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suggest then?”
    They volleyed for a few rounds while she thought. “I’ll ask mom.”
    He laughed coldly. “Oh, and that’s so much better than my idea?”
    “Um, duh! I’ll get her talking about periods and sex and mating and stuff. It’ll totally fit right in with the conversation. My mom’s a freak about preparation and education. As if I didn’t know it all by the time I was eight.”
    He had to admit, Sandy’s idea made more sense. Though it did vaguely trouble him that she was so well-versed on the subject matter.
    “It’s weird here, ya know? In L.A., we can be friends with all the humans we want but they can’t know we’re werebears. Here, it’s the exact opposite. Humans know who we are but we can’t so much as talk to them. Isn’t that fucked up? It is, right?”
    She shrugged, reaching for a wide shot and missing. After retrieving the ball, she asked a question that froze Chet in place, winning her back the point she’d just lost. “Do you think she knows?”
    He honestly had no idea. He’d been working under the assumption that she didn’t, but that was just habit. What if she did know? What if that’s why she didn’t seem all that happy about his profession of love?
    “Does, like, everyone in town know about us?”  
    “I think it’s mostly the folks that work for our companies, but that’s pretty much all the adults in town. Most of them don’t tell their kids till they come to work for Dad. Only one of my human friends knows. Maybe I’ll tack that on to my list of questions for mom. I’ll throw her some softballs, like ‘Where do babies come from?’ and then a few tougher ones. Keep ‘em confused!”
    As it turned out, Aunt Clea’s answers to Sandy’s questions were vague at best and only led to more questions so now he was more confused than ever. All he knew for sure, standing there in Uncle Max’s office stuffing meaningless papers into even more meaningless file folders, was that he’d been profoundly changed when he met Crystal, and that couldn’t be a bad thing.
    “Well, Chet? Would you?”
    Uncle Max’s words snapped him out of his thoughts. Would he what? He had absolutely no idea what his uncle was asking of him, but he figured it couldn’t be any worse than filing old bills of lading. Besides, the one piece of his dad’s advice that he always tried to follow was ‘Say yes, then figure it out later.’
    “Um, sure.”
    “Great. Go meet Pete down on the loading dock. And take one of the company trucks.”  
    There was no time to try to puzzle out what he just agreed to because Uncle Max snatched up the ringing phone and started talking about basal areas, residual stands and stumpage. Welcoming any chance to get out of the office, Chet grabbed his Member’s Only jacket and bolted for the door.
    “Oh, Chet!” Uncle Max whispered loudly, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Pete knows about us but don’t bring it up. It’s not something that’s talked about.”
    Chet nodded and started for the door again when his uncle stopped him again. “Oh, and Chet? Remember, no fraternizing with humans your own age while you’re in town, got it?”
    ~ * ~ * ~
    Chet couldn’t believe his good luck. He was driving old Pete, one of the company’s mill foremen, home in the most ancient pick-up truck he’d ever seen in real life. The top half was a faded turquoise and the bottom was white with rust for trim. An enormous bench seat stretched for a mile between them. The radio in the dash was AM only, which Chet didn’t even know was a thing. The suspension in the rig was completely shot so the rutted road into town sent Chet’s brain jostling around in his skull.  
    Pete was droning on about how all teenagers should be forced to get summer jobs because it trains them for the ‘real world’ — he hated it when adults used that phrase — and kept them out of trouble. He himself had found a job for his granddaughter at a whale-watching outfit called Whale’s Tail