Young Adult Fiction
The bear lowers its head. When a dog looks like this, it means you could get bitten. When a bear looks like this, it means you could be lunch. The bear's eyes harden, as if he has lost patience with us. We're on his trail and he wants us off. The bear opens his jaws. Big jaws. Really big teeth. His jaws make a smacking sound.
I whisper, "He's going to eat us."
This is what I was doing when the back door opened and I heard the sound that would change our lives.
It was my brother—after bursting through the kitchen door, he was shouting for Dad, screaming for him in the most horrific voice, tortured and full of terror. Paralyzed by what I heard, I stopped what I was doing and listened. Eric was tromping back and forth in his heavy boots with "Dad" being the only word he seemed able to say...By the time I reached the top of the stairs I could hear my mother trying desperately to calm Eric down—trying to understand what could possibly have upset her son to the point that he could no longer speak.
