Opening
A week after her mother’s death, Tiger Tolliver is hurled through a chain of life-altering revelations: a foster sibling is removed, a father emerges from prison records, and a half-sister flies in as her new guardian. With Thaddeus Roach at her side and Cake trying to help, Tiger’s grief tangles with anger, fear, and the fragile hope that something—anything—might feel safe again.
What Happens
Chapter 16: 6 days, 12 hours
A social worker arrives at LaLa’s house, and Tiger braces, sure they’ve come for her. Instead, Leonard is taken to a new placement, while Sarah screams and Leonard repeats the mantra he shares with Thaddeus: “All superheroes were sad kids. The sadness made them strong and then they rose up and helped people.” Thaddeus promises, “brothers always find each other,” but the quick, clinical removal exposes the trauma and churn of The Foster Care System and Child Welfare, leaving the house hollow and shaken.
LaLa, exhausted, explains the revolving door of placements and why kids with “great big issues” struggle to find stability. She reveals Sarah’s history—her sister was abducted—explaining Sarah’s terror of goodbyes and illuminating the stubborn, daily work of Resilience and Survival. Desperate for something familiar, Tiger texts Cake Rishworth, who rushes over and briefly restores normalcy. As they talk through the looming news about Tiger’s father, Karen, the social worker, arrives with answers.
Chapter 17: 6 days, 12 hours (continued)
Karen begins with names. Tiger’s father is Dustin "Dusty" Franklin—alive, but incarcerated in New Mexico on a six-to-ten-year sentence for a drunk driving crash. He has a history of addiction and arrests. Cake and Thaddeus insist on staying, calling themselves Tiger’s family, sharpening the novel’s focus on Family and Found Family.
Then the deeper wound: Karen reveals that June Tolliver stayed in contact with Dusty for years. The secret detonates Tiger’s grief, adding rage to Grief and Loss and splintering trust in her mother. The moment pivots into Guilt and Forgiveness: how do you forgive the dead, or yourself? Karen delivers one more shock—Tiger has a twenty-year-old half-sister, Shayna Lee Franklin, living in Hawaii, who has agreed to be Tiger’s legal guardian. The driver’s license photo, so clearly family, makes it real.
Chapter 18: 7 days, part two
Reeling, Tiger, Cake, and Thaddeus retreat to Thaddeus’s room and search Shayna on Facebook. Photos of beaches, parties, and drinks flood the screen. Shayna looks carefree, maybe reckless—the opposite of the steady guardian Tiger craves. The discovery jolts Tiger’s fragile sense of self and her path toward Identity and Coming of Age: what does it mean to belong to someone who feels like chaos?
Tiger edges toward a panic attack. Cake keeps trying to find a hopeful angle, but Thaddeus offers the hard truth he knows too well: the state favors blood relatives, even when blood isn’t safe—“Even if they kick the shit out you so hard they break your stupid back.” He warns that Shayna could take Tiger away, splitting her from Cake. Overwhelmed by the avalanche—her mother’s death, her father’s imprisonment, a stranger-sister—Tiger crawls into her bunk and calls her mother’s phone again and again, clinging to the voicemail.
Chapter 19: 7 days, part two (continued)
Tiger turns inward. She imagines June’s last moments, terrified that her mother died remembering their final fight: “Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone?” Shame saturates her grief. Images of “wet cement” and a hungry “black hole” capture the suffocating pull of despair, a visceral portrait of her spiraling Mental Health and Coping Mechanisms. The guilt feels permanent, like a stain she “can never, never, never, never, never, never wash away.”
Chapter 20: 7 days, 10 hours – 7 days, 11 hours, 50 minutes
Craving escape, Tiger asks Thaddeus to drive her to school. The hallways close in. Without Cake as a shield, whispers about her mother and her “orphan” status throb in the air. The black dress she still wears—her private punishment—draws stares. When the panic spikes, she bolts. Mr. Jackson, the counselor, intercepts her and suggests a teen grief group. Tiger rejects it, flings the card away, and finds Thaddeus waiting, ready with Plan B: come with him to work.
At the horse ranch, the world quiets. The animals’ power and beauty pull Tiger toward a rare calm, stirring a memory of June’s love for horses. While Thaddeus labors, Tiger checks Facebook: Shayna is on a plane to Tucson. Panic returns. Thaddeus opens up about his past—his stepfather broke his back; his mother’s addiction led to the state taking him; he still keeps tabs on family to protect his little half-sister, Jax. “Sometimes you’d do anything to protect your family,” he tells Tiger. The confession deepens their bond and reframes his tough exterior as devotion forged by pain.
Character Development
These chapters strip characters to their cores, exposing what they fear, what they’ve survived, and what they’ll do for the people they love.
- Tiger Tolliver: Hope flickers, then collapses under secrets and new obligations. The father she imagined isn’t a savior; the sister she’s given may be a storm. School proves unbearable, but the ranch offers a breath of peace. Tiger’s bond with Thaddeus becomes a lifeline.
- Thaddeus Roach: The caustic humor comes from a brutal history. His promise to Leonard and openness with Tiger reveal a fierce protector who tells the truth even when it hurts—and stands by the family he chooses.
- Cake Rishworth: Loyal, immediate, present. Her optimism clashes with Tiger’s lived reality, revealing both her love and her limits.
- Dustin “Dusty” Franklin: Not a myth, but a man in prison, emblem of addiction’s wreckage and the collapse of a hoped-for origin story.
- Shayna Lee Franklin: A vibrant unknown. Her online persona suggests instability, making her sudden authority over Tiger’s future terrifying.
Themes & Symbols
Family fractures and reforms in these chapters. The system elevates biological ties while often ignoring safety, pushing Tiger toward a sister she’s never met and a father whose absence carries a rap sheet. Found family—Cake’s insistence on staying, Thaddeus’s ride-or-die loyalty—offers steadier love than blood. Grief expands as Tiger learns June kept Dusty a secret; love and anger coexist, complicating any easy path to forgiveness.
Symbols cut through the noise. The black dress becomes a ritual of self-punishment and a thread back to the last fight with June. Horses, by contrast, open a window: strength, motion, breath. In their presence, Tiger feels a trace of her mother and a future not defined solely by loss. The foster home’s revolving door, Leonard’s removal, and Sarah’s terror embody how policy turns into pain, while Thaddeus’s scarred body stands as proof that survival can be both a burden and a vow.
Key Quotes
“All superheroes were sad kids. The sadness made them strong and then they rose up and helped people.”
- Leonard’s mantra reframes pain as potential. It sustains him in the moment of separation and becomes a fragile call to courage for Tiger and Thaddeus.
“Brothers always find each other.”
- Thaddeus insists on a chosen kinship that resists the system’s separations. It is both promise and defiance.
“Even if they kick the shit out you so hard they break your stupid back.”
- Thaddeus’s blunt warning exposes the danger of prioritizing blood over safety. His body bears witness, forcing Tiger—and the reader—to question who gets to be called “family.”
“Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone?”
- Tiger’s last words to June haunt her grief. The line distills the novel’s knot of love, anger, and guilt, and explains Tiger’s compulsion to keep wearing the dress.
“Sometimes you’d do anything to protect your family.”
- Thaddeus’s credo clarifies his motives and anchors the found-family thread. Protection, not perfection, becomes the measure of love.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the book from survival-in-place to a new, uncertain trajectory: Tiger’s legal guardian changes, her imagined family collapses, and her trust in her mother fractures. The story shifts from navigating a system to confronting inheritance—of secrets, damage, and unexpected bonds. Thaddeus’s vulnerability offers Tiger a model for enduring the unbearable without pretending it isn’t. The horses’ calm, fleeting as it is, suggests a path forward: not away from grief, but through it, toward a self Tiger chooses rather than inherits.