In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,30
thing!” Zia pointed in the direction of the damaged living room. “It was trying to kill her!”
“You hopped up Blayne on sugar,” Coop reminded his sisters, “and then she startled poor little Stevie.”
“Not our fault,” Zoe said while Zia shook her head. Neither willing to take blame.
“Bullshit.”
A little shocked, they all looked at the end of the table toward Cherise. When no one said anything, she reiterated, “Bullshit. They know it”—she pointed at the twins, then at herself—“and we know it.”
“And if you think this is the end of your problems—” Toni began but was cut off by a scream coming from the second floor.
Toni looked around the room. “Mom? Aunt Irene?”
“Went over to the wild dog house,” Coop explained. “They haven’t come back.”
“The boys?”
“Went to the library.”
“Alone?”
“Dad took them. They won’t be long.”
Kyle ran into the room and stood behind Cherise’s chair, using her as his human shield.
“Really?” Coop had to ask.
“She has that crazy look in her eyes and I’m willing to sacrifice Cherise to save my beautiful, beautiful hands.”
“What about my hands?” Cherise wanted to know.
“Oh, please,” Kyle huffed. “You play the cello. The cello.”
Their twenty-one-year-old sister stomped into the kitchen holding a pair of jeans in each hand.
“Where is it?” Oriana demanded, glaring at everyone.
“Where’s what?” asked Toni, the only one among them brave enough to talk to Oriana when she was like this.
Oriana had been a little on edge lately. A ballerina prodigy since she was five, Oriana had finally gotten her chance to dance with the Fuller-James Ballet Company of Manhattan and was well on her way to becoming the company’s prima ballerina. However, that position was currently being held by a tough full-human Russian who had been playing this game a lot longer than Oriana had. That was hard for Coop’s younger sister. Oriana had always gotten everything she’d wanted in the dance world, and her battle with the lead dancer was—from what Coop had heard—getting pretty nasty.
He knew his younger sister too. Knew she would never give “some bitch” the pleasure of seeing her sweat, which Coop completely understood. There was a twelve-year-old Italian prodigy pianist that Coop called “The Asshole” every time the kid showed up on TV.
So he knew what his sister was going through. Unfortunately, unlike Coop—who took his rage out on his piano or by playing video games on his computer that required him to kill a lot of zombies or World War II Nazis—Oriana tended to pour her rage and panic into being obsessive. And she could be pretty obsessive. Like now.
Shaking her clothes at her family, Oriana barked, “Where are my jeans?”
“You’re holding them,” Coop kindly pointed out, which nearly got his head bitten off.
“Not these jeans, you idiot! The jeans between these jeans. Those are the jeans I want! I had them organized in a certain way, I go to class and rehearsal, and come back . . . and now things are displaced. Why are they displaced?”
Cherise muttered, “Wow,” and lowered her eyes so as not to challenge her fellow canine.
Toni raised her hand toward Oriana, palm out. “Maybe you should calm down.”
“I want my jeans back.”
“How about I buy you a new pair of jeans?”
“I don’t want a new pair. I want the pair that belongs between these two!”
“You need to stop yelling!”
“I’ll yell if I want to!” Oriana screeched, her voice so high that the twins began to yelp and howl in response.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle interrupted, unable to help himself. “You notice your jeans are ‘displaced’”—he said with air quotes—“but not that there’s a giant hole in the middle of the grand ballroom?”
“Did my jeans cause the giant hole?” Oriana asked.
“No.”
“Then I don’t give a fuck! I just want my jeans back!”
Now the three oldest siblings muttered together, “Wow.”
* * *
They walked into the Panda Garden restaurant and all the employees called out, “Shen!”
Stevie took a step back, ready to bolt, but a moment later she knew she wasn’t in danger. These weren’t grizzlies and black bears. These were giant pandas. The cutest of all bears! As far as Stevie was concerned.
But she knew when she said that, it always annoyed Shen, so she kept the words to herself.
Shen greeted everyone in the restaurant with a wave of his hand before walking to a table and pulling out a chair for Stevie. She sat down and he took the seat catty-corner from her.
“Hiya, Shen.” Dorie, the waitress’s badge said. She had two menus in her hands.