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Ian

Ian throws the plastic ball, and his brother swings and clips it with the red bat. The ball doesn’t go very far.

“That wasn’t a good throw,” declares his brother. “So it’s called a ball.” He kicks it toward the middle of the yard.

“How many of those do you get?”

“Four,” says his brother, hesitantly. “Then… I get a ghost runner on first. The other ones go to third and fourth.”

Ian’s positive there wasn’t a fourth base when they started, but he got out for missing it last time. He picks up the white ball out of the dirt.

Paula

“Are you blind!” shouts Pat. “That was a stop sign!”

Cuthbert nods. “Mustard! My shorts are off.”

“What he means is he’s a polysemist,” sighs Paula. Paula is wearing two seatbelts. “Sorry, he was the only ride I could get.”

“So what, he’s from Utah?” Pat squints at her. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”

“Mormons aren’t polygamists or–” Paula hesitates. “Actually, you could make that argument.”

“Oh,” says Pat, “semi.”

“Yes! Polysemy! You’re getting it.”

“No,” says Pat, “there,” and points to the truck in their lane.

“Comma dash dash comma dash,” argues Cuthbert, signals left, and pulls onto the sidewalk.

Taggert

“SPELLBINDING… A POTENT TRANSCENDENTAL-NOIR BREW!”

Kirkus Reviews

Leo Taggert’s laser eyes are trained on suburban Bangladesh in My Ganges Heart. Like the previous “TAGGERT’S PROSE IS TAUT AND LUMINOUS!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Heh. Give me a minute.

“SECOND PLACE MUST SUCK!”

Kirkus Reviews

“SHUT UP, CIRCULATION ZERO!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Ladies! Calm down, I’m sure we can arrange “A POSTMODERN CLASSIC!”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Cleveland! I said not to call me here!

“I KNOW YOU MISSED ME!”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“BITCH, YOU DID NOT!”

Kirkus Reviews

Oh shit. Oh Jesus.

“I’MA SLAP THAT OFF YOUR FRONT PAGE!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Cynthia

“CYNTHIA!” screams Ban from around the corner, and Cynthia sprints.

Etheldred’s hauling Ban and a rope into a third-story window when she turns the corner. He grins and waves, then disappears.

Cynthia saw the padlocks on the first-floor doors. She scrambles through her backpack; maybe a hook and line, a bobby pin–

There. A deck of cards. She flexes it and begins to flip them out, and while they’re still in the air she’s running up their backs toward that window. Higher, spiraling, don’t think about it: the deck is missing a joker, she remembers. Only fifty-three steps.

Nina

“Because you can’t eat popcorn with a spoon, and it’s uncivilized to eat frosting with your fingers,” says Nina.

“Ah,” says Jax. “So the fridge and oven are open and on because…?”

“The heat went out this morning.” Nina wriggles down into the blankets. “Refrigeration is exothermic, you know.”

“How do you make everything seem so reasonable?” Jax finally shuts the door and shrugs off his bag.

“Get over here,” says Nina, victorious. She dips out a ladleful of Orville Redenbacher Original Butter and rolls it in Betty Crocker Vanilla Sprinkles. “I’ll make it reasonable that we’re watching Teen Wolf Too.

Jasmine

Marietta’s fingers are perfectly tubular, less like hands than a child’s drawing of hands. Her eyes are large and dark as a guinea pig’s.

Jasmine’s two hundred twelve days pregnant and the only one here who knows CPR, dammit. Don’t they make you learn when you buy a pool? There should be a law. Jasmine had to pee a minute ago. She counts compressions, blows angry hair out of her face.

Marietta isn’t her kid. Marietta deserves better parents. Her mother’s bubbling to 911 while Jasmine pinches Marietta’s nostrils, although you’re not really supposed to, anymore. She realizes she’s wet herself.

Longshanks

“Want to take a break after this wave!” Longshanks roars as he hooks a scaling ladder off the rampart.

“What time is it!” Pellegrin jerks his face away from a hot spray of goblin blood.

“Almost end of shift!”

“Sure!”

The water cooler is next to the pitch cauldrons. Longshanks always thought that was dumb.

“We need a better siege process,” he sighs. “Our quartermaster’s not ISO-certified. What if we get audited?”

Pellegrin snorts. “They can’t sieze our assets if we eat them all.”

“Exactly!” says Longshanks. “No starvation plan! Are we supposed to eat the children first, or what?”

Agnes

And it’s so easy to feel badass with the headphones on, with the bass up. Agnes rocks her wrists to keep from dancing.

“I’m not afraid of the dark!” she exulted to Diego, earlier.

“No?”

“I got my black belt, D,” she said. “My black belt.

He laughed. “You’re that much better than you were last week?”

“I gotta go. The police want me to register my hands.”

Agnes bops the shadows between streetlights, looking down all the alleys. This new and easy confidence. Sneaker Pimps and her hoodie.

You want some of this, she thinks.

Are you talking to me!

Found Dog

Found Dog rattles down the shale and draws an inch of blade, enough to use as a mirror. The gulls are still behind him. They’re catching up.

The bottom of the ravine is wet and he stumbles in it, looking for more shelter. There. Half a beaver dam. Found Dog gets his head under just as the scream of gullsong bursts over the ravine’s lip.

There’s a fat man in a smelly coat underneath. He’s bleeding, and he has ugly wings.

“Who is it,” he hisses.

“I’m Found Dog!” says Found Dog cheerfully. “Found Dog is a good person to be!”

Trey

Maud tanks at the box office. She uses the old Sherman that sat in front of County Water for who knows how long, getting grass stuck to it while bored kids picked at the padlocks.

Turns out it was still loaded.

“Glad nobody got hurt,” says Trey as they watch from the parking lot. He’s still holding the bucket of soda fountain nozzles.

“She didn’t start shooting until everybody was out,” says Bernadette. The tank groans over the central concession island. “Unless somebody was in the bathroom.”

Jurassic Park,” says Trey.

“Wayne Knight.”

Seinfeld.

“Can’t use TV.”

Seinfeld the Motion Picture.

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