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Spotted Hyenas, before it was even in sight.
    I got to the door and felt the usual flutter of nerves. I hated this place already, and I felt pretty sure that there was no way I was going to have the amazing transformation that Paul and Dr. Maria talked about.
    I walked into the front room. Todd was lounging on his bed, the curved brim of his dirty white cap pulled low over his eyes. He was reading a paper book. Another part of the costume of this place.
    “Hey, Owen, good to see you back,” he said. “You feeling okay?”
    “Fine.” I passed him and walked through the doorway into our bunk room. There were wooden bunk beds built into the walls, a small window beside each bed. Another wall was lined with cubbies. Everyone was messing around, some kids playing dice on the wooden floor, others joking, some sitting, legs hanging off their perches. I headed straight for my bunk, which was in the far corner, by the side exit door.
    I was just reaching the little ladder up to my bed when a balled-up, sour-smelling sock whipped past my head and smacked against the wall.
    “Check it out: the Turtle lives!”
    I looked over to see Leech staring down at me from his bunk, where he was leaning on his elbow, lounging like royalty, giving no indication that he’d just thrown the sock. Everybody stopped when they heard him and turned to look at me.
    “We thought you were dead,” said Jalen, sounding disappointed.
    I wanted to say something, but what? Leech was the undisputed ruler, there was no use fighting it. When we’d all first walked in, each dropping our bags onto our bare bed and sliding our trunks underneath, Leech’s top bunk had already been decorated with posters, photos, and drawings, his stuff already hung in cubbies. He’d been wearing the hand-dyed T-shirt from last session that was signed by the other kids and even the counselors, like an endorsement of his king status. He’d already shown that he knew everyone on the staff by name, and they all knew him. Even the kitchen cooks gave him high fives.
    He’d started handing out the nicknames during the first dinner, the night before. I’d been busy eating real wheat pasta for the first time, and also this leafy plant called spinach, which was greener than anything I’d ever seen and tasted bitter and smelled like wet rocks. People were giving welcome speeches to the whole camp, when I heard Leech begin.
    “How about . . .” He scratched his chin with his index finger and thumb, a scientist hard at work. To either side of him, Jalen and Leech’s other freshly minted minions were already leaning in close. “Ooh, I know,” he said, and then he pointed dramatically to the two kids at the opposite end of the table. “Bunsen and Beaker.” Leech’s gang laughed, though I’m not sure any of them knew what those nicknames were from. I didn’t. “Who else?” said Leech, scanning the table with his squinty gaze. It landed on me. He nodded and grinned. “Turtle,” he said. More snickering laughter.
    “What?” I said back to him, because I didn’t even know what he meant by the nickname. I figured I didn’t look turtlelike in any way, since I wasn’t overweight, so I wondered if maybe it was because of how the tortoises out in Yellowstone lived in burrows and how I lived underground, too.
    “Turtle,” he snapped back at me, and I guess it was the fact that I’d dared to question him that suddenly made his grin curl downward. “That’s you.”
    The reason for the nickname turned out to be even dumber than I’d thought. I learned later that night that it was just because I had been wearing a turtleneck shirt. And nobody called those shirts turtlenecks anymore. I’d never even heard of the word. It was just a LoRad pullover like anyone else might wear back at Hub. They were part of the dress code at my school, where Rad levels were a daily issue.
    And the reason Leech even knew a retro word like turtleneck was because he was a Cryo. He’d been frozen