David shook his head. He’d started out just telling the rest of his story to Sunday, but the others had fallen around the fire to listen as well, unable to resist despite their obvious disgust at the idea of David filming his little sister getting off and posting it for everyone on YouTube to see.
“That was your sister?” Tino said. “I’ve seen that video. There was no way that was your sister.”
“It’s real?” Georgia asked.
Jackie chuckled. “I’m sure you can Google it when you get home.”
“I’m not—”
Cody put his hand on Georgia’s back. “That’s not what Jackie meant.”
“Uh, yeah it was.”
Jenna sat closest to the fire, as usual, holding a stick in the center of the flames, watching the end blacken and char and the tip burn until it was a bright orange ember. “If that story was fake, you’ve got a sick sense of humor. If it was true, you’re just sick.”
“My vote’s for a little from column A, a little from column B,” Jackie said.
“At least I didn’t try to pass off an episode of Space Howl as my own,” David said defensively.
Jaila cleared her throat, pulling the attention off David. “So we’ve got a problem we need to discuss.”
“How none of the girls should ever be left alone with David?” Lucinda said.
Tino laughed. “You’re not related so you’re probably safe.”
“I think we’re lost,” Jaila said, raising her voice to cut through the noise.
No one spoke for a full minute. Like Jaila had stolen our voices and thrown them into the fire and all we could do was watch them burn.
Tino found his first. “And who knew this was going to happen?” He looked at each of us in turn. “Oh yeah, that’s right. I did.”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Constantino,” Georgia said, which caused Cody and Sunday to both stare at her. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her cuss before, and it sounded harsher coming from her.
“We got turned the wrong way trying to get down the rocks earlier,” Jaila went on. “And I think we’ve hiked too far north.”
“Thanks, Georgia,” Jackie said.
Cody bunched up, his expression tight and defensive. “It wasn’t her fault!”
“Yes it was,” Georgia said. “If I hadn’t run off and gotten hurt, we wouldn’t have had to go around the stupid boulders.”
Tino pointed at Georgia. “At least someone’s taking responsibility for screwing up.”
“I swear to God I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat,” Lucinda said.
David said, “Why don’t you two go screw and get it out of your systems already.”
Jenna rolled her eyes at him. “Because they can keep it in their pants.”
Tension simmered around the campfire, and it was beautiful. All they needed was a little nudge to explode. But Jaila shushed them and said, “Look, we’re hungry and tired, and we’re not going to figure this out tonight. So why don’t we just get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it in the morning?”
No one argued, not even Tino, and we each eventually retreated to our sleeping bags, but I don’t think anyone slept that night.
DAY 3
OUR THIRD MORNING in the wilderness was damp and quiet. Everyone was hungry, and everyone was angry. We were frayed and wondering if we were going to make it back to camp. Without the flare, Dipshit Doug would never know where to find us, and it began to occur to each member of our clusterfuck at different times that we could actually die out here.
I thrived on the chaos, I lived for tossing bombs and watching them explode. But even I didn’t want to die of starvation or thirst or by being mauled by wild animals. Jenna had woken up screaming in the middle of the night, and I’d seen her and Georgia wander off to talk. While they were gone, I’d sworn I’d heard wolves or a bear or whatever animals prowled these mountains, so I’d pulled my sleeping bag over my head, hoping if some hungry beast wandered into our camp, it would eat one of the others and then leave.
Jaila, Jenna, and Sunday had woken up early and huddled near the fire, talking quietly and trying to figure out where we were. Tino and Lucinda joined them eventually, and it was a wonder that the meeting didn’t end with anyone shouting or castrated or dead. They decided as a group that we needed to head east because even if we didn’t hit camp, we’d eventually run into the main road that ran up the mountain. It seemed as good a plan as any, and there were no arguments.
Georgia’s ankle was still swollen and bruised, and she couldn’t put any weight on it, but she was able to hop a little using the crutches Cody had made her. She was determined not to spend the whole day being carried around in the litter, and even though carrying her would have been faster, no one was brave enough to tell her that.
“Maybe you got lucky and it’s not broken after all,” I overheard Cody say to Georgia after we’d started walking.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. But if I broke it, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, at least then I’d have an excuse to quit the soccer team.”
“What?” Cody stared at her. “Why would you want to quit?”
Georgia stopped. “Look. I was sent here because a girl on the team accused me of sexually assaulting her.”
Cody’s mouth fell open. “Did you?”
“No!”
“But—”
“We kissed, that’s all. And she kissed me first.” Georgia kept her voice low. “But her parents found texts we’d sent each other, and they freaked out, and she made up this whole story.”
“So does that mean you are gay?” Cody asked.
Georgia didn’t answer for a while. Then she said, “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“You know it’s okay if you are.”
“Yeah,” Georgia said. “I just . . . maybe I like both. It’s confusing, you know?”
Cody nodded. “I get it.”
“Everything just got all messed up with that girl. She lied, she flat-out lied, and now my parents think . . .” She stopped, shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Sunday must have been eavesdropping because she fell in beside them and said, “My dads sent me here because of something somebody else did, too.”
“What was it?” Cody asked.
“No one wants to hear it,” she said.
“She’s right about that!” Tino shouted from the front.
“I do,” Georgia said.
Sunday’s chin dipped to her chest. “Sure,” she said. “Okay.”
“SELF-PORTRAIT”
by Brandy Colbert
SUNDAY TAYLOR SAT next to Micah Richmond her first day at the Brinkley School, and he was the first person who was nice to her, so she trusted him right away.
She also knew right away that he was different from her friends in Chicago. At her old school, she’d hung out with the church kids because they always seemed to want her around. They invited her to birthday parties and weekend barbecues and youth group meetings teeming with sexual tension. None of it was particularly fun—she’d always felt a bit like they were all in some unspoken competition for who could be the best Christian. But they were always kind.