Lone Wolves by John Smelcer Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ll call my friend and get you signed up.”
    Denny’s mother stopped what she was doing.
    â€œWhat’s that about a race?” she asked, with her arms across her chest.
    â€œI’m going to be in a dogsled race this weekend,” replied Denny happily. “Grandpa says I’m ready.”
    Delia glared at her father.
    â€œWhy do you fill her mind with such notions? She’s a girl, Dad. She shouldn’t be racing dogs or hiking up to cabins all by herself, for god’s sake! It’s too dangerous.”
    â€œBut, Mom, you’re always telling me that a woman can be anything she wants to be,” said Denny. “You’re always telling me to believe in myself. Were you lying?”
    â€œNo,” replied her mother. “But you need to act more like a girl, or you’ll end up all alone.”
    Denny thought her mother was really talking about herself. She knew that her mother’s generation had, for the most part, turned their backs on the old ways, wanting their children, instead, to fit in with the new world . . . the white world.
    â€œYou need to stop hanging around with dogs in the woods and make some friends. Why can’t you wear a dress once in a while? And would it kill you to put on some make-up? Why can’t you be more like that Mary Paniaq?”
    Denny bit her lip, literally. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw something.
    Be like Mary! If Mother only knew what I know, would she think a pregnant, pot-smoking, alcoholic teenager with a total disregard for her baby is better than me?
    â€œWhat about what I want?” she yelled, almost in tears. “What about who I want to be? Maybe I don’t want to be like you !”
    On hearing the last words, her mother let her jaw slack and her arms fell to her side.
    Denny grabbed her parka and school bag. She wheeled around in the open doorway.
    â€œI am going to be in the race! You can’t stop me!” she shouted before slamming the door.
    On the walk to school Denny felt bad. She realized how hard it had to be for her mother, raising a child alone, living with her parents in a small village offering but few good jobs, living where everyone knows your business. Denny remembered how Anne had written in her diary that she hated her mother but how, by the end of the book, she came to understand how much it would hurt her mother to read something like that from her own daughter.
    â€œI don’t hate her,” she said to the deaf trees. “I just want her to love me for who I am.”

    At school, while standing behind the building during lunch break, Denny told everyone that she was going to enter the dog race.
    â€œThat’s crazy!” said Johnny Shaginoff, taking a drag on a cigarette.
    â€œGirls don’t mush,” said Mary Paniaq, taking a sip from her flask.
    Norman Fury rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.
    â€œYou don’t have a chance in hell,” he said.
    Only Silas Charley said anything encouraging.
    â€œI’ll go,” he whispered, when everyone else was talking about something else.
    â€œWhat’d you say?” asked Deneena.
    â€œI’ll go watch you race.”
    After everyone else went into the building, Denny grabbed Silas by his jacket and stopped him in front of the main doors.
    â€œHow come you’re being nice to me?” she asked.
    â€œI just like watching dog races. My uncle used to race.”
    â€œBut you’ve never been nice to me before. I mean, whenever you guys are all drunk or high, all you ever do is make fun of me, saying how I don’t have a father, how I’m such a tomboy, or how I’m such an old fashioned goody-two-shoes.”
    Silas leaned close to Denny.
    â€œI’ll tell you a little secret,” he whispered. “I don’t really do none of those bad things. I just want people to think I do, so they’ll like me. That’s all.”
    â€œBut I’ve