╓╫╨
The thing at her bedroom window asks if she’s ready. She does a quick mental inventory of her backpack:
- Birdcall
- Compass/signal mirror
- Thomas Guide of the tunnels underneath Crab Mountain
- Mora knife emblazoned with her heraldic badge (merman impaling the sun w/trident)
- Midol Teen Formula
- The makings of a false nose
- Eight fortune cookie fortunes all saying the same thing (A smooth long journey! Great expectations.)
- Six darts tipped with curare
- A stack of Sacagawea dollars in a bottle of prescription medication (Ziprasidone)
- Three smokecherries constructed from her own recipe of sugar, gunpowder and finely ground conium maculatum
She nods. The thing raises its ghostly black skeletal hand for a high five.