Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

I hear someone clear her throat behind us. When I turn, I find Bex standing a few yards away, holding my empty backpack. She’s wearing a miniskirt, a Superman T-shirt, and a pair of Mary Janes that add two inches to her already-tall frame. She’d look hot if it weren’t for the impatient crease between her eyes.

“We’re out of food,” she says. “If you’re done killing each other, we need to go shopping.”





Chapter Two


I KNOW IT’S NOT SOMETHING I SHOULD BRAG ABOUT, but I’m really good at shoplifting.

Of course, I had to learn the hard way. My first attempts were embarrassing. I was too nervous, fumbling with my backpack and looking around suspiciously. I got caught six times in a row! On one of my first tries, the Korean owner of a convenience store chased Bex and me into the woods with a shotgun. We had to hide in a wetland all night while he shouted Korean profanities and mosquitoes dined on our skin.

Anyway, I learned some things from those experiences, like to avoid stores where the guy behind the counter is also the guy who owns the shop. This is how he pays his bills, and it means a lot to him. Big chain stores like 7-Eleven and Wawa don’t pay their employees enough to care if you walk out with a case of Slim Jims, so they don’t when you do.

Making a list is also helpful. My mom used to make them when we went for groceries at C-Town. She said it helped her stay focused. She was right. The stores I’m ripping off have a rainbow of colorful distractions and can hypnotize you with their endless varieties of corn-syrup-soaked foodlike products. When I go in, I know what I want to take, and if it isn’t on the list, then it stays on the shelf.

But the real secret to my success is what I call the four simple steps:



1. Find a store with a male cashier, somewhere between the ages of nineteen and fifty-five.

2. Dress Bex in some hoochie clothes.

3. While the cashier/pervert is drooling over her, fill up the backpack with necessities.

4. Run like maniacs.





For the most part, the four simple steps are foolproof, just so long as Bex has Cashier Boy’s attention. Unfortunately, today’s “shopping trip” has a bit of a snag in it. Bex is in a mood and not talking to me.

“It’s nothing,” Bex says as she applies a thick layer of eyeliner in the side-view mirror of our Dodge Caravan.

“It’s something,” I mutter. The tension between us grows like weeds these days. I assumed it was due to sleeping in construction sites and wearing the same clothes for days on end. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to think. My friend is an enigma, the queen of the emotional stiff-arm, and few can see the trouble behind her happy eyes. I’ve learned ways to get around it, but nothing seems to work now. All I know for certain is that “nothing” is about me.

“Forget it, Lyric,” she whispers as she touches up her lip gloss, then steps back to get a better look at herself in the tiny mirror. She looks like she just stepped out of Lolita. When you combine all the tiny clothing, makeup, and her natural sun-kissed California-girl face, she’s impossible not to notice and, we hope, impossible to resist.

“How is it that we have both been washing our hair in park fountains, eating the same diet of Snapple and Swedish Fish, and yet you look like you’re ready for the runway, while I look like that thing that lives in the folds of Jabba the Hutt’s skin?”

“Let’s get this over with, all right?” she says, then walks across the empty street.

“I do not approve of this behavior,” Arcade seethes. She sits on the hood of the Dodge, staring at our target, the Piggly Wiggly across the street. Unlike Bex, Arcade’s stiff-arms are not so emotional. They’re more like angry uppercuts. There’s no beating around the bush with her feelings. Right now she’s looking at me like I’m something on the bottom of her boot.

“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Arcade. We’ve got to eat,” I explain, reaching into the back of the Caravan for my water bottle. I eyeball it to make sure it’s full, then slip it into my backpack.

“There is honor in hunger.”

“If we starve to death before we get to Tempest, that would be disappointing.”

She grunts.

“In the hunting grounds, my people threw thieves into the black chasm to feed the Leviathan.”

“Leviathan?”

“A mammoth beast as big as a ship with a thousand teeth and a taste for brains,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Is there anything where you’re from that’s not gross?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she turns her disapproving gaze back toward the store. Out front is a sign featuring a cartoon pig with a big “Come on in, folks!” grin on his fat pink face. I don’t think he’d be smiling if he knew what I’m planning.

“Stay in the car and try to stay out of sight,” I beg her. Like Bex, Arcade is a beauty, but there is something slightly nonhuman about her appearance that draws a lot of attention.

“A Daughter of Triton does not hide,” she barks.

There’s no point in arguing with her, so I hurry to catch up with Bex.

I find her out front peering through the store’s big windows. A large NO COASTERS! sign is taped to the glass.