“What, how—HUH?!” We were stuttering and mumbling and gaping at her leg.

Thalia dropped her club. “Somebody cut off your leg…terrorist attack?” she guessed softly.

Demi nodded.

“But—that’s horrible, what happened?” Beth asked, her face crumpled in worry.

I was still staring. Poor Demi, my mind was saying over and over again. Tom looked like he’d forgotten he’d been nailed in the foot. He looked pale as he stared at the blue metal leg. Zac looked like he wanted to hug her. Thalia got there first. It was hard to remember she was a kid, with her spunky attitude and knack in the wild, also because she’d stabbed a 12-foot python in the eye.

But right now, she looked exactly her age. She pulled away.

“What happened?” I asked Demi.

She looked paler than Tom when she put her leg back on.

Oh gross, I am NOT using that sentence again. Talk about creepy. Anyway, she gestured toward the tent. Zac helped Tom up and we followed Demi back to the tent.

“I was five,” she said. “I’d just had dinner and my ma had kissed me goodnight. When I was about to sleep, a man came into my room. He was holding a knife. He—he threw it at my heart but missed completely.” She swallowed.

I could tell it was difficult looking back to such a horrible time in her life.

“I had barely survived,” she continued. “There was a fire, and my father yelled ‘GO!’ I ran for my life. The next thing I knew, my leg came off and I blacked out. The next morning, I was in an orphanage’s hospital room. The nurse said my parents had died in a fire and my leg had been cut off. I got a bionic leg the next day.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna WHACK those people in the forehead and throw them off the top of the Burj Khalifa,” Thalia mumbled.

“Yeah, my orphanage kind of burned down too,” Demi said.

We were all silent.

“That’s really sad, Demi,” I said.

“You want to go for a walk?” I asked. She nodded.

We got up and went for a walk.

I wasn’t looking when we reached the canyon. My foot slipped. The next thing I knew I was hanging over the side of it with Thalia trying to haul me up. The rest tried and helped. My hand was slipping. There was shouting but it was muffled. I fell.

“NO!” was the last thing I heard before I was falling into the canyon’s darkness.