THE MOJAVE DESERT
TOP OF THE PLATEAU
NOVEMBER 3RD
10:06 A.M.
Charlie was good at pretending. She could pretend to respect the way Shira ran her Academy. She could shrug her shoulders and play dumb when asked how the island’s surveillance system got broken. She could even pretend that Darwin looked cute during his blessedly short-lived emo phase when he dyed his naturally highlighted hair blue-black.
But at some point, even the best pretenders dropped their masks. Charlie’s mask hung by a thread thinner than dental floss, and any minute now that thread was going to break.
For hours, she’d been pretending to be strong and upbeat as she led seven exhausted, dehydrated, and ridiculously dressed Alphas and Brazilles up the side of a searing-hot mountain devoid of shade. Soon it would be noon. The sun’s heat would only grow hotter, she had a huge painful blister under her gladiator sandals, and she was down to less than half a canteen of water.
In other words, if the GPS didn’t work, they were screwed. And all the pretending in the world wasn’t going to help Charlie hide it from her friends. Aside from AJ, who stumbled along the rocky terrain humming to herself, they were a smart, perceptive group. They’d know something was up.
Charlie knew Darwin could see it, too. Charlie’s exhaustion hung on her like a heavy coat, dragging her down with each thudding, blister-rubbing step. Darwin kept walking doggedly at her side, his own foot bleeding where the strap of a too-small pair of platform sandals dug into his skin.
“We’re here!” Mel shouted up ahead. Somehow, he had found the energy to push ahead of Charlie and Darwin to climb over the last boulders that led to the mountaintop, where a wide, circular plateau awaited them. Mel dropped to his legging-covered knees and actually kissed the dusty ground as Allie clambered up the boulders and looked on with a weirded-out expression on her dust-streaked face.
As Charlie and Darwin struggled up the rocks to join them, Charlie could hear Taz still playing the “What would you do for a bite of food” game with AJ and Skye. She had one unopened BrazilleBlast bar left, but Charlie had kept it hidden, wedged into her pack along with the GPS. They’d need it soon enough.
Taz’s game was getting a little out of hand. He must be really hungry, Charlie thought as she scrambled up a boulder and turned to watch the stragglers approach. “But would you eat a scorpion, uncooked?” he asked, breathing hard as he helped push an exhausted Skye ahead of him.
“Yeah, I would,” Skye said, her eyes visibly rolling under her gold aviators.
“Would you bludgeon it to death, or throw it on a fire and burn it alive?” Taz asked.
“Stop!” AJ squealed, bringing up the rear. “As a member of PETA, I insist you find another game.”
“As a member of humanity I insist you find a sense of humor,” Allie shot back.
When she finally reached the plateau, Charlie’s legs collapsed beneath her. She sank to the ground like a wind sock minus the wind.
Now comes the moment of truth. Charlie shrugged her metallic mini-backpack off her sweaty shoulders and unzipped it. She pulled out their aPods and the GPS module, laying everything in front of her on the ground so everyone could see what she was working with. Or not working with, as the case may be.
“Go higher, Charles,” Allie said. Charlie turned and saw Allie’s freshly Purelled thumb gesturing to a giant, flat-topped rock. “That’s the highest point around.”
“Fine,” Charlie shrugged.
“I’m coming, too,” Darwin said, grabbing the GPS and limping over to the boulder.
On top of the boulder, with Darwin bent over the GPS unit, Charlie felt like she might panic-puke. Be calm… she commanded herself. Don’t rush this. She pulled Allie’s bobby pin out of a small zippered pocket on the arm of her flight suit and gestured for Darwin to hand over the GPS unit.
“What are you doing? Don’t you want to try turning it on?” he said, holding the GPS tightly against his chest.
“I want to check the motherboard and make sure all the wires look okay before we risk blowing out the unit,” Charlie answered, hoarse with exhaustion. She had rushed when she fit all the pieces back together, and she needed to check her work. Please, her cocoa-brown eyes pleaded with him. I’m too tired to fight.
“I think we should try it first. If it doesn’t work, we can always open it back up,” Darwin started, but Charlie had already heard enough.
“No.” She shook her head and snatched the GPS angrily from his hands. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me enough to let me do this right,” she muttered. “Who’s the engineer, Darwin? Me or you?”
Darwin’s hazel eyes flashed with momentary anger that quickly dissolved into hurt. “Fine. Sorry for trying to help. Let’s do it your way.”
Charlie nodded silently, blinking away tears of frustration. She knew she’d snapped, but she was mad, too, hurt that Darwin would try to tell her how to do something she knew so much more about than he did. But right now she had a job to do. She would save the anger for later. If there was even going to be a later.
Charlie looked down at the machine, unscrewing the cover with shaking hands. Then she felt Darwin’s hand on her chin, tilting her face up to his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his mouth forming a tentative let’s-make-up smile. “No matter what, you’ll always be my angelfish. Don’t forget that.”
Angelfish. Of course he went there. Because when it came down to it, Darwin knew exactly how to make her feel better. Charlie’s mouth uncurled from a stressed-out pucker as she let her thoughts travel back to the coast of Brazil, where three years ago Darwin had first told her how much he cared about her. They were practically kids still, sitting on the edge of a snorkeling boat that Shira had chartered. Everyone else was either already in the water or working on one of Shira’s documentaries when their Brazilian boat captain pointed out a school of angelfish below.
“Pez angel. They mate for life,” the captain said. “Muy romantico.”
Darwin had blushed a deep red, and when the captain turned away, he grabbed Charlie’s hand and whispered that he was pretty sure she was his angelfish. Then he’d jumped into the water. When he surfaced, the school of angelfish had scattered, but Darwin’s goofy smile made Charlie even happier than the fish could.
Charlie and Darwin had never forgotten that moment. They’d even talked about getting matching angelfish tattoos someday. Charlie looked up at him and wordlessly leaned over to give him a crushing hug, using the last of her strength. Darwin hugged her back, his breath reassuring and warm against her brown hair.
Suddenly the GPS flicked to life. Their hug must have activated it!
“Darwin!” Charlie cried, pulling away from him to stare down at the machine. Instead of static, there was a real, clear radio signal.
“It’s working!” Darwin cheered. He stood up from the boulder and nearly fell off as he yelled to the others. “Guys, we got a signal!”
Charlie grinned and turned to give the rest of the crew a thumbs-up, but they were all looking at something else. And screaming. And flapping their arms. Allie stood stock-still in the center of the plateau, her mouth a perfect O, her arms in the air. Next to her, Taz was screaming while doing the moonwalk. Mel was on the ground doing snow angels in the dust, his silver legging-encased legs flailing. What was going on?
Charlie whirled around to see what it was behind her that had gotten everyone’s attention, not daring to hope for a plane. But when her eyes met the sky, she saw that was exactly what it was.
“That was fast,” Darwin said as a shiny blimp floated toward them. Definitely not your average Delta flight to Delaware, but hey, it would work. And it was coming closer.
Waving her arms and screaming louder than the front row of a Justin Bieber concert, Charlie almost sobbed with relief. Darwin grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, and the two of them jumped up and down together, hugging hard enough to crush each other’s windpipes but not caring in the least.
Now their version of forever wouldn’t end in the desert. In fact, Charlie realized as the plane got closer, forever might actually be a long, long time. Thank goodness. Because these two angelfish had a lot more swimming to do.