“Still, we were surprised you never told us,” Mads said as she entered the room with Finn and dropped onto his lap once he’d sat in the love seat across from the others.
Tock lifted her hands and immediately dropped them. “Never told you what?”
Mads leaned forward, hands clasped in front of her, and replied, “How much that woman fucking hates us.”
*
Tock studied her teammates.
“What? No,” she argued. “My . . . my grandmother doesn’t hate you.”
“You don’t think I know when someone hates me?” Mads asked. “I lived with someone who hated me. Actually,” she self-corrected, “two someones. My mother and my grandmother. Every day, I looked into their cold, dead eyes and saw hatred. And I saw the same thing from your grandmother.”
Tock refused to believe any of this. “Why would my grandmother hate you? You’re all honey badgers. You’re all good at what you do. You’ve always had my back. And she’s a big believer in loyalty. I’ve only been keeping her away from you guys because I didn’t want her recruiting you.”
“She would have recruited us,” Max noted, “just so she could be sure we were dead by the time we were eighteen.”
“No way!”
“As you know, Tock, I feed on the hatred others have of me. It gives me life. It gives me motivation. It’s like Popeye’s spinach. And I left that conversation quite satiated. Almost overfull.”
Tock took another look around the room, studying each of her fellow badgers. They were being serious with her. They all felt this way. “Did she say something to you guys? Was she rude?”
“No,” Mads said. “She was wonderful. Couldn’t say enough nice things about us.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Nelle said, “she has no problem with you.”
“She adores you,” Streep said.
“I think you’re her favorite.” Max glanced at her phone. “Which is impressive since you seem to have so many cousins, and she seems to be the grandmother of them all.”
“Yes, but as for us . . . ?” Nelle spread her hands out, glancing around the room. “Pure hatred.”
“And you know what that means,” Mads said before looking at Max.
Grinning, Max promised, “That means I’m going to have so much fun fucking with her.”
*
“What are you doing?”
Shay, now sitting on the stoop at the back of Mads’s house, overlooking a surprisingly large yard, pointed. “Watching.”
Tock sat down beside him. “Watching what?”
“Wait. You’ll see.”
They did, sitting there in silence, staring at an empty backyard. It didn’t feel awkward or strange, though. Just quiet.
Finally, the silent waiting paid off.
“Is that your dog?” Tock asked.
Shay turned his head to look at her. “That’s a coyote.”
“Oh.” She leaned against him and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but all dogs look alike to me.”
“I see that. But this is actually interesting.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. Mads’s coyote has moved his girlfriend in. And their kids!”
For the last thirty minutes, before Tock had come out here, Shay had been watching a female coyote carrying pup after pup to the den the male had created under Mads’s house.
“How many puppies does he have?” Tock asked.
“So far . . . ? Five, I think.”
“Wow. What a whore he is.”
“Huh?”
“After everything Mads has done for him, he knocks up another woman and then moves her and their kids into the home Mads has paid for. It’s like a Maury Povich episode.”
Shay laughed. Hard.
“Finn’s going to be pissed when he finds out there are more coyotes,” Shay said when he could finally speak.
“He does not seem like a fan.”
“He’s not.” Shay glanced at Tock. “Um . . . hey. Listen . . . thanks. For today. Dani really enjoyed her time with you. And helping with the dogs and her math. All that was really . . . cool.”
“Sure. We need more women in STEM.” When he just gazed at her, she explained, “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. When we find girls who really love math and science, we need to support them because insecure boys will try to push them out. And I can’t have that. So, if she needs any more help with her work or whatever . . . just let me know.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Stevie said something similar. . . but she said it from a kitchen cabinet. Because the”—he made air quotes with his forefingers—“ ‘maneaters’ were around. And she felt safer in the cabinet until the panda came back with her ice cream. So, long story short, I’d prefer you tutor my child rather than someone else.”
“That’s probably for the best. Not because Stevie is terrified of her own kind—which she is—but because Stevie just knows this stuff. Like, it’s in her blood or something. The rest of us have to read books and study and work on equations and work with teachers and think about next steps and make mistakes along the way and take our SATs more than once . . . at seventeen or eighteen. Not at eight. The problem is, it’s hard for her to understand how to get from point A to point B when she’s already at point Z and heading toward the infinity of time and space.”
After glancing around, Tock leaned in again and whispered, “I’ve heard a rumor that once, while working on her physics homework, she accidentally opened a worm hole into another dimension.”
“Do you believe that?”
Tock shrugged. “I don’t disbelieve it. And if anyone could do it, it’s definitely Stevie.”
They were both silent for a moment, contemplating Tock’s words, when, at the same time, they both began to speak.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. It’s best she works with you.”
“Absolutely. And I’m happy to do it.”
“Great.”
“Great.”
Tock stood. “Mads set up the couch for you to sleep on.”
“I should probably head home.”
“No one believes you’re going home with your cub spending the night at a bear house. So don’t even try to lie. Instead of standing outside the Dunn house all night, just sleep on the couch. With your hearing, you’ll know if she sneezes in her sleep.”
A little embarrassed that Tock had so easily sized him up, he simply replied, “Thanks.”
He felt her turn toward the back door, but she didn’t walk away. Instead, she crouched down and placed her hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be just fine tonight. I promise.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
She kissed him on the cheek, taking him by complete surprise and charming him all at the same time.
“See you in the morning,” she said.
“Yeah.” He waited until she opened the back door before he looked at her over his shoulder. “Night, Tock.” But his voice was so low, he wasn’t sure she even heard him.
*
He opened the door to his brother’s room in their New Jersey home. He didn’t like being the one to wake him up, especially this early in the morning. It was risky. The big cat took his sleep very seriously. They all did, but his older brother was the only one who wasn’t afraid to make his displeasure painfully known.