I offered to go along, but they said it wouldn’t be necessary. Typical. Maybe it’s because they think of me as a useless kid or because I’m not part of the family. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t know about. Even though they’re generally nice to me, they treat me like an outsider. I get excluded a lot. I’m sort of used to it by now, having spent several days with this bunch.

Anyway, they left me behind with the women while they puttered out and started picking up nearly everything that was still afloat.

Connie stood on one side of me, her mother on the other.

“They won’t bring back Wesley, will they?” Connie asked, making a face like the one she’d given me once when we talked about eating beets.

“We should give him a proper burial,” Billie said.

“He’s probably in chunks,” I added.

“They’d better not bring back chunks of him. God! That’s just what we’d need.”

“If we’re stuck here very long,” I said, “we might want to eat him.”

“Rupert!” Billie gasped.

“God!” Connie snapped. “I can’t believe you sometimes. That’s disgusting!”

“We’d have to jerk him right away,” I said, “so he doesn’t go bad on us.”

Billie shook her head at me. She was smiling slightly. “You’re demented,” she said. “Just don’t say anything like that around Thelma.”

“I wouldn’t,” I assured her.

She swayed sideways and bumped me a little with her shoulder. “I know,” she said. “You’re demented, but sensitive.”

“That’s me.”

“Cut it out, huh?” Connie said. I think she meant both of us. I’d noticed before how it seemed to annoy her when Billie and I talked or goofed around. Come to think of it, just about everything about Billie seems to annoy her. Maybe it’s one of those competition things, and she knows she doesn’t measure up. I mean, her mother has her whipped in every department: looks, brains, sense of humor, compassion, you name it.