“No,” Jude says, reading my mind. “Not drinking fish piss. Give me the bottle.”
My brow furrows. “It could be drugged.”
“Drugged is better than this.”
“Could be poisoned,” Lucas adds. “This was probably left by the psycho who cut off Ms. Brighton’s finger.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
Jude makes a clumsy grab and bumps the bottle, sloshing water out and down to the ground. My tongue burns. Aches. It’s Emily who brings it to Jude’s lips. Emily who also pulls it back after a few swallows.
“More,” he says.
“Not yet. You’ll puke again.”
She’s all quiet focus, feeding him half the bottle sip by sip. He sinks to the ground, and we watch him like he’s a lit fuse. He’s mostly sleepy, waking up to take drinks. Whining about his head. I feel a sting and smack at the mosquito on my leg as Emily cracks open a second bottle.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but within a few minutes, Jude looks better. Not good by a long shot, but better. He’s eventually strong enough to hold the bottle and sit up against an oak. His curls are wild and his lips are still a mess, but his eyes don’t look as sunken when he opens them.
“How do we know if it’s poison?” Lucas asks.
No one answers, but Jude chuckles. “I guess you wait to see if I die.”
He hasn’t died so far, but how long has it been? Ten minutes? An hour? No way to know, but I’m pretty sure I should wait a little longer. The problem is, I don’t know if I can. I dig my fingers into the dirt and feel like my mouth is turning itself inside out. All I can see is that bottle at Jude’s lips. All I can think about is ripping it out of his hands and pouring it down my own blistered throat.
“Screw it,” Lucas says, caving with a quick swipe of one of the bottles near Emily’s lap.
“Go slow,” she warns him, but she grabs her own bottle.
I fumble for one too, cracking it open with clumsy fingers.
“Slow,” she says again.
I try. I really do. The first sip turns me into an animal. I’m sure I’ve never known thirst like this, never understood the way a few swallows of water can taste like the best thing I’ve ever had. My throat soaks it up like a desert. I’m sure it doesn’t even hit my belly, just soaks into all the parched places on the way down. Another swallow and another, and I will never think of water the same again. I will never take this for granted—
It’s ripped from my hands, and I gasp. I’m winded. Queasy.
Lucas’s face looms in front of me, worry creasing his brows. “Easy.”
I reach to snag my bottle back, but it’s half-gone. My stomach rolls. Emily was right. I close my eyes and wait for the sloshing to settle.
“OK,” I say, opening my eyes when Lucas doesn’t give my water back. He raises his brow, and I glare. “I’m fine.”
I’m actually nauseated as all hell, but I snag the water back and take a sip to spite him. I go slower now, feeling my cramped joints go loose, that dull ache that’s spread through my head relenting.
I don’t pass out midway through my second bottle. Neither does Lucas, who’s had two, or Jude, who is starting his third.
No one talks about the fact that it’s getting darker. Maybe two hours of daylight left, and it will be night. The last night carried more than darkness on its shoulders, but we don’t talk about it. We just sit around Mr. Walker’s tent, stinking to high heaven and looking at each other like one of us is a rabid dog and we’re just waiting to see who lunges first.
But if someone’s going to lunge, it isn’t going to be one of us. My eyes drag to the trees, where trunks, thick and thin, smooth and rough, rise up from the forest floor in lazy rows. Limbs twist toward the sun, reaching here and there overhead. I see things move out of the corner of my eye. Leaves. Squirrels.
A killer maybe.
A sudden, awful thought blooms: What if Madison and Hayley and Ms. Brighton aren’t dead? What if they are over there, alone and terrified but not able to make noise? Did someone leave them water too?
My heart pinches. I think of my dad helping me drop off lemon chicken soup at the downtown church. We used to go as a family. I refuse to let my mother take that from us too, and Dad refuses to let me drive down there alone. The soup is easy, and the drive is short. It’s the rest of the experience that makes me flinch.
“How do you put up with this?” I look at the women who watch us too closely as we pass, smiles tight enough to tell me they’re more interested in where he was born than who he is. “You have to see how those women look at you, like you’re dangerous. I’m sick of it.”
“I see very well. Well enough to see my daughter feeding hungry people.”