No one said much after Tino finished his story, but I think we were all glad Jaila had the knife and not him.
Water was running pretty low, so we looked for somewhere to refill our canteens, which took us an hour out of our way. The stream we found was barely a gurgle of a thing, but it was enough.
Everyone had broken down into their little cliques again. Except Tino. He was by himself, leaning against a tree when I noticed Jenna approach him.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Yeah you are.”
“We’ve all been through . . . stuff.” Jenna’s shoulders were rolled forward, and she wasn’t looking Tino in the eyes. “Just, if you want to talk, I’ll listen.”
Tino laughed. “You think I’d want to talk to you?”
I’m pretty sure if he’d spoken like that to Lucinda, she would have cut off his balls, but Jenna just offered him a shrug. “Maybe. And if you don’t, that’s fine too.”
Then she walked off again. I was expecting him to keep laughing, but the moment Jenna was out of sight, Tino’s bravado fled. It was like the iron in his spine melted, and the tree was the only thing holding him up anymore.
“You think he killed someone?” Cody was asking Sunday and Georgia when I wandered back to where they were sitting on the ground.
Sunday shook her head. “No way. He’s full of it.”
“But all that stuff he was saying about Lucinda and me being rich?” Georgia said. “I mean, my parents have money, but we’re not like that. We give to our church, and I volunteer and—”
“Don’t take it personally.” Sunday laid her hand on Georgia’s, but Georgia pulled it away immediately.
“I’m not—”
“She’s just being nice, Georgia,” Cody said.
Georgia scrambled to her feet. “We should get going. Let’s go.” And then she stormed off the way we’d been walking earlier, leaving Cody and Sunday to gather their things and follow.
I should have gone after them, too, but I couldn’t help wondering what else I could learn listening in on conversations when no one was looking for me. Jackie and David were discussing their favorite TV shows—Jackie’s, of course, was that werewolves in space show that was full of good-looking twentysomethings who were supposed to be teenagers—and David’s was some online show I’d never heard of. I was thinking Jackie was going to give David a black eye for suggesting her favorite was garbage, but she kept her fists holstered. Jaila and Jenna were discussing how much farther we could walk before nightfall and whether we’d actually make it to camp by the end of the third day. Jenna could do all the calculations in her head, like she was some kind of human calculator. It was amazing. And despite what Tino thought, I had faith that Jaila could get us back to camp on time, even if she was faking the faith she had in herself.
Truthfully, I didn’t give a shit when we returned to camp. I didn’t have anything there worth going back to, and nothing waiting for me at home when we finally left the Bend. I might have been hungry and filthy and exhausted, but this was the most fun I’d had since my uncle had dropped me off, and I wasn’t ready for it to be over.
I didn’t hear the yelling at first, but I saw Jaila’s head jerk up, and then I heard what sounded like Cody screaming in a panic. I followed Jenna and Jaila to where the others had all gathered around Georgia. She was bleeding from her head, and her right ankle was bent in a way ankles weren’t meant to bend.
“She was trying to climb down those rocks and she slipped and I think her foot’s broken and—”
Georgia was awake and crying about how she couldn’t play soccer with a broken ankle and what was she going to do now, and I couldn’t figure how she was worried about soccer when she was hurt and we were in the middle of nowhere.
David knelt beside her, stripped off his shirt, and pressed it to the cut on her head. He pulled the makeshift bandage back and poured a little water on it. “It’s not deep,” he said. “Just bleeding a lot.”
Everyone looked to Jaila for what to do, but she’d gone pale and backed away. Tino growled at how useless we all were and got down on his knees to examine Georgia’s ankle. He untied her boot and peeled off her sock. Her foot was already turning purple and swelling up.”
“Shouldn’t you leave the boot on?” Jackie asked. “So it acts like a splint or something?”
“Won’t do any good if her foot swells up inside and cuts off circulation,” Tino said.
“Here.” Jenna handed Tino a first-aid kit that I hadn’t known she had.
“Is it broken?” Cody’s face had gone paler than Georgia’s.
“How the hell should I know?” Tino said. “I’m a delinquent, not a doctor.” But he wrapped her ankle with a roll of gauze to immobilize it the best he could. “She’s not walking anywhere.”
“I could use the flare,” Jaila said.
We all turned to look at her. “What flare?” David asked. “You have a flare?”
Jaila nodded. “Doug gave it to me for emergencies. Told me to use it if anyone got hurt, and they’d come get us.”
“This is a big fucking emergency,” Cody said. Even with all of us crowding around Georgia, he’d stayed by her side, holding her hand.
“Shit,” David said. “I would have broken my leg yesterday if I knew we had a way out of this.”
Everyone was talking over each other, most telling Jaila to use the flare, and I doubted it was because they cared about Georgia.
“I don’t want to quit,” Georgia said.
Lucinda, who hadn’t given her opinion yet, said, “I don’t think we have a choice. If you can’t walk, we’ll have to carry you, and I don’t think we’d make it back on time if that were the case.”
Jaila was already digging around in her backpack. “That settles it, then.” She pulled out the clunky flare gun. “Sorry, Georgia.”
I knew why I liked being out in the woods, but I didn’t understand why Georgia was crying about going back to the Bend early. Hell, being hurt likely meant Doug would call her parents to come get her. We were all supposed to leave two days after we returned from our survival trip, but she’d get to leave even earlier. Her parents would probably charter a private plane or some rich-person shit to rescue their little girl if that’s what it took.
Jaila popped the cartridge into the gun, clicked it into place, raised it over her head, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
She pulled the trigger again.
Nothing.
“Shit.” Jaila pulled out the cartridge, replaced it with another, and tried again.
Tino swiped it from her and opened the compartment where the flare went in, trying to fix it, but it was no use.
“Figures Dipshit Doug would give us duds,” Jackie said.
“What’re we going to do?” Cody asked, his voice rising high with panic.
“We’ll have to make a stretcher,” Jenna said at the same time as Lucinda said, “We’ll carry her.”
We spent an hour pulling the frames of our packs apart and using the rope we had to strap them together to form a litter to carry Georgia. It wouldn’t have won any awards, but it was sturdy enough to hold her weight. Tino and Jackie got into an argument about who was going to have to carry her, but Lucinda and Cody volunteered almost immediately.
The mood of our clusterfuck had taken a nosedive. Jaila couldn’t be entirely certain we were walking in the right direction, Georgia was hurt, we were all hungry and thirsty and itching from not having a real shower, our emergency flare gun was useless, and we only had a day and a half to find the Bend. And then it started to rain.
“I bet Doug gave us bum flares on purpose,” Tino was saying. “Probably thought it’d teach us a lesson about relying on ourselves.”
“Twenty bucks says he still lives at home with his parents,” David said.
“I don’t know,” Sunday said. “He’s not so bad.” Even Jackie glared at her for saying that, so she added, “You know, for a middle-aged momma’s boy.”
Cody started struggling with his end of the litter after only an hour, so Sunday switched out with him. David offered to take Lucinda’s place, but she said she could keep going all day, and I believed her.
The rain made it even more difficult to find our footing, and it seemed like we were going nowhere fast.
“Someone please tell another story,” Georgia said.
David’s face brightened. “I can finish mine.”
“Hell no,” Jackie said. “I’m depressed enough as it is. But I got one.”