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  The streets were teeming with othermothers during the day now, and most of them were in cornflower blue, but Bo had learned not to look at their faces or listen to what they were saying. It was easy enough to avoid them by ducking into low doorways or finding any sort of stairs—their lanky legs had trouble with both. He kept a medical mask in his pocket for the rare occasions he was spotted and recognized and they started wafting their sickly sweet-smelling pheromones.

  Bo saw what happened to the ones they killed, and sometimes to dead wasters. A pod would come to the site, pick up the body with big raspy pincers, and fly it away. Violet explained that it was recycling them to make new ones, which made Bo’s joints feel loose and watery, thinking how the othermothers were made at least partly of human meat. It was important to know, though, because that was how Wyatt said they would lure a pod away from the warehouses in the first place.

  Violet was a good teacher, but often impatient, and when he asked a question she thought was stupid she had a scornful look that let him know. Even so, the evening after he scraped his shin climbing a fire escape with her, he found a big stack of Dora the Explorer Band-Aids waiting by his bed.

  He used plain ones from the medicine shelf, but kept the ones from Violet too.

  8

  Violet didn’t usually pay attention to the calendar Elliot kept scrawled on the wall of the lobby, but now they were only a day away from the square he’d lassoed with black and red Sharpies. The spot was picked out, the weapons were ready, and Wyatt seemed to have full confidence in Bo playing the bait. Violet wasn’t feeling sick anymore—the brand switch seemed to have worked—but she did feel nervous.

  Up until now, there had been a kind of equilibrium. Lost Boys escaped, the aliens sent othermothers. Lost Boys killed the othermothers, the aliens sent replacements. Up until now, what happened outside the warehouses hadn’t seemed to matter all that much to them. But now there were more othermothers out than she’d ever seen, all of them looking for Bo, and the Lost Boys were about to provoke their enemy in a big, big way.

  As she crept through the dark lobby, Violet glanced over to the corner where her little protégé usually slept. He hadn’t shifted anything big since the semi—Wyatt’s orders, in case the Parasite only had so much juice in it—but she’d seen him practice little ones, sitting cross-legged on his mattress and zapping drifting beetles or crumpled pop cans out of existence while Gilly watched in awe. He could be distractible and over-eager when they were out in the city, not paying close enough attention to his surroundings, but when he shifted things he had a dead-serious focus.

  Maybe he’d gone and shifted himself too, because his bed was empty.

  “Where’re you going?”

  Violet jumped—she hated that, how she was still jumpy even now that there was nobody to be scared of. Bo was standing against the peeling wall, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. Violet switched the grocery bag she was carrying to her other shoulder.

  “Go to sleep, Pooh Bear,” she said. “Tomorrow’s the big day.” She walked past him into the entryway, but she could hear him padding along softly behind her. She turned.

  “I can’t sleep tonight,” Bo said. The sullen way he said it, the way his shoulders were slumped, made him look like a little kid again. He still was, really. Eleven was too young for all this shit. Maybe fifteen was too. Maybe any age.

  “I’ll give you a pill,” Violet said. “Knocks you out good and you don’t dream.”

  “I’m not having nightmares,” Bo said, scowling away into the darkness. “I’m just thinking.”

  “About the plan?” Violet asked.

  “No. About my mom.”

  “That’s even worse,” Violet said flatly. “Take a pill. Come on, I’ll show you which bottle.”

  “Where do you go at night sometimes?” Bo asked. His face flickered to sly. “I thought maybe you and Wyatt go meet up somewhere, but he’s sleeping on the stage.”

  “You just been sneaking around watching everybody sleep?” Violet asked, glad the dark hid her flush. Bo just shrugged and stood there looking sad. Thinking about his mom. She rocked foot to foot, debating. “You can come one time,” she said. “But it’s a secret. That means you don’t tell Wyatt either.”

  “Wyatt doesn’t know?” Bo sounded actually puzzled at the idea of Wyatt not knowing something, like Wyatt was supposed to be omniscient. It did seem that way sometimes, Violet knew.

  “You promise?” she asked. “Swear on your sister?”

  Bo’s face went serious, so much so that Violet almost felt bad for saying it. “Alright,” he said. “I swear.”

  Violet looked at him for another minute to make sure. He didn’t have a good face for lying. Didn’t have a good anything for lying. When he said something he either meant it with every bit of his body or with none of it. Right now he meant it.

  “Let’s go, then,” Violet said. She turned and led the way outside. The cold air slipped between her lips. She’d worried, in the beginning, about the weather changing. About winter, and how the Lost Boys would keep warm, never mind all the wasters freezing to death. But it was the same day every day, cool and cloudy gray, and the same night every night. Chilly, but not enough for frost.

  Up above them, the pods were starting to make their droning noise. The ship’s underside gave off its pale yellow glow, making her think of bioluminescence, like it was the stomach of some huge dark deep-sea creature.

  Violet switched her flashlight on and motioned the way. She’d thought maybe the trip would feel less lonely with Bo along, but he was uncharacteristically quiet as he followed her along the avenue, past the bombed-out liquor store, through a parking lot. Violet didn’t feel much like talking either. They cut diagonally across a park, through rows of twisty trees. The branches waved and trembled, reminding her a bit of an othermother’s grasping hands.

  “I came here before,” Bo suddenly said, breaking the silence. They were passing a playground, the skeletal silhouette of a swing set, a climbing frame, poles and bars.

  Violet looked over at him. “I did too, a few times. Instead of going home after school. There’s some real fucking creepers around, though.”

  “Didn’t have your bat?” Bo asked, grinning a bit.

  “It was my dad’s back then,” Violet said. “I hate baseball. Boring as shit.”

  She led the way across the dark street, then into the grassy alley that ran between peeling blue fences. She stopped at hers and hopped it. Bo came over nimbly, and then they were both standing in her backyard. Violet had the brief giddy thought that she was bringing a friend home, how she hadn’t done since grade school. Her mom would’ve been thrilled.

  “Your house?” Bo guessed.

  “Yeah,” Violet said. “I like to come back. Check up on it. And …” She paused, debating. She could tell Bo to wait and he would wait. She could go in and make sure her parents were still alive and keep it her secret, her one secret from Wyatt and the Lost Boys and everybody. But she’d kept secrets all her life, and she was getting sick of them. If she could tell anyone, she felt like she could tell Bo, who had sworn on his sister. “My parents are in there,” she said. “They’re alive. Clamped, but alive. I check on them.”

  “What?” Bo demanded. His voice was ragged and she knew at once she’d made a mistake.

  “Just in case,” Violet said, watching his face. He wasn’t a liar. He was angry, his brows knit with it, his mouth twisted.

  “You said they’re not people anymore,” he said. “Clamp’s in the head, better off dead. You said that. You told me that.”

  “We all say that,” Violet said, but she felt a hot wave of shame. She tried to turn it into something more comfortable—anger, mostly at herself. She shouldn’t have brought him. He was going to tell Wyatt and ruin everything. Wyatt would be pissed. Wyatt wouldn’t trust her anymore.

  “Wyatt says we’re a family,” Bo said, like he’d read her mind. His voice was screwed back tight against tears. “The Lo
st Boys, that’s our new family. We have to forget about the ones that are gone. Clamp’s in the head, better off dead.”

  “Bo—” Violet didn’t know what to say, and she was cut off anyway.

  “Clamp’s in the head, better off dead,” Bo chanted, sticking his hands over his ears. “Clamp’s in the head, better off dead.” He stalked past her, to the front gate, and swung himself over. She knew he was heading back to the theater. Back to tell Wyatt. She stood stock-still for a second, then followed after, feeling numb, unsure if she should try to stop him or not. She lifted the hinge on the gate and let herself out with a long creak.

  Bo had stopped short at the end of the gravel driveway, staring down the street. There was a reason Violet always came through the backway. Her street had come through relatively unscathed, but the rest of the neighborhood, the Wally’s, the elementary school, the storage units and apartments, were mostly blackened rubble. The ship’s fizzing blue exhaust had come down heavy here, and electrical fires had done the rest.

  Before Violet could say anything, Bo set off running. She watched him tearing down the scorch-marked sidewalk for a moment before she went after him. The pods in the sky had stopped their droning. The only sound in the night was their feet slapping the concrete. Violet hadn’t realized how quick he was until now, chasing him. He had a smooth gliding gait that seemed too long for his legs, and he was nimble, avoiding the divots and ruptures that pocked the road. Violet gave up on catching him and just tried to keep him in sight, her heart thudding hard and her breath loud in her ears.

  When he finally stopped, it was at the burnt-out husk of what Violet vaguely thought had been a duplex. She could see a few twists of blackened rebar from the foundation, some barely standing framework that looked ready to turn to powder at a touch. Bo stood upright at the edge of the ruin, breathing even, not winded from the run. But as she listened she could hear a sobbing whine building in his throat. She tried not to look for the telltale shape of bones in burned fabric.

  “Last place I saw her,” Bo said. “Last place I saw her. She told us to get out, and she was right behind us.”

  “Your mom?” Violet asked, soft.

  “Then the pod picked us up,” Bo said. “And I thought maybe it was trying to save us from the fire. I thought maybe another one had picked up Mom too.” He rubbed his eyes fiercely, kneading them with his knuckles until Violet wanted to tug them away, sure he’d bruise himself. “Stupid,” he said. “Stupid, stupid.”

  Violet felt ashamed again, ashamed that she’d brought him here, that she’d reminded him. There was a reason Lost Boys didn’t talk about their old family. There was a reason they had to kill the othermother. She reached forward and put her hand on Bo’s shoulder.

  He jerked away.

  “I hate the fuckers,” he said, turning to her with teeth clenched, tears sliding down his cheeks. “I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them—”

  Violet pulled him into a sort of hug. It was badly angled and she didn’t know what to do with her hands, but a beat later Bo hugged her back, hard. They stood clung together like that for what might have been a long time. Violet wasn’t sure. Eventually Bo pulled away, wiping his face on his sleeve, partly just to hide it, maybe.

  “We were neighbors, almost,” she said, just to be saying something.

  “Don’t you cry anymore?” Bo asked, one last bit of anger in his voice. Then he gave a shuddery sigh. “We were new here,” he said. “Had an apartment before. She was excited about this place, like … really happy, really excited for it. When we got the place, she called our grandparents and talked all in Hausa with them for an hour. Long distance. They don’t know how to Skype.”

  “Talked in what?” Violet asked, because it seemed important to ask.

  “Hausa.” Bo swallowed. “From Niger. I know a little bit. She wanted me to learn more. I only know the greeting you say in the morning. Ina kwana, lahiya lau. Ina gajiya, ba gajiya.”

  “What’s it mean?” Violet asked, because that seemed important too.

  Bo screwed up his face, thinking. “Like, how did you sleep? Good. Are you tired? No.” He shrugged. “Then at the end, she says to, madalla. And I think that’s like, good. Okay. Everything’s fine.” Bo shook his head. “It’s not, though,” he said, quiet.

  Violet put her hand on his shoulder again, and this time he didn’t flinch away. “Yeah, Bo,” she said. “I know.”

  9

  The next morning, the morning of what they had all started calling the mission, Bree dug out a battery-powered set of clippers. Bo saw her at work when he came back from the bathroom. She sat cross-legged on the lobby floor, looking down into a cracked Hello Kitty–stickered mirror, and moved the electric razor with deft swipes until she was surrounded by a dusting of shorn hair. Gilly, darting around behind her, was already sporting the same haircut and a mad grin.

  “What d’you think, Bo?” she asked. “Like soldiers, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Bo said offhand, then, when her face fell a little: “Sure, you look cool.”

  Gilly’s grin got even wider and her cheeks went pink. “Bree can do yours too,” she said. “Can’t you, Bree?”

  From the floor, Bree clacked the clippers off and on in affirmative. Bo dug a hand into his hair. He’d been able to find the shampoo his mom used to buy for him, but he had to lean over the drain in the bathroom floor and dump bottled water over his head to rinse it out. The knots and tangles were past combing and pushed out his hood when he tried to pull it tight. The shaved head made Bree look older too. Tougher.

  Everyone was waiting for Violet and Wyatt to come back. They were out watching the wormy wall, waiting for the first wave of othermothers to exit. Then it would be time to hunt.

  “Yeah, okay,” Bo said. “Might have to use scissors on it first.”

  “Got those too,” Bree said. She stood up, brushing loose hair off her neck and face, and motioned to the spot she’d vacated. “Have a seat in the barber chair.”

  Bo sat as still as he could while Bree hacked away, and by the time she’d finished there was a queue forming, first Saif and Alberto, then Jon, then even Elliot and his thick brown mop. When he was buzzed clean, Bo helped sweep the fluffy piles of his hair away, then went to the bathroom mirror. He ran his hands over his scalp and the stubble prickled his palms. His reflection in the mirror looked harsher than it used to, and it wasn’t only the haircut either. He hadn’t noticed that his cheeks were starting to slim down. His eyes were different too, darker underneath.

  He liked it. Bo bared his teeth at the mirror, then came back out. Bree was working on Alberto, shaking his dark curls out of the guard. The air inside the theater was thick and buzzing with excitement, and it ramped up each time a Lost Boy stood up, head shorn. Bo could feel his heart beating quicker than normal and goose bumps on his arms. The adrenaline was infectious, like every bit of touch or eye contact was more meaningful than it had ever been. Bo’s Parasite was moving, and he knew everyone else’s was too. It was partly the knowing that charged his skin with static.

  People started to cheer for whoever it was getting shorn, and once the last girl, Jenna, was done, they started the rhymes. Bo knew some of them already, like the whirlybird one: I eat firsts, seconds, thirds, whirlybirds can eat my turds. That was from back in the warehouses. Bo chanted loud as anyone. Quiet Saif had a new one, one that caught and carried and made Bo’s spine tingle. The othermother’s not my mother, I done killed one I’ll kill another.

  He knew, by the math, that the othermothers they used for the first bait would probably be wearing his mom’s cornflower-blue dress. But it wasn’t his mom, and he couldn’t let himself think it was. He had the second bait to worry about. So Bo chanted along with the rest, letting the excitement course through him, until Gilly, who’d been watching outside the door, ran up to tell him Wyatt and Violet were coming.

  “They’re coming!” Bo shouted. “Shut up!”

  To his surprise, mostly everyone did. They
respected him. They knew what he could do with the crackling Parasite in his stomach. Feeling like he was on the crest of a wave, like he could do anything at all, Bo raised his arm.

  “In a line,” he ordered. “Everybody in line.”

  When Wyatt and Violet stepped into the lobby, all the Lost Boys, heads shaved, eyes forward, were standing in a row. Violet had been on the verge of saying something, but her mouth shuttered closed when she saw them. She looked worried for a second, nearly scared, but Bo spared her only a glance before he looked to Wyatt.

  Wyatt was grinning a fierce grin, eyes bright. He walked slowly down the row, and when he passed Bo he gave him a nod, and Bo gave it back. At the end of the line, Wyatt turned.

  “Where do I get mine done like that?” he asked.

  Gilly couldn’t hold back her cheer, and then Bree was getting out the clippers again as Wyatt peeled off his shirt. He sat stock-still while she sheared the blond locks away from his head, only moving his eyes, scanning back and forth while his Lost Boys all got geared up. Some had knives, some had found police batons; the others, Bo included, had makeshift blackjacks tied off by Elliot’s tight knots. Elliot had made the hooks too, and fastened them all to the bungee cords. Jon was helping spool them and pack them into the backpack.

  Bo looked for Violet and realized she was skulking in the shadows by the door, her face stony, nostrils flared. They hadn’t spoken since they came back last night. He caught her eye and hesitantly raised his hand, miming the clippers. He could guess why she didn’t want to, but it felt important that everybody do it, so they were all the same. All Lost Boys.

  She gave half a shake of her head, looking angry and almost pained. But Bo didn’t have time to worry about her as Wyatt stood up, brushing the last bits of hair off his wiry shoulders. Everyone went quiet without needing an order.

  “Most of the othermothers are heading downtown,” Wyatt said. “Remember, we want to get them isolated first. Pick one, lead it off, take it out. We want three bodies fast, so we’re doing three groups. Me, Jon, and Violet leading.”