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expression was raw with grief, her eyes so swollen she could barely open them. She hugged a stuffed elephant in her arms. She told the press that she was keeping the elephant company until her son came home.
    Kick reached for the box of red pushpins, took one out, and pushed it into Seattle with enough force that it left an imprint on her thumb. Tacoma was just a half hour south of Seattle, so close that the two red pushpins touched.
    Monster didn’t come back with the ball. Kick noticed it, vaguely, but Monster was old and he was easily distracted, so she didn’t think much of it. She still hadn’t showered. She peeled off her sweatshirt and walked to the bathroom, anxious to smell like something other than gunpowder.
    •  •  •
    Kick used showers as an opportunity to conduct injury checks. She started at her feet. Her blackened big toenail was progressing nicely. The nail was already starting to separate as the skin beneath it healed. She beamed at it proudly, wiggling the toe on the wet shower floor. She’d driven that toe into another student’s thigh at the dojo, and his femur had been way worse off than her toenail. Kick twisted around to catalog the bruises on her legs. She’d been working on learning how to take a fall, throwing herself forward on the mat at the gym again and again until she knew how to reflexively roll. She ran her hands over the sore spots on her ribs where she’d taken hits sparring at the boxing gym, and over a scrape on her shoulder from when she spontaneously decided to take a fall on concrete just to see if she could do it. She examined the scabs on her knuckles frompracticing breaking boards with her latest karate move. Each injury made her feel stronger. Not young. Not soft. Safe.
    Satisfied, she turned the water off, opened the glass door, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the shower, her skin instantly pebbling with goose bumps. She could have retreated back into the warm shower stall to dry off, but she was working on making herself tougher. She rubbed herself dry, trying to ignore the slow sucking sound the water made as it fought its way down the shower drain. This was the price of having elbow-length hair: it had a way of collecting in pipes, of forming dams and obstructions. It seemed to have an agenda all its own.
    Kick wrapped herself in the towel. The condensation was clearing off the mirror. She was never as badass-looking as she imagined herself.
    As she combed out her hair, the last of the shower water wheezed down the drain. The quiet only lasted a moment before she heard a faint dripping sound: bthmmp, bthmmp. Kick ignored it, pulling at a snarl. Her phone was on the counter. She checked it. There were no developments in the Amber Alert case. She looked back at her image in the mirror. A puddle of water was forming at her feet where runoff from her hair had pooled. Maybe I should get a Mohawk, she thought.
    The words hung in the silence. And then: bthmmp, bthmmp.
    Kick opened the shower door and tightened both of the knobs. She stared up at the showerhead. She didn’t see any drops of water hanging from it. She stepped back and let the shower door close.
    Bthmmp, bthmmp.
    She spun around. It wasn’t coming from the shower; it had to be coming from another source. As she surveyed the bathroom, she realized something else.
    Monster wasn’t there.
    Her dog usually curled up on the rug in front of the sink whileshe was showering, and then, as soon as she got out, he’d follow her around, licking up the water she left in her wake. She didn’t know why he did it. James thought it was because the water tasted like her. Eau de Kick, he called it.
    Kick opened the bathroom door. The comb was still in her hair, stuck in a snarl over her ear, but she just left it there. She didn’t see Monster in the hall.
    She whistled.
    He didn’t come.
    A tiny thread of fear tightened around her throat. Monster was old. He had habits. He knew his way easily around her apartment;