“Hey, Ms. Bennett, this is my grandmother,” Jasmine said.
“Oh, you’re the lady who was so nice to Jasmine this weekend! I hope she wasn’t too terrible,” Marta said.
“She was a delight,” Daisy said.
Marta looked alarmed. “Jasmine, did you threaten her to make her say that? What did I say about threatening people?”
Jasmine ignored her and kept carving the bench beside her with her extended claws.
“Okay, she was interesting and entertaining,” Daisy said. “And entirely unique.”
Jasmine’s grandmother looked relieved. “Well, thank you for saying that,” she said. “I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I should, with me working crazy hours and all.” She shot her niece a severe look. “She really should be watched twenty-four seven,” she added. “She’s going to make my fur turn prematurely gray. Jasmine, stop defacing school property!” she added.
Jasmine ignored her and kept carving.
Daisy leaned in to look. “On the bright side, she really is a wonderful artist,” she said. “And the principal looks great with devil horns.”
Jasmine favored her with a small smile, which she immediately replaced with a scowl. “If anyone gives you a hard time today, come get me, and I’ll shank them,” she said. “You can find me in detention, pretty much any time.”
“Jasmine, we do not threaten to shank people!” her aunt scolded her.
“No, Grams, you do not threaten to shank people,” Jasmine said. “I do it all the time.”
Her grandmother fanned herself with a bus schedule. “Lord, give me strength. And Valium,” she muttered.
Daisy went to her classroom with a smile. Jasmine was lucky she had someone who cared about her, which was more than a lot of the kids here had.
By lunchtime, Daisy was feeling less optimistic. Somebody had stolen her jacket, the children were swarming around like overcaffeinated monkeys, and yet another teacher had quit.
She kept an eye out for Jasmine – she’d planned on offering her half her lunch – but Jasmine seemed to have vanished.
She sat down at a picnic table on the playground with several other teachers.
“I mailed off all the grant applications,” said Mrs. Finster, the school secretary. “Thanks for writing them – you did a great job.” In addition to working for the school, she was a community leader who was spearheading the drive for the rec center.
“I might have a friend who will donate a little bit,” Daisy said. She didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up by telling them about Ryker Harrison’s pack; the donation was far from a sure thing.
“That would be lovely. Oh, and I see you befriended Jasmine,” Mrs. Finster said. “Quite the artist, that girl. If only she’d redirect her talents.”
Daisy laughed. “She is something, isn’t she?’
A couple of the other teachers rolled their eyes and shook their heads.
“She’s something. I don’t know what, exactly,” one of them muttered into her ham sandwich.
“If you can get through to Jasmine, you can get through to anyone,” Mrs. Finster said. “So, do you think you’ll be staying here?”
Daisy looked across the playground. A bear cub had a coyote in a headlock, and a teacher was trying to pry him off. A little boy was peeing on a fence, and three wolf cubs had shifted and treed a cougar cub. They were ignoring the teacher who stood there yelling at them to let him down.
Then a little boy named Jasper turned and waved at her and flashed her a big, genuine smile, and she felt as if the sun had burst out from behind the clouds.
Daisy grinned at Mrs. Finster. “Why would I ever want to go anywhere else?”
* * * * *
Ryker knew the investors would blow a gasket if they saw him in his pickup truck, so he went home and fetched his fancy sports car.
He passed his cousin Sally’s house as he headed into town. The house was under construction. Sally was pregnant with twins. He felt tension curling in his gut as he drove. Sally’s husband needed this job. He couldn’t afford to blow it.
Her husband Kory, like most of Ryker’s pack, worked for Big Bad Wolf Apparel. He worked in the factory, maintaining and repairing the machines.
Walt was the CFO, which was why he was always twitchy when it came to money. Ryker felt sorry for him, because he’d rather chew his own paw off than look at numbers all day long, but Walt seemed to thrive on that kind of stress, in a weird way. And then there was Carlotta. Walt was always going on about how lucky he was to have Carlotta, and he couldn’t stop showering her with expensive gifts every chance he got. Ryker doubted that Walt had saved up a penny of his generous salary.