The little girl wanted to be a bear. Whenever she walked, she imagined the muscles in her arms and legs expanding, ripping off her shirt and pants and sprouting coarse, black hair. The little girl learned to growl like a bear. At night, she pressed her face into the pillow and roared so loud that the back of her throat hurt. Feeling totally free of all worry and energy, she would fall asleep instantly.

No one would mess with Lucy if she were a bear. She would be safe.

Bear came onto her grandparent’s property all the time, which was fitting, because they lived in a place called Bear County in Michigan. She had learned to hold up her palm and point to the middle of the pinkie to show where she lived. She thought this was cool for a month, and did it all the time, then didn’t think it was cool anymore.

Now, she thought bears were cool.

She’d seen the bear a few weeks earlier. It was the middle of summer around dusk. She and her grandpa were watching television when it lurched toward the bird feeders in the middle of the yard, looking for a snack. They watched it through the sliding glass door until her grandpa yelled, “Hey, bear! Get outta here!” She watched it slowly walk back into the federal woods, miles of which surrounded the property. The bear went back to the swamp where her grandpa told her it lived. It was in no hurry.

A few weeks later, a bear – they figured it was the same one – tore up the houseplants on the patio deep in the night while Lucy was asleep. Her Grammy was upset and Pa stayed up all night watching TV with his deer hunting rifle across the arms of his chair by the sliding glass door.

Her Grammy and Pa thought the bear was a nuisance, but Lucy loved him. She thought an animal that deserved so much attention, even if it was negative, earned her respect.

Lucy lived with her grandparents now because her parents were, as her schoolmates said, drunks. They called her trash. They made fun of her mom, who was always seen drinking with men at bars – different bars than the one where she used to work. They also made fun of her because her dad was in jail for beating up her mom in the grandstands at the annual Bear County Fair during a Motorcross event. He smacked her so hard he split her lip and bruised her eye. Everyone saw him do it and many of the fathers who had children in Lucy’s third grade class were the ones to jump on her dad and hold him so he wouldn’t punch her mother again.

He also liked to punch Lucy when he came home stinking and smiling with his eyes weird, but she didn’t like to think about that. He never made her bleed, though. She never had to go to the hospital like her mom, where Lucy would visit and spend a lot of time in the gift shop with Pa.

If Lucy were a bear, she would tear her dad to shreds and carry her mother off into the woods behind Pa and Grammy’s house and protect her. She would protect Jimmy, too, even though he was only her half brother. He lived with his mom who had a good job at the salt factory. They went on trips to the zoo in Detroit and to water parks in Traverse City. Jimmy’s mom didn’t like Lucy’s mom, so Lucy was never invited.

Lucy wanted to be a bear, but knew she never would be. So, instead, she decided she would make the bear that visited her grandparents’ house become her pet and bodyguard. She had seen pictures in a book at the school library where people had trained bears to play with balls and do somersaults and all other kinds of neat things.

So Lucy began leaving treats in the backyard so the bear would visit more often. She had read in a different book in the school library that bears like to eat sweet things like donuts and jelly. These items were easy enough to steal from her grandparents’ pantry. She even went and found an old collar and leash from Pa’s pole barn from when he used to have a dog.

Lucy planned on feeding the bear until it became nice. Then, she would put the collar and leash on it and walk it down to the jail where they would break in and the bear would eat her dad.

Then, she might teach the bear how to play with a ball.

***

For three nights she was able to sneak out of her grandparents’ house and leave a donut covered in syrup for the bear. She would wait until her grandparents were asleep, which didn’t take long. They were old and fell asleep earlier, her grandma in bed, her grandpa in the chair in front of the television. The deer hunting rifle was leaned against the wall behind the chair in case the bear came on the patio to mess with her Grammy’s pots of plants.

In nothing but a nightshirt, Lucy would slink from her room at the back end of the small house into the kitchen and grab the sweets. Then she’d walk quietly passed her grandpa’s chair, ease the sliding glass door open and run out on the narrow patio and out onto the grass. Her grandpa would be fast asleep and never notice.

The summer grass was wet and cold on her bare feet. She ran out past the bird feeder and pole barn to where the property met the woods. Her grandparents lived on a lot of land in the middle of the forest and the nearest house wasn’t visible for a mile.

On an old tree stump, she’d leave the bear treats. It felt similar to the one time she left cookies for Santa Claus. That was back when she was living with her mom in an apartment on Main Street in Bear River, before her mom lost her job at the bar. Her mom said the boss was a jerk and just didn’t like her, but Lucy knew enough to know her mom had been drinking from the stuff she was supposed to be serving the customers. Lucy had seen her do it when she went in to visit once.

Lucy left the donuts on top of the old stump near the pole barn and in the mornings would be overjoyed to see that they were gone. She felt she and the bear were secretly communicating.

Then, after three days, her mom came home looking really bad.

That evening her mom curled up on the couch looking like a zombie in front of the TV while Pa sat in the chair with the rifle nearby. For six hours, her mom sat on the couch drinking Gatorade, eating pizza and watching reality shows on TV.

She said things like, “We’re going to be a family again!” and, “I ain’t going back to the way I was before. I feel like I’m a new person.”

Her mom hugged and kissed her and said she loved her and that they would have a new life.

Lucy knew her mom wasn’t lying the way Jimmy at school lied about winning a dirt bike jumping competition (he didn’t even have a dirt bike), but had heard her mother say these types of things before.

What upset Lucy more was that she wasn’t going to be able to get to the tree stump because when her mom came home to sober up, she didn’t sleep. She’d be up all night drinking Gatorade watching reality television shows on the couch. Lucy was tired anyway, and even though her mom made her feel uneasy, it felt better to have her around. It was nice to know where she was, that she wasn’t off someplace being hurt.

In bed, having almost drifted off to sleep after a very satisfying roar into her pillow, Lucy heard a crash outside, followed by a commotion in the living room. She knew instantly what it was. The collar and leash were under her bed. She grabbed them and ran out of the bedroom. It was time.

In the living room, her mom was standing in front of the TV wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, her belly spilling out over the waistband, hands up to her mouth, shrieking. Her eyes looked ghostly.

Her grandpa had the rifle and was sliding open the patio door.

“Goddamn bear is back!” he screamed.

Lucy was excited when she heard more crashing outside by the pole barn where she had been leaving the donuts. It meant her new pet was hungry. It meant he would soon be her bodyguard and she could walk down Main Street with her bear in the collar on the leash and no one would mess with her. It meant she’d walk him all the way out by the jail and let the bear eat her dad.

“What are you doing with that leash, Lucy?” her mom said.

“I’m catching the bear!” she screamed. “He just wants donuts.”

“You’ve been leaving donuts out there?” her mom said.

“Yes,” Lucy said. “The bear’s gonna be my pet. We’re friends.”

Her grandpa, who was swooping a large flashlight across the property, illuminating a truck, a couple snowmobiles with tarps covering them, said, “Well, if you’ve been leaving donuts for this bear, that explains why he’s back.”

Her grandpa was calm as usual. He always made her feel very safe. But now, heading out into the dark with the flashlight and rifle, he scared her.

There was another loud crash from the darkness.

“He’s getting into the pole barn,” Pa said.

Standing on the patio, he fired a shot in the air.

“You git out of here, bear!”

Lucy ran for the patio, but her mother grabbed her and held her close.

“I gotta catch the bear, Mom!”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

She squirmed, but couldn’t get free. Lucy still clutched the collar and leash.

Her grandpa disappeared into the darkness with the gun and flashlight, still hollering at the bear. All Lucy could see was the bobbing beam of the yellow light. She tried to break free from her mom, but was held back. Lucy could only listen and watch the flashlight. They were agonizing moments for her. She didn’t want her grandpa to shoot the bear.

“Please, don’t kill it, Pa. Pleeeze!”

Her Grammy was up now. She ran out onto the patio in her nightgown and screamed at Pa.

“What is it?”

There were three gunshots.

“Goddamn bear! I killed it on this tree stump here.”

“It’s dead?” her grandma yelled.

“Dead as ever. Tried coming at me. Poor thing.”

Lucy finally broke free of her mother’s arms and ran out to the tree stump. Her mom and grandma followed at a slower pace. Tears rolled from Lucy’s eyes and she felt like her chest would collapse with the running, but she made it to where her grandpa stood by the stump. She screamed, “No! No!”

She saw the giant bear collapsed on the tree stump where she had been leaving the donuts, the flashlight on its face. Blood was smeared on its teeth and it had the saddest look in its eyes Lucy had ever seen. It made her cry even harder. She ran to the bear and jumped on it and screamed, “No!”

She had never touched a bear before and it was more raw and scary than she thought. She could feel the heat from its freshly dead body and the coarseness of its coat throughout her own body. She knew it was the strongest thing in the world besides people, and all people did was hurt other people with that strength. It didn’t seem fair. The bear just wanted a donut. After it had devoured her dad, she would have taught it to play with a ball in no time.

“Get away from it, Lucy,” her mom said. “It’s probably got rabies or something.”

“You shouldn’t be feeding these guys, Lucy,” Pa said. “They’re dangerous. You could get hurt.”

Her grandpa was pulling her off the bear now. Even though the big, dead, hot, scratchy bear was the scariest thing she had ever felt, she wanted to hold on to it with all her life.