“Are we ready?” I asked them.
Kate put out her hand; without a hesitation or a flinch, Louis placed his on top of hers; Aaron laid his on top of Louis’s. I lifted my hand but let it hover for a moment. This isn’t friendship, I reassured myself. This is teamwork. Teamwork is different. I set my hand firmly down on top of Aaron’s, and before I realized I was doing it, I squeezed, then he squeezed Louis’s, and suddenly, we were all holding on.
“The Fearless Four,” said Kate fiercely. “All for one, and one for all.”
“There’s no I in team,” declared Aaron.
“Except in Spanish,” I added.
We all smiled.
“Dudes, we got this!” said Louis, and for the first time since we’d woken him up, his voice wasn’t shaking at all.
After we were all settled in eating oatmeal with dried fruit, Jare went back to his tent the way he always did, possibly to devour a spectacular breakfast created from his private stash of food, possibly to wear a new gully in the ground with more cage-stereotypy pacing. I wondered if Jare was like the guilt-ridden guy in the Edgar Allan Poe story who was plagued by the sound of his murder victim’s heart; then I wondered if Daphne even had a heart; then I felt instantly bad about wondering this. When Daphne was around, almost nobody could stand her, but now that she was gone, the other campers and I felt a kind of solidarity with her. Like, sure, she was an evil, cold-blooded bully, but she was our evil, cold-blooded bully. And no matter who she was, she didn’t deserve to be disappeared.
As we’d planned, Aaron and I sat at the far edge of the group, as close to Jare’s tent as we could without obviously invading his space. Cyrus and Edie sat at the opposite end of camp, while Kate and Louis were stationed at different points in between. When we’d all been eating for about five minutes, I signaled Kate, who signaled Cyrus, who ran across the campsite toward Jare’s tent. As he passed us, he shut one of his licorice-black eyes in a conspiratorial wink, and Aaron and I gave him a quick thumbs-up.
“Jare, Jare!” cried Cyrus as he ran. “Something’s wrong with Edie!”
In a couple of minutes, Cyrus reappeared with Jare. As they walked, Cyrus hovered around Jare like a dragonfly, talking a mile a minute. Jare wasn’t exactly rushing, but I also noticed that he was moving a lot faster than he had the last time Edie had been in trouble.
“She didn’t want me to tell you,” said Cyrus, wiping at his eyes as he and Jare passed us, “because she wasn’t sure how bad it was going to be, and she didn’t want to inconvenience you for nothing. But I’m really worried!”
He gave a convincing sob, but after they’d passed, he darted a mischievous look at us over his shoulder. Louis watched until Jare and Cyrus were all the way on the other side of the campsite and then nodded at us. Casually, we set down our plates and slipped away.
Jare’s tent was big enough for us to stand inside, and the rain cap was off, so plenty of sunlight filtered through the side mesh. Luckily, it appeared that Jare hadn’t repacked his backpack yet. Sitting outside the pack were some smaller sacks, a few boxlike containers, and what looked like a tiny plastic suitcase, but that was it. As big as he was, Jare could carry more than the rest of us, but not a lot more.
“You start on that side, and I’ll start over here,” I told Aaron.
“We need to move fast,” said Aaron, already opening up one of the bags. “And listen for Kate’s whistle.”
“You’re sure you don’t know what a satellite phone looks like?” I asked.
“Nope. Sorry.”
I opened a metal box with a strong latch that looked like a miniature version of the bear-proof food containers we’d seen at the various campsites. The latch was complicated, and my nervous fingers struggled clumsily with it for what felt like an excruciatingly long time before the box popped open. When I saw what was inside, I stifled a laugh. There was some fresh fruit, but mostly the box was full of Twinkies, honeybuns, and single-serving boxes of Froot Loops.
“You found something?” asked Aaron.
“Just Jare’s secret junk-food stash,” I said. “Would it be wrong to steal a Twinkie?”
“Definitely,” said Aaron.
For several more minutes, we frantically searched.
“There’s nothing in the stuff on my side of the tent that looks like a phone,” said Aaron.
“Same here,” I said.
Then I opened the tiny plastic suitcase, and it was not just a phone but what looked like a mini communication station.
“Found it!” I said.
“Okay, let’s get out of here and call!” said Aaron.
Our campsite was at the base of a steep hill, and at the bottom of it, in back of Jare’s tent, sat a big boulder that appeared to have rolled down a long time before. Aaron and I crouched behind it and opened the satellite phone case again. It seemed oddly old-fashioned and complex, but in a not-high-tech way. There was a compass-looking gadget, switches, buttons, and some antenna-type pieces that unfolded.
“This looks like it’s from the Revolutionary War or something,” I whispered in exasperation, and then I snapped, “And, no, you don’t have to tell me that the phone wasn’t yet invented during the Revolutionary War era.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Aaron.
“Sorry. Rushing makes me grumpy.”
“This sure doesn’t look like any phone I’ve ever seen,” said Aaron.
He picked up the handset, held it to his ear, and shook his head. He pushed some buttons. “Nothing. There must be an on switch somewhere or something.”
I started messing with the buttons and switches on the phone, desperately trying to make it work. “Ack! He’s going to show up any minute!” I hissed.
And that’s when a voice from above said, “I’m already here.”
Aaron and I both jerked our heads back to look, and instantly I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. There was Randolph, standing with his hands on his hips and smiling the nastiest smile I’d ever seen.
“You guys are so busted,” he said through his smile. “I can’t wait to see what Jare does when he finds out you were trying to steal his stuff.”
Aaron stood up. “You don’t understand,” he said.
Randolph’s smile vanished. “Shut up. You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t understand?”
“That’s not what he meant,” I said. I stayed crouched by the phone. “Work!” I told it. “Just work!”
“Get up, dumb girl,” said Randolph.
“No,” I said. “I need to figure this out.”
Just then, a high, piercing whistle sliced the air. Kate. Jare was on his way!
“Listen. Please,” I said, looking up at Randolph. “You can’t tell Jare.”
Randolph gave a snide chuckle and put his hands on the sides of his mouth, as if to yell.
“Audrey, we have to tell him what’s going on,” said Aaron, talking fast and seeming to catch sight of something over Randolph’s head. “Jare’s coming, and he’s mad. Really mad. I can tell by the way he’s walking.”
“You don’t have to tell me nothing,” said Randolph. “I already know what’s going on.”
“Yes, tell him!” I said, banging on the phone in frustration.
Aaron blurted it out: “We think Jare killed Daphne. We’re trying to call 911.”
Randolph grabbed Aaron by the front of his shirt and yanked him closer. “What? Liar! Daphne ran away!”
Aaron said, “Oh, shoot. Jare sees us. He sees us. Take the phone and run, Audrey!”
I slammed the tiny suitcase shut. There was no time to latch it. I jumped to my feet, getting a glimpse of Jare striding toward us, kicking up dust, looking like a mad bull—or a herd of mad bulls—and I tucked the suitcase under my arm like a football and took off running in the only direction there was to run: straight uphill.
“Hey!” I heard Jare yell, his voice terrifyingly close. “What the heck is going on?”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Aaron t
ug himself free from Randolph.
“Don’t look back!” he shouted, waving me onward. “I’m right behind you! Just go, go, go!”
Adrenaline surged through me like electricity. It was punishing terrain, but I realized that being smaller and nimbler than Jare, I had a better chance of outrunning him on a stony, uneven uphill than I would have on the flat desert floor. It occurred to me that I had no plan, no direction, no idea what I would do even if I could manage to lose Jare. It also occurred to me that I was literally running for my life. But I shoved those thoughts away and tried to make my body into a machine whose only job was upward, upward, upward.
I could hear footfalls behind me, and I prayed that they were Aaron’s, not Jare’s. Aaron had gotten a pretty good head start, but Jare was so big, so strong, so angry. Sweat trickled into my eyes and burned them, and once I fell and felt the sharp rocks cut my one free palm, but I kept going. When I got to the top of the hill, I was so relieved that I pitched forward and almost landed flat on my face. But I scrambled up and allowed myself one glance behind me. Aaron was about twenty yards back, and Jare wasn’t far behind.
“He’s getting closer!” I screamed.
“Keep going!” shouted Aaron.
“Stop!” bellowed Jare.
My breathing was loud and raucous in my ears, and I was bone tired. For a moment, I considered just letting Jare catch me, because at least I’d get a rest before he did—but then I thought of my parents, how much they loved me, and suddenly it was like all of home was inside my head: Janie and the hallways at school and Dean Amory and the cool, green woods. And I understood that I liked my life, that I wasn’t anywhere close to done with it, and I felt this knowledge flow like strength into my legs and arms and back, and before I even knew I’d gotten up, I was running, running across the flat mesa at the top of the hill, my legs pumping, my ponytail swinging, the phone still safely under my arm.
But then a terrible, unexpected thing happened: the mesa ended. I skidded to a stop just inches from the edge and gazed desolately down. It wasn’t a cliff, exactly, but it was such a steep, drastic drop and so pitted and stony that I knew there was no way I could ever run down it without breaking my neck.
“Audrey, keep running!”
I spun around to see Aaron tearing across the mesa, with Jare so close—no more than twenty feet—behind him.
“I can’t! It’s too steep!” I cried. I swiveled my head crazily from side to side, looking for an escape route that just wasn’t there. I could have taken off in another direction, but I knew that running around the top of the hill made no sense. Jare would catch me in the end.
“Aaron, he’s right behind you!” I screamed.
Then Aaron did an amazing thing. He stopped. And spun around. He ducked his head and, in a low crouch, ran toward Jare instead of away from him, toward the furious, charging animal Jare had become, and he threw all of his gangly weight against the center of Jare’s wide chest. I saw the shock on Jare’s face at impact, but he didn’t fall, just staggered backward. Aaron was the one who fell, flopped sideways like a rag doll, and lay still, and I was afraid his neck was broken and wanted to watch for him to move or get up, but there was Jare, not running now, but striding toward me, wild-eyed, unstoppable.
“Everyone knows!” I shouted. “We told everyone in the camp what you did! Even if you kill me, you won’t get away with it.”
“Give me the phone!” boomed Jare. His hands were clenched into huge fists at his sides.
“It’s over! Use the phone to turn yourself in!”
Jare was close now, close enough to push me over the edge. Emptied of hope, I just stood my ground and waited for the shove. But the shove didn’t come. Jare reached out and yanked the phone away from me.
“Stupid kids!” he spat, and just like that, all my fear vanished. It was replaced by a cold fury.
“Yeah, we’re kids,” I said. “Look at yourself. A big guy like you, going around hurting kids. You’re pathetic.”
Jare narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Is that what Pepin thought too?” I asked him. “Back in high school? Is that why you hated him so much?”
Jare’s face changed. “Pepin? George Pepin?”
I heard a shout come from the other end of the mesa, but my eyes stayed locked on Jare’s.
“Did he call you a coward?” I said. “Humiliate you? Is that why you killed his daughter?”
Confusion clouded Jare’s eyes. He shook his head. “What? No. You don’t understand.”
“What did Pepin do to make you hate him so much?”
Jare straightened and said, “George Pepin is my best friend. I would never hurt him or his kid.”
Truth. Truth. It hit me so hard I gasped. Even though what he was saying made no sense at all, it was stone-cold true.
Jare slumped and rubbed his forehead. “I was trying to help. I was only trying to help.”
It happened so fast. The words were barely out of Jare’s mouth before: pounding footsteps, Randolph hurtling headlong across the mesa, howling, “You! Killed! Her! You! Killed! Her!” He was unhinged, clawing the air as he ran, a human torpedo, headed straight for Jare, who didn’t even have time to turn around to see what was coming.
“No!” I screamed.
But it was too late. Randolph hit Jare squarely between the shoulder blades. The phone flew over the edge first; then, with a long, awful, drawn-out “Ahhh!” Jare fell too. I thought Randolph would roll down next, but he landed with a thud at my feet, and everything in the world went dead still and wretchedly silent. I covered my face with my hands, scared to look, and eventually felt someone standing next to me. I uncovered my eyes to see Aaron, his lip bleeding, his terrified eyes trained on the downward slope. I was so glad he was alive that I put my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder. He didn’t move, just stood as if frozen, staring down the hill.
“Is it bad?” I asked.
In a hoarse whisper, Aaron said, “Bad.”
I looked. Scattered along the side of the hill were pieces of the satellite phone, and at the bottom, his body oddly twisted and motionless, the kind of motionless that looks permanent, lay Jare.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Aaron Archer
El Viaje a la Confianza
IT TOOK LESS THAN THREE seconds for the desert to shatter Jare. At first I was afraid it had killed him. But after we scrambled down the slope, I saw his chest rising and falling and I could feel his pulse, and as Audrey crouched next to me, his eyelids fluttered open. “I can’t walk,” he whispered. I could tell he was in agony from the way the skin around his eyes had gone white under his tan. He glanced over my shoulder. “Somebody make Louis sit before he falls down,” he gasped, pointing at Louis, who’d staggered down the hill behind us.
Louis did his best not to collapse at the spectacle of Jare’s leg, which protruded at an angle it had no natural right to protrude at. The rest of the campers, who must’ve gotten curious about the shouting, began to trickle over the edge of the embankment. Randolph had disappeared.
Edie handed Louis her water bottle and sat him on the nearest rock.
“Who,” Jare said, “thinks they are tough?”
We all glanced at each other. Since Jare had made it crystal clear that he didn’t think any of us were tough, it seemed like sort of a weird question. “I know,” said Jare softly. “That’s kind of a weird question. But I need help. And it’s gonna take somebody tough.”
“I’m tough,” Kate volunteered.
“Kate is tough,” agreed Enod.
“Enod,” said Jare, “run back to camp for the first-aid kit.” Jare turned to Kate. “Okay, Little Miss Sun—okay, Kate,” he said, his eyes fluttering upward in agony as he dug a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket. “Ready?”
Kate nodded.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a compound fracture,” said Jare. “’Cause of all the blood. So could you please slice off my jeans above the knee? We need to have a look.” Kate di
d it. She tried to not hurt him. What she slowly uncovered brought tears to her eyes, but she resolutely sawed through the fabric and dropped the shredded pieces of blue jean in the dust beside her, and when she was done, she waited for instructions.
Unfortunately, Jare had passed out from the pain.
“What do we do?” asked Kate, keeping her eyes off Jare’s leg.
I’d once read part of a Red Cross first-aid manual while recovering in the lifeguard shack at Splashview Swim Club after one of the guards had to “rescue” me because I did such a wicked belly flop, I ran into a little trouble swimming to the ladder. The pictures of compound fractures were so horrible I could barely look at them, because a compound fracture happens when not only is your leg broken so crazily it bends like you have an extra, sideways knee, but also the jagged pieces of bone stab through your muscle and rip a gash in your skin from the inside. Like Jare’s. The lifeguard, who was a little peeved at me anyway because I’d made him jump in and ruin his hair, saw what I was staring at and took the manual away, but not before he turned green.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We have to wait for Jare to wake up.”
Enod called down from the lip of the drop and tossed the first-aid kit to us.
Slowly Jare stirred. “Take this,” whispered Jare, handing Kate a huge gauze square from the kit. “Press on the gash as hard as you can. Keep mashing until I stop bleeding. I might pass out again. Actually, I kinda hope I do. But keep on it. Only . . . your hands are sort of small. You’re gonna need help.”
“I’ll help,” said Kevin Larkspur. “I want to be a doctor when I grow up.”
This was another thing Jare would’ve scoffed at ordinarily, but things were not ordinary. “Good man,” murmured Jare as they pressed the gauze against the break. “Hoo. That hurts.” As they squeezed, he closed his eyes and fell silent, but he stayed conscious. After a while, the bleeding slowed, and Jare handed Kate another square of gauze, a tube of antiseptic, and a roll of adhesive tape. “Wrap that baby on there tight, and maybe we can keep enough germs out to stop gangrene from setting in,” he said.