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1 Prologue Here is how it happened: Percy Kipapa of Waikāne lay face down on the ground desperately sucking for air, his mouth opened wide, dry all the way to the back of his throat. His huge upper body heaved up and down. His mind raced as he prayed that whatever it was they were hitting him with would stop sending its stinging jolts of pain across the bare skin of his back. He tried to open his eyes, but with his already blurred vision now clouded by a well of tears, he could make out nothing, only the feeling that they were all surrounding him. When the burn of the sand and salt they had shoved into his face became too much, he shut his eyes tight, feeling their presence—more than twenty of them—shouting and taunting as the stick came down yet again with a whack! The sting that arose was so sharp that it must have drawn blood, but he couldn’t tell for sure, the rest of his body burning with muscle fatigue so deep that even his feeble gasps for air hurt. His back, the backs of his big legs, his massive shoulders were on fire, his arms now rubbery with exhaustion. The voices kept shouting from all directions, coming closer. All he knew for sure was that he had to get up off the ground somehow, if only he could suck in enough air, if only his arms would move. And then the kicking started. As if it wasn’t already struggle enough to get some oxygen into his lungs, the biggest guy there was now kicking him in the ribs. He’d wanted it to end long before they’d even thrown him down, but no: it had gone from pushing and slaps to the head, to getting thrown to the rock-hard ground, to the beatings with the stick. And now, with each thud to his side, he’d begun to give up on the chance of it ever ending. Percy tried opening his eyes again and through the blur he could make out the shape of a man, bigger even than his brother Kurt, stepping forward like a massive five-hundred-pound field goal kicker with one leg pulled back. Then Percy’s side exploded in pain, the kick pushing all the 2 Prologue air from his greedy lungs again, and for a moment he wondered if this might be what it felt like to drown. Twenty guys mobbing him, and he was going to die from lack of oxygen. Another whack and this time the pain went deeper—not a sting, but a body punch that lit up every muscle in his back. The shouts around him grew louder, and when he opened his eyes, even through the blur, even on the edge of passing out, he could see that what they were now hitting him with was an aluminum baseball bat. The big Hawaiian held it high over his head with both hands for one still moment before bringing it down again hard, and it occurred to Percy that he might actually die, that all of them had gotten so caught up in the moment that they could no longer see how far they were taking this, that he would never see his mother’s face again, that they would send his body home to her in a box, and what in the world would they tell her? That he couldn’t get up off the ground? And suddenly Percy began to feel the slightest drips of energy seep into his exhausted arms. If not for the fact that every ounce of his own four-hundred-pound body was now focused on the task of lifting himself to his hands and knees, he would have seen that what was now energizing him was the purest form of fear he had ever felt. Heaving loudly now, pushing the air out and then sucking in with all he had, he pushed on the floor with his big hands and rose, this first little surprising show of progress energizing him further, until he managed to bring one leg under himself, and then the other, opening his eyes to the sting of tears in search of something to hang onto. Finding nothing but the round shapes of the men standing over him, he stood at last and reached out for a shoulder to steady himself. Theshoutsrangoutagain,nowwithmoreurgency,andPercy’sthoughts exploded from...

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