Winter Door by Isobelle Carmody

your uncle who went exploring in the jungles?”
    Rage nodded, startled at how much he knew about her. “He’s taking care of the farm and me while Mam is in hospital. I told him in the message that I’d wait in the library until closing time, so I better go there.”
    “I’ll wait with you,” Logan offered. Rage guessed that he wasn’t too keen on the idea of going outside alone, and she could hardly blame him.
    “What will you do if your uncle doesn’t turn up?” Logan asked when they were both sitting by the heater in the library.
    “He’ll come,” Rage said, taking the wet books from her bag and propping them on the floor by the heater fan so that the pages would dry. Logan began to help her, grimacing at the worst damaged.
    “Lucky you to have someone to rely on,” he muttered with some of his old bitterness.
    Rage had opened her mouth to say that she was not a bit certain that her uncle could be relied upon, but then she closed it because she hardly knew Logan. Rage noticed that snowflakes were falling and falling through the blue halo of radiance around a light outside.
    “Maybe those things were some sort of experiment that escaped,” Logan murmured. “They’d have to be some sort of mutation to be that big.”
    “Maybe it will say something about them in the paper tomorrow,” Rage said, remembering how big the wolves had looked. Then she realized Logan was still talking.
    “…if you want,” Logan was saying diffidently, his cheeks pink.
    “Pardon?” Rage asked.
    “Forget it,” Logan said with an angry shrug.
    Rage sighed. “Logan, if we are going to be friends, you have to stop taking everything the wrong way. I didn’t hear what you said because almost being eaten has made it hard for me to concentrate.”
    He expelled a hissing breath and then looked into her eyes. “ Are we going to be friends? I’m not that easy to be friends with.”
    “Me neither,” Rage said lightly, dabbing at the wetness inside the bag with a balled handkerchief.
    Logan hesitated and then said without looking at her, “I was just saying that after the library closes, I can show you this late-night café near the bowling alley that doesn’t close until two a.m. Then there’s an all-night gas station where they don’t mind if you sit, so long as you keep ordering stuff. It doesn’t have to be anything expensive, and there’s a good doughnut place that opens for breakfast at six. Just in case your uncle doesn’t turn up.”
    Rage stared at him incredulously. “Stay up all night?”
    He shrugged. “What else? It doesn’t kill you. Unless you want to be sent somewhere by that silly cow, Somersby. Given the way she looked at you the other day, she’ll have you sleeping in someone’s doghouse.”
    Rage laughed. “I’d rather sleep in a dog kennel than call her. You know her?”
    “Unfortunately,” Logan said laconically. “Let’s just say she makes kids like me her business.” He said this in a good imitation of Mrs. Somersby’s harsh, malicious tone.
    “Hey, you really are good at that,” Rage said, laughing in admiration.
    Logan said roughly, “Look, what I’ve been trying to say is that if you like, I’ll stay with you the whole time. Show you the ropes, like.”
    Rage was touched. “Is Logan your real name?”
    He nodded. “My mum—my real mum, I mean—she got the name from television. Not the X-Men character but a man in this old sci-fi movie. He’s a government hunter who chases anyone older than thirty or maybe twenty-five to kill them because they don’t want to waste any food or water or anything on old people. All people who get old are supposed to go in this machine thing and die, but some run and he chases them. Then this guy, Logan, ends up being chased, even though he’s not old.”
    “She must have liked the character,” Rage said.
    “He was pretty cool,” Logan said with mock modesty. They smiled at one another. Rage thought later that this had been the first