Noble shook his head. “No. If the ranger comes for us now we’ll all have to go home, and I don’t want everyone to have to go home early on my account.” He took a deep breath and stood up. “I’ll stick it out till the end.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m not going home until I see you out there dancing.”

Tora had been dancing with Michael Martin most of the night—especially the slow dances—and Harlan seemed to have found a new friend in the girl from the refreshment table.

Argus leaned forward and spoke directly into Noble’s ear. “I’m not a very good dancer.”

“I know,” Noble said as he looked out across the floor. “But don’t worry…nobody is.”

That much was true. The girls at least had a sense of rhythm and had learned a few dance moves from the videos they’d seen on MTV and MuchMusic. The boys, on the other hand, seemed lost out on the floor, struggling to keep time with the music without stepping on their partners’ toes. It was utter chaos, but somehow it seemed to work. Best of all was that no one cared. So what if nobody knew how to dance? Everyone was having fun, and that was all that mattered.

“It does look like fun,” Argus said.

“Trust me, it is,” replied Noble.

“And there are a few girls who actually said they wanted to dance with me.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Argus hesitated a moment, then slowly began to move his head from side to side in time with the music.

“That’s it,” Noble said, slapping his brother on the back. “Now you’ve got it!”

Argus stepped forward and slipped into the crowd on the dance floor. In no time at all he was dancing with not one, but two girls.

Noble smiled at his brother, gave him the thumbs-up sign, then turned for the boys’ bathroom. His head was spinning and his stomach felt like he’d been punched in the gut. His legs had all the strength of rubber bands, and he struggled just to make it across the hall to the bathroom.

“Hey, Noble,” someone said as they came out the door. “You okay?”

“Too much dancing.” Noble smiled.

Then, when the boy was gone, Noble pushed his way into the bathroom and stumbled into a stall, where he fell to his knees…and threw up into the toilet.

“This can’t be good,” Noble muttered as he tried to catch his breath. He’d never really been sick before, nor had any of the pack, for that matter. Sure, they’d had the odd cold or flu, but the symptoms were never very severe, nor did they last for very long.

This was something different. Something very different.