“For thousands of years, the T. rex thought it was unstoppable. Then a giant rock came, and boom!” Marcy snapped her fingers. “He’s not the king of the world anymore.”

“I don’t have a meteor, and if I did, that would kill more than just the sirens,” Harper said.

“My point is that nothing is unstoppable, and the T. rex wasn’t as great as he thought he was. I mean, what were those little arms for?” Marcy pulled her arms back into her sleeves, so her hands made short imitation T. rex arms, and she wiggled them back and forth. “What an idiot.”

“The dinosaurs weren’t as smart as they thought they were.” Harper leaned forward on the desk. “Maybe that’s it.”

“If he fell over, how did he get back up?” Marcy continued to wiggle her hands. “Those little arms weren’t doing anything.”

“Maybe we can’t kill them,” Harper said, ignoring Marcy’s dinosaur impersonation. “But maybe we can outsmart them.”

“How?” Marcy asked, and finally pushed her arms all the way out of her sleeves.

“I don’t know. But they’re still partially human.” She turned to face Marcy. “Maybe we can reason with them and work something out.”

“Hey, anything’s possible.” Marcy shrugged. “Except for a T. rex doing push-ups. That just isn’t happening.”

“Oh, my gosh, Marcy, you have a one-track mind,” Harper said, and got up from the desk to find some actual work to do.

“I have a one-track mind?” Marcy scoffed. “We spend every day talking about sirens, but I want to spend an afternoon talking about the T. rex and his ridiculous appendages, and I have a one-track mind?”

“You’re right.” Harper paused, unable to tell if Marcy was actually annoyed or just pretending. “I’m sorry. We can go back to talking about the T. rex.”

“Good. Because yesterday I read 1001 Exciting Facts About Dinosaurs while you were gone,” Marcy said. “And today I plan on sharing all of them with you.”

28. Fireworks

TWENTY-EIGHT

Fireworks

It still didn’t feel right. Gemma had reassured Harper a hundred times that she’d be fine, and Harper had talked to Alex, who told her he’d be right next door keeping watch on the house. Plus, Brian was in the living room, watching an Indiana Jones marathon on TV.

So it wasn’t like Harper was leaving Gemma unguarded. Still, when Daniel knocked on the door, Harper almost told him that she couldn’t go. But Gemma all but pushed her out of the house, insisting that Harper have a nice time on her date.