Page 52 of Enemies in Paradise

Before she climbs in, she turns back to me and squeezes my hands. “Thank you for saving my babies, Bear. What I would have done without you?”

And then she climbs into her car and is gone before I can say anything.

Which means I’m babysitting some squirrels.

Even though I’ve checked outside the shop for cats, now I go back and inspect the inside closely. Evidently, Lynette believes the squirrels will be safe, but I’m worried about keeping the stuff in the shop safe, too. I toss anything I think the squirrels can chew up or damage into the storage closet and cover the Mustang tight.

When I finish, the place looks better than it’s looked in years, although I have to give Cassie credit. She did more than clean out the cats. She cleaned out a lot of the trash that was here, too.

Looking at it all clean and orderly, I wonder if tearing it down is the best thing to do. I’ve always thought of the shop as trashed and irredeemable. But it actually looks pretty good right now. As much as I hate to admit it, I can almost see it as a bookstore with Cassie behind the counter.

Which means it’s time for me to find something else to think about.

It’s also time for practice. Voices outside tell me my team has arrived, and as much as the squirrels may want to be free, the girls don’t need any more distractions than they already have. And squirrels would definitely be a distraction. Little girls aren’t any better than puppies when it comes to losing focus.

So I cover the cage with an old blanket and wheel the table into a corner. The squirrels immediately break into a high-pitched chirping noise that resembles baby birds being tortured. Which isn’t a sound easily ignored.

If I’d thought about it early enough, I would have turned on some music to drown out the sound. But the thought doesn’t occur to me until the girls trickle in. I greet them all with a loud hello and ask questions about the weather, but my voice only makes the squirrels chirp louder.

“What is that sound?” Janie is the first to ask, swiveling her head around the entire shop.

“I don’t hear anything. Let’s get our gear on!” I clap my hands together, but no one is as interested in getting dressed as they are in finding where the noise is coming from.

“It sounds like it’s coming from inside,” Hazel says and points to the squirrel corner. “From over there.”

Look, I have a sister thirteen months older than I am. If there’s one life lesson I’ve learned from her—and should have remembered ten minutes ago—it’s that there’s no keeping secrets from little girls. Or big girls.

Thirty seconds after we got home from the restaurant last night, Britta got out of me that Cassie and I had kissed.

So I cave. Especially since the squirrels are doing a terrible job of keeping themselves secret, anyway. I’m positive they’re girl squirrels. Zero percent chance they’re not.

With a sigh, I glance in the direction Hazel points her finger. “I’ve got some baby squirrels.”

Predictably, the girls explode into squeals of delight and pleas to see them.

It’s powerless to resist, but they’ll have to earn it.

“If you can get your gear on in the next two minutes, I’ll let you see them!” I yell over their begging, confident they’ll never be able to do it.

Sixty seconds later, I’m proven wrong.

I make the girls sit in a circle, then I wheel the cart to them. Once they’re quiet, I take the blanket off the cage and lower it to the girls’ eye level.

Girl squeals join the squirrel squeals. Cries of “they’re soooooo cute!” and “can we hold them, pleeeeeeease?” and “they can be our mascots!” engulf me as the girls circle around so close, I have to lift the crate so no one—girl or squirrel—gets crushed.

“You can’t hold them. They’re wild. They might bite.” The last thing I need right now is to take a kid to the ER because of a squirrel attack.

Or a squirrel to the vet because of a girl.

“Coach, you have to let them out of the cage!” Hazel demands. “They don’t like it in there! They need to be free. They’rewild.”

“It’s not a cage, it’s a crate, and it’s keeping them safe from all of you.” I angle the cage—crate—to look inside.

And Hazel may be right. The babies don’t look happy. In fact, they appear, and sound, as if they’re crying.

I look from the squirrels’ big, wide, and pleading eyes to the girls who meet me with the same wide-eyed, pleading look. I’m about to give in again when I think of one last argument. “If I let them out, they could run out the door when we come back from practice.”

Not one second passes before Janie points to the door leading to the studio—Cassie’s apartment. “We come in through the studio, then through that door. Then they can’t run outside.”

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