Page 76 of The Dysasters

She trotted down the hall, peeking into Tate’s room before heading downstairs. Sure enough, he was gone. Bed was made and everything neatly in its place like it magically reset itself every morning. If only Foster could get a little bit of that magic. She practically hopped down the stairs, finally feeling energized as the dark of her room slipped off of her like a skin and the sunlight, casting fun house–mirror shapes along the floor and walls, kissed each patch of her bare flesh.

“Eggs,” she said with a chipper sort of finality. “I’ll make eggs beforeSabine gets here and has a chance to look at me all vegan and disapproving about my life choices.” She rushed into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl from the cabinet before stuffing her feet into her tennis shoes. “And this has nothing to do with those chickens who woke me up,” she said to whichever deity might be listening. It wasn’t spite. It was her stomach.

On her way to the coop Foster paused, flailing her hands, and the bowl, above her head in an attempt to get Tate’s attention from across the vast pasture. It was no use. He was out there with those, she cringed,horses.Or at least that’s what everyone kept calling them. She sighed and continued her short trek to the chickens’ living quarters. To Foster, those two mares would always be dinosaurs and the people who rode them would always be crazy.

Foster stopped short of the coop with its pale gray siding, cheery white shutters, and fully fenced-in yard area where the chickens could chicken about without fear of being eaten by some wild animal. It was a perfect playhouse-sized version of the main house, which is exactly what Finn had intended when he’d built it. And it was nice.Reallynice. Like, nicer than the vast majority of the motels she and Cora had stayed at. But those hadn’t been filled with chickens.

“Hi. Hello. Hi,” Foster said, bending over and ever so quietly tiptoeing to the small and open front door of the coop. Gingerly, she waved at the hens sitting sleepily in their nesting boxes. “How’s it going?” Foster set down the bowl and rubbed her sweaty palms on the butt of her shorts. “So I’m just going to grab this right here maybe.” She tentatively reached into the chicken coop.

“Bwak!” The chicken fluttered its wings and seemed to puff to twice its original size.

Foster yanked her hand back before the chicken had the chance to peck her to death. “Sorry, ma’am. Sorry.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and crouched into a squat. “It’s just that you happen to be sitting on something that I need.”

The hen let out a short cluck of protest.

“But, see, that’s kind of why you’re here—so we can have your eggs. I mean, there’s that whole debate about which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but what if neither came first and they both came at the same time and you, being the chicken, were like,hmm, I guess I should sit on that,but me, being thehuman, is telling you that you don’t have to. I’ll take it for you and… sit on it. You know, so you can have a break.”

“Are you trying to rationalize to that hen why you’re taking her eggs?”

Foster could almost hear Sabine’s eyebrow arch sardonically. “No.” She picked up the bowl as she rose to her feet. “We were just talking about…things.”

A bee buzzed around one of Sabine’s Princess Leia–style buns and she shooed it away with a calm wave of her hand. “Sure you are.” Her smooth eyebrow arched even higher, if that was possible.

“So, scones.” Foster eyed Sabine’s hands, which were empty except for the iPad she clutched against her stomach. “Where are they?”

“The kitchen. I left them in there when I came out here to get you.”

Foster’s mouth watered. “Are they chocolate chip today? Man, I love it when you make chocolate chip.”

“It’s starting.” Sabine thrust the iPad in Foster’s direction. “All morning I’ve been trying to figure out a better way to tell you, but I guess that’s why they say you can’t polish a turd.”

Foster couldn’t force herself to grab the device. She didn’t want it to be real. It couldn’t be real. Only a few minutes ago she had told herself that she wouldn’t think about those other kids, and that there was a chance that everything would be okay—that Doctor Rick, the Fucktastic Four, the entire outside world would leave her and her new family alone.

Sabine moved next to Foster, pressing the triangular button glaring up at them from the darkening screen. Foster stared speechless at the purples and reds and oranges and yellows swirling on the screen.

“Hey, Sabine!” Tate pecked Foster on the cheek before giving Sabine a friendly hug. “Finn’s out feeding, but said it was important I—”

“It’s happening.” Foster wiped a stray tear from her cheek before Tate or Sabine saw that it had fallen. “Heading for Texas,” she passed the iPad from Sabine to Tate who was back by her side. “Galveston if I read the map correctly.”

“No, no, that can’t be right.” Tate stretched his fingers across the screen, zooming in.

“Foster’s right,” Sabine said. “It’s not very big, actually it’s the opposite—small, powerful, deadly, and completely focused on its trajectory. It’s heading straight for Galveston.”

“Foster,” Tate’s voice was almost a whisper, and he took a deep inhale before continuing. “There’s, uh,” the way he avoided her gaze made her heart feel like a trapped lightning bug. It knocked wildly against the confines of her chest, only slowing as the realization set in.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

There was no place to fly to.

“Something I should have told you…”

Her light dimmed then, the way the bug would have after it lost all hope.

“Well, I should never have kept it from you.”

Dimming. Dimming. Dimming.

“I shouldn’t have lied.”