Gloria locked the door. “I really wish that didn’t happen.”

“What?”

“People. Coming onto my property like they got a right. Thumping on my door. Busybodies, nosing around. I hate that. I really, really do. Puts a lot of pressure on me.”

I frowned and nodded.

“And you,” she said. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me, miss.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed until my knuckles crunched together. “Don’t think I don’t notice what you’re doing. I can see you making goo-goo eyes at Erma’s son. Why don’t you go up and kiss him right on the mouth? You scared? Is that it? Yeah. You’re scared. Well, you look like a real simpleton, you know that?”

My cheeks got warm.

“Maisy Janes. You answer me. Do you know how stupid you look?”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“I look stupid,” I whispered.

“That’s my girl.” She stopped squeezing my hand. “You listen to Gloria and you’ll grow up decent. Not like some moony-faced ninny, tripping over her own feet.”

I looked at Chicken, but he went and lied down in front of the basement door.

“And that dog is ridiculous,” she said. “Old and ridiculous.”

That night in bed I heard the tapping again. I knew it was Rowan down there. It made my middle feel worse. What if he got out? What if he was sad, too? Could a wolf be sad? What if he stopped being bad and Gloria didn’t know? If I was brave, I would go down there and check. But I wasn’t brave. My head was full of ideas and they raced around and crashed into each other. It made me fuzzy and sick to hold it in.

Gloria came in my room and heard the noise. “Nothing normal acts like that. No one would say otherwise.” Then she told me I had to turn off my brain. I had to put all my bad thoughts in a huge box and shut the lid down tight. “That’s what regular folks do,” she said. “When they got troubles in their life.” I wondered if Gloria did that too. I wondered if the basement bathroom was her box. She kept the lid on tight and didn’t see Rowan no more.

She gave me an extra giant spoon of green cough vitamins, but I still couldn’t sleep. The tapping wouldn’t stop and my box wasn’t working. I tried to put Rowan in there. I tried to sit on the box in my head, but the lid kept popping off. And when I looked in Rowan wasn’t a horrible wolf at all.

He was waving at me and smiling. “Hello, Turtle,” he said.

ROWAN