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As a delighted murmur rose from the gathering crowd of men, Wisper shot Petal a look, and her talkative sister finally discovered another fine place to put a period.

“Sorry,” Petal said, a little hurt. “I was just selling you, is all.”

Wisper’s look said plainly that additional selling would be severely punished.

“Okay, fine,” Petal whined, and as every available male in the place tensed for the frenzy of bidding to commence, she opened the floodgates. “Then, without further ado, which is such an odd thing to say really, especially if you don’t know what an ‘ado’ is…”

Wisper rolled her eyes and held up a hand.

“What am I bid?” she said, not needing a microphone to be heard.

“One hundred thousand dollars!” a voice shouted, closing any potential floodgates with a slam.

Wisper’s eyes went wide and she froze, hand in the air.

The entire audience, including me, gasped and turned to her bidder-slash-suitor. Washburne just smiled that cat-eating-my-girl’scanary smile of his and stared unblinking at Wisper. She only stared back, though without the same feelings I noted. Washburne, apparently, believed a hundred thousand to be the magic number, given Ms. Waboombas’ instant success.

And from the looks on all the men’s faces, and the fact that I was broke, he was probably correct. I gritted my teeth and fumed. Dammit. How did ordinary people live without wealth?

“Oh,” Petal said. “Wow. That was fast. So. Okay. I guess we’re done. Going once, going twice…”

“Five hundred thousand!” I said.

If it was possible, this new gasp was even louder and more shocked than the previous one, and now every eye trained on me. Which really wasn’t a good thing because at least some of the eyes belonged to police officers and angry teenagers, possibly one or more of those who had been chasing Morgan and me earlier. And apparently Ms. Waboombas hadn’t quite gotten River out of the picture quickly enough because I saw their faces appear at the edge of the crowd, and River just couldn’t be less happy, no matter which part of him you studied.

“Withdraw your bid!” Wisper snarled.

“What?” I said, caught off-guard by her anger.

“I do not want you bidding on me!”

“Do the rules say anything about you getting a choice in the matter?” I asked.

She said nothing and continued glaring at me, then abruptly turned to Petal, who looked sheepish and could only shrug.

“Never been a problem before,” Petal told her older sister.

Wisper turned her attention back to me, speaking volumes without saying a word.

“Then my bid stands,” I said.

She glared at me, fixedly, as her expression slowly softened to one of hurt and sadness. It was unexpected, and I instantly wanted to do whatever it took to make her happy again. Except withdraw my bid.

Then Washburne went and made things even worse.

“Seven hundred thousand!”

I drew a breath to respond, but Wisper cut me off. “Let it go!” she said furiously.

“No,” I said, and began to speak again, but she cut me off once more.

“I don’t want anything to do with you!” she said. “Not now, not ever! Don’t force me!”

Now it was my turn to be hurt.

Every eye was on us, ping-ponging back and forth between her and me with expectation, and I could physically feel how everyone present wanted more—if just so they could understand what the hell was going on. Unfortunately for Wisper, I wanted to know too, and only stoked the fires of interest in the crowd.

“Why not?” I asked, genuinely not understanding.

“Why not?” She was plainly shocked at my ignorance. “Look at you! You’re the only one in this entire crowd, in almost this entire town, who’s wearing pants—if you can even call what’s left of them pants. Yet I know—inside—you’re thinking we’re the one’s who are weird.”

I started to respond, to deny it, but then abruptly realized she was right and only goggled, wordlessly, like a gaffed flounder. To my mind, even with the modest gains I’d made in my time here, on some level I believed that everyone in this town was weird.