CHAPTER ONE
“Wait!” Ozzy shouted, hopping on one foot as he shoved a sneaker onto the other. “Wait for me!”
“Come on! Hurry up!”
He rushed out the door, squinting in the glaring sunlight. Byron was already at the end of the street. Ozzy broke into a sprint—but Byron was turning around with a dejected look on his face. “Bastards!” he said once Ozzy was within hearing range. “Those assholes.”
Ozzy slowed to a crestfallen trot. “They left without us?”
Byron nodded.
So that was it, then. No more coral caves. No cliff jumping or condor baiting or after-dark capture-the-flag. No Lily Sarlock, with her black bangs nearly obscuring her sapphire eyes.
No sneaking off with Lily Sarlock into the woods, leaving the others behind and falling alone together into summer oblivion…
“Couldn’t’ve waited thirty more seconds, huh?” Byron plunked himself down on the curb. “Shit.”
“We could still take the bus,” Ozzy offered. A glimmer of hope. Maybe he’d still get to leap off that fifty-foot drop into crystal-clear waters after all…
But Byron had a face like he’d just swallowed a lemon. “It won’t work,” he muttered. “It’s pointless. Thirty seconds, goddamn it. Tori’s gonna speed, too, she always does—they’re probably there by now—”
“Well, I’m going to wait for the bus.”
The bus stop was just down the road. Someone was leaning against the sign: a foundling hidden inside a tattered, faded jean jacket. She spotted Ozzy approaching and tossed something to the ground at her feet, stamped it into the pavement.
She exhaled a plume of smoke.
“I saw that,” said Ozzy.
“You saw nothing.” She sized him up. “Catching the bus?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you going? Marauder’s Cove?”
“Well—yeah,” said Ozzy, just as Byron arrived beside them.
“Oh,” Byron grunted at the foundling girl.
“Oh yourself,” she said.
“What’s your name?” said Ozzy.
“Nell.”
“Nell Ferrin?” Byron leapt in. “The same Nell Ferrin that got kicked out of—”
“I never told you my last name.”
Byron bit his lip.
“So what’s your name?”
“Byron.”
“And I’m Ozzy.”
“Well, Byron and Ozzy, listen up. I don’t wanna be a downer or anything, but I’ve been waiting for this bus for almost half an hour now, and I dunno how much longer I’m willing to wait. But”—Nell pulled open her jean jacket, just for a second, just for long enough for Ozzy and Byron to glimpse half a dozen firecrackers sticking out of the inside pockets—“I’m storming Marauder’s Cove tonight, just like you guys.” She grinned like a trickster god. “I propose we hitchhike.”
“Hitchhike?”
“Yeah. It’s bad form to hitchhike by yourself—that’s just asking to get murdered in a secluded barn or something. But with three people we’ll be all right. And since you’re both going to the same place I am—well, that seals the deal, doesn’t it?”
With that she stepped out into the street and stuck out her thumb. After a few seconds she turned to glare at Ozzy and Byron. “What are you waiting for?” she demanded.
Ozzy and Byron shared a glance. Then Ozzy got to his feet, stepped out into the road and stuck out his thumb, in perfect imitation of Nell. Byron followed suit.
Several cars passed by before one of them stopped: a rusty pickup truck. The driver wore a bristling, bushy beard. His face was tomato-red in the heat. He looked, Ozzy thought, like he belonged in the yellowed pages of history, aboard a pirate ship beset by scurvy and sea-madness.
“Got room for three?” said Nell.
“Room for as many as you can fit back there,” Piratehead grunted, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the trunk. “Where ya to?”
“Marauder’s Cove.”
“Marauder’s Cove… well, I don’t pass it, but I come pretty close. I’ll drop you up by Monolith Creek. It’s a twenty-minute walk south from there.”
Ozzy and Byron shared a glance. “I dunno if—” Byron began, but Nell had already hopped in the trunk.
“You’re either on the bus,” she said, “or off the bus.”
“It’s a truck,” said Byron.
Ozzy jumped up to join Nell. Byron groaned, then clambered in after them. The truck jerked forward and trundled off down the road. Ozzy looked back as they picked up speed. He laughed: the bus had just arrived at the stop.
“If we’d waited…” he murmured to himself, then trailed off. He didn’t know it then, but he sensed it, somehow, in a secret part of his mind—the feeling that he’d strolled through a crossroads. That he’d inadvertently chosen the path he would travel for the rest of his life.
“What’d you say, Oz?”
They rounded a corner and the bus vanished from sight.
Ozzy laughed. They were gaining speed, merging onto the freeway. “Oh, nothing,” he said.
J. Herrera Kamin 