Lies

sometimes. But not always.”
    He dropped his hand to his side.
    “You have leprosy?” Caine demanded.
    “Like at Sunday school?” Bug said.
    Sanjit nodded. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, if your finger falls off, you kind of don’t even feel it.”
    “I felt it when my penis fell off, but it didn’t hurt that bad,” the one called Choo said.
    Penny yelped. Caine shifted uncomfortably. Bug fadedfrom view as he backpedaled away.
    “But people are scared of leprosy, anyway,” Sanjit said. “Silly. Kind of.”
    “What are you doing here?” Caine asked warily. He had put down his food, keeping his hands ready.
    “Hey, I should ask you that,” Sanjit said. Not harsh but definitely not willing to be pushed around by Caine, either. “We live here. You just got here.”
    “Plus, you killed one of our sheep,” Choo said.
    “This is the San Francisco de Sales leper colony,” Sanjit said. “Didn’t you know?”
    Diana began to laugh. “A leper colony? That’s where we are? That’s what we half killed ourselves getting to?”
    “Shut up, Diana,” Caine snapped.
    “You guys want to come back to the hospital with us?” Sanjit offered hopefully. “All the adult patients and the nurses and doctors are gone, they just disappeared one day. We’re all by ourselves.”
    “We heard there was some movie star’s mansion out here.”
    Sanjit’s dark eyes narrowed. He glanced right, as if trying to make sense of what she was saying. Then he said, “Oh, I know what you’re thinking of. Todd Chance and Jennifer Brattle pay for this place. It’s, like, their charity.”
    Diana couldn’t stop giggling. A leper colony. That’s what Bug had read about. A leper colony paid for by two rich movie stars. Their charity thing.
    “I think Bug may have gotten just a few of the detailswrong,” she managed to say between dry, racking laughs that were indistinguishable from sobs.
    “You can have the sheep,” Choo said.
    Diana stopped laughing. Caine’s eyes narrowed.
    Sanjit quickly said, “But we’d rather just have you come back with us. I mean, we’re kind of lonely.”
    Caine stared at Choo. Choo stared back, then looked away. “He doesn’t seem to want us to come to this hospital,” Caine said, indicating Choo.
    Diana saw fear in the younger boy’s eyes.
    “Have them take off their bandages,” Diana said. All urge to laugh was gone now. Both boys had bright eyes. The visible parts of them seemed healthy. Their hair wasn’t brittle and broken like hers.
    “You heard her,” Caine said.
    “No,” Sanjit said. “It’s not good for our leprosy to be exposed.”
    Caine took a deep breath. “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to throw your little lying friend there straight into a tree. Just like I did with this sheep.”
    “He’ll do it,” Diana warned. “Don’t believe he won’t.”
    Sanjit hung his head.
    “Sorry,” Choo said. “I screwed it up.”
    Sanjit began unwinding the gauze from his perfectly healthy fingers. “Okay, you got us. So, allow me to welcome you to San Francisco de Sales Island.”
    “Thanks,” Caine said dryly.
    “And yes, we do have some food. Maybe you’d like to join us? Unless you want to stick with your sheep sushi.”

    Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the shell-shocked kids of Perdido Beach milled around, lost and confused.
    But Albert was neither lost nor confused. Throughout the day kids came to his office in the McDonald’s. He had a booth there, in a corner by the window so he could look out on the plaza and see what passed by.
    “Hunter came in with a deer,” a kid reported. “And some birds. About seventy-five pounds of usable meat.”
    “Good,” Albert said.
    Quinn came in, looking tired and smelling of fish. He sagged into the seat across from Albert. “We went back out. We didn’t do very well since we got started late. But we have maybe fifty pounds usable.”
    “That’s good work,” Albert said. He calculated in his head. “We have about six ounces a head of meat. Nothing from the fields.” He tapped the table, thinking. “It’s not worth opening the mall. We’ll do a cookout in the plaza. Roast up the meat, make a stew out of the fish. Charge a ’Berto a head.”
    Quinn shook his head. “Man, you really want to get all these kids together in one place? Freaks and normals? As crazed as everyone is?”
    Albert thought that over. “We don’t have time to open the mall and we need to