“Dad.” I form the word with my lips, and my throat feels thick. Dark eyes, brown skin, the lilt of his accent that turns my name into a song—did I ever say anything that mattered to him? Did I thank him for staying? After my mom left, he could have gone home to Beirut. Did he want to?
“My parents would freak if they saw me like this,” Jude says, so I must have said it out loud, picked at his worries too.
I don’t know what he calls them. Are they both Dad? Maybe I ask that out loud too because he swirls the water in his bottle and nods. “Tom is Dad. Brady is Pop.”
Pop. The word makes me smile, but I’m not sure Jude would appreciate that, so I hide it behind my hand. “My dad’s a worrier,” I say. “Probably because it’s just me.”
“Divorced?” Emily asks softly.
I laugh, but it’s not funny. “Very.”
When Mom left us for Charlie, Dad got a set of divorce papers and I got pneumonia. He didn’t talk about it, and I was too sick to push. Instead, he brought me endless bowls of oversalted soup and cups of undersweetened tea. A week later, I climbed out of bed and brushed the worst of the tangles out of my waist-length hair.
He asked me if I knew how much I looked like my mother. And then I asked him if I could cut my hair.
“What are you staring at?” Jude asks.
I shake my head, jarred back to our ugly reality. “Sorry. Thinking of when I had pneumonia when I was younger.”
“I don’t have pneumonia,” he snaps.
“I know that. I just—”
“I’m not sick.”
“Unless asshole is a disease,” Emily mutters, but I smile, hoping to disarm him.
It doesn’t work.
“What is your problem with me?” he asks me. “You think it’s charming I have two dads? Does it make you feel more evolved to know me?”
“Um, am I missing something?” I ask, stunned at the sudden outburst.
“She didn’t do anything to you,” Emily tells him.
“I can see the look on her face!” Jude says. “It’s patronizing.”
My cheeks go hot. “I wasn’t patronizing you! I was missing my dad!”
“Stop being a tool sack,” Lucas tells him. “Believe it or not, we mere mortals do think about other things.”
Jude crosses his arms and scoots back against the tree. The sun is closer to the top of the branches now. I frown, and Lucas follows my line of vision.
“It’s getting dark,” I say, thinking of last night’s events and all those stupid stories. Ghosts running men off cliffs. Dead girl parts being dragged off, eaten, by bears. “What should we do?”
“We keep watch in shifts,” Jude says. “If whoever this guy is comes back, we should be ready to run.”
Lucas shakes his head. “Screw that. I say we run now. We take the water and one of the tents—”
“Take them where?” I scoff. “I doubt any of us are up for a hiking trip. Jude was half-dead an hour ago. And what, we just leave Mr. Walker to fend for himself?”
“At night?” Emily looks scandalized at the idea.
Lucas cocks his head. “Would you rather snuggle up beside him and maybe wake up with nine fingers?”
“I’m starting to think leaving won’t help,” Jude says. “Especially if it’s too dark to see.”
I feel my brow quirk. “Why the change of heart?”
His eyes lock onto mine. “I had some time to think about it. Look at our wrists. This isn’t random. Whoever did this isn’t going to just wander off and hope we stay put—they’re watching us. How else would they have known to leave the water while we were away from the camp?”
“For God’s sake, Jude,” Lucas says. “Do you want us to just sit here and wait for the lunatic to show up again? We have no idea who this is.”
That’s it. I stand up, a little edgy. “I agree. And two hours ago, you were all set to follow Lucas into the great beyond. Now you’re acting like we might as well stay put and not even bother trying? Tell me again why we should all be sure you aren’t the guy behind this.”
Jude’s eyes are cold slits. “Because I don’t think you’re a darling.”
Can’t argue with that.
“Enough,” Lucas says. “First off, nobody here could have crossed that river, and second, let’s stop pretending Sera got the lucky word in this mess.”
A chill runs up my arms. Jude looks at his shoes, so I turn to Lucas.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Lucas says.
I whirl on him. “It’s not nothing. What are you talking about with the lucky word?”
Lucas points at everyone but me. “The rest of our words are problems, Sera. We’re dismissed or defective. Whatever you want to call it.”
“I don’t—”
“Deceptive, Damaged, Dangerous.” He shakes his longish hair out of his eyes. “The three of us were found lacking, but you weren’t. Your word makes it sound like you’re chosen. Or special.”
“It’s true,” Emily says, but she doesn’t look at me. She looks right past us, her eyes so cloudy, I can’t tell if she’s seeing anything at all.
“These could be random,” I say. “Think about it. Everyone’s damaged, right? Everyone lies now and then.”