"Gurrrrrl?" Josie stopped her usual mid-after-lunch walk and looked around her, puzzled.

"Yo! Gurrrrrrrrrrl? Does yo' mama know you left the house lookin' like that?"

Mike and Raina's newest niece wrinkled her forehead and looked around some more. She HAD been hoping to 'bump' into Draculaura and Draculaura's extra big hot pink parasol (Josie was, what was the word? Enamored? Smitten? Crushing? Yeah, crushing.

"Girlfriend, did you hear me?" Distracted from her crush, Josie's hazel eyes swiveled towards a girl with skin as dark as hers balancing precariously on the top rail of the expensive wooden fence Josie usually passed with little thought as she wandered the back alleys of the gated community she'd been more or less born into.

The girl shook her head, grinning, "Oh my GaaaAWD, you ashy too – look at yo' legs!" She jumped down from the fence adding with a toss of her intricately braided mane, "You be makin' all of us look bad that way!"

Josie blushed as she attempted to speed walk away. Say, into the next county? (The one Uncle Mike was always saying he'd knock anybody who dared mess with her (or any of his beloved girls) clean into?)

"Yo, come back!" whoever it was yelled after Josie, "Didn't mean to be rude!"

Josie turned around, a deer in the headlights as the other girl easily loped towards her, braids bouncing and twinkling with little gold beads.

"Mamma's a braider, the BEST. She can help!"

"Help me with what?" Josie stopped dead in her tracks, appalled. There was something wrong with her? How… how could Aunt Raina or Uncle Mike (who was busy studying to become a cop again and not exactly paying attention to anything other than his books and being grouchy) let her leave the house with something wrong with her?

"You really don't know?" The girl laughed. "Girlfrien', you shittin' me?" She gestured with one perfectly manicured hand, the other one idly adjusting the beautiful braids that tumbled past her shoulders in pretty little corkscrews. Some of them were neon purple! "C'mere!"

Friendly grin with really, really white teeth aside, Josie hesitated. The other girl seemed nice enough, but… ummmm… stranger danger… Still, intrigued by seeing someone who looked a lot like her without actually being her, only better dressed, Josie reluctantly inched backwards towards the Stein's guest house and Uncle Mike.

"Girl, really?" The stranger, whom Josie couldn't help but notice was wearing amazing clothes, cocked a very carefully shaped eyebrow, "Just… "Oh! Get inside before anybody sees you with your hair all nasty an' your knees ashy—" the other girl grabbed Josie's hand and yanked her towards the big frame house that was next door to the Stein's, "Get inside NOW! You're embarassin' all us RADS!"

With a squeal that was almost a giggle, because this was the most excitement she'd had so far this long, hot muggy summer week, Josie stopped dead mid-yank and pulled out the pocket sized notebook from one of the back pockets of her cut-offs and flipped open to a clean page past the quick doodles and notes of her first week of being alive and wrote a quick journal entry about the strange girl who looked like her.

"Oh my gawd! Are you… journaling?" The other girl stared at her in disbelief, adding, "Put that dumb book away, it's summer, and follow me!"

"Okay?" Josie slipped the journal back into her pocket and trotted over to the back door where the other girl waited. "I'm Josie, Josie Schmidt."

"Clawdine, Clawdine Wolf." Again, that million dollar perfectly white smile. "Now c'mon, girrrrrrrlllll. Stop wastin' time an' follow ME."

"...How was your afternoon, różyczko?" (Różyczko was Polish for "rose". Aunt Raina's grannies were both from some place called Poland so Aunt Raina used Polish words around people she liked instead of English when strangers were around. She called Uncle Mike "Misiu", which meant "teddy bear" or something like that, which was weird because except for his ears, Uncle Mike did NOT look like a teddy bear, but ummmm, it is what it is, I guess.)

"Good. I got adopted by the werewolves next door!" Josie said, the screen door to the kitchen slamming behind her. She dropped a strange tote bag that clattered and clinked down on a nearby kitchen chair, "Aunt Raina, did you know we have werewolves for neighbors?"

"Really? You just figured that out?" Aunt Raina laughed.

She knew all about the werewolves next door; she and Mrs. Wolf attended Friday evening Mass together after accidentally walking in on the entire Wolf family one full moon night lounging around the backyard bbq in all their hairy glory when returning a borrowed vacuum cleaner. Mr. Wolf was really good at grilling steaks.

"Yeah, they said my hair was 'nappy' – whatever that means." Josie said sitting down at the tiny kitchen table. Raina set a bowl of hot soup in front of her. "And my knees and elbows are ashy, but there's lotion for that – please pass the crackers?"

Raina handed her great niece the box of Saltines before joining her at the table, marveling at how well the Steins had engineered the girl using DNA salvaged from a lump of long-dead fetal tissue, making them the only mixed family in the entire gated community unless you counted the Wolf family. (Mrs. Wolf was very proud of her Black-Backed Jackal heritage.) The Steins did a good job on Josie's nose, Mike muttered on the day Josie was activated. He was smug that it looked like his, only more rounded, and her halo of soft, frizzy dark hair was cute even if it became a growing nightmare for someone who'd kept her own European hair mannishly short most of her life.

Curious, Raina reached over and touched Josie's new braids.

"Can you NOT?" Josie snapped, slamming down her spoon.

"Sorry." Startled, Raina pulled her hand back, remembering Sylvia, her room-mate at Annapolis, who wore a close-cut 'fro nobody was allowed to touch. How could she have forgotten?

Mrs. Wolf must have braided Josie's hair in her basement beauty salon– Raina should have asked her how to take care of Josie's hair, but she'd been too embarrassed to, thinking she could discreetly bone up on black hair care through YouTube Videos – leading to the expanding itchy bird's nest on her great-niece's head.

"I want dreads." Josie said, "Like the ones I saw on Instagram. They were ombre, aqua and black – cute!"

"Do you think Mrs. Wolf would let you help with the yard work to help pay for all this?" Raina said, warily eyeing the simple but elegant shoulder length braids gently brushing Josie's shoulders. Simple or not, they looked very, very expensive.

"She says I can help Clawdeen run their annual rummage sale this weekend to help pay for all this." Josie gestured casually at her new hairstyle after putting her dirty dishes in the sink. She turned, smiling, "Is Mama home?"

"No." Raina said, stomach dropping. Puck didn't give a shit about her teenage daughter. "She's still out looking for a job."

As for Josie's father? Some random, nameless high school dropout in a cheap gold rope chain, greasy Jheri curls, and a knockoff L.A. Raiders track suit from Watts back in the eighties just to embarrass the yuppie couple who'd adopted her as part of their five-year plan.

"Oh."

Somewhere in Raina's heart two Polish babcia's, grannies, tongue clucked, scandalized, – it wasn't the color of the father's skin that bothered Raina, but Puck's ignoring her own flesh and blood — how could you do that to family?

"So, not for a while, then?" Josie said, clearly disappointed.

Raina took her great niece's slender brown hands, eyes resting on the baby hairs gelled down into delicate curls now decorating Josie's forehead. Landing a Navy chopper on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier during a storm back in the day was so much easier. "'Fraid so, różyczko, 'fraid so."