Free Croak by Gina Damico Page B

glare at Zara, who now had a smug look on her face.
    “Getting late,” Uncle Mort said. “You ready to head home?”
    “Already?” Lex glanced up in disbelief at the darkening sky. Hadn’t she eaten breakfast only a little while ago?
    “I told you time flies.” He turned to face Zara. “Thanks for your help, Zar.”
    “No problem. And good luck tomorrow,” she told Lex. “You’ll need it.”
    “Why?”
    “Oh, no reason,” she said as she walked back toward town. “Your partner is just an acquired taste, that’s all.”
    Lex snorted. “Who around here isn’t?”
    ***
    The second she entered the kitchen, Lex realized she was famished. “I’m about to gnaw my arm off,” she said to Uncle Mort. “What’s for dinner?”
    “Dinner?” He seemed confused. “I already gave you breakfast.”
    “Well, on most planets, guardians feed their kids three meals a day.”
    “That seems excessive.”
    “What are your feelings on frozen pizza?” a third voice asked.
    The boy from that morning stood idly in the doorframe, once again wearing that maddening smirk. “Mort doesn’t really believe in cooking,” he said, swinging into the room. He opened the freezer door and nimbly transferred a pie from the box to the microwave. “He calls it a waste of time and sulfuric acid.”
    Lex attempted to disguise the mangled expression of intrigue and annoyance that had involuntarily appeared on her face. “And you would know because you’re his . . .”
    “Pool boy.”
    “There is no pool!” She turned to Uncle Mort, the ire rising once again. “What is he
doing
here?”
    Uncle Mort heaved an overdramatic shrug. “What are any of us doing here, really?” he said, waving his hands philosophically.
    “Jesus. You’re both evil.”
    “That’s no way to talk about your uncle,” her uncle said.
    “Or your partner,” Driggs added.
    “What?” Lex squawked, a whole new stew of emotions bubbling over. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed the salt shaker and hurled it at him, followed by the pepper. “
You’re
my partner?”
    Driggs caught both items and began to juggle. “Yes, he is,” said Uncle Mort. “And in case you’ve forgotten, you still have a full week of training left—training that I can easily cancel and turn into a one-way ticket back home if you keep acting like a troglodyte.” Lex frowned, but lowered the sugar bowl she had readied. “So you two better find a way to get along. Now hug it out.”
    “No way.” She eyed Driggs. “I’m not hugging that.”
    “Oh yes you are.” Uncle Mort was enjoying this little show. “Befriend or else.”
    She had no choice. Careful to avoid Driggs’s gaze, Lex reluctantly entered into the frosty embrace.
    “You have no intention of befriending, do you?” Driggs whispered.
    “I’d rather take a bath with a toaster.”
    Oblivious to their murmurs, Uncle Mort gave a satisfied nod as they withdrew. Driggs, a mischievous look in his blue eye, removed the half-cooked pizza from the microwave, sliced it into two sloppy halves, and gestured for Lex to follow him. “We’re gonna go do some trust falls, okay, Mort?” he said, disappearing with the plates out the door.
    “Yeah, okay,” Uncle Mort muttered as they went outside. “Go bond.”
    Lex watched Driggs clamber up a ladder with their dinner. “Climb,” he said.
    There comes a time in every young girl’s life when she is instructed by a complete stranger to scale a tall ladder for dinner atop a roof, and in almost every case the best thing to do is refuse and run home to call the asylum from which the stranger escaped. But after a day of ending people’s lives and slicing through space and time with a magical switchblade, Lex figured another heaping dose of absurdity couldn’t hurt.
    So she grabbed at the rungs and flung herself up onto the gently sloped surface. “Here,” Driggs said, tossing her a slice.
    Unfortunately, Lex and projectiles had never gotten along very well. She