CHARACTER
Dryby Jarrod Shusterman and Neal Shusterman

Jacqui Costa

Jacqui Costa

Quick Facts

  • Role: Hardened teen survivor who becomes the group’s fiercest protector
  • First appearance: Chapter 10 in Laguna Beach, intervening during the confrontation with Dalton
  • Key relationships: Alyssa Morrow, Kelton McCracken, Henry
  • Signature: Pragmatic, abrasive, risk-embracing; a lone wolf who learns loyalty

Physical Description

Jacqui is fit and muscular, with long dark hair, an olive complexion, and “inscrutable dark eyes” that make her seem older than nineteen. She appears in black, carrying an infected cut on her arm—visual shorthand for a survivor who’s been fighting on her own for too long.

Who They Are

Bold, unsentimental, and frighteningly capable, Jacqui Costa enters as a self-appointed realist in a collapsing world. She functions as a hard-edged foil to Alyssa Morrow’s moral compass and Kelton McCracken’s textbook prepping. What reads as cruelty is usually calculus: Jacqui weighs risk and reward with zero sentimentality. Yet the crisis that isolates everyone else draws her, paradoxically, toward connection. Her arc turns on whether survival means shutting people out—or whether it requires fighting for them.

Personality & Traits

Jacqui’s armor—sarcasm, aggression, distrust—is a survival system. She assumes the worst not because she’s heartless, but because experience has trained her to see the world’s sharp edges. Over time, the same tactical mind that kept her solitary teaches her a new strategy: protect the pack.

  • Street-smart and pragmatic: Grounded in the brutal logic of Human Nature: Civility vs. Savagery, she makes moves that keep bodies alive. She leverages saving the group to secure antibiotics, and later prioritizes gas, mobility, and water sources over niceties.
  • Cynical and distrustful: Expecting betrayal, she warns, “They’ll turn on each other. Everyone does eventually.” This isn’t posturing—it is her predictive model for human behavior under scarcity.
  • Volatile and impulsive: Quick to act and quicker to threaten, she seizes control of Kelton’s gun and neutralizes Dalton without hesitation. Her psychiatrist once labeled her with “Psychodissociative Disorder with Nihilistic Tendencies,” and she admits the “Call of the Void” tempts her—evidence that her risk tolerance borders on self-annihilation.
  • Resourceful: She exploits opportunities others miss—trading leverage for antibiotics, hotwiring and driving, and sprinting back into danger to retrieve the ÁguaViva at the evac center.
  • Secretly loyal: Although she insists she’s only out for herself, she repeatedly chooses the group over safety—culminating in her run through fire to secure water. The final gesture of listing Alyssa’s family as her emergency contact exposes where her heart has moved.

Character Journey

Jacqui arrives as a self-preserving solo act, intent on getting antibiotics and ghosting the group. Shared danger turns her competence into leadership—she drives, protects, and makes the hard calls others can’t. The pivot happens when the group’s survival begins to matter more than her own. Standing before a wall of flames on the way to the reservoir, she rejects the nihilism that has shadowed her life. Running through fire is both literal and symbolic: she burns away the story she’s told about herself—that she’s irredeemable, untethered—and emerges as the person who will suffer so others don’t. By the end, the “lone wolf” chooses a pack, and with it, a purpose.

Key Relationships

  • Alyssa Morrow: Jacqui sizes Alyssa up as an “entitled cheerleader,” and Alyssa sees Jacqui as a dangerous wildcard. Their friction—idealism versus pragmatism—generates constant heat. But the crisis reframes their conflict: Alyssa’s conscience checks Jacqui’s ruthlessness, and Jacqui’s decisiveness saves Alyssa. Jacqui’s final reliance on Alyssa’s family signals a trust she’d sworn she’d never give.
  • Kelton McCracken: She mocks “Survival Boy” for his theoretical prep, but quickly folds his knowledge into her action plans. He patches her arm; she drives and defends. Their dynamic settles into sibling-like bickering layered over real reliance—her field instincts plus his technical know-how make the group viable.
  • Henry: From first meeting, Jacqui reads Henry’s charm as manipulation and wants consequences when his betrayal surfaces. In a world without functioning systems, she embodies immediate, rough justice—a moral counterweight that refuses to let harm go unanswered.

Defining Moments

Jacqui’s big beats track her shift from ruthless survivalist to sacrificial protector. Each choice challenges her self-image and redraws her loyalties.

  • Confronting Dalton (Chapter 10): She disarms a desperate “water-zombie” with Kelton’s gun and takes command. Why it matters: Announces her as a force—decisive, intimidating, and necessary—while hinting that power is her preferred language of safety.
  • Driving the Truck (Chapter 17): After securing Uncle Basil’s truck, she takes the wheel and, with it, responsibility. Why it matters: Mobility is survival; by becoming the driver, she binds her fate to the group’s and starts acting as their protector.
  • Retrieving the ÁguaViva (Chapter 25): Amid evacuation chaos, she sprints back for the box of supposed water. Why it matters: It’s a calculated risk taken for collective benefit—an early crack in her self-first facade.
  • Running Through the Fire (Chapter 53): She charges through a wildfire to reach the reservoir. Why it matters: The climax of her arc; she rejects the “Call of the Void,” choosing painful life and communal survival over detached self-preservation.

Symbolism

Jacqui personifies Survival and Desperation: the will to live sharpened into a blade. Her admitted draw to the “Call of the Void” externalizes the temptation, in crisis, to give up on meaning and other people. When she runs through fire for the group, she reframes survival as something larger than breathing—it becomes loyalty, responsibility, and the rediscovery of humanity.

Essential Quotes

  • “I saved your asses from the water-zombie, so I get the gun. Fair trade.” This line fuses her ethics into a single exchange: value for value. She sees life in transactions because transactions feel safer than trust. It’s also a power claim—control the gun, control the terms.

  • “The human body is about sixty percent water... But I would say he was down to forty-five percent. I’m not sure what percentage makes you toast, but he’s well on his way.” Gallows humor is Jacqui’s coping mechanism and diagnostic tool. She reduces horror to numbers to stay functional, signaling both scientific detachment and an unwilling tenderness masked as wit.

  • “When this is over, it will be my absolute pleasure to never see any of you ever again. But you especially.” She weaponizes sarcasm to keep people at arm’s length. The overstatement is a tell: the more invested she becomes, the more she insists she isn’t—until her actions contradict her words.

  • “What’s a little fire, anyway?” A throwaway quip that reveals her intimacy with risk—and her denial of fear. It reads reckless, but it’s also defiance: if the world is burning, she’ll meet it head-on rather than flinch.

  • “I won’t take it. Because even though I’ve seen everyone around me lose their humanity today, I realize that in this moment, I have finally found mine.” The thesis of her arc. She rejects nihilism and claims a self defined by sacrifice and connection. In a book about scarcity, she discovers the only resource that grows when shared.