--XXIX--

James led the way to the nearby beaches where I sometimes still tumbled. I followed while eating the still-hot French toast Malcolm made for me, with his own heat and fire, prepared outside the small two-story house.

"Tell me, Midnight," said James, "what part of You take the hotel on Monday did you not understand?"

"I understood the sentence."

"So you intentionally went against my authority."

"Do you or do you not realize that had I not been there, Cobb would be dead right now?"

This made him hang back.

I kicked a broken shell off the road and back into the sand. I kicked off my sandals, too, and walked into two front handspring stepouts- one-handed because of the toast- sitting myself down on the sand as landing for the second one while still eating Malcolm's fancy and yummy and happy bread.

Still no response from James. I looked over my shoulder. He wasn't looking at me.

"Ih wath the righ choith," I said before swallowing the mouthful of toasted, buttery happiness. "It was the right choice and you know it." I paused. "It was the only thing to do. Anything else would've been disaster. And because of you, too."

He was my boss, but just for that one moment, I wasn't going to sugar coat. Someone could have been murdered- and to me, it wasn't just anyone, either.

My gaze went back to the 5PM horizon, the sky with all its smeared-around combinations of orange and red, mostly a translucent color that made me think of pink lemonade maybe mixed with strawberry juice. The sun was unobscured and glowed just as mellowly, just like it did, back when I kept hermit crabs from here as pets- before letting them free again, back here, after a day. I was younger and really wanted pets. I wasn't allowed any, was told I couldn't "afford" them; I didn't know what money moved in or out at that time. I returned the little things because I didn't want them around the air of drugs or prostitution. They deserved better.

I looked at my hands. I'd forgotten to wrap the left one, but any pain was unnoticeable because of the waves and the sky and the ocean air around us. It made the humidity- typical it being the Overwoods- not only bearable, but almost welcome.

James still didn't say anything. Red flag, very unusual. James didn't not talk. I considered flying away, perhaps off to some other, less beautiful or accommodating part of The Port where someone the likes of James would never set foot. Maybe to the Bay of Bodies; maybe to McKinley War Memorial. Or somewhere else. There was no end of hiding places, now; now that I was the survivor that was forcefully made of me.

But not the Lowdown.

Never the Lowdown...

I glanced at the strange, slow, orange-with-purple-clouds Overwoods summer sunset; I remembered Marie. Summers here that rained and snowed with typhoons or hurricanes or every other catastrophe you could possibly think of. The boys and girls- the children­- that have never and will never recover from the tortures.

But Kaylee and I are damaged forever.

While the ones who ran the experiment are probably out drunk and partying.

I am so hungry...

But at least his hunger was my choice. I was empowered; it was MY doing; MY self-inflicted pain- no one was doing that to me but me and thus it made me feel some small sense of autonomy; some small sense of control. Who cared if it hurt, right? At least I had a choice for once.

For freaking ONCE.

So I didn't care that it hurt; that I felt there were two slices of bread and a pool of toxic acid with poison-canister-spray in my esophagus and stomach.

But I'm still hungry...

I was already calculating line and distance and where exactly to place my feet when he spoke again.

"That's why I'm here."

"Because Elyza would be dead right now if not for what I decided, and the rest of the gang? My friends who you call drug addicts? Which, by the way, makes zero sense coming from you. Are you here to stare at the beach with me?" I moved, getting up from where I was and walked north, toward a rock. "Because bye."

A frayed, old piece of rope hanging from a boardwalk railing started flying towards me.

I flipped backward in layout and out of its way, no hands this time and no twisting as I was now a bit more cognizant of the pain in my hand. Sometimes, I wondered if the contraption from Nightingale was still on it. Just maybe invisible, or something.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

James's voice was undeniably one of anger.

"You will stay here," he said, in a very uncharacteristic bark that only reprimanded me further, "Or you'll find some other federal agency to work for!"

I froze. But only for a moment before I responded with, "Maybe I should."

At that moment a squirrel with a red coat of fur- the same one I had seen in the school- materialized from under a toppled-over recycle bin. It scurried over and stood on its hind legs in front of me.

I gave it the rest of my French toast.

Marie's dead. Hundreds of other kids are dead; maybe even thousands.

I didn't deserve food anyway.

I saved Elyza's LIFE, and here I am- getting my butt CHEWED OUT for it.

Maybe that guy or gal (or otherwise other gender identity individual- I didn't know the pronoun) was right-

NOTHING I do is right...

"No matter who I protect or what I do for you, you're unhappy," I continued. "To me right now, you're practically mad Elyza's alive. Half the stuff you make me do doesn't even make sense."

Something tugged tightly around my right wrist and pulled me straight down into the sand. Without glancing over I knew James had kept me in place.

I pretended I wasn't scared.

"Lecture me now if you want to so badly," I said, "or fire me. I'm not sure it matters anyway."

I wiped water off my left cheek.

"I get it," I whispered. "I get it. Nothing I ever do is right."

Maybe Elyza will do something right. Maybe, maybe that will count as something, because I saved her.

I felt the rope loosen, but only so slightly. I was still stuck here.

James was smiling some sort of smile, which was more of the norm. The words he spoke next exhibited a tonality to his voice that I didn't hear very often- but it was one that made me believe him.

"I came here to say thank you."

The rope came off. I dusted off my pants and walked to where the torn brown sandals were laying in the sand. They were too huge for me but I liked them because they were Malcolm's. He let me use them on Sundays. There were a few acorns in one of them- the squirrel must have left them there- and I shook them off onto the sand.

Why on earth would the squirrel leave that there-

My fingers fumbled at the hem of the shirt I was wearing. It was a gift from Sam- a small black T-shirt with the picture of a cartoon Pembroke Welsh corgi puppy and the words "i'm a corgi" all in lowercase below the printed graphic; she heat pressed the shirt herself in her home in V4.

Squirrels were strange in the Overwoods- like almost all other things in the Overwoods, they made little to no sense to me. But at least they were cute; at least they were mostly harmless; at least they weren't broken human child traffickers- leaders of mass abuse, evil in walking form and seemingly human.

Yeah you know squirrels be cute like that

Nice train of thought, right?

But the squirrels deserve better than to live HERE...

That they did. So did 6 out of 10 people. Or at least that was my thought at the time.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"Did you hear what I just said to you?" said James.

I looked at him. Carrot hair; pistachio-ice-cream eyes; dark circles prominent under the glasses. My first instinct was to say thank you back- but something just felt wrong; I wasn't sure what. Maybe it was that he was thanking me for saving one life when I watched dozens of kids die in front of me at age eleven; maybe it was that the mess would not have happened at all if not for me. Consider that I'd already hopped off of Century Spire's roof to die and apparently I didn't even do THAT right.

I stared at the ground; at broken little shells on the sand. Most of them where dull gray. Some were bright orange. A hermit crab danced on top of a broken wine bottle.

Even small things like broken wine bottles reminded me of Nightingale.

Cute little hermit crab.

Focus on cute dancing hermit crab.

The cute dancing hermit crab climbed off of the broken wine bottle and crawled into a small hole in the sand.

I was the one who needed a hole in the sand to bury myself in- or at the very least a shell to go back into and hide in.

Dancing hermit crab is lucky.

"So, I don't deserve a reply, I guess." James put his glasses in his shirt pocket. You know- the fancy expensive shirt with the collar and the pocket. "I came out here just to thank you," he said, "and all that your eighteen-year-old mind is thinking about... is a crab."

That was oversimplification.

"It is an oversimplification," he said. "But you get my point."

Uhm like no I don't.

Nice of him to assume I understood the point, though.

"At least talk to me if you won't talk to Malcolm."

WHAT?

WHAT IS THE-

THERE WAS NO COMPARISON.

Just say something and maybe he'll finally leave you alone.

"I'm not sure if you're welcome," I said.