Brianna was on watch duty during the play. She stood at the edge of the dock, swinging her Bowie knife around while the rest of the kids were watching a "modern Cinderella" play. That was okay, though. She really didn't have much interest in it, even if Cinderella was a sassy, rebellious teen.

Not that standing guard was very fun without any action. She kept repeatedly scanning the horizon for anything — Drake, a coyote, a helpless child, Drake. Preferably Drake. Brianna was dying to be the one to finally take him out. She'd be a hero. With her new Bowie knife she could easily chop him up and spread his body parts across the FAYZ. She'd like to see him try to regenerate after that.

Then she saw it, a coyote. Not close enough to be a danger to the lake, but how could she resist such a tempting offer?

Before the coyote even had time to move, she was already right next to it. It tried to spin around to attack her, but, unsurprisingly, she was quicker. She chopped off it's tail and it cried out in pain. Brianna laughed in delight at the effectiveness of her new weapon before she stabbed the coyote somewhere near the heart.

"Play dead," she grunted, and the animal went limp. She scanned around for others, but she couldn't see any. Sighing, she sped back to the lake.

She stopped abruptly in front of an irritated Dekka.

"Brianna!" she scolded. "You weren't supposed to leave your post."

Brianna rolled her eyes. "You're so uptight. I just went to kill a coyote." She raised her bloody knife.

Dekka glared at her before she turned and walked back to the play.

Brianna watched her leave. During the giant bug incident, Dekka had confessed her love to Brianna. Brianna didn't know how to feel about that. She'd always thought of her and Dekka as sisters, not like that. But now that she knew how Dekka felt, she might have felt the same way too.

But then there was also Jack. He was cute and smart, but did she really like him, or was she just trying to? Whenever they made out it didn't seem like anything special. She only did it because she was bored. She was only twelve, and people expected her to know if she was a lesbian or not.

She sighed, and leaned against a wooden post, watching the fake sun set.

Ever since the Perdido Beach fire, Roger had admired Edilio. While he hadn't actually seen him in action, since Roger had been unconscious — much to his embarrassment — but he'd heard what happened. How Edilio had helped in saving the town from the idiocy of Zil.

Roger hadn't thought twice about Edilio before that. He'd secretly had a small crush on Sam, but he'd never admit that to anyone. Edilio, in his opinion, was even more heroic and selfless than Sam.

Okay, maybe he was a bit obsessed, and it's not like Edilio was gay, anyway. The possibility was highly unlikely. But now, at the Cinderella play, he was sitting next to Edilio. His heart was beating irritably fast. They hadn't said a word to each other so far, but still.

He kept trying to gather the confidence to say something, but he was afraid of saying something wrong.

"This actually turned out better than I thought it would," Roger heard. It was Edilio. Was he talking to him? He looked to the right, where Edilio was sitting. He was looking at the person next to him, another soldier. Roger's heart sank. Of course he wasn't talking to him. He was just a civilian.

Suddenly Roger lost all interest in the play. He stood up to go back to his boat, but his foot knocked over Edilio's cup of water, spilling it all over Edilio's pants.

"Sorry!" he said quickly. He knelt down and picked up the cup quickly, saving a bit of the water.

"It's alright," Edilio said, his face reddening almost as much as Roger's. He rubbed off some of the water with his hand. He looked up and their eyes met for a moment. Edilio's eyes were a deep brown, and the setting sun reflected off them beautifully, making them look caramel.

Roger looked away. Now Edilio would think he was a klutz. Which might be true, but still, he was a bit chubby despite months of starving and he was nowhere near as attractive as Edilio. He had no chance.

"Sorry," Roger said again, and walked quickly back to his houseboat.

Dekka was grumpy, as usual. She was sitting at the edge of the dock as the sun rose in the false sky. She watched as the lake residents slowly woke up, and made their way to the food storage boat to get breakfast.

Her mildly peaceful time was interrupted when one of Edilio's soldiers came to get her. He told her that Sam called a meeting in the White Houseboat. Something about a septic system.

When she got to the boat, Sam, Edilio, a few of his soldiers and a few others were in the first room, standing around the edge.

"Dekka," Sam greeted. He was acting even more snappy than usual, probably because Astrid was still gone. "Alright, well, we can't keep peeing in the forest," he said. "We need some sort of system. Any ideas?"

There was silence for a moment, before Mohamed, Albert's "representative" of the lake spoke. "Albert talked to me about some ideas he had for a bathroom system," he said, a slight Middle Eastern accent. "He thought maybe we could do something like dig a big slit trench and put one of the train car walls on top of it, and set up little stalls over some holes that Sam could burn into the train wall."

"That could be pretty sweet, actually," one of Edilio's soldiers said.

"Better than shitting in a hole in your backyard," Howard agreed.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "What do you think, Edilio?"

Edilio looked at him. He blinked, looking distracted. "What was that?" he asked.

"What's wrong, 'Dilio?" Howard asked. "You hungover?" He smirked at an unamused Edilio.

"Howard, you're a filthy bottom-feeding—" Dekka started, only to be cut off by Sam.

"Of Mohamed's idea. With the train car walls," Sam said, ignoring Howard.

"Oh. Yeah," Edilio said. "Um... It's a good idea. I'll get people to help build slit trenches, but how would we get the train car walls all the way to the lake? That train is pretty far away."

"Albert says he can get Caine to do it for us," Mohamed chimed in. He added, "Not for free, knowing Caine."

Sam rolled his eyes. "'Course," he said, disgustedly. "What does he want?"

Mohamed shrugged. "Probably the usual extra fish. I don't know. I'll check with him on my next visit to town."

Dekka looked at Sam. "Am I still needed here?"

He shook his head. "You can go, Dekka. Thanks for showing up."

She left without another word, done with their attempt at politics. She was disappointed to see that her spot at the dock had been taken, but it was too noisy there anyway. The crowd at the food boat head cleared up, though. She decided to get breakfast.

Dekka stepped inside the boat, where a responsible boy named Dylan oversaw the distribution of the food. He was obviously bored, as he was repeatedly rolling two dice — rare items in the FAYZ nowadays — but he was dutiful and remained at his post.

He noticed her and sat up. "Hey, Dekka," he greeted.

"Hi, Dylan," she said back. "What's the menu for today?"

Dylan looked at his clipboard. "Uh... canned fruit and vegetables. Would you like pears or peas?"

"Pears."

He nodded to where two girls about nine years old were digging through a crate. The Artful Roger, a boy who Dekka knew only by name, was waiting patiently behind them. Dekka thanked Dylan and silently waited her turn before fishing out a can of pears. She turned to leave when Brianna blurred to a stop in the doorway.

"Hey, Dylan!" she said cheerily. Then she noticed Dekka, and her expression went neutral. "Dekka," she said, like she was greeting her teacher.

Dekka couldn't help but admire her. Her sloppy red pigtails, her fit legs, the bad-ass look the sawed-off shotgun sticking out of her backpack gave her.

"Brianna," Dekka said, venting all the stress and anger she had in that one word.

Brianna sped past her and back to the food crates without another word.

Dekka caught Dylan staring at her. She knew he knew about what happened between her and Brianna. And what didn't happen. Everyone did.

"What?" she snapped.

Edilio wasn't sure why the boy from the play kept crossing his mind. It wasn't even him knocking over the water onto his leg — he'd pretty much forgotten that detail — but it was the smaller things, like his eyes and his nervous, embarrassed smile.

He knew who the boy was. He was the Artful Roger, known for his artistic talent. His nickname was supposed to be a play on some person called the Artful Dodger, but Edilio had no idea who that was.

But that wasn't important. What was important was that Edilio couldn't stop thinking about him, and it frustrated him. Why was one boy he had no acquaintance so important to his subconscious?

Edilio sighed as he walked along the dock, taking a swig from his plastic water bottle. He'd just gotten out of Sam's septic system meeting, and was unusually fed up with Howard. Howard's puny insults normally didn't affect him at all, but today he was irritated. He just wanted to lay down in his dark houseboat room.

"Edilio!" someone called.

He pretended he hadn't heard them, but he heard footsteps behind him and exhaled in resignation. He turned around to see Jezzie, Sinder's friend. Edilio admired her resilience, as she was still wearing her signature all-black attire in the summer heat.

Smiling what he hoped was friendlily, he said, "T'sup, Jezzie? You need something?"

Jezzie stopped in front of him, bouncing slightly on her feet excitedly. "Yeah. It's really cool! Get Sam, too."

Edilio raised an eyebrow. "Cool," he repeated. "Why would this require Sam? Or me, really."

"It's really important, I swear," Jezzie insisted. She motioned to the east edge of the lake. "It's just down there, a few minute's walk."

Edilio considered this. He had nothing else to do. And maybe it would help get Roger off of his mind. "Okay, I guess," he said. "Go get Sam and bring him back here. I'm gonna get myself some food."

Jezzie nodded enthusiastically and ran bouncily toward the White Houseboat to fetch Sam.

After making a mental note to round up slit trench diggers later, Edilio turned to the food boat. He took another drink of his water as he walked inside. As he tilted his head back to drink, he ran right into somebody, and spilled his water on both of them.

It was Roger.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," Edilio apologized at the same time Roger squeaked, "Sorry!"

Roger's eyes widened in horror as looked up to see who it was that had run into him.

"I'm sorry," they both said again in unison. They stepped away from each other.

Edilio felt his cheeks grow hot. He looked at Roger, who was blushing, too. "I guess we're even," Edilio said, with a little laugh.

Roger nodded. "Yeah," he agreed, obviously uncomfortable.

They awkwardly looked at each other for a moment before Roger said, "Well... sorry, again," and then walked quickly away.

Edilio watched him go. Cursing himself silently for his idiocy, he walked inside the food boat and passed Brianna, who was leaving.

"Hey, Edilio," she greeted, before she sped away.

Dekka was inside, looking at him with interest. Edilio blushed at the attention.

"We have a lot to talk about," Dekka said, with a small smirk.