Twelve is strong; it’s months, and the number of hours before you start over again at the beginning, the years when a kid is still a kid and hasn’t tipped over that birthday into teenager-hood and begun that final climb to adulthood.

Stump was twelve years old, and he liked the nightset, the twelve hours from seven to seven. Enough time to see the people go to bed, and see the people get up and into their cars and drive along the snowy roads in the thick grey fog, their headlights bright.

The cold didn’t bother him. He had fur. He liked the night; nobody would get a good look at him, in the dark.

There was a girl at the house with the rock garden, and she’d put food out on the patio. Stump would climb over the back fence and sit in the snow and eat, and sometimes she’d watch through the glass door.

She never opened it, but she never threw anything, either.

Stump sometimes had to chase away raccoons and opossums and one time a skunk. He got in a fight with a coyote once, too.

It was okay. He won.