13 PLAN B

13 PLAN B Lunar day 252 T minus 19.5 hours to evacuation When I entered the rec room, things were bad. Violet was cowering in a corner, defiantly holding a set of hologoggles, while Patton advanced on her menacingly. Patton's face was as red as his father's had been, and there was rage in his eyes. Kira was yelling at Patton to leave Violet alone, while Lily was cheering him on. Kira looked terrified. Lily looked disturbingly excited, like a spectator at a dogfight.

"Patton!" I yelled. "Stop!" Patton froze in his tracks and whirled toward me. The blood drained from his face in fright. He instantly went from red to white, like he'd been bleached. He'd apparently been so angry with Violet that he'd forgotten all about the space snakes. "Don't call the snakes on me!" he pleaded, then pointed accusingly at Violet. "She started it! She kicked me!" "He deserved it!" Violet argued. "Kira and I were in here, playing Unicorn Fantasy, and then they came in and tried to boot us off!" "We asked nicely," Patton protested. "Like heck you did," Kira said, then looked to me. "They tried to take the goggles right off us. Violet was only defending herself." "Yeah, you big jerk!" Violet screamed at Patton. "I hate you!" Patton seethed with rage and spun toward Violet, his fists clenched. "Don't you dare touch her!" I yelled. It surprised me how forceful I sounded. Patton backed down, torn between his anger at Violet and his fear of me. However, Lily Sjoberg grew even more excited, as

though she had been anticipating this moment. "Or what?" she asked me tauntingly. "Are you going to call your space snakes on us?" "Lily...," Patton said weakly. "Don't..." "Oh, give it a rest, you moron," Lily told him. "There's no such thing as space snakes." "Yes, there is!" Violet said. "And if you don't back off, Dash will call one here and it will swallow you whole and then barf up your bones." She was probably trying to be helpful, but her threat made the space snakes sound even more ridiculous than usual. If anything, this encouraged Lily. "All right, then," she said confidently. "Call them, Dashiell. I'm not afraid of them." She came toward me, smiling cruelly, enjoying this. I thought back to what I had just learned about her, how she snuck into the greenhouse at night to sit among the plants. Even if she was the kind of person who took time to contemplate the wonders of life now and then, she was still a bad person. She was cruel and mean and as big a bully as her brother. Bigger, maybe. I looked around the room, hoping Zan might make a sudden appearance. Maybe she could present herself to Lily as something even more

hideous than what she'd shown Patton, scaring the pee out of her, too, and then the Sjobergs would finally leave the rest of us alone once and for all. Only Zan didn't show herself. We were on our own. "You should be afraid of them," I said, although the threat sounded hollow, even to me. "Don't tempt me." "You mean I shouldn't try to hurt you?" Lily continued toward me, her wicked smile growing bigger. "Even though you cost us our ComLink privileges...." "I didn't cost you those," I protested. "You're the ones who broke the rules here." "And you're the one who ratted us out to Nina!" Lily snapped. "The whole time we've been at this base, you have been constantly causing trouble for us." "Me?" I asked, backing away. "You've been bullying me and everyone else since you got here!" "Because everyone here has been horrible to us," Lily said. "But you... You have been the worst. You even tricked my poor brother into believing in these stupid snakes. He's been a wreck because of you!" Lily's eyes narrowed into little angry slits. "So now I

think I am going to tempt you. Because I need to prove to Patton once and for all that you're a liar and a fool." "My brother isn't a liar!" Violet shouted. "Show them, Dashiell! Call those snakes!" I glanced outside the rec room, looking for an adult or two who might be walking past, someone who could come to my aid. To my dismay, the only adult I could see was Sonja Sjoberg, and Sonja wasn't going to be any help at all. Instead she was standing in the doorway, watching everything transpire with glee, her overinflated lips curled into a frightening grin. Just my luck. Normally, I couldn't do anything at MBA without an adult stumbling onto me, and now when I needed one, there was no one to be seen but the dragon queen. Lily was now looming over me. She was a head taller than me and built like her brother, big and broad-shouldered. I had never considered fighting a girl, but I figured that Lily could probably wipe the floor with me. "What do I have to do to see these snakes?" she taunted. "This?" She poked me hard in the chest with a sharpened fingernail. Patton cringed, as though Lily had made the

worst mistake of her life. But of course, no snakes appeared. Because I couldn't conjure them up. All I could do was make a final desperate bluff. "Trust me, Lily, you really don't want to do this." "Oh, I do," she said. "I really do want to see them. What if I do this?" She shoved me backward with an open palm. "Lily! Stop!" Kira yelled. But Lily kept on coming. She was grinning broadly now, pleased that she'd called my bluff. Behind her, even Patton seemed to grasp what was going on. "Hey!" he growled. "There aren't any snakes, are there? You tricked me!" "Of course he tricked you, you idiot!" Lily shouted. "The snakes don't exist. This twerp can't defend himself against us. Which means it's payback time." Now Patton grinned cruelly as well. His hands clenched into fists and he stormed toward me. It seemed that he'd spent the last month building up hatred for me, and now it was all about to come flooding out. "No!" Kira yelled. "Patton! Don't!"