I didn’t say a word to Tub about what I’d seen. The fact that I had no proof to show him bothered me less than that I had no proof to show myself. There were no claw marks anywhere on my skin, no tufts of fur caught in my jacket zipper. For a long time I’d worried about the mental stability of my father. It was why Mom had left us, why we lived alone in a homemade prison. What if, printed in my genetic code, was a similar insanity? Tub might abandon me, too.

I looked past the football field, where the jumbotron workers were packing it up for the day. To the east, the crags of Mount Sloughnisse were bathed in peach light. To the west, a different kind of mountain had slipped into shadow: the towers of totaled vehicles at Keavy’s Junk Emporium, a legendary spot for late-night teen trespassing. I scanned the darkening sky to estimate the time. To Dad, getting home after dark was the worst possible offense.

“Hey, Pocahontas.” Tub chomped at a stick of the gum he’d offered me a few minutes earlier. “If you’re a few minutes late the old man will live.”

“You still don’t get it.”

“I get that he needs to put a couple more links in your leash.”

“He just worries. About a lot of things.”

“Congratulations, you are today’s winner of the Understatement Award! Honestly, I don’t know how a guy that wound up sleeps at night.”

The truth was that he didn’t sleep at night. Tub knew it, too, and grimaced at his own comment. I was going to tell him not to worry about it when he perked up his head and slapped my shoulder.

“Shortcut time?” His braces flashed in a mischievous grin.

The building closest to Saint B. High was the San Bernardino Historical Society Museum, a columned edifice mostly ignored by the local population but, if rumors were to be believed, celebrated by rare-artifact aficionados all across California, whose deep pockets made it possible for the society to announce new acquisitions annually. Much more popular was the expansive garden that surrounded the museum. Rare was the weekend that you didn’t see a woman in a white dress being photographed while the rest of her wedding party milled about and yawned. The garden was cordoned off by a mile-high fence, though, confounding any high schooler who wanted to save time going north.

Tub and I, though, knew a different route.

“I don’t know, Tub. We’re going to run out of luck one of these days.”

But he was already walking backward toward the museum, wagging his eyebrows and blinding me with those metallic choppers. Even in my current mood, I couldn’t help but laugh. He knew he had me and ran as fast as he could toward the front entrance. I hiked up my backpack and took off after him. Our shoes thumped down the hedge-lined sidewalk and up the grand marble stairs, and we passed beneath the jade owl that glared down at us from the frieze carved over the entryway.