Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke

around?” 
    Sunshine kind of smiled at me, and I kind of smiled  back. She drank the last sip of her iced tea, and set it on  the nearby porch railing. “So what have you found out  about the stranger living in your guesthouse?” 
    “I haven’t asked to see his ID, and I won’t, because it’ll  sound stupid now. And he’s terrible at answering questions, so I know almost less than I did before. Are you still  planning to get him drunk and steal his wallet?” Sunshine leaned back in the swing and looked at me. 
    Her eyes were sharp and honest—a rare expression for her. 
    “River doesn’t like me. And his liking me was a vital part  of that plan.” She paused. “Did you ask him if he saw the  guy with the furry teeth too?” 
    I nodded. 
    “And?” 
    “He said that he didn’t see anything.” 
    “I figured. It doesn’t matter. I know what I saw.” Sunshine was quiet for a moment.“Look,you two go ahead to  the movie.I’m going to stay here.Maybe a mysterious new  guy will pull up and want to move into my guesthouse.” 
    ≈≈≈  
    River had the picnic basket ready to go when I got back to the Citizen.We took the path into town for the third time in the last eight hours. 
    The park was packed with people, and the sky was smoky and getting dark fast. We were late. The front spots were all taken, but the movie screen was big enough to see from the back of the square.We walked by a bunch of kids from school, but they didn’t really acknowledge me, and I didn’t really acknowledge them. It wasn’t that any of us hated each other. There wasn’t enough passion on either side for that. Everyone knew that our parents had been gone for a long time, but they didn’t know whether to feel sorry for us parentless ex-rich kids or be envious of our freedom or make fun of us for having weird, artisticparent problems. So people left us alone. I guess they thought we were snobs, like Daniel Leap. 
    Luke did better than me, socially. He was more attractive and a lot less sensitive. But that was all right. The only person I was ever easy talking to was Freddie, anyway. 
    And River, I realized. I was easy enough with River. I threw the quilt I grabbed from the house onto the ground, far away from my classmates. I caught sight of Gianni among the group. He was tall, and dark, and he had mischief in his deep Italian eyes, which I liked. He worked at the café sometimes with his parents, when he wasn’t working at their pizzeria, and he liked to talk to me about fair trade beans,and flat whites,and the perfect foam on a cappuccino. He tended to lose his temper over requests for artificial syrup flavors, like white chocolate, and it was pretty charming. 
    Gianni caught me looking at him, waved, and smiled. I smiled back. 
    On our right was a group of laughing little kids—they were playing with a bunch of red yo-yos and having the kind of wholehearted fun only kids can have. I wondered what they were doing at Casablanca. I supposed their parents kicked them out of the house after supper and they just headed toward the action at the center of town. I wondered if they would stay for the film,and chatter all the way through it. But then I decided I didn’t really care. 
    River and I dug into the olives and the cheese and the baguette and watched the kids while we ate. There were six boys, all with yo-yos, and one girl with a hula hoop. I recognized one of the boys. He was maybe eleven, with dark red-brown hair, and pale, freckled skin. I’d seen him around town a lot and had been struck by how grave he seemed, for a kid. Sometimes he had a pack of boys with him, and sometimes not. Mostly he was just all on his own.He’d started coming into the café sometimes,drinking coffee too young, like me. 
    After a few minutes, an older kid crawled out of the dark beyond the town square and started bugging my yo-yo boys. He had shaggy dark hair and a mean look in his eyes, like a wild, half-starved dog. He