Scout's Honor: Chapters 9–13

Whenever I nap after dawn patrol, everything that happened before sunrise congeals into a series of nightmares.

“Believe it, Prudence Perry,” the Beast says as she sashays past me into the foyer.

She picks up a crystal bishop from the decorative chess set and holds it up to the light, appraising its worth.

She and Avi retrieve their Handbooks with the grudging slowness of taking an open-book pop quiz.

He shakes the serving spatula so that his meatballs fall into a precarious pyramid.

“If their disappearance seems grub related, I’ll need to tell Headquarters. It wouldn’t be the first time we had a large-scale breach in the hills. Kids accidentally pull through something they can’t See, then pay the consequences for losing control.”

After I left the scouts the first time, my psychiatrist, Dr. Gardner, recommended anti-anxiety medication. Dr. Anita Silva-Perry, Ed.D, must have been the first mother in history to ask if her child’s debilitating mental illness might need to stick around. Apprehension is an evolutionary need, isn't it? Fight or flight? What if, on this medication, she just stands in front of an oncoming bus?

Scouts empower themselves and their 
community by maintaining an active lifestyle.
 Regular exercise promotes a circle’s capacity to 
handle and subdue emotional flare-ups.

Despite their lack of arch support, Keds have been the official shoe of the Ladybird Scout for the last hundred years. This pair is so beat up, the robins stitched to the heel are barely discernible, which is fine by me.

He steps inside the door, gingerly dropping the case of water with a plasticky crunch before sweeping me up in a tight hug.

The Beast gives an ambivalent shrug, true feelings cloaked by her sunglasses.

“Why don’t you both grab a water bottle?” I say, motioning down to the pallet on the floor.

If we dawdle for too long, Lo will just come get us.

“We’re a sisterhood, not friends or petty thugs.”
The Beast stumbles backward, dazedly blinking. Kelsey and Avi edge away from her as though the admonishment could spread to them.

Tía Lo raises an indifferent shoulder.

She must sense me seething, because she clasps my shoulder hard and jostles me.

As she gives my shoulder another squeeze, her thumb digs into the top of my scar, where there is a hard knob of mottled skin.

The interior trap lid pops closed, and a moment later a giant white centipede writhes into being.

Its body is water-balloon heavy, distended on my fear of failure.

Its rough legs scratch and scrabble against my bare forearms.

She hasn’t even changed out of her heels yet. I can hear them digging divots into the stairs.

Onscreen, the demon-clown makes a suspiciously adroit kick-stab combo.

The bare boards of the left wall are wallpapered in nerdy posters—a map of cryptids in North America, the ocarina songs from Zelda, a chibi Mothman and Sasquatch cheering up a crying Jersey Devil, various Star Wars blueprints at jaunty angles.

“When they tucker themselves out, I’ll be rested and ready to trounce them.”

As far as I know, the only food Kyle’s stepdad, Tim Mills, can make is charcoal-burnt hot dogs. Which are probably not what is ominously rattling the lid right now.

It scuttles back and forth, cracking its teeth, creeping closer and closer to the giant goth maniac bearing down on it.

Water dribbles threateningly from the tip.
“God, it’s like you all have never had a drink before,” I say to the boys with fake bluster.

“It had black eyes. It couldn’t kill anyone,” Avi says indignantly.

“I did kill that grub with zero help,” Sasha grumbles. I stare at her blankly until she gives a petulant stomp.

Unlike when my mom and Tía Lo run into their sister scouts, no one in my old circle rushes to give hugs or kiss cheeks. There is only awkward silence and the tacit understanding of a missing link. We aren’t a circle anymore.

Faithlynn arches an imperious eyebrow that betrays her true dishwater blond.

The Mare Island scouts’ eyes go reverently wide. Ugh. I forgot. They all know exactly who these scouts are. Or, at least, they think they do. They’re seeing the girls at the top of the leaderboard.

“They’re not as young as we were when we passed over the threshold,” Gabby says. The intervening years haven’t slowed her speech at all.

“You couldn’t pay me to patrol a town with an amusement park. You need a whole circle just to sweep out the Nock Jaws.”
Gabby ticks off two more items on her fingers. “Add in a high homeless population and encroaching gentrification...”

“Add in a high homeless population and encroaching gentrification...”
“Lots of misery,” I finish for her.

Apart from its waltzing gait, the Tizzy Louse defends itself via chemical repulsion.

Every primal instinct in your body maxes out, wanting to run far in the other direction.
Unless you can remember the flash card with the cherubic tangerine bell with the goldfinch smile and force yourself to act against every instinct lighting up your nerves.

The three of them rain down stabs on Faithlynn’s upholstery.

“We did it!” Avi cheers, bouncing up and down so that she’s intermittently Sasha’s height.

Would it kill her to smile or say something encouraging? Even Dame Debby would have a platitude at the ready.