T. REX ON THE ROOF

The next morning, it was like everything that had happened the previous night was a bad dream. Okay, it felt like I’d been rinsing my eyes with sand, my tongue had been replaced with what tasted like a dead rat, and I had cake crumbs wedged in areas I didn’t know I had. But other than that, I felt pretty good.

Outside my window, the sun glinted on waves rolling onto a curving mile of gleaming white sand. Behind the beach, the town of Shark’s Bay sparkled in the morning sun. The sky was blue and so was the crystal-clear water.

A pod of dolphins splashed in the surf. It was hot, but nothing like the cauldron of yesterday. Bright-green parrots screeched through the branches of trees that edged the shimmering backyard pool.

Other than Bradley and Belinda, who were swimming laps, the view was magnificent. This trip might work out after all, I thought.

“Not too shabby, eh?” Leo said, and I had to agree.

I could get used to this.

There wasn’t even a trace of last night’s storm. Other than a crane lifting a Tyrannosaurus rex off the roof of a house a couple of streets away.

“Back up there, cowboy,” Leo said. “A T. rex?”

I jerked my head back toward the crane and saw that, despite no one in Shark’s Bay seeming even slightly concerned, it actually was a T. rex being lifted off the roof.

And I was an expert on T. rexes. By which I mean that I’d seen all of the Jurassic movies and still had the purple plastic dinosaur that Grandma Dotty gave me when I was six. Like I said, an expert.

“Oh, come on,” I muttered. “You gotta be kidding.”