We do a water-bottle washing of dishes and put everything away while the fire dies down. “So are you going to listen to your dad?” I ask.
“Of course not,” Juneau replies. She’s put her panties and tank top back on and is sitting in front of the dwindling flames, jotting something in her notebook. She tears off the page and makes a clicking noise to call Poe. He drops the bone he’s pecking at and goes to her, letting her tuck the note into his pouch. Following her whispered directions, he flies off into the night.
“A note to Tallie,” she explains. “Asking her to find a computer and look some things up for us.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Anything she can find about the hunting reserve, especially a map if one exists. Details about Hunt Avery. And the old Hindu story about Amrita—I want to double-check what Whit told me.”
I nod. “When are we leaving?”
Juneau stares at the fire and gets that focused look she does when she Reads. After a second, she says, “Whit’s in a bedroom by himself, reading. He’s obviously not coming back for us tonight.” She looks up at me. “How about first thing in the morning?”
“Let’s sleep, then,” I suggest. I shake out the blanket we used for our picnic, and spread it out inside the tent on top of the other one, making one bed for the two of us instead of the usual one blanket roll each.
Juneau crawls into the tent with her crossbow, and lies down on her side facing it. I zip the door up behind us, and lie down behind her. Curling myself around her, I drape my arm around her shoulder and lace my fingers through hers. “We’ll leave before daybreak,” she says.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and rub my nose in the back of her hair, savoring her earthy, herbal smell. Wishing I never had to move again, I breathe her in and close my eyes.
What feels like moments later, I open them again. Sunlight is streaming through the sides of the tent. It’s already morning. “Juneau, wake up,” I say, and pat around in the blankets for a second before I realize I’m by myself.
I unzip the tent door and look outside. “Juneau?” I yell. I scan the woods around the tent and see no sign of her. And then I spot a piece of paper skewered on a tree limb right in front of the tent. It’s a note from Juneau. I know what it says before I even read it. I know what she’s done. She’s gone ahead and left me behind.
Miles,
I have decided to follow my heart instead of my head. To barge in like gangbusters. It doesn’t make sense and isn’t strategically sound, but maybe I’m not the great leader I’m supposed to be. Maybe I’m just a girl who misses her family.
I can’t take you with me. I’ve chosen the dangerous route—the one that will require me to use all of my gifts in order to hide, find my people, and survive. I’ve chosen to place myself in danger, but I won’t choose the same for you—not when you aren’t equipped with the same advantages I have. I almost lost you once. I won’t take that risk again.
If you wait here, you won’t be in danger: Whit wants me, not you. If I succeed, I promise to return. But if you need to leave the mountain, for whatever reason, I will come and find you.
There is, of course, the chance that I won’t succeed. That I will be imprisoned with my clan. Or worse. You have your own battles to fight, Miles. Your own parents to save. You still have your mother, and, once she gets better, she will need you.
This is my fight. My clan’s fight. You are not yet a part of our world, and I won’t pull you in before you’re ready. I won’t risk your life.
Don’t forget that you’re my desert island friend.
Juneau
27
JUNEAU
SWEAT STINGS MY EYES. I WIPE THEM AND GLANCE up to measure the angle of the sun. If it’s this hot at 10:00 a.m., the afternoon is going to be sweltering.
I peer out from behind the boulder that hides me and watch the jeep full of camouflaged guards drive slowly along the inside of the perimeter fence. One sweeps the landscape with his binoculars, looking for anything that stands out against the brown-on-brown landscape.
They are the first sign of life I’ve seen today, besides a band of wild dogs I spotted early this morning, jogging just inside the fence as if they were doing their own surveillance of the land. They looked like the picture of hyenas in the EB, which, considering Avery’s collection of zebras and antelope, fits right into the African theme.