None of Olive's friends had heard from her for a few weeks. This was slightly unusual. Even though she wasn't the sort to go and do things with friends, she usually kept in contact through E-mails and phone calls. She had kept in contact with them at the beginning of the summer, but then the phone calls and E-mails stopped coming.

When the invitations were sent for Olive's birthday party, most of her friends replied almost at once that they'd be able to come.

Still, the party was fairly small. Under twenty guests arrived overall—some friends, some friendly acquaintences, and several friends-of-friends who just came to have fun and get some free food.

Patio furniture was set up in the backyard. It was a good place to have the party; there was a nice view from her backyard, forests and hills and a clear sky. The clear sky part was especially nice, as there had been a chance of rain that would have forced the party inside. The sun was low enough in the sky to be blocked by her house, throwing most of the backyard into shade. It was the middle of August, and the heat was bad enough without the sun making it worse.

A girl with dirty-blonde hair walked around the side of the house, set a present on a table nearby, and dropped into a seat next to Olive.

"Hi!"

Olive grinned. "Hey. Long time, no see."

"I know. What have you been doing? You didn't answer any of my E-mails!"

"Well, you know how my computer is. It was messing up for a while, and by the time I got it to work, my mailbox was completely full."

"Oh. I thought maybe you'd gotten a life or something."

"Yeah, right." She rolled her eyes. "You ought to know me better than that by now."

As they continued their conversation, the remaining few people arrived, and the party started to get underway. Olive's father brought a cake from the house, and carried it to one of the tables. It didn't stand a chance—ten minutes after she blew out the candles, nothing remained but crumbs and fifteen half-melted candles.

The presents came after that. In addition to a present from each of the guests, her father had also gotten her several gifts. Olive's friends preferred throwing wrapping paper at each other to watching her open presents. She was dragged into the melee a few minutes after it started. Several dramatic death scenes and one impromptu dogpile later, she returned to unwrapping her presents, breathing hard but grinning.

In time, the pile of presents had been reduced to wrapping paper and a table full of varying things. There were the cheaper gifts, picked up at the last moment from a convenience store. These were mostly from the friends-of-friends. There was a new game system from her father, as well as several smaller presents. Things from her friends included everything from jewelry to puzzles.

The party was beginning to wind down. A few people had already left, but most of the guests were sitting around a table, filling her in on what she'd missed over the summer. She seemed slightly disinterested, and was fiddling with a small metal puzzle, two nails looping around each other that were supposed to come apart somehow.

"...she told him that she already saw the movie, and he got all stammery. But Nicole felt sorry for the guy, and—Why are you so tired, anyway?"

Olive stopped mid-yawn, then closed her mouth and shrugged. "I didn't get that much sleep last night."

"Oh. Excited about your birthday?"

"Something like that," she said with a smile, absently looking out over the hills that swept into the distance.

On the eastern side of town, bluffs tapered off into construction and roads. People who lived on the eastern side of town could hear echoes from the highway at night. People who lived near the forests on the other sides of town could, every so often, hear the faint howling of wolves.