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“Why?” Ava blurted out. She wished to God she’d remembered to bring her own sunglasses.

“I just think you’re an interesting person,” Buff said. “I think we might have some things in common.”

“Like what?”

Suzi and her friends rose up out of the water, Suzi’s friends helping her hop up the beach, and they all plopped down on their towels again, laughing. Suzi, Ava remembered, had been told by their parents not to go into the water, because it might strain her knee. Suzi herself had told Buff she couldn’t swim, but she must’ve decided to give it a try—good way to get more attention. Ava waved at Suzi, who appeared to be turning to look at her; but if Suzi saw her, she gave no sign.

“Here, look,” Buff said. He opened up his cell phone and clicked around on it. Was he going to show her a picture of his wife, the Playboy bunny? Finally he found what he wanted and held the phone up so she could see.

There was so much glare that Ava couldn’t make out the image at first.

“This is amazing,” Buff said. “Very cool!” His deep voice got squeakier. “I’m totally down with this.”

Ava took the phone and tilted it and saw a picture of herself, one of the ones taken by Mr. Boy. One of the naked ones, where she was lounging in a chair with a big dumb smile on her face. “Oh God.”

“I know the guy who took it,” Buff said. “He forwards me stuff now and then. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” He nudged her. “And don’t get mad at him. He didn’t tell me your name or anything.”

Ava handed him the phone and glanced up at the river, but the entire scene before her, Suzi, the gallivanting rednecks, swimming tower, the river, the palm trees and pickerelweed on the other side, disappeared in the painful glare. “Then how’d you know it was me?”

“I recognized you from the neighborhood, and then I found out Suzi was your sister. Maybe you could pose for me sometime? I’d really like that.”

“Hey, Buff,” one of Suzi’s friends was calling. “Come here. It’s Suzi’s knee. It’s really hurting her.”

Buff stood up and Ava hid her burning face between her knees. She’d never been so grateful for Suzi’s need to suck up all the attention.

The summer was more than half over. When school started in the fall, Otis would be a senior at Sunny Side High. His guidance counselor, Mr. Wilkins, had been after him all the previous year to start working on college applications, but his parents hadn’t mentioned college to him in a long time—his mom obsessed with Ava getting into Rhodes, and his father fussed after Suzi—so Otis had let the whole thing slide. He had his own plans for the future, and they didn’t involve college.

He, Otis Witherspoon, would be the first person ever, in the history of the world, to single-handedly create a successful (model) breeder reactor, and then … fame and fortune would follow. He could skip the college and graduate school part altogether. He’d be given a job as a prestigious respected young scientist with enough money and staff to build whatever he wanted to. Women would fall all over him.

This day, the day he’d be testing the neutron gun, would be a huge step forward for Project Breeder Reactor. The fuel he was using had been hard to obtain and had taken him weeks to procure and harvest.

First was radium. He’d scraped the radium paint off the old clocks, stirred in the contents of the tube of paint he’d found in the stolen clock, and added that to some radium he’d strained from a chunk of uranium he’d ordered online at amazon.com. Radium, check. Next, beryllium.

He’d called on a science geek friend, Bucky, a recent Sunny Side High School graduate who now worked at the chemistry lab at Tallahassee Community College, to ask for his help. Without asking questions, Bucky smuggled four strips of beryllium from the lab and sold them to Otis for twenty-five dollars each.

At last Otis had the proper fuel for his gun. Eventually he would fire it at some thorium in order to create the reaction, but first he had to test it. Because the neutrons released by the radium and beryllium through the gun would make