Read Talker 25 for Free Online Page A

all my fault, Dad.”
    “It’s not your fault. We’ll go look for him together. Let me talk to Keith.”
    I hand the phone over. A few seconds into the conversation, Keith steers me up the stairs and out the front door. APCs surround the scorched field where the silver made its last stand, All-Blacks pick over shards of ice in the MK High parking lot, and army helicopters create an airspace perimeter against the half-dozen news choppers.
    “You and the young lady need to get back inside, Major,” an All-Black says.
    “Colonel Callahan’s coming to pick up his daughter,”Keith says as I spot Dad’s Prius at the edge of the parking lot. The loud whir of helicopter blades silences his approach.
    The A-B lifts a visor adorned with a patchwork of red dragon scales to reveal a face weathered by age on one side and burned by fire on the other. “This isn’t open for discussion. You don’t have authority here. Why don’t you go back inside and teach your kids to stay in their shelters better?”
    “Watch it, Sergeant,” Keith says. “Let’s go, Melissa.”
    “No, I’m waiting here,” I say. The All-Black smirks at me. “Smile all you want, you don’t have any authority to tell me what to do.”
    He runs his tongue along his upper teeth. “Feisty ragger, aren’t you? Stay out of our way, girl, and if something happens I hope Daddy’s here to help you, because we won’t bail your pretty ass out.”
    I return his smug smile. With his back to the road, he didn’t see Dad drive up. Busy ogling me, he must not have heard him get out of the car either.
    “Daddy is here, Sergeant.” My father stands beside the Prius, arms folded, jaw stiff. He opens the passenger door. “Get in the car, Melissa.”
    I press my middle finger to my lips and kiss it at the burned soldier as I get in.
    “You ever talk to my daughter like that again—” Dad shuts the door, cutting his sentence short, but I happilyconstruct my own dialogue.
    After Dad sends the A-B on his way and talks to Keith, he returns to the car, his features on the volcanic side of angry. I reach over and hug him. The tension in his chest softens, and he’s hugging me back. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry about everything.”
    He releases me, then starts the car. “I don’t know what I’d do if you or Sam got hurt. You have to protect him. And yourself, Melissa. Keith told me what you did.” He pulls out of the parking lot wearing a sad smile. “You’re too much like your mother sometimes.”
    Two Humvees block the road into town. Columns of smoke billow into the air from the center of the housing district. A-Bs patrol the parking lots of the adjacent Walmart and Kroger’s, ordering curious shoppers back into black buildings. Punctured siding, chipped concrete, and broken windows mark the storefronts and the homes closest to the high school.
    We stop at the roadblock. Dad lowers his window as an All-Black approaches. Unlike the other soldiers, he’s not wearing a helmet decorated with dragon scales. He’d look young except for his eyes. He salutes.
    “Any news, Captain?” Dad asks.
    “Your son is at the bivouac receiving treatment for smoke inhalation.” He glances at me, then leans in and sayssomething I can’t hear.
    Smoke inhalation. We learn about it every year in our Dragon Ed classes. When I was younger, they had a cartoon. I first saw it in second grade. It showed a sharp-toothed Green breathing fire on houses. We were young, so we laughed. The teacher shushed us as a cyclone of smoke with red eyes and a wicked grin emerged from the destruction and swept across the streets, swallowing uneducated boys and girls in its giant mouth.
    Though they stopped using the video after elementary school, the message shown on the screen at the end still looms on placards in many classrooms. “Half the time it’s not the fire that gets you,” I whisper. It was always a joke before.
    Dad frowns my way. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll be back to collect