In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,52
to me. But, then again, I’m brilliant and it takes a lot to keep me interested. Especially in the kind of thing that average people enjoy. Of course . . . I doubt you’d understand.”
Shen bit his tongue to prevent himself from laughing. He had to. The look on Novikov’s face . . .
He was just so devastated.
Giving a low, vicious growl that rolled past them, Novikov skated off.
“The dogs make that noise sometimes,” Stevie noted. “I wonder what it means.”
“I can’t believe you told him no.”
“He was rude to you,” she said. “He put his Gigantor hand over your face. Who does that?”
“Novikov,” Shen and the siblings said together.
“Well, it’s rude. Even for prodigies, there are rules. He needs to learn that.”
Shen put his arm around Stevie’s waist and hiked her up a little higher on his hip. “Look, I don’t want you not to play simply to piss off Novikov.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I don’t want to play because I don’t want to have to put all this crap on every time. All this padding. And my shirt is huge. It’s like a dress.”
“We thought this would be a good alternative,” Oriana pointed out, “after your reaction to the derby outfit.”
“I’m looking for a little . . .” Stevie glanced down at herself. “Something between those two options.”
Kyle, who’d been pretty quiet this entire time, offered, “How about softball?”
* * *
Stevie snatched the softball out of the air with one hand, tossed away the bat she had in her other hand, and stalked over to Kyle and the others.
She held the ball under his nose. “You suggested a game that has a ball coming at my head at—” Stevie looked off and Kyle knew she was calculating something. “—seventy-three point five miles per hour? Does that really seem like a good thing to you?”
Kyle stared at his friend for a bit before replying, “I don’t know what the right answer is here.”
“Do you know how important my brain is?” Stevie asked. “Not just to the world but to the entire universe? Two years ago,” she ranted on, “I stopped this entire planet from being sucked into a black hole. Do you think I could have done that if I had brain damage to my head from this?” She shoved the ball closer to his nose. “Well . . . do you?”
Shen scratched his big bear head. “Wait . . . we were almost sucked into a black hole?”
Kyle and Stevie ignored Shen, and Kyle asked, “So I’m guessing softball’s out?”
Snarling, Stevie threw the ball down, hitting Kyle’s foot in the process.
“Owwww! Viper!”
“How fucking soft is that, Kyle?” she barked, heading back to the locker room. “How fucking soft is it?”
* * *
“I should just go home,” Stevie sighed once she was back in her shorts and T-shirt. It seemed she’d looked at all the team sports and none of them worked for her. They’d even stopped in at the football stadium, but she’d left three minutes later when she saw that most of the team was made up of gigantic bears who didn’t seem as worried as Stevie about traumatic brain injury.
“I’ve got a suggestion for you,” Shen said around the bamboo in his mouth.
“I think we should just end it,” she replied. “It’s . . . it’s just too hard.”
“One more,” he said, taking her hand.
He walked off, pulling her behind him. Kyle and Oriana brought up the rear.
Together, they took the elevator down a few floors until they arrived at a floor that was completely dedicated to one arena. As they walked down the hall toward the main doors, Stevie examined the framed shirts they passed. Shirts with claw marks, blood stains, and last names.
“Are these . . . memorials?”
“Don’t be silly,” Shen said as he kept walking, continuing to pull her along. “Memorials for game deaths are in the basement.”
Stevie tried to pull away at that point, but he kept walking, tossing over his shoulder, “Just kidding. Lighten up.”
They arrived at the big double doors, one of which was already open. He pulled her inside and she quickly realized they were in a soccer stadium.
A group was playing but she doubted they were pro players. Not when she saw Kyle’s oldest brother out in the middle of it all.
“Soccer?” she asked, looking up at Shen.
“Yes. Soccer. It’s perfect for you. Short bursts of running, which is great for your tiger side. But still competitive, which is good for your child prodigy side. Your hands