“Hi, Celia.” The boy’s eyes flicked up and down the road as his fingers massaged the bruise that circled his eye. “I’m Rampage. We haven’t had a chance to talk one on one, but, like, heya and how you doing?”
The short-haired girl leaned against the brick wall of the community center with her hands folded across her chest. “Hey, I’m Trix.”
“I thought all the hunters were supposed to be hunting Krawl,” Celia said. “Did something happen? Is everything okay?”
“Okay?” The girl laughed and shook her head.
“Not even close, not even a little bit.” The boy looked behind him, eyes darting everywhere before he fixed his gaze on Celia. “But last night I dreamed you’d be on this road, and we have to tell you something.”
“Road’s empty, Rampage. Make it quick,” the girl whispered. She stepped onto an overturned planter box and stood a couple of feet above them, scanning the road. A shivery wind blew snakeskins past them.
Celia bit into the stale bagel and chewed while she listened to them.
“Yeah, so Celia, so um, there’s this thing Ruby doesn’t exactly want you to know.” The hunter spoke fast and his words blurred into each other. “It’s like, when I dream, I sometimes get tiny glimpses of the future. Like, not that I’m magic, and it’s nothing useful, mostly, but . . .”
“We haven’t got all day, Rampage,” Trix reminded him.
“Yeah. So. The thing I keep dreaming about is . . . you.”
Celia shoved her hands in her pockets and shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Do you know what I’m supposed to do?”
“Nah. If I knew that, I’d win the prize for best hunter in the world if there was that kind of prize. All I know is that your face is plastered all over the future, and a lot of terrible things might happen. Like destruction and death and stuff. And there’s something we think you should know, doom girl.”
“Get on with it,” the girl said, and ran her hand through her stubbled hair.
He nodded and licked his crooked teeth. “Yeah, so Ruby told all the hunters that you had to think being the doom girl was a straight-up good thing. She said you had to learn the doom prophecy a little wrong, so you would choose right. The real prophecy says, The city will shake and the girl will be found. The city will hiss and the girl will run. The city will fill with silent words and the girl will decide. And that’s it. That’s all.”
“Get it?” the girl asked. “Ruby added on the last part about how you would decide to save the city. The real prophecy doesn’t say anything about what you’ll decide. So don’t go thinking you can’t mess things up, or that you’re destined to be a hero or something.”
Celia blinked. Her world tilted and moved, but this was no earthquake. She took a step back from both of them. Saving the city had felt like way too much, but at least it was a good thing. And now, maybe she would decide something right or maybe she would get it all wrong?
“You’re the girl who decides which way things go. You’ll choose good, now that you know it’s a choice, right? Trix and I got worried that since you wouldn’t know, you would just stumble into doing bad.” He bounced up and down in his thick leather boots as he spoke. “We tried to talk to Ruby about it, but she doesn’t like it when people disagree with her.”
“But you won’t, right? Not even if the hunters lose track of you and we aren’t there to make sure you do the right thing?” the girl added.
Celia’s eyes narrowed into slits. “If they lose track of me?”
Both hunters suddenly got very interested in studying the ground.
“You mean the hunters were ordered to babysit me so they can force me to do whatever they think is the right thing?” Celia’s stomach clenched and twisted. Amber and Ruby don’t like me. We’re not friends. I’m their job, same as hunting Littles, she thought.
The boy whispered, “Sorry.”
Trix jumped down from the planter box. “What’d you expect? The world isn’t made of fairies and Care Bears. We have to do everything we can to stop the Bigs. The monsters are the bad guys. The hunters are just trying to do what’s right. You get that, don’t you?”
“Right,” Celia echoed. Except when the monster was a sad boy who fought against his own nature to watch out for her. Except when the good guys lied to her and pretended they liked her.
“What are you thinking, doom girl? About all the ways you’re going to save people, and not destroy them, right?”
Celia shoved her cold hands into her coat pockets. “What would Ruby and Amber do if they thought I was about to choose the wrong thing?”
“Hunters got to do what we got to do,” Rampage said, and shrugged. Behind him pigeons and crows pecked and squawked at each other.
“Time to bounce,” Trix whispered. She ducked down like she was tying her shoes. “Hunter girls at two o’clock.”
Celia scanned the road and saw Ruby and Amber over a block away.
“Tell me what they’ll do to me if they don’t like the decisions I make,” Celia said again, but the two hunters had already disappeared into the community center.
Amber leaned against Ruby as they walked down the street. I’m not their friend. I’m nothing to them, Celia thought. All of that was a way to trick me.
“Celia!” Amber cried out. She grinned with a phony, pretend-friend smile. “I’m so glad we found you.”