Bubba must never have removed old flyers, because I spotted a bunch of old stuff—the announcement requiring Texas high school students to take combat class instead of gym, a seminar discussing scrab origin theories, even a newspaper article from 2013 about the attack in New Orleans, with a photo of President Obama standing amongst the wreckage. The walls were more history than advertising.

“All right, Clara,” Bubba said as he walked through the door and sat down at his desk. He pushed aside a coffee mug. “That’ll be twenty.”

I dug the bill out of my pocket, flattening it with my hand against the counter before handing it over. Bubba whisked it into a box in the top drawer of the desk. I swallowed as I watched it disappear. With the exception of a few quarters, that was all the money I had. I’d been saving that twenty for months.

The television mounted on the wall above my head was silently playing the news, and Bubba glanced up at it. The words Grayson St. John and Elite Fighting Squad scrolled across the bottom of the screen, beneath a photo of three scrabs standing over a destroyed food cart in Beijing. The scrabs looked a bit different depending on the region—in Asia they were large, typically six or seven feet tall, with enormous bodies covered in spikes. They ran on all fours and mostly used their massive mouths full of fangs to fight. Scrabs in Europe and the UK fought on two legs and made better use of their front claws. North American scrabs were a mix of both, but everyone said ours were smaller and kind of sluggish compared to the rest of the world.

I wondered which version Bubba had modeled his dummy after.

“You thinking of joining?” Bubba asked.

“Uh, I don’t know.” I was too embarrassed to say yes.

He squinted at me, running a hand over his dark beard. “You got any special skills or anything?”

“No.” I tilted my head. “Well, maybe. Is surviving a special skill?”

“I guess?” Bubba said it skeptically, probably thinking of my four deaths he’d just witnessed. But Bubba didn’t know. Not really.

“Yeah, I’ve got that, then. Not dying. That’s what I’m good at.”

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About the Author

Author photo by Carey Hough

ERIN BOWMAN is the critically acclaimed author of numerous books for teens and children, including the Taken trilogy, Vengeance Road, Retribution Rails, The Girl and the Witch’s Garden, and the Edgar Award–nominated Contagion duology. A web designer turned author, Erin has always been invested in telling stories—both visually and with words. Erin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and children.

Visit her at embowman.com

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