He reversed through the lawn and kept going until the tires had munched up a flowerbed across the street. By this point, though, Jack was having a blast, his eyes sparkling with the kind of intensity I’d only seen in battle. He shoved the gear into drive and stomped on the gas. Once the spinning wheels grabbed hold of the pavement, we accelerated through a cloud of burning rubber, Jack whooping with uncharacteristic glee.

He drove the same way he rode his bike back in 1969: headlong, at top speed, and improvising every step of the way. By the time we heaved to a halt in Tub’s driveway, we’d only dented three cars, demolished one topiary light, and snapped a sapling in half. Jack honked the horn and Blinky used a tentacle to throw open the side door. The van chugged; every fiber in my body was in motion.

We saw movement at the back of the house. Jack gunned the engine, ready to roll. ARRRGH!!! hulked her cautious way along the side of the house, blotting out the yard lights as she approached the van. Once more, it seemed there was no way she’d fit, and yet she did, turning the entire back compartment into a stinking lounge of black fur upon which Blinky sat. She seemed to find being inside a human’s vehicle almost as novel as Jack did. I adjusted my mirror and noticed something glinting from ARRRGH!!!’s mouth. I turned around in my chair.

Proudly she pulled back her furry lips and grinned. Wrapped around each gigantic, lethal tooth was the same chicken wire I’d helped Tub pull through his bedroom window four days before, expertly tightened by metal screws.

“Braces,” Tub said.

He stood on the driveway decked out in his best approximation of a ninja: black tennis shoes, black sweatpants, a black hoodie, a belt made from a red curtain sash, and an oversize fanny pack holding his gear, probably not throwing stars and nunchakus but who really knew. It was unfortunate that the fanny pack was lime green, but I still was impressed. Tub pointed at his own braces.

“She liked mine.” There was no disguising the satisfaction in his voice. “She’s actually more aware of her looks than you’d think. So I hooked her up. Not bad, huh? She’ll have the best choppers around in just, you know, maybe a couple hundred more treatments. But that’s nothing in troll years, right?”

ARRRGH!!! extended her muzzle from the side door and rested it upon Tub’s shoulder. Her blasts of breath wobbled his mountain of frizzed hair. Absently he patted her on the nose like he’d done it a thousand times, which I realized, he probably had. At once I felt terrible and inspired: this friend whom I’d left to deal with this frightening creature had performed so much better than I’d thought possible.