Midnight Howl is the fifth novel in the Poison Apple franchise.
Summary[]
Marisol and her mom move from the city to rural Montana for a few months, and stay with family friends and their twin children, Jack and Hailey. Marisol loves looking at the stars so far away from city lights, but she feels creeped out by the woods right by their house. She's even more scared when her new friend Lily warns her about the wolves there -- wolves that are most dangerous around the full moon. When she notices Hailey disappear several times late at night, Marisol starts to wonder . . . could she be friends with a werewolf?
Excerpt[]
“You are going to die,” my best friend Tasha said. Her brown eyes were wide with horror.
I laughed. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Tasha made a face. “You’ll be lost out there. And
I won’t survive here without you.”
We were sitting under a big oak tree on the grounds of our school, eating sandwiches from the café down the street. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and a gentle breeze lifted strands of curly brown hair from my ponytail. It was a perfect September day.
School had been back in session for two weeks,
and it seemed like Tasha and I had spent most of
that time having the same conversation. Tomorrow,
I was leaving our hometown of Austin, Texas, for three months.
“You love Austin!” Tasha insisted, tucking her
chin-length black hair behind her ear and making a
sad face at me. “And seventh grade has already
started! We need to be study partners! And plan the
Halloween Dance together!” She crumpled up her
empty chip bag and looked at me, lips trembling.
“Marisol, you can’t leave. You won’t be happy in the
middle of nowhere.”
Tasha is very, very dramatic. One day last year,
she called me crying so hard she couldn’t talk. I
thought she was sick, or that something had happened
to her family. I rushed over to her house on
my bike, but it turned out she had just gotten a bad
haircut. And it wasn’t even that awful!
Tasha being her dramatic self made me reluctant
to show any nerves at all: If I was the levelheaded
one, I wasn’t going to admit to any doubts about
leaving town. And it’s true I love Austin. It’s the best
city in the world — you can walk or bike pretty
much every where; it’s beautiful; and there are terrific
restaurants, funky coffeehouses, great hiking
trails, and cool music. But I wasn’t leaving forever —
I’d be back in just three months. I ignored the little
tremor of ner vous ness in my stomach at the thought of leaving home, and took a big bite out of my sandwich.
I thought about how this totally unexpected trip
had come about.
When my mom and I found out that everyone in
our apartment building had to move out for a couple
of months (the building needed a complete rewiring
or it might catch fire — yikes!), I assumed we’d just
rent another apartment in Austin.
Instead, my mom sat me down and told me she
wanted to talk. I knew something big was coming.
“Marisol, I think we should go to Montana and
live with Molly while they’re fixing the wiring,” she
had said in a rush. Molly had been my mother’s college
roommate a long time ago. I’d never met her,
but she and my mom got together for a girls’ weekend
in New York every couple of years, and she
always sent us Christmas cards, so I’d heard of her.
But still, it wasn’t the most obvious solution to our
problem.
When my mom explained her idea a little, it made
more sense: Molly and her family run a bed-and-breakfast
with horses (Yay! I could learn to ride!) in
a little town called Wolf Valley near Glacier National
4
Park. Their busy season is summer, so they have
plenty of room during the fall and winter. And Molly
had been begging my mom to come out for a long
visit for ages. Since my mom edits an online magazine,
she can work anywhere, so that part made
sense, too.
“This is such an amazing opportunity to experience
life somewhere else!” my mom had said
excitedly. “When are we going to have a chance to
do this again? Pretty soon you’re going to be in high
school and won’t be able to switch schools so easily,
and then you’ll go off to college. Now is the time!”
Then she added casually, “And if we love it, we could
even stay the rest of the school year! We’d have to
help with the guests in the spring, but they don’t get
really busy until summer.”
I had rolled my eyes. “Mom, this might be a great
adventure, but I think I’ll be ready to come home
after three months of living with strangers.”
My parents got divorced when I was eight, and
my dad lives in Miami, so it didn’t make any difference
to him where my mom and I were. I spend
part of my Christmas and summer vacations with
him, so while it would be a longer plane ride to
Miami from Montana than from Austin, it was still a plane ride.
I’m a little less spontaneous than my mom, but
spending a few months in Montana did sound like it
could be awesome. I’d always lived in Austin, aside
from visits to Miami and an occasional vacation. In
Montana, I could try out a totally different life! How
cool was that? So I had swallowed back my nerves
and told myself my mom was right. This would be a
great opportunity.
But, sitting on the lawn and looking at my best
friend’s sad face, I knew she wasn’t going to be
able to even pretend to get excited for me. I also
knew that admitting even the smallest case of
nerves would totally set Tasha off on another rant,
which would only make me more anxious. I swallowed
the last bite of my sandwich and reached out
to squeeze her arm reassuringly. “Tasha, it’s only for
a few months. I’ll be back before Christmas.”
Tasha moaned and flopped down on her back,
closing her eyes. “I’m afraid it’s the end, Marisol.
After three months in the middle of Nowhere,
Montana, you’ll be dead from boredom. What are
you going to do out there?”
I flopped down next to her. The warm grass still smelled like summer. “I’m going to be fine. Montana will be great. I can hike and bike and explore outdoors. There’ll be all kinds of animals, and can you imagine the night sky? We’ll be out in the country, and the stars will be amazing without city lights. I’ll be able to see things I’ve never seen before!” Austin’s an outdoorsy city — there’s a great park within walking distance of my building — but it’s not the country. And I happen to love astronomy, so I was super-excited to use the telescope my dad had given me the previous Christmas out in the country.
Tasha made a face. She’s into theater and dance
and just barely tolerates the outdoors. Hiking and
stargazing clearly didn’t sound all that great to her.
“Maybe the school won’t let you go?” she asked
hopefully.
“Nope, they’re totally on board,” I said. We go to
the alternative public middle school in Austin.
They’re very committed to letting everyone pursue
his or her own dreams (while meeting state requirements,
of course). “They’re treating it like a semester
abroad.”
Tasha sighed and looked at me sadly. “I’m going
to miss you.”
Of course, I knew that was what she’d really been
saying all along. Still, it was nice to hear it. I hugged
her. “I’ll miss you, too, Tash,” I said. “But we’ll both
be fine. We’ll talk and text and e-mail. Just think of it
as if I’m on a long vacation.”
I went to sleep that night with my bags packed,
gazing up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling
and trying to think of it just that way: like a
vacation. But as I lay in bed listening to the footsteps
and laughter of passersby outside my building, I felt
a cold shiver of anxiety. Now that I was alone, I had
to admit that I was a little ner vous. I mean, who
wouldn’t be? Sure, stepping into the unknown might
be an awesome adventure, but it was also scary. I
drifted off to sleep uneasily, a tense knot in my
stomach.
A minute later, I was outdoors. The air was crisp
and clear. I was walking along a wooded mountain
path, brushing easily past the branches of wind-twisted trees. Dry leaves crunched under my feet. Above me,
the sky darkened, but I wasn’t worried about getting
lost. I knew, in the way you always know things in
dreams, that I was in Montana, exploring, and my
heart was beating fast with excitement, not fear.
I reached a clearing in the woods and gazed upward. Cygnus, Aquila, and Ursa Major — familiar constellations — shone overhead, seeming so near I almost believed I could reach up and touch them. Just above the tops of the trees a huge, yellow full moon drifted in the sky. Behind me, leaves rustled. I turned in time to see something disappearing into the undergrowth. Was it a cat?
I took a few steps forward. Yellow eyes gleamed at me from the bushes. A coyote? I crouched to peek beneath the bush. Whatever was in there whined — a thin, lost sound.
The breeze was rising, turning into a wind. On the wind, I heard Tasha’s voice again. It was faint but clear, and much more ominous than her joking tone earlier: “You’re going to die.”
Suddenly, I was very afraid.
I started to run and, as I ran, I could hear something behind me, but I didn’t want to look back.
The path ended abruptly at the edge of a cliff. I wobbled at the brink, catching a dizzying glimpse of rocks and water far below before turning and looking back. I had to see what had been chasing me.
There was nothing there. And then I fell.
I woke up sweaty, my heart pounding. The clock
said it was 2:17 in the morning. I thought of texting
Tasha — she would be asleep, but just typing out a
message might calm me down — or waking up my
mom. Instead, I climbed out of bed and padded over
to the window.
It was quiet outside. No one was walking by the
building now. The streets were mostly empty, but
occasionally a car drove past, its tires swooshing on
the asphalt. The streetlights were on, and the calm
city they illuminated helped me relax. Slowly, my
breathing returned to normal.
“Montana’s going to be great,” I said to myself,
but I didn’t feel so sure.
Trivia[]
- Along with This Totally Bites!, this is one of the few books where the main character is not the monster.