Chapter 28

Nurse Leibowitz is throwing me around and twisting my arm, but I won’t let go. Because this is my chance to do something really important and save the world and, also, I don’t want to get hurt.

Finally, I wrench the crossbow away from her.

And now I’m standing with this sharp weapon, pointing it at her, and she’s standing there in front of me and it’s, like, who am I?

“Don’t move!” I yell. “Or I’ll—”

Oh my God, what will I do?!

“You’ll what?” Nurse Leibowitz snickers. “That crossbow couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“What?” Simon exclaims.

“I work at a camp with children, for God’s sake. I totally sanded down the arrow tip. See? I even glued rubber over it.”

While we’re all trying to figure out how to respond to this, Nurse Leibowitz holds up the tablet.

“You’ll never catch me!” she cackles. “And you can’t prove any of this!”

“Oh, yes, we can,” I say in a really stern voice that I didn’t know I had. “Because I”—I tilt my head down—“got it all on film, which will one day be my new opus.”

“You still got pus?” Pops asks.

Nurse Leibowitz looks kind of shocked. Her face droops, and her mouth opens and closes like she’s gonna says something, but she just looks like a fish who can’t get air.

Lily lifts the tablet from her hands. “That’s what you get for being evil and wearing last decade’s athleisure wear.”

At that moment, police sirens whine up the road. The cars screech to a stop. Car doors open and slam. The sounds of voices and stampeding feet head our way.

“We’re down here, officers!” Yipsy yells. Before she can bolt, we surround Nurse Leibowitz like a human cage.

“Is this you saving the world?” Nathan asks, dumbfounded.

“It looks that way,” I reply.

A bunch of police officers rush down the embankment. I place the crossbow on the ground, and we all start talking over each other. The police confer with Yipsy—even though they don’t seem completely convinced that he’s a reliable witness, since he’s covered in hardening, cracking white goo. But, somehow, they manage to get most of the story. Yipsy offers to accompany them down to the station to fill in the details.

“I’ll come too,” Nathan says, still looking totally confused, like he accidentally walked into the carnival funhouse in someone else’s nightmare.

The officers handcuff Nurse Leibowitz. Just as they’re about to haul her off, she cranes her head over her shoulder, looks straight at me, and shouts, “One zero one four five one!”

And giggles.

I’m too tired to even wonder what that’s supposed to mean.

It’s almost dawn now. Somewhere in the distance, birds chirp, and the woods are alive with the sounds of cricket-y, croaking, woodsy things. The sky is fading to yellow-white as a light breeze blows in from the lake. In the distance, I hear the muffled sounds of kids. Camp Challah is waking up.

George, Pops, my mates, and I stand in the small clearing in the big woods. Nobody seems to know what to do or say.

“Wow,” Tyler finally says.

“You were awesome, Noah,” Mia tells me.

“It was nothing,” I reply with a shrug.

“No, really,” she insists. “You were epic. Like, song-worthy epic.”

I’m embarrassed to feel a hot blush crawl up my neck and onto my cheeks.

“Glad that’s over,” says Josh with a weary sigh. “I’m starving.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Simon asks.

“What’s that?” Tyler says.

My eyes meet Simon’s.

We say it together: “We still have to save the world.”