Marco scooped the warm raven poop off his head with his hand and flung it into the lawn, wiping the rest on his pants.

  He grabbed Rowf and hopped on his bike, pedaling as fast as he could toward El Stucco, the sprawling 1980s Spanish-style condo complex he called home.

  At the entrance gate, he zoomed past a small car pulling through, veered left, and stashed his bike deep under the carport.

  Still catching his breath, he scanned the surrounding trees and terracotta rooftops for ravens but saw nothing.

  “I think we’re safe,” he told Rowf, setting him on the ground.

  Together, they sprinted for the stairs.

  Angel, the neighbor’s pesky cat, sat at the bottom of the condo steps, blocking the way.

  A limp dove lay dead in front of her. Its downy feathers smeared across her face like a toddler wrangling a melting Fudgsicle.

  Marco gasped. “Oh no.”

  Near him, an old mourning dove nest clung to a balcony beam.

  A single wide-eyed fledgling peered down at him innocently.

  There used to be two.

  Furious, he screamed, “I hate cats!”

  He clenched his fists and stomped down hard on the stairs, sending Angel scrambling.

  “Grrr... Rowf! Rowf! Rowf!” barked Rowf.

  Angel bolted across the lawn toward the neighbor’s back door and vanished beneath a patio chair, her kill dangling from her mouth.

  “Yeah, you better run, you stupid cat!” shouted Marco.

  Rowf bounded up the steps to the front door, nubby tail wagging, while Marco trudged behind.

  They stepped inside.

  It was cool and dark, with the drapes drawn, just how his mother liked it.

  “Mom? I’m home!” he called out.

  There was no answer.

  “Mom?”

  Anxious, he hoped she hadn’t collapsed unconscious again, or worse.

  Chemotherapy had left her body thin and weak, and she was prone to passing out.

  To his relief, he found her working in her bedroom, hunched over the computer.

  A bright blue bandana was tied around her head, and her sunken eyes stared intently at the glowing screen.

  “Hey, Marco,” she said nonchalantly. “Come look at this.”

  She explained excitedly, “We finalized the names of all known human papillomaviruses. There are over two hundred now.”

  “Oh. Uh, great,” he said, trying to sound supportive.

  It amazed him how she could stay so calm and scientific about the virus that was killing her.

  He tried to be like that. Rational, composed, focused on the facts.

  But staying an objective scientist was proving harder than he’d thought.

  Without turning from the screen, she said, “I made you a sandwich. It’s in the fridge.”

  Marco wanted so badly to tell her about rescuing the puppy, but he knew better.

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  She didn’t handle interruptions well and asked him more than once not to be bothered while working on “the list.”

  Lunch in hand, he stepped into the living room.

  He took a long sip of coconut water, hoping it might clear his head.

  Then settled beside the gently whirring fan to study the butterfly collection on the coffee table.

  The glass box held a colorful trove of indigenous California butterflies, collected nearly a century ago.

  Impossible to recreate today.

  Looking through the beveled glass at certain angles made their wings appear to shift positions.

  It wasn’t a purposeful trick, just something he’d discovered on his own, quietly looking in.

  The collection was complete except for four empty pinholes.

  Jarring gaps where missing butterflies should be.

  Years ago, his father, the renowned biologist Nick Polo, had solemnly explained that

  Glaucopsyche xerces, Plebejus icarioides pheres, Cercyonis sthenele sthenele, and Parnassius clodius strohbeeni had all gone extinct.

  So he donated the precious specimens to a college museum.

  “Gone forever,” he recalled his father saying.

  Setting his water glass on the table, Marco turned from the melancholy butterfly collection

  and looked up at the giant California grizzly bear caught in a frozen roar behind his father’s dark green leather chair.

  At nine feet tall, she was the reason his parents chose a home with cathedral ceilings, or so they liked to say.

  He remembered being a three-year-old, watching his father slowly pronounce the scientific name while pointing at the bear on the California state flag.

  “Come on, say it with me. Ursus… arctos… californicus.”

  Marco reread, for the umpteenth time, the old brass plaque mounted on the bear’s base:

  Great Geraldine — Shot by Alan Rhodes, age 16. April 2, 1886.

  He heard his father’s voice again, solemn and final, speaking of the extinct California grizzly bear.

  Gone forever.

  Growing up, it was Great Geraldine who had always been there for him.

  Not as a ferocious roaring monster but as his loyal friend and secret confidant.

  Someone he could depend on whenever he was feeling sad or alone.

  Like when he knew he was different than the other kids his age but couldn’t say why.

  And that one afternoon after school when his mother had to be rushed to the hospital.

  Geraldine was loyal, dependable, huge!

  He walked over and petted her arm.

  And as for being gone for real… he wasn’t so sure.

  Somewhere deep down— deeper than science could reach—

  he wondered if maybe she wasn’t.

  Maybe there were bears like her still out there.

  Nah. I’m being stupid. Someone would’ve found them by now.

  Science said she was extinct. He had to believe it.

  He let the thought drop.

  Marco pressed a button on his cell phone, and the long white curtains draped around the living room opened automatically.

  Light spilled in, revealing tall glass cabinets crammed with his family’s collection of indigenous antique taxidermy.

  He loved it. The way everything was labeled, preserved, pinned just right.

  But what he loved most were the names.

  The scientific names. He’d memorized them all as a child, whispering them like secrets.

  Sliding open one of the heavy glass doors, he carefully removed a small lizard labeled Phrynosoma mcallii.

  It was mounted to a rough pinewood base, carved with:

  “This horny toad was caught in Palm Desert, California, 1969, by J.E.B.”

  To him, the sharp horns protruding from its collar made it look like a miniature dinosaur.

  But what he admired most was its strange ability to defend itself by squirting streams of stinging blood from its eyes.

  Marco liked to pretend he could do it too, especially to the bullies at school.

  Sploosh!

  He looked up from the prickly lizard and noticed that, at some point, his mother had quietly entered the room and was watching him.

  She set his half empty glass on a coaster and asked, “Any unusual animals out today?”

  “Sort of,” he answered, not quite looking up.

  A loud knock at the front door interrupted their brief conversation.

  Rowf, who had been napping under the air conditioner vent, sprang up and barked.

  Marco opened it and was smacked in the face by a blast of blistering summer heat.

  Their sweaty, elderly neighbor, Gretty Lime, was standing on the stoop with her arms tightly crossed and an agitated look on her face.

  She wore a pair of white shorts and a green floral-print blouse that matched her bright green fingernail polish.

  “Is your mother home?” Gretty asked with strained politeness.

  Marco’s mother appeared at the door. “Hi Gretty! Want to come in?”

  Gretty jabbed a long, green fingernail toward Marco.

  “Andrea, I just saw your son try to kick my Angel!”

  She glared at Marco knowingly and said, “I saw it with my own two eyes!”