Everything happened at once. Stan shoved Zoe down onto the driveway. Uhura lunged at him and bit his hand so hard that he let loose a shriek. It turned out that Stan was pretty chickenshit himself.
Uhura refused to let go. Stan exploded with profanity and wheeled around in pain. The dog hung on to his hand by her teeth, even when her feet were dangling off the ground.
“Mother of god,” Stan screeched, “I am going to kill this thing dead.”
Then, from out of nowhere, something struck him in the head. A rock. Blood trickled down around his ear. He spat out a vivid streak of curses. He and Zoe both turned to the porch, where Jonah was standing with a fierce look on his face.
“It was me, Zoe!” he said proudly. “I got him! It was me!”
Stan lurched toward Jonah, but Uhura still wouldn’t let go. She was furious and wild. It was like watching someone wrestle an alligator.
Zoe ran up the steps to Jonah. He hugged her hard around the waist, then opened his fist: his pink palm was full of rocks.
“I’m gonna get him again,” he said.
“Don’t, Jonah,” she said. “He doesn’t fight fair, so we’re not going to fight. Okay? Say okay. I want to hear you say okay.”
“Okay, Zoe. I won’t get him again—but I could.”
Stan finally threw Uhura into his pickup and locked her in. The dog clawed at the window. Her breath fogged the glass. It was awful to watch. Jonah buried his face in Zoe’s coat.
Stan was sweating now. He was shaking with rage and rubbing his buzz cut to try to calm down. Blood ran down the right side of his face. What appeared to be mascara ran down the left—he’d apparently been using it to dye an eyebrow. As sweat washed it away, Zoe could see that the otherwise black brow had a creepy tuft of pure white.
Stan went to the back of his truck, lifted a tarp heavy with snow, and pulled out what looked, in the darkness, like a poker from a fireplace. He walked toward Jonah and Zoe.
He pointed the poker at them like a weapon.
“Now where,” he demanded, “is the other … motherfrickin’ … dog?”
Zoe didn’t answer, but Jonah flew toward the house, which gave it away. She raced after him and bolted the door the second they were inside. She could hear Stan leaping up the steps behind them.
Jonah was in the living room, pushing a coffee table in front of the doorway, like a barricade. Nobody made better forts than her brother. Well, nobody made more forts than her brother, anyway.
Within seconds, Stan was bashing at the front door.
Zoe tried to call the police. She couldn’t get a signal. The text to her mom was still unsent, like a plane that would never be cleared for takeoff. She wished her mom had known they were safe in those few moments when they actually were.
The next thing Zoe knew, Stan had shoved the coffee table aside and stormed into the living room, his breathing heavy and ragged. Zoe and Jonah raced behind the couch just to get something between them and the intruder. Jonah held a floral cushion in front of his chest like it would protect him, which, even in the terror of the moment, made Zoe’s heart hurt.
Stan ignored her. He loomed over Jonah.
“Hey there, little guy, I’m Stan the Man,” he said. “Where’s the other dog?”
He waited for an answer like he wasn’t going to wait long.
Spock was still under the rug, the tiniest bit of his tail poking out. If Stan had been any less enraged, he would have spotted him immediately. Zoe willed herself, and Jonah, not to look in the dog’s direction.
As Stan stood there panting, she noticed for the first time what a big, grotesque head he had—how awkwardly it bobbed on his skinny neck. He looked like a dead sunflower.
“Don’t talk to my brother,” she said.
It wasn’t courage. It was disgust.
Jonah inched closer to her. He wasn’t pretending to be brave anymore. In a moment, he was crying so hard that his shoulders started to shake.
Zoe smoothed his hair out of his eyes. She told him everything was going to be okay.
“Now don’t go telling him that,” Stan groaned, his white eyebrow wriggling like a caterpillar. “That is what they call a falsehood. Because it sure as hell ain’t gonna be okay. In fact, it’s gonna be a big ugly mess of not okay if you don’t tell me the location of the other damn dog.”
He twirled the poker like a baton. He wanted to seem menacing, but nearly dropped the thing on his foot.
Jonah struggled to speak. Finally he forced the words out, stuttering through his tears: “W-what are you going to d-do to Spock?”
Stan snorted.
“Aw, I’m just gonna give him a bath, little guy,” he said.
“Don’t talk to my brother.”
“I d-don’t believe you. And d-don’t call me little guy. My daddy called me that.”
This shut Stan up for a second. But what he said next was the vilest thing yet somehow: “I knew your daddy, little guy. Met him back when we was shrimpy, like you.”