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Starkey is annoyed that she’s asked such a question in front of the flashlights, the towel, and the water bucket.
“He won’t squeal,” Starkey says, tousling his hair.
“But if he does?”
He turns to the towel kid. He’s one of the younger groupies who’s always trying to win Starkey’s favor. “What do I always say?”
The kid takes on a terrified pop-quiz look. “Uh . . . smoke and mirrors?”
“Exactly! It’s all smoke and mirrors.”
That’s the only answer he gives Bam—and even the answer is a foggy deflection, a nonanswer that avoids the question. Would he hurt them? Although Starkey would rather not think about it, he knows he’ll do whatever is necessary to protect his storks. Even if it means making an example of someone.
“Speaking of mirrors, have a look,” Bam says, and hands him a mirror that she tore off the side of someone’s car.
It’s hard to get a full view of himself—he keeps having to shift the mirror to catch the entire visual effect. “I like it,” he says.
“You look good as a platinum blond,” she tells him. “Very surfer dude.”
“Yeah, but surfer dude doesn’t exactly inspire trust from adults,” Starkey points out. “Cut it. Make it short and neat. I want to look like an Eagle Scout.”
“You’ll never be an Eagle Scout, Starkey,” she says with a grin, and some of the other kids laugh. It actually hurts, although he won’t show it. He first got interested in magic when he was younger because of its value as a Boy Scout merit badge. Funny how things change.
“Just do it, Bambi,” he says. Which makes her scowl, as he intended. The other kids know not to laugh at her actual given name, lest they face her formidable wrath.
When Bam is done, Starkey could pass for the boy next door when he smiles, or a Hitler Youth when he doesn’t. His scalp still stings from the bleaching solution, but it’s not a bad feeling. “You know, I’m not the only one who needs to change identities,” he tells Bam, after the other kids have left.
She laughs. “Nobody’s touching my hair.”
Bam has hair just short enough to be low maintenance. Her clothes are mannish, but only because she detests prissiness. Once and only once she made a pass at Starkey, but it was quickly deflected. Another girl might have folded and turned painfully awkward around him, but Bam took it in stride and carried on. Even if Starkey had been attracted to her, he knows acting on it would have been a bad idea. He’s not foolish enough to think that a relationship here in the relative wild will last, and adding that kind of complication to his relationship with his second in command would be foolhardy. As for other girls, the fact that he can have any girl he wants is a perk of his position he knows he must apply with careful discretion. He gives the same eye contact, the same lingering smile to every girl—and even to the boys that he can tell have an interest. It’s all part of his subtle control. Keep them all thinking they’re special. That they can be more than just a face in the crowd. These little touches carry big weight. The illusion of hope, combined with a healthy fear of him, keeps all his storks in line.
“I don’t mean changing your identity, Bam,” Starkey says. “I mean our identity. This guy did figure out who we are. To be safe, we can’t be Camp Red Heron anymore.”
“We could be a school—that way it won’t just get us through the rest of the summer, but will work once the school year starts too.”
“Excellent idea. Let’s make it a private school. Something that sounds exclusive.” Starkey runs through his mind all the storklike species he knows. “We’ll call ourselves the ‘Egret Academy.’â??”
“I love that!”
“Get that artsy girl what’s-her-face to design the shirt again—but not so bright as the camp’s. The Egret Academy will be all about beige and forest green.”
“Can I come up with the school’s history?”
“Knock yourself out.”
There is a fine line between hiding in plain sight and flaunting their status as a fugitive band—Starkey knows how to ride the edge of illusion like a tightrope walker.
“Make it sound legit enough to fool the Juvies, if we come across any.”
“The Juvenile Authority is a pack of idiots.”
“No, they’re not,” Starkey tells her, “and that kind of thinking will get us caught. They’re smart, so we need to be smarter. And when we do strike, we have to strike hard.”
Since their ill-fated flight, there have been no stork liberations. Starkey had rescued several storked kids about to be unwound back during their stay at the airplane graveyard, but Connor was the one with the lists of kids about to be rounded for unwinding. Without a list, there’s no way to know who needs to be rescued. But that’s all right—because while saving individual kids and burning their homes as a warning is fine and dandy, Starkey knows he is capable of far more effective measures.
He has a brochure for a harvest camp that he keeps in his pocket. He pulls it out when he needs reminding. Like all harvest camps brochures, it features pictures of beautiful bucolic scenery and teens that are, if not happy, at least at peace with their fate.
A bittersweet journey, the brochure proclaims, can touch many lives.
