But then they found the gang that had kidnapped the Darien kid, she identified them all, and the special patrols stopped. And once I was well again, I swore it had all been some kind of wild nightmare, a dream. After all, I had a healthy distrust of the police because of my association with Bert Koop. I think everyone was relieved.
Except—and this was the really funny thing—except my father. He made these long, secret phone calls to his brothers and sisters, and even to his Uncle Louis, who scarcely had an aggie left, much less the rest of his marbles. My father rarely spoke to his family; they were the embarrassing past he’d left behind. But since my night of raving, he insisted on calling them every night, talking to them in Yiddish. Yiddish! After that, he started going to work late and driving the twins and me to school before getting on the train to the city. Further, he established a check-in system for all of us. I was sixteen and embarrassed; sixteen is the high-water level of being embarrassed by one’s parents.
It was two weeks before I saw the man in black again. By that time, with my grounding rescinded—not because my grades had gone up but because we all had other things to think about—and Mary Lou starting to pay a different kind of attention to me, I had all but forgotten the man in black. Or at least I had forgotten he scared me. I had walked the long block to Mary Lou’s for a study date. Study on her part, date on mine, but I still got to hold her hand for about a quarter of an hour without her finding an excuse to remove it. Her parents kicked me out at ten.
The moon was that yellow-white of old bone. It made odd shadows on the snow. As I walked, my breath spun out before me like sugar candy; except for the noise of my exhalations, there wasn’t a sound at all.
I was thinking about Mary Lou and the feel of her hand, warm and a bit moist in mine, and letting my feet get me home. Since I had gone around that block practically every day since second grade—the school bus stop was in front of Mary Lou’s driveway—I didn’t need to concentrate on where I was going. And suddenly, right at the bend of the road, where Newtown Turnpike met Mary Lou’s road, a large shadow detached itself from one of the trees. He had made no sound but somehow I had heard something. I looked up and there he was. Something long and sharp glittered in his hand. He was humming a snatch of song and it came to me across the still air, tantalizingly familiar. I couldn’t quite place it, though a tune ran through my mind: “You are on your way trying to escape . . .”
I turned and ran. How I ran! Back past Mary Lou’s, past the Pattersons’, past the new row of houses that just barely met the two-acre standards. I turned left and right and left again. It was dark—the moon having been hidden behind clouds—then light once more and still I ran. I had no breath and I ran; I had a stitch in my side and I ran; I stood for a moment by the side of the road vomiting and vomiting up something and then nothing and I ran.
I got home at three a.m. My mother lay fast asleep on the sofa, a box of Kleenex by her side, her eyes red with crying. She didn’t rouse when I slipped in the door. I thought of waking her, of hugging her with gratitude that I was home and safe. But I was so exhausted, I went right to bed.
I took off my shoes and, still in my clothes, lay down. A shadow detached itself from my closet. Something long and sharp glittered in its hand. I tried to scream and couldn’t, then saw it was my father and relaxed.
“Dad. . . ,” I began.
“This. . . ,” he said, as he always did when he was going to punish me, “is going to hurt me more than it does you.”
He was wrong of course. On cold nights, especially winter nights, that missing toe aches more than anything.
But I have never seen the man in black again.
Wilding
ZENA BOUNCED down the brownstone steps two at a time, her face powdered a light green. It was the latest color and though she didn’t think she looked particularly good in it, all the girls were wearing it. Her nails were striped the same hue. She had good nails.
“Zen!” her mother called out the window.
“Where are you going? Have you finished your homework?”
“Yes, Mom,” Zena said without turning around. “I finished.” Well, almost, she thought.
“And where are you—”
This time Zena turned. “Out!“
“Out where?”
Ever since Mom had separated from her third pairing, she had been overzealous in her questioning. Where are you going? What are you doing? Who’s going with you? Zena hated all the questions, hated the old nicknames. Zen. Princess. Little Bit.
“Just out.”
“Princess, just tell me where. So I won’t have to worry.”
“We’re just going Wilding,” Zena said, begrudging each syllable.
“I wish you wouldn’t. That’s the third time this month. It’s not . . . not good. It’s dangerous. There have been . . . deaths.”
“That’s ’gus, Mom. As in bo-gus. ’Ganda. As in propaganda. And you know it.”
“It was on the news.”
Zena made a face but didn’t deign to answer. Everyone knew the news was not to be trusted.
“Don’t forget your collar, then.”
Zena pulled the collar out of her coat pocket and held it up above her head as she went down the last of the steps. She waggled it at the window. That, she thought, should quiet Mom’s nagging. Not that she planned to wear the collar. Collars were for little kids out on their first Wildings. Or for tourist woggers. What did she need with one? She was already sixteen and, as the Pack’s song went:
Sweet sixteen
Powdered green
Out in the park
Well after dark,
Wilding!
The torpedo train growled its way uptown and Zena stood, legs wide apart, disdaining the hand grips. Hangers are for tourist woggers, she thought, watching as a pair of high-heeled out-of-towners clutched the overhead straps so tightly their hands turned white from blood loss.
The numbers flashed by—72, 85, 96. She bent her knees and straightened just in time for the torp to jar to a stop and disgorge its passengers. The woggers, hand-combing their dye jobs, got off, too. Zena refused to look at them but guessed they were going where she was going—to the Entrance.
Central Park’s walls were now seventeen feet high and topped with electronic mesh. There were only two entrances, built when Wilding had become legal. The Westside Entrance was for going in. The Fifty-ninth Eastside was for going out.
As she came up the steps into the pearly evening light, Zena blinked. First Church was gleaming white and the incised letters on its facade were the only reminder of its religious past. The banners now hanging from its door proclaimed WILD WOOD CENTRAL, and the fluttering wolf and tiger flags, symbols of extinct mammals, gave a fair indication of the wind. Right now wind meant little to her, but once she was Wilding, she would know every nuance of it.
Zena sniffed the air. Good wind meant good tracking. If she went predator. She smiled in anticipation.
Behind her she could hear the tip-taps of wogger high heels. The woggers were giggling, a little scared. Well, Zena thought, they should be a little scared. Wilding is a pure New York sport. No mushy woggers need apply.
She stepped quickly up the marble stairs and entered the mammoth hall.