Read Online Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk - Free Book Online

and watched them with her arms crossed. She never played. Usually she went off somewhere with Andy, but today, without him, she sat by herself and waited for recess to be over. Today she seemed more intent than usual. But she did not look at me once the whole time, so I paid her little attention in return.
    And then, just as Mrs. Taylor called us back in to school, Andy came strolling into the yard.
    Betty went to meet him halfway across the clearing, and they spent a moment together, talking, glancing at me as they did, before following us into school. I wondered what they were saying and what it had to do with me.

    For the rest of the day, Andy and Betty passed notes and looks, ignored Mrs. Taylor when she asked them to join her at the chalkboard for arithmetic, and were the first two out the door when she dismissed us.
    By the time I left the schoolhouse, they were nowhere in sight.
    I didn’t mind, then, when my brothers took off for home, racing each other up the hill and out of sight by the time I made it to the first turn in the path.
    I heard them, though. First the sound of them racing away. The thud of their feet. A breathless
hey!
The mumble of loose pebbles on the path. Then a stretch of silence as they put more distance between us. And then a scream. And then Henry calling my name.
    I ran to them up that hill as if it were flat ground.
    I found Henry kneeling over James, who lay on his back in the path, crying, his forehead covered in blood.
    I dropped to my knees beside them.
    â€œI don’t know what happened,” Henry said. “James was ahead of me and he just suddenly fell back and started to cry.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t just fall down,” James wailed, rolling onto his belly and pushing up onto his knees. He pointed along the path and there, just ahead, was a wire strung tight between two trees.
    When Henry stood to have a closer look, I saw that the wire would have caught him in the neck if he’d been in the lead.
    Henry ran his finger along the wire and jerked back. “It’s sharp right here above the path,” he said. “Like someone filed it.”
    He stepped into the brush and unwound the wire from one of the trees where it was anchored. Coiled the wire carefully and left it hanging from the tree on the other side of the path.
    I used my sleeve to blot the blood from my brother’s face. The cut was deep enough to bleed a lot, but it wasn’t too bad.
    â€œCome on,” I said to James, helping him to his feet. “We’ll get you fixed up just fine.”
    I took him by the hand and he let me, still blubbering. Henry went along in front, head up, as quiet and serious as a bull. From time to time he turned to look at me and James. At one point, as we crossed the fallow field on the brow of the hill, he turned and then stopped short. I looked back and saw Betty at the mouth of the path into the hollow, watching us.
    â€œNot now,” I said to Henry, who seemed to know what I meant. He stood stock-still and watched her as James and I hurried past. “Not now,” I said again. And he turned to follow us home.

    The wire was gone when I led my father back to where it had been.
    â€œI know it was here,” I said. “Just where that hump of root is. I made sure of it so I wouldn’t forget.”
    My father stepped off the path and fingered the pale scar on the tree where the wire had taken a bite. There was another like it on the other side of the path. “You remembered right, Annabelle. This is where he tied the wire.”
    My father didn’t get angry very often. My mother usually got angry first, so there wasn’t much need for him to get involved. But this was different.
    â€œSomeone has a snake in him, and it’s woken up,” he said quietly.
    I thought that was a very odd thing for him to say. He sounded a little like the reverend at our church or Aunt Lily when she got going, though he was not for the most