“Damon?”
He just watched her. She had to admit . . . he didn’t look brazen.
More as if he were in pain. His face looked very pale suddenly.
Was he taking on the whole burden of what had just happened? That must be it.
He
was going to tell Elena, because he wanted to help Bonnie, to make it easy for her. That was why he was saying “Forget.” He really meant . . . don’t mention it.
Suddenly
everything that had just happened seemed oddly blurred in Bonnie’s mind, as if it were made out of ice cream that was rapidly melting. It was . . . becoming formless.
This must be just another kind of insanity. But, honestly, whether Bonnie wanted to forget or not, the memories seemed to be going. That was
. . . a little sad, although she knew that thinking so was wicked. Bonnie watched her heavenly little moment shrink away into . . . oh, God, she was tired . . . into nothingness . . .
With a start, Bonnie lifted her head. She was wearing Damon’s jacket, which smelled strangely like sadness. Damon was holding her in a very gentle and fraternal embrace.
“. . . feeling better now?” he was saying.
Bonnie sniffed. Her nose was running. She sniffed harder, not wanting
it to run on Damon’s clothes. She’d been crying, for some reason. There were tears on her cheeks, drying chilly in the night air.
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “What—what just happened?”
“Well, you either grayed out or you started to go to sleep again,” Damon said. “I just chased those bad dogs away.”
To sleep . . . again! That’s right! Oh, my God, Bonnie thought. I’ve been sleepwalking. And those
bad dogs came after me and the big white dog!
Just as she thought this, she became
aware of a low sound—so deep it was almost beyond her range of hearing. It was a growl, and it was coming from her friend, the big white dog who was standing beside her.
The big white dog was growling at Damon.
“Oh, good grief,” Bonnie said, suddenly feeling her spirits lift. It was clear that after seeing that the bad dogs were gone, the white dog had suddenly gained the courage to threaten
someone
.
For a good boy, he had a fairly vicious growl.
“Stop it!” Bonnie said sharply. “Damon isn’t trying to hurt me! Honestly!”
The white dog subsided, but his golden eyes seemed to watch Damon with disapproval. It made Bonnie want to laugh.
But she also felt drowsy. Sleepy . . .
Damon gave her a little shake.
“Look, Bonnie, what on earth is going on? You’re running around in the wee hours in your nightie!”
“I know,” Bonnie blurted. “And
this here is the most cowardly dog in the world! He hid behind me—oh, but Damon, thank you for making those bad dogs go away! They were going to attack me and this dog here! And, and, and—”
“Easy. Easy, redbird. Don’t try to
talk now. Your feet must be freezing.” Damon picked her up and turned to walk back down the concrete path toward Soto Hall. Bonnie clung to his neck with one arm and tried to cover her feet with her nightgown with the other. The white dog followed them watchfully.
Bonnie
was vaguely surprised that she wasn’t crying hysterically. Maybe she had been hysterical before she had—grayed out—and Damon was just too nice to mention it. That would be like him. He was always kind to her.
Weird how far away
the attack of the feral dogs seemed now. Weirder, because she couldn’t remember anything after it except seeing them run away.
“How
—how did you know where to find me?” she asked, feeling lost.
“I didn’t. I’m not the only one out looking
for you. I got lucky and found you— just in time.”
“I’m the lucky one,” Bonnie said sincerely.
She buried her face in Damon’s shoulder, feeling her shivering slow down. The problem came when they reached the side door of her dormitory.
“Come on,” Bonnie said, unburying herself. She made clicking noises with her tongue, all the time watching the big white dog. “Good boy, come on in!”
“Steady on there. Bonnie, you can’t bring a—an animal that size inside. You know that!”
“But you don’t understand—he helped me—I was so scared, but then
he
was so scared. He’s
my
dog, now. He’s a good—”
“Bonnie, you can’t keep a pet in college. Oh, well, maybe a hamster. But not an enormous white
dog.”
“
He’s an Alaskan Husky. I know because my cousin had one. And I
want
him.” Irrationally, Bonnie felt tears come, leaking out of her eyes and tracing their way down her cheeks. “I’m going to name him and feed him . . . and besides, where’s he going to go if I don’t take care of him?”
“He can take care of himself. Does he look as if he’
s ever missed a meal in his life?”
Bonnie, gazing at the white dog’s
furry, healthy body, had to admit that he didn’t look like a stray.
“He doesn’t even have a collar—”
“No, and I doubt he’d be grateful if you put one on him. Bonnie, you
know
you can’t keep him, don’t you?”
More tears spilled
. Bonnie reached out toward the animal and Damon let her down so that she could put her arms around it.
“I’m sorry, but you have to go away now,” she whispered. “
He says I can’t keep you. Maybe someday I’ll see you again. You’re a good boy.”
The white dog, heavy and
warm and solid in her arms, nosed her curls for a moment and then gave her a giant lick right in the middle of the face.
“Oh, yu
ck!” It made Bonnie stop crying and giggle. “Good boy,” she said one last time, and wiped her face on her sleeve.
She took a deep breath and then allowed Damon to guide her into the dorm in front of him. The door shut behind
them and Bonnie’s heart ached when she thought that the white dog might be staring at it in bewilderment, wondering why he wasn’t allowed to follow them.
She choked up again and had to keep blinking away tears as Damon escorted her up to the second floor where she and Meredith shared a room
near Elena.
Time to face the music, she told herself. At least it distracted her from the pain in her heart.
Damon didn’t go all the way to her room, though. He stopped at Elena’s door and knocked three times, paused, and then knocked three more times.
The door opened to reveal Elena, mobile in hand, breaking off a sentence with an exclamation of: “Bonnie! Oh, thank God!” And then, while hugging Bonnie fiercely
: “It’s all right, Matt; Damon found her. She feels freezing cold, but she looks okay.”
Behind Elena, Meredith was also on her mobile. “Jim, Damon just brought her inside. She’s fine. Oh, Lord
; I’m so sorry to have bothered you, but thank you so much for searching!”
Caroline was in the armchair, hands clasped o
ver her stomach. “Where were you?” she asked bluntly, eyeing Bonnie’s nightgown.
By that time Meredith was hugging Bonnie even more fiercely than Elena had.
“Bonnie, how
could
you? We’ve been going crazy looking for you!”
“I sleepwalked,” Bonnie said, embarrassed and defensive. “I woke up
at Lerner Hall.”
“The night after we discover you need constant protection you begin to sleepwalk?” Elena asked, looking from Bonnie to Damon in consternation.
“Why Lerner Hall?” Meredith asked at almost the same instant.
“Are you sure you’re not just doing it for attention
?” Caroline said, as coolly as if it were an ordinary question.
“We woke
Caroline up accidentally,” Elena explained under her breath. “When Meredith saw that you were gone, Damon asked her to come over to stay with me, while he went out to look for you. All the noise woke her up.” Caroline’s room was between Elena’s and Bonnie and Meredith’s.
“I wasn’t asleep,” Caroline said in a voice which indicated she had said it more than once.
“And then Meredith and I called Matt and Jim Bryce and got them out looking for you, too,” Elena said. “We—well, we were terrified, really. We thought you might end up like that girl in Heron.”
Bonnie, still flushed with embarrassment, felt that she had a lot of explaining to do. She did her best to convey everything that had happened—and then had to backtrack when a series of knocks came at the door and a blinking, rumpled Matt was allowed in. When she got to the part about the bad dogs coming toward her, however, she saw Elena and Meredith and Damon exchanging glances like adults listening to a child tell about a dream.
“What?” she demanded. “Why don’t you believe me?”
Meredith said gently
: “Bonnie—wild dogs? Here on campus?”
“I suppose,” Matt said, “that the campus kind of backs up onto
forestland, but still . . . I never heard of wild dogs living in Dyer Wood.”
Elena was still looking at Damon, and Bonnie realized that he was looking uncomfortable.
“Maybe,” Elena said slowly, still looking at Damon, “you just dreamed the parts about the dogs, too—all three of them. Maybe you thought you were awake then, but you were really still asleep.”
“But I
wasn’t
asleep! I was too
cold
to be asleep! And Damon saw the white dog, didn’t you, Damon?”
Damon
was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, yes. She said it was an Alaskan Husky. I wouldn’t know, but it was damn big and white all over.”
“It had
beautiful golden eyes,” Bonnie contributed. “It didn’t wag much; and it was afraid of the bad dogs.”
“These bad dogs—” Matt began.
“They were ginormous. More Alaskan Huskies, but they were brindled on top and only white on their stomachs—”
“Brindled
. . . like a wolf?”
Everyone stopped talking and looked at Matt.
“People were always breeding wolf-dog hybrids back in Fell’s Church. They thought it was cool—but then after the puppies grew up, they dumped them around the Old Wood. I’ll bet that people do it around Dyer Wood, too,” Matt said, thinking it out.
“
Wolf-dogs?”
Meredith asked skeptically. “Wild ones?”
“And maybe Bonnie’s white dog
, too. They might even run wild in a pack somewhere in Dyer Wood.”
“But—that’s impossible!” Caroline said, her voice tight. “There may be coyotes around here, but
there aren’t any—”
She broke off,
seeming uncomfortable. Matt just plunged on: “They’re way more vicious than dogs or wolves are. They might even track a human—especially if she was with the lowest-ranking member of their pack.”
Bonnie felt injured. “Why
the lowest-ranking? He was just scared, and so was I. Does that make
me
the lowest ranking girl in our—”
“Animals that are all white or all black are often discriminated against—in pa
cks in the wild,” Meredith said in her explaining-from-a-book voice. “But, Matt, do you really think a pack of wild wolf-dogs is roaming the Dalcrest campus?”
“
They might be hanging out in the woods,” Damon said. He had a way of speaking that made everyone stop and wait for him to say more. “They might even have kicked the white dog out of their pack . . . and then followed him with unfriendly intentions when he went to hide on the campus where big blundering humans live.”
“But you didn’t
let me keep him!” Bonnie wailed, turning toward Damon. Now she was really upset. “They’ll eat him or something! I could have saved him!”
Damon, looking
somber, just shook his head. “Redbird, you can’t keep an enormous, untamed, unneutered dog in your room. It’s not fair to him, and eventually you’d get expelled.”
“Rusticated,” Elena began, and then fell silent, frowning.
“Rusticated . . . sounds familiar somehow,” she murmured, shaking her head.
“
But I have to protect him! I’m going back right now and getting him—”
“You’re not going anywhere in your nightgown and bare feet!”
—Meredith.
“You can’t keep a wolf-dog in a dorm room!”—Caroline.
“You’re not going anywhere without protection for yourself!”—Elena.
“The dog or hybrid or whatever is already gone—I’m sure.” That was Damon, seeming perfectly serious, looking perfectly competent.
“He ran away at the sight of Indoors. That’s not where he wants to be.”
Everyone nodded at this, and Bonnie knew that they would all take his word for it; because he was a junior and they were freshmen, because he had traveled, and they hadn’t; because he could deal
with the bitch queen on wheels that Elena could be sometimes, and nobody else could. And because of a whole different reason
that
she couldn’t even think of right now.