which was dry like sand and burst into the air as dark puffs.

“Did anyone hear about the wolf?” Dirk asked.

“What wolf?” said Lotte.

“Oh, come on, don’t try to scare us,” said Margot with a flirty twitter. “There are no wolves here.”

Dirk straightened up, excited to be urged on. “There are. Haven’t you read? Wolves are back in the Netherlands after, like, more than a hundred years.”

“A hundred forty years,” Karin said, realizing too late that she was sounding really annoying. But it was true. “My mom is obsessed with the wolves,” she added with a shrug. “I get a daily play-by-play.”

The kids glanced at her warily, but Dirk seemed chuffed that his story was confirmed by the nature nerd. He nodded for her to continue, and she took the invitation.

“There used to be wolves here a long time ago, but then they, like, kind of wandered off to Germany.” Karin knew the right word for this was “migrated” but was loath to use any even mildly scientific language among her peers. “And they’ve lived there for a long time, but then one of them just showed up here by himself last year. A male. And then later somehow there was a female, and early this summer they had pups.”

“Awwww,” Lotte said, as if Karin had been telling a love story.

“Wait, so now it’s, like, a whole wolf family?” Margot said. “How many?”

“I don’t know,” Karin said, although she did know. “Maybe, like, six or seven?”

There were seven. Karin had seen photos of five wolf cubs born in June. Her father, if he were still alive, would have definitely come out here to take pictures of them. That had been his thing. And she would have come with him, definitely.

“So there’s, like, a wolf pack out here?” Margot asked, her eyes bulging out, totally exaggerating. “In these woods?”

Could Margot and Lotte have missed the boat on this whole story? The story was, like, everywhere. Karin had spent the summer dodging the subject every time she mentioned her upcoming dropping to an adult. “Ah, Roodkapje, Roodkapje, waar ga je heen?” (“Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood, where are you going?”) they’d start singing, the song from the Dutch Little Red Riding Hood movie everyone watched.

“See?” said Dirk, now very satisfied with himself even though he had said literally nothing.

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t hurt people.” Karin kind of wanted to take some wind out of his sails. “It’s not like Little Red Riding Hood. Wolves eat sheep or deer. They would only attack you if you tried to hurt their babies.”

“I don’t know,” Dirk said, darting her a look. “I see three pretty tasty Roodkapjes right here.”

“O-M-G, you guys are not serious,” said Margot. “We’re not going out there to be eaten by wolves! I’m about to turn back right now and go home.”

Karin turned to Dirk. “You don’t need to scare everyone. I read the family had probably moved on by now anyway. They have to get somewhere warm by winter.” This was a lie, but no one was fact-checking.

Dirk just lifted his chest and leaned his head back and howled, “Aahwooooh! Aaahooowh!” at the top of his lungs. “Maybe he’ll howl in response…”

All of them waited to hear if there was an echo to his howl. There was none.

“Literally?” said Margot, giving him an exasperated look. “I can’t believe you are literally trying to get the wolves to speak to you.”

Dirk looked at all three girls, with the range of expressions on their faces, and a wide grin grew on his face. “You guys are too easy,” he said. “Are you also afraid of the Wolfman? Because that’s who I turn into late at night, when the moon is full.” He looked up toward the sky, but they couldn’t see the moon because of the clouds, and if it was up there, it probably wasn’t full. “I come out here to see my old friends Freddy Krueger and Ghostface too.” With that, he reached out to grab Margot, and she jumped.

“Don’t!” she said. “You’re totally scaring me.” But instead of acting scared and pulling away, she tucked herself under Dirk’s arms and tried to wrap herself in them, like a blanket.

He welcomed the invitation and put his big, wrestling-team arms around her shoulders, then slid them down to her waist. “Don’t worry, little Margot. I’ll make sure no wolves eat you!” He was laughing, and Margot clearly enjoyed the embrace, but her face pretended to have a pouty expression.

Lotte, seeing the two of them flirting in