Brianna! Is Sam okay?” Astrid cried.
“No. Drake tore him up.” She wanted to sound tough, but the sobs came bubbling up and overtook her. “Oh, God, Astrid, he’s hurt so bad.”
Astrid gasped and covered her hand with her mouth. Brianna put her arms around Astrid and sobbed into her hair.
“Is he going to die?” Astrid asked, voice wobbly.
“No, I don’t think so,” Brianna said. She stood back and wiped her tears. “I gave him something for the pain. But he’s messed up, Astrid.

Where’s Sam?” Brianna asked.
“He’s out. So is Edilio,” Dekka said. “You going to tell us what’s in the bag or do we have to guess?”
Brianna stopped. She was disappointed. In her imagination the big revelation would have been to an admiring Sam Temple. He was the one she wanted to impress. Failing that, Edilio, who was generally warm and sweet to her.
But she was tired and wanted to put the bag down. Also, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer.
She climbed nimbly up to the top deck of the boat, grinned, and said, “Is it anyone’s birthday? Because I have a present.”
“Breeze,” Dekka warned.
So Brianna opened the bag. Dekka looked inside. “What is it?”
So Brianna upended the bag. Dead lizards, broken eggs, and Drake’s head landed on the antiskid flooring.
“Ahhhh!” Astrid screamed.
“Ah, Jesus!” Dekka yelled.
“I know,” Brianna said proudly.
What lay there was something to strike envy into the heart of a horror movie special-effects expert. The two halves of Drake’s head had started to rejoin. But because the halves had been tossed wildly together, the process was very incomplete. Very.
In fact at the moment the halves were backward, so that the left half was looking one direction and the right half another. Sections of neck and spine stuck both up and down. The part that held most of Drake’s mouth was stuffed with hair from the back of his head.
And, somehow, bits of dead lizard were squeezed in between. But the dead lizards thus incorporated were no longer dead. And there was egg white smeared across one eye.
The mouth was trying to speak and not managing it.
A lizard tail whipped one eye—hard to tell if it was left or right—a parody of Drake’s whip arm.
The three of them stared: Astrid with blue eyes wide, hand over mouth; Dekka with mouth wide open and brow furrowed; Brianna like a proud school kid showing off her art project.
“Ta-da!” Brianna said.

I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully.
Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.”
“Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said.
“In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.”
He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation.
Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.”
She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?”
“She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—”
BOOOOM!
The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand.
Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth.
In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.

Astrid and Taylor didn’t like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To “bounce,” as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid’s belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam’s type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam’s style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he’d move back in.

Brianna’s looking for Drake,” Edilio said, thinking out loud.
“You sent her out against Drake?” Albert demanded.
“Sent her? Who sends Brianna out to get into a fight? She goes on her own. Anyway, it’s not like you’ve left us with anyone else.”
Albert had the decency not to say anything to that.
“You know, you guys put me in charge. I didn’t ask to be in charge. I didn’t want to be in charge. Sam was in charge and all you guys ever did was give him grief,” Edilio said. “You two, especially.” He pointed at Albert and Astrid. “So, okay, Astrid takes over. And then Astrid finds out it’s not so much fun being in charge. So it’s like, okay, let’s get the dumb wetback to do the job.”
“No one ever—,” Astrid protested.
“And me, like a fool, I’m thinking, okay, that must mean people trust me. They asked me to be in charge, be the mayor. Come to find out, I’m not making decisions; Albert’s making decisions. Albert’s deciding we need to find more water and sending our two best fighters off into the countryside. Now I’m supposed to fix everything? It’s like you go, ‘Fight a war,’ but you sent my army off on a wild goose chase.

Hey, Sam,” Drake shouted. “I thought you’d like to know this isn’t my whole army.”
Sam didn’t doubt it.
“Your girl Brianna tried to stop us.” Drake waved a bowie knife in the air. “I took this from her. I whipped her, Sam.” He snapped his whip hand. The crack was like a pistol shot. “I broke her legs so she couldn’t run. Then . . .”
Dekka was halfway over the side, ready to swim ashore. Jack grabbed her and held her.
“Let me go!” Dekka yelled.
“Hold her,” Sam ordered Jack. “Don’t be stupid, Dekka. He wants us to come rushing at him.”
“I can beat him,” Jack said. “Dekka and me together, we can kill him.”
Sam registered the fact that Jack was actually making a physical threat. He didn’t remember ever hearing that kind of thing from Jack. But Dekka was Sam’s greater concern.
“I’m going to kill him,” Dekka said in a voice so deep in her throat she sounded like an animal. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.” Then she shouted, “I’m going to kill you, Drake. I’m going to kill you!”
Drake grinned. “I think she liked it. She was screaming, but she liked it.”
“He’s lying,” Toto said.
“Who?” Sam snapped.
“Him.” He pointed at Drake. “He hasn’t killed that girl or hurt her.”
Dekka relaxed and Sam and Jack let go of her.
“Truth-teller Toto,” Sam whispered. “He can tell when people are lying.”
“I just decided I like you,” Dekka said to Toto. “You might be useful.”
Toto frowned. “It’s true: you just decided you like me.