I TOSS THE SNAKE in the back of Dahlia's mini bus, Bertha, which I've recently learned is not called a "mini bus" and most people won't understand what you're talking about if you call it so.

What I've been calling "mini buses" are actually called "cars," and Bertha in specific is a type of "car" called a "truck," and she's also, in specific, a type of "truck" called a "pickup truck."

English is confusing. It's a fucking mini bus.

We climb in the front half of it, slam the doors. I get "shotgun." Ezra gets the back seat. Dahlia puts the key in the ignition. Her hands tremble on the steering wheel. I tuck my knees up to my chin. Still, I can feel the contractions of the snake against my throat, a dull, throbbing pain. Outside, the sun should be rising by now—the moon is low enough, dipping towards the earth—but the sky is as dark as Apollo's skin.

Burmese pythons aren't native to Florida. There are populations here, deep in the south, near the Everglades. Dahlia and Marisol both have gone on their people-are-idiots-please-respect-nature rants about them.

Except we're much further north than the Everglades. And even if we were anywhere close to them, Dahlia's house is on the top story, the sixth floor. To get there, the snake would have either had to

scale the building (can snakes do that?) or

taken the elevator (which I'm fairly certain that snakes cannot, in fact, do, and even if it could, it would need the code to be able to work) or

taken the stairs (which could be plausible, except, again, it would need a code)

And even if it could do one of those things, how would it get inside her locked house without the code?

"Dahls, you want me to drive?" Ezra asks, scooting to the center seat so he can lean up to talk to us.

"Do you even know how to drive?"

"No. You just seemed—"

"That's what I thought, you useless homosexual." A dry, nervous laugh. She sets her forehead in the center of the steering wheel. "I don't know where to go," she admits.

I'm barely thinking about what to do next. I'm thinking about pythons, about snakes constricting around my throat, about the gods, about Python, about—

"We need to get Marisol."

"What?" says Dahlia. "She's grounded. What are we gonna do, sneak into her house?"

"That's exactly what we're gonna do."

Because if I'm right, we aren't safe here anymore. And neither is she.