No trees of any kind, in fact, are made for running.
I tripped over my own branches and tumbled leaf over stalk into the middle of the street. Jack, trying desperately not to laugh, leaned down to help me up, holding out a hand.
That's when a herd of feral children caught sight of us and started to howl.
"THAT MAN IS HURTING THE SWAMP CABBAGE! GET HIM! AAIIEEE!!"
They came after Jack like a herd of tailgaters chasing the last chicken wing on game day. I looked up through my mesh mouth and saw a flash of real panic in his eyes.
"Tess, I can't get caught up in this. I have to go get Mellie," he said.
And then my boyfriend the ex-rebel soldier, shapeshifting tiger heroically turned his figurative tail and ran, leaving me rolling around in the middle of the street, unable to get back up.
Half of the kids chased Jack down the street, but the rest of them stopped and milled around me, muttering things I couldn't catch. I asked them, very politely, to help me up.
That's when things began to go horribly, horribly wrong.
The little turds—the same kids who'd been determined to save me from Jack—turned their traitorous attention toward me.
And not in a good way.
"It rolls," a tall kid, probably twelve or so and clearly the ringleader, shouted.
"THE SWAMP CABBAGE! GET IT!! AAIIEEE!!"
Oh, crap.
Those rotten kids started rolling me down the street with a vengeance. Since palm trees, and therefore my costume, were roughly cylindrical in nature, this was way easier than it should have been.
I was going tomurderJack.
Roll.
And Aunt Ruby.
Roll.
And even Marvin. Who said he could become a vampire when he had a civic duty to this town?
Roll.
All this time that I was plotting murder, worrying about Mellie, and trying not to throw up from motion sickness, I was screaming at the kids.
"Let me up! Let me up right now!"
But either they didn't hear me, or they pretended not to hear me, because we'd traveled all the way to the front of the parade line by now, but nobody was trying to intervene, because this was Dead End, and people probably thought this was part of the entertainment.
Finally I took the biggest breath I could and screamed as loud as I could:
"LET ME UP AND FREE FUNNEL CAKES FOR EVERYBODY!"
They instantly stopped pushing me.
"THE SWAMP CABBAGE IS BUYING US FUNNEL CAKES!! AAIIEEE!!"
They picked me up by my leaf, stalks, and any other parts they could get their sticky hands on and, when I was finally upright and the world had stopped spinning from a crushing case of cabbage-induced vertigo, I yanked the head off my costume and snarled at them.
"Finally, you little—"
