"I will freaking pulverize you, Ezekiel!"

As the scream echoed across the pool, Tyler, Katie, and Noah all put down their plastic forks and turned quizzically towards the tiki smoothie bar where Eva sat with Izzy (well, Izzy was upside-down spinning around on her head), as if they thought she had been the one to shout it. She actually looked offended that they had assumed it, Eva. Not that Ezekiel could blame her- it was a guy's voice. A high-pitched guy's voice, but a guy's voice still.

"Honest to goodness, I will do it! Don't test me!"

"C'mon, Coody. Here comes the plane."

Seething, the injured boy opened his mouth and allowed Homeschool to slip the soup in. "Aw," he cooed, scooping up another spoonful, "you're bein' so good 'bout this, biscuit."

The boy tried to kick at him, but his knee twitched about two inches and that was all.

Ezekiel glanced over his shoulder a second time as Eva splashed through the water towards the two of them and the other three teenagers who sat with their feet dangling in the shallow pool. "That you who yelled, Feathers?" she asked, gesturing vaguely at his nose with her cherry smoothie. Instead of shaking his head like a sane person, he shrugged. "You sure? 'Cuz it sure sounded like it was you. Or Homeschool himself."

Noah muttered something into his sandwich that even Ezekiel didn't catch. Eva tugged her left earbud out again. "Repeat?"

"I said that's no surprise."

Tyler about choked on his porkchop, spitting bits all over his swim trunks. Eva tipped up a brow. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

"It's me, Eva," Cody snapped, making a second and slightly less pathetic attempt to kick the spoon from Ezekiel's hand. "The first thing that's going to happen when I get out of these bandages, is I'm going to tackle Ezekiel onto the couch and then I'm going to sit on his head, and then I'm going to make him stay there while I drawl on about Freud and Schrödinger."

She blinked. "You talk. With all those scars on your throat, I guess I kinda thought you lost the ability."

Ezekiel hesitated with the spoon as Cody's eyes flickered down towards his chest. Then they came back up again, bright and blue. "They're bad, aren't they?"

Shrug. "Worst I've ever seen. What happened, anyway? We've heard rumors, but I didn't catch the whole story. They hurt?"

"Why do you care?" Katie asked, leaning back on her elbows.

"I don't care about his dumb feelings, I just wanted to know. Yeesh! And you. What are you doing, pussycat?"

Swallowing a couple of lumps, Ezekiel batted his innocent lashes at her as he clinked the spoon back in the soup bowl. "Feedin' Coody."

"Well, hit the road already." Eva flicked a thumb over her shoulder. "I'm taking over."

Ezekiel stared up at her, his brows crossed. He glanced around for a road, and, finding none, looked to her again and shrugged.

"Take off, Homeschool." Eva waved her hands at him for emphasis. "Get lost! Scoot! Scram! Toss the food. You've been lollygagging around over here long enough. You're Vitamin-D deficient. I want your butt out from under this thatched overhang thing and running laps out there in the sun. Or do I gotta snap your wrist?"

"No thank you," he whispered. He dropped the bowl on the tray and scooted off to join Noah, Tyler, and Katie where they sat with their plates (Tyler didn't have a paper bag handy, but something about that joke Noah had made had clearly upset him, because he'd yanked down his red headband and was breathing into that instead- Didn't his family believe in the wall thing?)

Eva watched this, hands on her hips. She clapped her hands. "Scrawny! Laps!"

"You didn't have to be so rude," Cody mumbled. "He was just trying to help."

"I thought you wanted to pulverize him."

"Well." The boy looked at his bandaged feet. "Not really."

Eva snorted a second time. "Trust me, new kid- stick around here long enough and you'll want to. We all do. Hey! Homeschool!"

So Ezekiel broke into a trot. He hadn't gone far before Eva hollered, "On the grass, you dipstick! No running around the pool unless you wanna break open your dumb skull like a freakin' coconut!"

"You know, that is scientifically proven to be a metaphor," Noah was saying when Ezekiel, puffing through his cheeks, came around for his second pass. "It's not literally going to break just because I said that Tyler and Homeschool have the same-"

The sky lit up with lightning. Noah yelped to rival the thunder, and in an instant he'd scrambled into Katie's lap, forcing Ezekiel to nearly slip and scramble around them as she overbalanced. Somewhere in the forest behind them, a tall pine groaned and toppled over with a thud. Without further warning, it began to rain. Ezekiel adjusted his toque and paused beneath one of the rubber palm trees.

"That… that was almost certainly a coincidence," Noah assured himself, not letting go of her shoulders. Katie sighed and patted his hair.

"I'd be worried in your place." Eva tossed over her shoulder. "Your big fat head is a tough target to miss."

"Oh, well then it's lucky I won't have to worry about being struck first, considering that you're dripping wet and your skull is filled with iron." He slithered away from Katie, rubbing down his arms. "I'm going inside."

Eva snapped her fingers above her head. "Hey pussycats, listen up! Fruitcake's got the right idea here. No one swims for thirty minutes after lightning. We're moving in. Everyone hustle. Chop, chop, chop."

As Katie and Tyler scrambled off, Noah spun around to scowl at her. He clutched his book and towel to his chest and seemed to be having a heavy inner debate on whether or not he wanted to stay out in the storm just to spite her. Ezekiel hoped he would. Then maybe all of Eva's focus would switch to him, and she wouldn't notice if 'Homeschool' slipped away for the remaining six weeks.

"Dare you," she snorted at him, and taking Cody's wheelchair by the handles, she started for the hotel. "Let's make sure you of anybody gets in. You're broken enough without having your metal chair zapped by lightning too."

"I can take it," he protested, trying to squirm around and peer over his shoulder at her. "Electricity's nothing new to me, seriously. I'm practically immune to shocks."

"C'mon, Noah," Ezekiel said, waving for him to follow as he bounded after her.

The others had grouped in the lobby to towel off. Wet patches covered the striped sofa, and every other step landed Ezekiel's foot in a puddle. Mess, mess, mess. Eva knocked her knuckles on each skull as she counted them off, and then she stopped. "Wait. We're missing one."

Tyler pointed down the hall on the right. "I j-just watched Izzy take off for the basement closet to throw together a storm cellar. The other day she brought all the blankets up to the card room though, so-"

"Iz- Oh, you mean the Loony Bird. Yeah, I'm not worried about her. I should be, but I'm not." Eva looked around the lobby again. "Where's Pretty-Boy?"

Katie's hand shot up. "I'll go look for him!"

So she turned and plowed back through the double doors. The rain had already started to pick up speed, shifting from a drizzle to a tentative downpour, sloshing across plastic pool chairs. Wheels squeaked on carpet. Eva asked Cody if he "actually liked any of this crud", and when he admitted that the fruits and soup Ezekiel had brought him were not his preferred snack, even if "it was heaven after Chef's cooking", she dragged him down to the kitchen. Tara and Samantha darted out fast, and the door slammed behind them.

Ezekiel glanced at Noah. Noah wrinkled his nose. He glanced at Tyler. Tyler set his jaw and nodded. Together, the two of them crept down the hall and placed their ears against the door.

"… Yeesh, tough wheelchair," Eva was saying. "I'm just messin' with ya, scruffy. You mean Feathers. But if you're gonna stay here, you gotta pick up on a few rules like the rest of the guys."

"Like…?"

"First one, I've given everyone here a stupid nickname. You will learn all of said stupid nicknames, and if you talk to me, you will refer to each one by aforementioned stupid nickname."

"That will take awhile. I have a hard enough time remembering their real names on a daily basis. You'll have to take it easy on me."

She chuckled. "Fat chance, Mummy Boy. Now, we gotta get you a real nickname too, and fast."

"I thought my name was Bandages."

"It is. For now. But eventually you're gettin' out of those, and I can't keep calling you 'Bandages' when that happens. That doesn't make any sense."

"Eva," he said, "You just called Noah 'Fruitcake' and Tyler 'Feathers'. That doesn't make any sense."

"He was coated in feathers when we dragged him off the boat. What do you expect?"

"Was he? Huh. That's weird." Something clattered to the floor. "Y'know what? I want to play this game Cody's way. I like nicknames, so I'm going to give you a one too."

"You want to give me a nickname?"

"Hey, you branded me with Bandages. Just for that, I'm giving you the most stupid, most grating, most irritating nickname of all time… You don't have a problem with that, do you, Albert?"

Tyler covered his mouth. "He's dead as cats," he whispered. As softly as Tyler could whisper, anyway.

"Did you just call me Albert?"

"Do you hate it?" Cody sounded positively delighted. "I just thought I'd call you that. Y'know, after Albert Bandura- the guy who did the Bobo doll experiment and basically pointed out the flaws in the idea of catharsis, AKA the belief that redirecting one's anger on an unaffiliated target reduces levels of internal turmoil. Brilliant choice, Codemeister. You've really outdone yourself this time."

Eva groaned. "Great. I just befriended another freakin' nerd. What's your department of expertise?"

"Oh, I actually have an art gift. But my mom's a psychologist. It's rubbed off. A little."

"Huh. Just don't get annoying with it. I think those bandages have lulled you into a false sense of security. Don't push me, new kid. Paralyzed or not, I will mash you to a pulp if you get me angry. Right now, I'm not angry. Who beat you up?"

"Oh. I got mauled by a bear."

"You got mauled by a bear." A plate clinked down on a hard surface. "Hang on," Eva said, and Ezekiel could pick up a trail of jumbled lyrics as she popped out her earbuds. "You got mauled by a bear. You got mauled by a beat and that's how you lost half your face."

"Heh heh. I kinda did, didn't I? You think this is bad? You should've seen how he came off after that fight.

"Nuh-uh. Shut up."

"Okay. I was just messin' with ya, dude. Yeah, I got wrecked."

A fork scraped across glass. "But you did get mauled, at least? Don't tell me you were lying about that part. I hate liars."

"I guess I did."

"What's that s'posed to mean?"

"Well. That's what everyone says happened, at least. I don't actually remember it myself. Not a fleck."

"Here. Oreos. Open wide."

Their conversation trailed into chewing and mutters from there. Ezekiel waited a little longer, but at last pulled his ear away when, up the hall, Katie bounded back in dragging Justin after her. He scrunched his eyebrows at Tyler. Tyler understood the question before it was asked and simply shrugged. "Huh," Ezekiel muttered and, scratching behind his neck, went off to dump his soaked towel in the laundry.