My clothes were still wet. I rung out the hem of my shirt and my pants, slowly, carefully, letting the water drip to the floor. When I was young Ruby ran after me through the halls once, pretending to be a monster with sharp claws and gnashing teeth. I screamed, ducking around trash bins and slamming through doors trying to escape. I begged her to stop, calling over my shoulder in panic, but she thought it too funny a joke. When she caught me, my chest was heaving. The game was so real. I never forgot the terror of being chased.
I pulled the thin blanket around my neck and closed my eyes, yearning for the comfort of my old bed, for the crisp sheets that were always pulled back, inviting me to sleep. I wished for the familiar smell of a venison dinner or the window seats in the library archives where Pip, Ruby, and I would sit, listening to the banned cassette of Madonna that was hidden behind American Art: A Cultural History. I felt the old battery-powered tape deck in my hand, the foam headphones on my ears as I tried to remember those lyrics, about the man on the island. I was thinking about Pip shimmying this way and that, in a secret dance, when I heard a noise outside.
I pushed farther back into the corner. Caleb was still asleep, his face slack with exhaustion. I heard it again—the cracking of tree branches.
“Caleb?” I whispered.
He didn’t wake up.
I closed my eyes as the noise came closer and covered my face with the blanket, my body stiff with fear. Rustling. The snap of twigs. The unmistakable squish of footsteps in the mud. When I pulled the blanket from my face my breaths stopped. I couldn’t move. A figure was standing outside the copter, only a few feet away, silhouetted by the moon.
They were looking directly at me.
Chapter Ten
THE BLANKET FELL FROM MY FACE. I DIDN’T DARE REACH for it, didn’t dare move, for fear of being seen. On the other side of the cockpit, Caleb turned over, rocking the giant metal shell. The figure took another step forward and rested a hand on the broken doorframe. I winced, already sensing what was coming: the cold gun that would be pulled from his belt, the handcuffs that would pinch my wrists.
“Eve?” a familiar voice finally whispered.
I peered up through the shattered window. Arden’s clothes were soaked and her black hair was slicked to her head. In the pale light I could see her face, strained with worry. “Are you there? Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s me.” I moved into the moonlight. “I’m fine.”
She climbed into the copter, her boots sinking into the leaves. She glanced from me to Caleb’s curled up body, as if a question in her mind had at last been answered. Then she settled down in a seat.
“You came back . . .” I cranked the plastic lantern, staring at Arden. She was shaking from the cold, dripping as if she’d emerged again from the river. I handed her my blanket.
Arden dug through the box, ripping open a packet of dried food. “Well,” she shrugged, “I do need to eat.” She nibbled on a dehydrated carrot, already ignoring me.
“Were you”—I leaned in as I spoke—“worried about me?”
Arden stopped eating. She glanced over her shoulder again at Caleb. “No,” she said quickly. “I just didn’t know if you were safe with him.”
I wanted to tell her that if she was concerned about my safety then technically the answer was yes, she was worried about me, but I restrained myself. As I took in Arden’s drenched clothes, I wondered if I’d misjudged her. If there was more to her than the girl who’d insisted all those years that she’d rather eat alone than spend time with the rest of us.
She threw down the empty silver pouches and let out a quick burp. “I suppose you want your blanket back?” she asked, handing it to me. It stayed there for a moment, a silver curtain between us.
I shook my head. “You keep it.”
The lantern dimmed, its charge waning. Arden’s pale face was the last thing I saw before the light went out and I fell asleep.
THE NEXT MORNING CALEB BEAT BACK THE TALL GRASS in front of us, clearing a path with a stick. We’d waited for his horse to return to the bank, but when the sun rose we had to leave.
“It’s a day’s walk from here,” he said. “With a little luck we’ll make it to camp before nightfall.” We moved along a moss-covered street. The sun had broken free from the yellowy-pink dawn and now the sky was bathed in white.
“We can’t stay at the camp long,” I said, falling back to confer with Arden. “We can get supplies but then we have to start on our way to Califia.”
The encounter with the King’s troops still played in my mind. Even in these early hours of morning, with no signs of the Jeep, I glanced over my shoulder every few yards. I flinched at the harsh cries of birds overhead.
Arden swatted a fly that circled her. “You don’t need to tell me,” she muttered, and then coughed—a wet, phlegmy sound. “Does this trail get any easier?” she asked, pushing a prickly branch away from her face.
“We should hit a neighborhood soon.” Caleb ducked under a low limb. “Careful.” He looked up at the sky again, as he’d been doing all day.
Before we’d set off, Arden and I had waited while he fiddled with sticks in the dirt, measuring their shadows with the passing minutes. Then he knew where to go, as if he’d been communing with the earth in a strange language we couldn’t understand.