It swam by the site twice, on the bottom of the canal, feeding on the grief, anger, and sadness. They were such a weak species. It had torn through one of their machines and taken the flesh it wanted; if their machines could not protect them, what could?

It resisted the impulse to rise from the water and attack all within its reach, slashing and devouring their flesh, filling them with terror. Instead, it swam away after the second pass, heading once again into the center of their places of dwelling. There would be more human prey to feed on.

Like most girls her age, Britney Neubaum longed to be popular. She was almost fourteen but had never so much as kissed a boy, let alone have a steady boyfriend. All the popular girls she admired had boyfriends. She saw them all over campus, holding hands, kissing and groping when teachers weren't looking, eating lunch together, passing notes.

Of course, the girls she admired looked nothing like her. They were cute and skinny and had breasts. Britney had breasts, but she wasn't cute or skinny. She was five-seven, taller than most eighth grade boys, and big-boned like her mother. To make herself less intimidating to the boys, she slouched, which did nothing to improve her appearance.

Everyone in her family wore thick glasses; the Neubaums were too thrifty to buy contacts. Her skin was good one week but bad the next, fluctuating with the ebb and flow of adolescent hormones. Her nose was just a nose; not big, not small, not ugly, but, unfortunately, not cute either.

Her best feature was her mouth; she had full sensuous lips, beautiful teeth, and a killer smile. A million dollar smile.

The popular boys had never paid Britney any attention. Until last week.

Last week Nick Hall had smiled at her and said "Hi, Britney" as she was leaving science class. Nick was cool, wore his hair skater-long and down into his eyes. She thought it made him look mysterious. Tall like her, he played on the basketball team and was one of their best players. She had gone to a few of the games, just to look at the boys and yell their names out loud: "Way to go Nick!" "Good shot Josh!" She liked that.

The smile Nick had given her wasn't the kind of smile she liked on him, like when he laughed. It had been kind of ... dirty.

She thought about it all through math. At first she felt uneasy, like he'd been thinking bad things about her. But when she thought about that, she wondered what kind of bad things he might have been thinking, and, more importantly, why would he be thinking them about her?

This was new territory; in the end she didn't know what to make of it. Walking out of math, she decided it had probably been a mistake. Nick really didn't smile at her and say hi, she just imagined that he had.

But it happened again the next day, Friday, at lunch. This time Nick was with his friends, Josh Miller, also on the basketball team, and Brandon Merrill, not on the basketball team but still way cool. He said "Hi, Britney" and smiled his kind of dirty smile. Josh and Brandon stood behind him, smiling the same way. They said "Hi" too, but didn't say her name.

"What 'cha eatin' for lunch?" Nick asked, as if he hadn't brought lunch and might want to share some of hers.

"Tuna salad sandwich," she answered, hoping he liked tuna.

The boys grinned like hyenas.

"You ever go out?" Nick asked.

"Out?" she echoed back, not really understanding what he meant.

"Yeah, out. You know, out with friends."

"Oh, yeah. Sometimes. To the movies and stuff."

He leered and said, "Cool. Okay, see you 'round." The boys left and she could hear one of them snicker and say, "You're right, dude. She's got a suh-weeet mouth." Then he said something she couldn't hear and they laughed.

She ate her sandwich and carrot sticks and drank her juice while trying to process what had happened.

Sarah Bugher and Kristy Levison, Britney's best friends, sat across from her with their hot-lunch trays and started picking at their food.

"You'll never believe what just happened," Britney whispered to Sarah and Kristy. "Nick Hall, Josh Miller, and Brandon Merrill just said hi to me."

"No way!" Sarah and Kristy said together, their eyes big as silver dollars and their mouths wide open.

Neither Sarah or Kristy enjoyed a more active social life than Britney, for similar reasons. Sarah was short and round with frizzy hair and Kristy had the biggest nose in school, adults included. Like Britney, Sarah was doomed by genetics and no one alive thought Kristy would ever grow into her nose.

Britney told them what happened. "He said hi to me yesterday, too," she remembered to add. Her friends were stunned, and it made her feel good.

"Ohmygod," Kristy said. "Did he ask you out?" She held her breath.

Britney shook her head.

"Did he ask for your phone number?"

Britney shook her head again.

Still, they were impressed. Britney beamed.

Then she told them what she heard Brandon say about her mouth. Kristy and Sarah exchanged a secret look and giggled.

Britney said, "What?"

"I bet I know what they want," Kristy said.

"What?"

Kristy whispered, "Nick wants you to give him head."

Britney was confused. "You mean kiss him?"

The girls giggled again. "Yeah, kiss him, but not on the lips, stupid."

Britney didn't know what they were talking about. "Kiss him where?"

Sarah and Kristy laughed out loud, making Britney feel embarrassed, like she didn't know something she should have, something everyone else in school knew.

Sarah leaned over the table and whispered into Britney's ear.

Britney's mouth popped open, her jaw almost striking her chest. Her face turned white.

Sarah leaned back in her seat, shocked. "You didn't know?"

Kristy had her hand over her mouth and was laughing so hard she said, "I'm gonna pee my pants!"

Now Britney was embarrassed. She felt like she should have known what "giving head" was. Why else would her best friends be laughing at her?

"I heard Jenny Johnson talking about it in the locker room," Sarah said, looking around to see if anyone, Jenny Johnson or her friends in particular, might be eavesdropping. "She said she gave head to her boyfriend, Kyle Couchran, after they went to the movies. She said all this stuff came out and she almost got sick."

Sarah and Kristy burst into laughter again, but not Britney. She turned red as a strawberry and said, "Eew. Why would she do that?"

It was Kristy's turn. " 'Cause Kyle told her if she didn't do it he would break up with her."

Sarah added, "Yeah, and then Jenny's friends said they do it too. One of them even said she liked it."

Kristy: "Yeah, and Jenny said it's not like you're having sex or anything. Like, you can't get pregnant and you don't hafta' take the pill and it doesn't hurt."

Sarah: "Yeah, my sister says sex hecka hurts."

Britney had no idea her friends knew about such things and they had certainly never talked like this around her before. She was appalled, but couldn't help thinking about it the rest of the day.

She had Jenny Johnson in her first class after lunch. Instead of listening to her teacher, Britney spent the hour studying Jenny out of the corner of her eye. It was easy to see why she was popular; she was pretty and skinny and had boobs. Britney wondered why a girl as popular as Jenny would have to ... do that thing with her mouth to boys. Wasn't being pretty and cool enough?

She thought about it all weekend and concluded that it was very possible that Jenny and her friends got such cool boyfriends for reasons other than they were cute and skinny and had breasts. And she began to entertain the idea that maybe she could be popular, too, maybe even be Nick Hall's girlfriend, even though she wasn't skinny or cute.

She fantasized about Nick coming to her house to watch TV, sitting on the couch, holding hands and sneaking kisses when her parents left the room; Nick taking her to the movies and to Jamba Juice for a smoothie; Nick giving her a little ring with a real ruby, her birthstone, and telling her he wanted everyone to know she was his.

She did not daydream about doing that thing with her mouth. Yuck. That was just gross.

Come Monday, there was an extra spring in her step and she stood a little straighter. She wore her favorite outfit.

Nick and his friends talked to her every day that week. Mostly they said hi and asked her things about herself, like what kind of music did she like and did she party. Other kids stared, like they couldn't believe such cool boys were actually talking to Britney Neubaum. Britney couldn't believe it either. Even Sarah and Kristy were jealous and weren't talking to her by Friday, but she didn't care. She glowed with hope for a love life she'd never dared dream about.

She felt so good by Friday that when Nick, at lunch, asked her if she wanted to go to a party with him that night she said yes. Just like that, Nick Hall had asked her out! She knew what that meant: he must want her to be his girlfriend.

Later, in class, coming down off the high of being asked out by Nick Hall, she realized her parents would never let her go to a party with a boy they didn't know, never in a million, zillion years, and she panicked. Fear gripped her heart with icy tongs.

He would have to come over and meet her parents. Surely they would let her go to the party with him when they saw how cool he was.

Still panicky but hopeful, after school while waiting for the bus, she went up to Nick and asked him if she could talk to him. He didn't smile. "What?"

"My parents don't let me go on dates with boys they don't know." She didn't dare tell him she didn't know this for sure because no boy had every asked her out. What would he think of her then?

" 'Date'?" he sneered. "Who said we're goin' on a date? We're just gonna party."

Britney was confused. Hadn't he asked her out on a date?

"But the party," she said. "You asked me to go the party with you. Isn't that a date?"

"No, stupid. That's not a date." He laughed at her. His friends laughed, too.

"Oh." Party, date, what's the difference? They were just being funny about what to call it. Who cared? He had asked her to go somewhere with him and in her book that was a date.

"Well," she continued. "I'm sure my parents will say yes if you just come over and meet them."

Nick gave her a look like she had just told him to kiss Brandon on the mouth or ask for extra math homework to see him through the weekend. "Meet your parents? What're you talking' about? I'm not gonna go meet your stupid parents. Do you want to party with us or not? 'Cause if you don't, I know plenty of chicks who do."

Oh no! This wasn't going well at all. Nick had asked her out, not someone else, not some other prettier and skinnier girl. She felt her chance to be popular, to be Nick Hall's girlfriend, slipping away.

"Well, all you probably have to do is just say hello, you know. You don't have to come in or anything. I'm sure they'd say yes if you just said hello to them."

Nick sneered again. "I said I'm not meetin' your stupid parents. If you don't want to party with us, fine. We got other girls." And he turned away.

Her heart stopped beating and her brain froze. No date with Nick Hall? No watching TV and holding hands? No ruby ring? This couldn't be. She had to do something.

"Wait. Nick."

He turned around and barked, "What?"

"I could sneak out later, after they went to bed. They're always in bed by ten."

The dirty smile returned. "Cool. Where do you live?"

She gave him her address and told him about a loose board on her back fence she could slip through. They agreed to meet there at ten-thirty.

"Sweet," Nick said, leering. "Let's party. We'll bring the cold ones."

While she wasn't sure what "cold ones" meant - root beer? 7-Up? - and that smile Nick used wasn't her favorite, she had saved the date; that's all that mattered.

She watched the clock all evening; time crawled, worse than when she was at school. She thought about Nick constantly, about being his girlfriend. She knew Sarah and Kristy would be so jealous they wouldn't want to be friends anymore, but so what. She wouldn't need them if she had Nick. And, once she was popular, she could get new friends, other popular girls who had cool boyfriends, too. Life had never looked so good.

Then, at nine, she had an awful thought: what if Nick wasn't there, waiting for her on the other side of the fence? What if he was just playing a mean joke? The idea terrified her so she pushed it from her mind. He would be there, of course he would. Why else had he talked to her all week, plus some of last week?

She had another crisis at nine-thirty when she realized she would get in huge trouble if she got caught sneaking out at night. The fact that she was sneaking out to meet a boy made it even worse. She could be grounded for weeks, maybe even months. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be Nick Hall's girlfriend and not be able to see him after school. He would probably break up with her and get another girlfriend. For ten minutes she considered the horrors of having Nick, only to lose him. She would have to make sure she didn't get caught.

Ten finally came. She pretended to go to bed when her parents did, except she didn't change into her PJs. She heard every tick of the clock and wondered if her parents would even be asleep by ten-thirty. What if they read in bed until eleven? Or watched TV? Even worse, what if they were having sex? She'd never thought about her parents having sex before, and now that she had, she was disgusted by the images forming in her head.

It was ten twenty-seven when she sneaked out of her house. Her parents were sound asleep, after all her worrying, engaged in a snoring contest. Both her brothers were older and wouldn't be in until midnight or so. She was sure she would be back by then, but even if she wasn't, they wouldn't notice anything anyway. They never paid her any attention.

It was warm out so she took off her sweater and laid it over the back of a patio chair. She heard voices, laughing and murmuring, from somewhere on the other side of the fence. Nick had come! She knew he would and he had. She hugged herself with happiness. Who would have thought that in one week's time she would go from being a nobody to being Nick Hall's girlfriend?

She walked across the lawn and lifted the loose board. It squeaked but she wasn't worried; a bomb could go and her parents wouldn't hear it over their snoring.

She passed through the fence and joined her about-to-be-boyfriend, Nick, and his way cool friends on the canal bank. She was going to a party!

"Detective Baskel."

"Detective, this is Deputy Jensen."

Baskel panicked. "What? Is it happening again?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. It's quiet right now. We'd, Detective Lawless, would like to know what's going on."

Relieved no one was about to get slaughtered, Baskel said, "What do you mean?"

"I mean with the helicopters and heat sensing cameras, or anything else."

"Nothing definite yet, but the ball's rolling. I just finished talking with Captain Bozeman and we have the green light for any resources we need. Choppers, men, whatever." He sounded upbeat, almost cheerful. "Oh, and Bozeman said he'd like to meet Detective Lawless, if possible, downtown."

"When?"

"He's down there now, getting things going."

"What things?"

"He's calling everyone in. Uniforms. Suits. Whoever he can get."