Scout's Honor: Chapters 14–19

Perform in-the-field triage, including (but not limited to) wound dressing, splint crafting, and safe practices for moving an injured person from a dangerous area.

“The first day of sparring is crucial, Prudence. Proper form is essential for developing new talent,” she says primly.

I truly don’t know if I’ve ever seen that smile aimed at me before. I might have only ever witnessed it secondhand while Paz basked in its glory.

“Hey, Sa-sha,” I say in a cajoling singsong. “Could you, um, not? I’m kind of hosting a baking show here.”

“I’m just saying that the all-pink ensemble is a little Baby Gap,” Sasha says, waving a hand over Avi’s monochrome pastel outfit.

“Excuse you, but the Handbook says that wearing pink helps establish us as a friendly, feminine presence in the neighborhood.”
“You know that just because something rationalizes its misogyny doesn’t mean you have to participate in it?”

Racing through the analog arcade, past the dilapidated Skee-Ball games and miniature basketball hoops, we pass through the automatic doors and into the enclosed courtyard full of neon-orange tables.

He leans back, attempting to rest his elbows on the tabletop behind him. It’s a move that Paul would pull off with effortless finesse, but Chancho misses twice, looking like a chicken ruffling its feathers.

It’s so difficult not to picture grubs lurking at the bottom, teeth and claws poised to strike.

“Ladybirds move toward danger, not away from it,” I chastise, sounding so unforgivably like Mom that I instantly wish I could wash my mouth out.

I wait on the other side of the pit for all of the babybirds to extricate themselves from the cubes.

I look back, but all I can see is the Nock Jaw blocking out swaths of the luminous paint on the ceiling.

My toes skitter to the edge of the floor, teetering at the precipice of a yellow tube slide.

Avianna tattled, Jaxon tattled, Kelsey went home and immediately told her parents all of the scout secrets, everyone is going to find out about Paul and Sasha getting the Sight from my initiation ceremony, Faithlynn Brett has finally found a way to make me prove that my championship Root shot was a fluke.

I push the sleeves up my wrists and fold my hands in an effort to look contrite.

Being brought into the fold feels like it should have more pomp and circumstance. A formal written invitation would have been nice. Perhaps a commemorative plaque.

No fanfare for Dr. Anita Silva-Perry. Just the facts rabbit-punched directly into your brain.

“Your scouts are not ready to hunt anything in the Carnivore class, and to tell the truth, you are not qualified to teach them how to handle White-Eyes. But you were saying at dinner that they were showing positive growth in hunting Critters. That will become your sole purview, freeing those of us who can safely fight Carnivores to do so. Your scouts can master banishment and hunting techniques in the field, just as they did today at The Wooz.”

Well, she’ll be out of commission for a while, I think. It’s so hard to lose a scout.

Dejected, I walk back inside where the air-conditioning makes my skin prickle.

I examine my hands against the calico granite.

Aside from the mottled seam on my left arm, there are healed-over gouges on my shins and grub bites on my knees, and a long slice across my back where Gabby once accidentally cut me during a fight with a Frightworm.

“Maybe they would have been nicer,” I grumble, thinking of the dispassionate way Mom and Tía Lo talk about scouts dying. How they never tear up, no matter how devastating the news.

Sometimes, it’s just hard loving someone from outside your group. Even a group that isn’t privy to the secrets of the multiverse.

“Sure, yeah. Many hands make light work and all that. We’re running covert drills,” I say.

Both blades crack into the Scranch’s jowls, pinning it to the ground like a scientific specimen.

When Paul starts flirting in earnest, we’re normally looking at losing him to another social group.

He’ll follow a girl into whatever clique she came from and forget about the Criminal Element entirely for a month or two, then show back up, single and ready to chill.

“Are you guys here about the Carnivore attack in Solano Park?” I blurt.
It does work to puncture Paul’s and Jennica’s heart eyes, but only by replacing them with horror at my distinct lack of tact.

Molly would always toss her hair too hard or take steps too small, just to make Faithlynn mad. Which would make Jennica mad. Which would rile Gabby up enough that we’d end up pulling through a grub big enough to fight.

“Our very own patrol route!” Avi swoons, her head dipping toward the ground.

Connected to the trunk, it twists toward the ground. As though it’s taffy, not solid black oak. Across the trunk, a horizontal slash.
Sasha mashes her thumb inside the arboreal wound.

“Who’s having feelings all the way out here?” Kelsey asks, looking around at the bike trail and sparse trees.

“Probably someone who lives in that neighborhood,” Avi says, pointing at the wooden fences that butt up against the grove.
“Grubs go where the people are,” I concur.

“I could have paid for it,” Sasha mumbles with a surly frown.

The weight of fear makes her shy away from Kelsey’s proffered box of Oreo O’s.

They count seven Pippy-Mint plants downstairs—including the one on the top of the toilet tank—and fawn over Mom’s collection of emergency weapons mounted inside the coat closet.

“The hatchet is the most traditional Ladybird weapon,” Mom says, in repose on the couch.

But for this one fleeting moment, I don’t feel inferior to my sister or like a disappointment to our legacy. Today, I am fit to be my mother’s daughter.

Warmth spreads through my chest, a happy glow that wants to believe that the sisterhood could actually feel as simple as this. The babybirds make it so easy to be a Ladybird. No competition, no emotional manipulation. Just actual belonging.