Writing to Aunt Beckie, Harmony says Mustang’s photos are needed immediately to prove the contamination hoax before residents permanently leave. Her mother wants to meet with a relocation agent; Ashanti’s father has pushed to leave for months; Teddy’s grandmother has already filed compensation paperwork for their house. Only Grandin and his mother have not discussed leaving. Ramón reports that Incident Command has ended live briefings and rarely responds to submitted questions.

In his film diary, Teddy writes that Gram dismisses the conspiracy theories and fears that the state’s offer will expire. He feels they are running out of time.

Grandin observes that his mother speaks only in hopeful terms about returning home—prepping the fields, his dad seeing how he has grown—and ignores all press briefings. However, at night, he can hear her crying.

Ashanti compares the infirmary’s military clock to the horae—goddesses of time from Greek myth—and frames each day without word from Mustang as another step toward doom.

Twenty-three months into the evacuation, Harmony’s Gazette article announces that the Council for Displaced Coloradans is recruiting volunteers for a task force advising the Emergency Relocation Agency, and that a Spring Stuff Swap will be held at the camp gym.

Harmony writes to Aunt Beckie, questioning whether to publish without Mustang’s proof and fearing that even with it, no one would believe them.

Ashanti recalls her nana’s old saying about wishful thinking: “If ifs and ands were pots and pans / there’d be no need for tinkers” (360). She reflects that there are no “tinkers” in the evacuation shelters—that is, no one trying to make a living through their own ingenuity, by offering services to others—and wonders whether this means that wishful thinking is no longer viable.

Acting on Ramón’s tip about General Giles’s private meetings, Teddy sneaks into a conference room and hides in a closet with his camera. When the communications director, General Giles, and officers enter, Teddy begins recording—but the boxes he is balanced on collapse and expose him. Two soldiers confiscate his camera. He escapes with a cut on his cheek and returns to the Emerald City, where he tells Harmony, Ashanti, and Grandin what happened. Harmony is furious that Incident Command took his private property; Grandin calls the attempt brave. Teddy cries in frustration, believing the camera was their only hope.

Grandin feels that the loss of the camera has defeated them. He checks his phone nightly for Mustang with no result, and wonders how they will even recognize the moment they have failed.

Ashanti bandages Teddy’s cheek. Harmony notes that he saved the SD card, though Teddy points out that the card is useless without a reader. Grandin arrives with Popcorn and delivers press conference transcripts and photos from Ramón. The group resolves to identify every recurring face in the photos to determine who is running the conspiracy. Harmony leads the effort while Teddy retrieves older photo folders.

In his production diary, Teddy writes that filmmakers need cameras, and he questions who he is without one.

Harmony writes that analyzing press conference photos is painstaking work involving military ranks and insignia. Most faces rotate, but two individuals appear at every briefing.

Harmony identifies the two people who appear at every briefing: a civilian man in a dark suit and a woman who stands in the back wearing a pin. Using a magnifying glass from Teddy’s Swiss Army knife, Ashanti identifies the pin as a jeweled bear. An encyclopedia reveals that California is among the states whose official animal is a bear. Grandin then prompts the group to trace the Eldorado River; Ashanti follows it through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and into California. Grandin identifies California’s defining crisis as drought, connecting the bear pin woman to the conspiracy.

Ashanti worries that her dream of attending UCLA and becoming a doctor will be destroyed if California lacks enough water to sustain itself.

Harmony confesses to Aunt Beckie that prolonged isolation has made her doubt whether they have the evidence right at all. She resolves to focus on the story and hopes Mustang will deliver proof.

During a classroom screening of a prerecorded press conference, Governor Clark introduces California State Senator Susan Colman as a special consultant to the Emergency Relocation Agency. The group immediately recognizes Colman as the woman with the jeweled bear pin. On screen, she delivers a polished speech of solidarity. Grandin’s phone vibrates in his pocket; the others urge him to step out, and he slips into a custodial closet to answer.

Harmony writes one triumphant line to Aunt Beckie: Mustang has obtained the photos of people holding dated copies of the Gazette.

In verse, Ashanti and Grandin describe their plan to smuggle Mustang’s SD card past guards inside a plaster cast on Grandin’s arm. Ashanti will use her medical knowledge to make the cast, and Grandin—who previously broke an arm in the car accident after leaving the camp—will claim to have just broken his other arm. Grandin reveals that he told Ramón the truth; Ramón will cover for them by pretending to take Grandin for X-rays.

Ashanti completes the cast in the Emerald City. Teddy objects to involving Ramón, but Grandin insists that honesty was necessary to preserve Ramón’s trust. Pax enters with Popcorn and immediately sees through the ruse. After she presses for the truth, Harmony reluctantly agrees to fill her in and swears her to secrecy. Grandin confirms that the retrieval will happen the next day.

In his production diary, Teddy worries that the SD card will be useless without a card reader and wonders what Jason Bourne—protagonist of the espionage thriller film series based on the novels by Robert Ludlum—would do.

At midnight, Teddy waits for a cleaning crew to lock the DAC, then uses his Gram’s theater key to slip inside. The next morning he rushes to the Emerald City and announces that he broke in to look for his camera but instead found a working laptop with a card reader, which he took from a storeroom full of them. Footsteps send the group scrambling to hide the laptop in a trash can, but the visitors are only Grandin and Popcorn. Grandin has the SD card inside the cast but has pushed it too deep to retrieve; Ashanti produces a cast saw.

In a letter to Aunt Beckie, Harmony compares inserting the SD card into the laptop to the out-of-body experience she had as a child when her father left—a sense of hovering above a pivotal moment, aware that everything is about to change.

Ashanti describes the video finally loading to reveal residents in supposedly destroyed towns—Timberline, Switchback Springs, Ponderosa—waving orange newspapers, with landscapes and buildings completely undamaged.

The group is stunned by the footage. Grandin steps away, quietly admitting he had hoped to see his father. The video continues with drone footage of a large construction site on a river, featuring cranes, stacked pipeline, and trucks bearing the logo of Collier Marine Construction, Inc. Grandin returns and, drawing on ranching experience, identifies the project as a diversion of the Eldorado River’s water supply to California, declaring that it will turn Colorado into a desert.

In verse, Ashanti reflects that because water makes up most of the human body, stealing water amounts to stealing life itself.

Harmony declares that they must trace who owns Collier Marine Construction. Grandin produces a password from Ramón granting access to Incident Command’s secret Wi-Fi network.

The group connects the laptop and is shocked by the strong signal. They find the Collier Marine Construction website and spot the dark-suited man listed on its board of directors.

Further searching identifies the man as Victor Albus, deputy director of the Colorado Investigation Bureau (CIB). The group also discovers that Albus is married to Major General Jessica Giles.

Grandin reflects that coordinating a conspiracy across the CIB, the National Guard, and the governor’s office would require enormous power—the kind needed to steal an entire river in plain sight.

Harmony writes to Aunt Beckie, wrestling with doubt: Does the evidence prove a conspiracy, or only confirm a bias they already hold? She considers whether General Giles may herself be deceived by the CIB, and wonders how to expose the person truly pulling the strings.

The group debates strategy. Teddy argues for immediate publication; Grandin says the Gazette alone is insufficient and that tipping off the conspirators would allow them to destroy evidence. Harmony concludes they need a large, public reveal that cannot be suppressed. When the others jokingly ask Teddy to think of a movie they can use as a source of ideas, he becomes upset and leaves abruptly.

In his diary, Teddy admits he cannot think of a relevant film because this is a story he has never encountered before, with no known ending.

Grandin follows Teddy outside and waits while Teddy uses breathing exercises to calm down. Grandin quietly confides that he once thought he needed no one but learned otherwise. He hopes someone is helping his father. The conversation sparks an idea: Teddy invokes the Flying Monkeys from The Wizard of Oz and asks about the reach of Mustang’s network across other evacuation camps. He runs off to speak with his Gram.

In a letter to Aunt Beckie, Harmony writes that if Teddy’s plan succeeds, the story could reach news outlets nationwide—and Aunt Beckie might see it wherever she is.

In verse, Ashanti resolves that regardless of the outcome, she will still become a doctor. No one can take her future.

In verse, Grandin resolves that whatever happens with the plan, he will afterward leave to find his father.

Twenty-five months in, Harmony’s Gazette article announces a Fourth of July celebration on the quad, framed as appreciation for service members, featuring performances by Big Bob’s Barbershop Quartet, the Junior Dance Team, and the Camp Rogers Community Choir and Orchestra, with a call for volunteers to build the stage.

On July 3, carpenters build the stage while Gram oversees volunteers. Teddy briefs the group: Their film will screen after the barbershop quartet, Grandin confirms that Mustang’s network is ready to show it simultaneously at other camps, and Gram will introduce Harmony and Teddy. Grandin tells everyone to stay alert once the screening begins. Teddy then pulls Grandin aside and shows him something on the laptop.

Grandin sees the Feathermore Community Hall on the screen—and his father, alive, squinting into the sun. He had privately accepted that his father was dead without ever saying so aloud. He collapses to the ground, overwhelmed.

After composing himself, Grandin goes to tell his mother and thanks Teddy. On July 4, hundreds fill the quad; Governor Clark, General Giles, and Senator Colman sit in the front rows while Victor Albus is absent. Gram takes the stage, thanks the barbershop quartet, and introduces Harmony and Teddy, noting that the day’s Gazette issue, printed on bright orange paper, is on every chair, before announcing the documentary premiere.

In his diary, Teddy wonders whether a story without a defined ending is still a story.

Harmony addresses the crowd, comparing their displacement to Dorothy’s journey in Oz, then introduces the film. The documentary opens with upbeat scenes of camp life before shifting to Incident Command’s images of devastation, silencing the audience. The film then cuts to Mustang’s smuggled footage showing intact towns and residents waving orange newspapers.

The Gazette article, dated 26 months since the evacuation, reports that new video evidence contradicts official contamination claims and that government footage appears to rely on computer-generated imagery. It also reveals the pipeline project at the Eldorado River’s headwaters and points to possible collusion between state agencies and Collier Marine Construction.

Audience members glance between the screen and the orange newspapers in their hands. Senator Colman, Governor Clark, and General Giles react with visible alarm as officials exchange whispers. The film shows aerial footage of the Collier construction site, then closes on Grandin’s father, alive and waving an orange zine.

In verse, Ashanti describes the crowd erupting with a roar, releasing years of pent-up fear and anger.

In verse, Grandin recalls pulling his mother, Pax, and Popcorn beneath the stage for safety as chaos broke out around them.

In his production diary, Teddy recalls the riot—the crowd surging, demanding answers, refusing to disperse—which he committed to memory since he lacked a camera. Ramón pulled him and Gram into his car. Because Mustang’s network screened the film at every evacuation camp simultaneously, outrage spread statewide.

In verse, Grandin recalls watching the chaos from under the stage and reflects on the long ordeal that followed before they could return home. He envisions the eventual reunion with his father and the reclaiming of their land for future generations.

In verse, Ashanti recalls the infirmary filling with injuries in the days after the riot. She learns that her friend Maddie is missing from one of the camps and wonders if she was left behind during the initial evacuation.

Writing to Aunt Beckie, Harmony recalls the group gathering in the Emerald City that night, overcome with excitement and nervousness. Days of disorder followed as Incident Command failed to restore calm. Aunt Beckie picked up the story and pursued it further, uncovering kickbacks to Senator Colman, secret recordings about water and political power, and offshore bribes connecting Governor Clark, Victor Albus, and General Giles. Despite the evidence, bureaucratic delays and mandatory environmental testing kept the evacuation zones closed for another full year. When residents finally returned, Harmony reflects, both the land and the people who had fought for it were permanently changed. She closes by quoting journalist Nellie Bly: “Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything” (458).

A flash-forward reveals the adult lives of the four protagonists. Teddy Brenkert graduates from film school at 19; his feature documentary about the Eldorado River conspiracy earns international acclaim, and he goes on to make films about sustainable energy. Ashanti Johnson attends college, completes medical school, and becomes a trauma surgeon for Doctors Without Borders, working in international conflict zones and specializing in the care of displaced people. Harmony Addams-Paul earns degrees in journalism and international relations, wins a Peabody Award for investigating corporate pollution, and joins the Washington Post as a correspondent. Grandin Stone graduates from West Point and serves as an army environmental engineer focused on water conservation, with plans to return to the family ranch—where Popcorn’s descendants now roam—after his military service ends. All four remain close friends.