THE MOJAVE DESERT
CAMP DINNER
NOVEMBER 3RD
3:47 P.M.
Adrenaline coursed through Charlie’s body as she prepared to dart, gazelle-like, in the direction of the roasting beast. Her peripheral vision faded to black, and all she could see from her crouched position behind a Volkswagen-sized tumbleweed was the boar roasting on the spit. Behind it, taunting her, was the cast-iron cauldron of beans.
The Scouts meeting had finally wrapped up and the pack of khaki-clad girls had filed out of their campfire circle, but Charlie was waiting until their voices sounded sufficiently far away to make her move. She didn’t trust these intense nature girls to share their bounty with a dust-covered outsider in a silver flight suit, and she didn’t want to have to explain to them who she was before devouring some desperately needed grub.
Maybe after she’d eaten a little, she told herself. Maybe then, she’d reevaluate and ask the girls to help her get home.
Charlie cocked her ear and frowned, still hearing faint conversation nearby even though the Scouts were out of her line of vision. Her mouth watered; she could almost taste the meat from here. Any minute now, it would be making its way into her cramping stomach. She felt a pang of remorse that Skye and Allie weren’t here to reap the benefits of her find. They must be as hungry as she was, probably suffering somewhere out in the desert. Okay, and AJ, too. But if AJ were there she’d probably try and rescue the animal instead of eating it.
A Girl Scout reappeared by the roasting pit. The uniformed girl looked about the same age as Charlie. She adjusted her wide-brimmed hat before cranking the lever on the side of the spit, turning the boar so that it cooked evenly. Then the girl turned around and headed back down the same path the other Scouts had taken.
Charlie’s stomach gurgled so loud that for a second she was sure the girl had heard, but there was no sign of her. She took a quick sip from her canteen and forced herself to wait a little longer. Bide your time. Don’t blow your cover.
In order to stay patient, Charlie decided to play a game to distract herself. She imagined the first thing she would do when she arrived back at Alpha Island. Kiss my boyfriend? Tell Shira off for putting our lives at risk? Or will I just suck it up and keep playing the game?
Charlie truly had no idea. Lately, she’d been surprising even herself. She knew she hadn’t been easy to deal with since the plane crash, but why had it fallen to her to be responsible for everything and everyone? The Jackie O’s expected her to solve everyone’s problems, but nobody was stepping up to solve things for Charlie. Skye was always so caught up in the boy of the moment, and Allie was constantly entangled in some dramatic struggle with AJ or Mel. With friends like these, who needed friends? Where was the work ethic, the teamwork?
Charlie shut her eyes and replayed her outburst on the plateau that morning, wishing she’d made a passionate speech about kicking butt instead of running away from all the drama. In hindsight, she knew all the right things to say: “We didn’t sacrifice everything to act like normal teenagers. We came here to win, and to win, we need to rise above this petty drama.”
Buoyed by her own internal speech, Charlie opened her coffee-brown eyes and scanned the campfire area one last time. There wasn’t a straw hat in sight, not a trace of Scout-chatter permeating the silent air. Surely the Scouts had drifted far away by now to prepare for dinner.
We came here to win, and I came here to eat.
Charlie was ready to make her move. She channeled her inner jackrabbit and sprang into action, leaping on pointed toes toward her delectable, delicious meal. In seconds, she had reached the campfire and stood in front of the roasting meat. She grabbed a knife that had been left in the pig’s side, curling her fingers around it and pulling it out of the flesh so she could slice off a steaming, greasy bite…
“OW!”
Suddenly, her feet flew up beneath her and the sky and earth traded places. Charlie’s head nearly scraped the dry, cracked ground as she struggled to escape the rope, swinging by her useless feet and snared tighter than a pig at a rodeo hog-tie. Her ankles were bound together above her, and she flailed upside down like a unwilling trapeze artist.
Her heart raced with terror. Her mind reeled while her body spun Cirque du Soleil circles in the air. Who were these paranoid, militaristic Girl Scouts, and how had Charlie been dumb enough to step in one of their traps?
“Um, hello? You may as well come out,” she yelled, trying to keep her voice unpanicked and neutral. The last thing she was prepared to do was let them see her freak, especially if Shira was really watching.
Charlie whipped her head around and saw three sets of legs step out from behind some boulders. It was hard to get a read on their expressions from Charlie’s upside-down vantage point, but one thing was for sure: Judging by their muscled legs and the professional hunter–grade trap they’d set, they were built of steel. These girls made G.I. Jane look like Kate Bosworth.
“We have another one,” one of the girls barked. Another one? How many people had they captured? Charlie swallowed a fearful lump forming in her throat.
Charlie heard a staticky “Ten-four” come out of a walkie-talkie. She tried again to spin around on her rope to get a read on their faces, but all she could see clearly was hot-pink hiking boots, each toe box stamped with the initials WG in a bold font, with a silhouetted drawing of a tree fanning out behind the letters.
You can talk your way out of this, Charlie told herself as blood rushed to her head.
“I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding,” she tried. “I’m not the enemy. I’m just lost, and I stumbled onto your camp and there was nobody here and I—”
“Save it,” a different set of pink shoes interrupted. “We have our orders. You can talk to Tiger Lily.”
“Tiger Lily?” Charlie squeaked. “Orders?” Had she stumbled onto the set of a Pocahontas remake?
Suddenly, the pink shoes cut the rope that held her feet and flipped her over so she was standing up. Before she could get a look at her captors, they had pulled a dusty burlap sack over her head. Eeek!
Seeing nothing but brown burlap, Charlie felt two sets of hands grabbing hers. They yanked her arms behind her back and quickly tied her hands with a knot so tight it burned her wrists. A second later, flanked on either side by the demented trio of Girl Scouts, Charlie was being hustled forward along what her feet told her was the same path she’d seen these girls use earlier.
Charlie’s forehead was slicked in sweat and her heart began to race even faster. She couldn’t decide if it made more sense to remain quiet and agreeable or if now was a good time to start screaming. Maybe Shira would swoop in and save her, too? After all, she was kind of family, wasn’t she? Two very familiar voices interrupted her thoughts. Voices that were arguing, loudly. A relieved smile spread over Charlie’s face underneath the burlap sack. Too bad this Jackie O reunion had to happen in captivity.
Skye! Allie! Charlie thought-shouted, not wanting to risk giving any info to the psycho Scouts still holding her hostage. She had never been so happy to hear her two friends yelling at each other.
“Get in,” one of the Scouts grunted, tugging the burlap sack off Charlie’s head and shoving her into a large army-green tent.
“Ow! I’m going, no need to push,” Charlie snipped, wishing more than anything that her hands weren’t tied up behind her. The first thing Charlie’s half-blind eyes focused on was the WG logo stitched on one wall in hot-pink thread. “Say hi to your friends.”
Charlie blinked in the tent’s dim light and saw Allie and Skye sitting cross-legged on the ground, their hands hog-tied just as tightly as her own. “Hi.” She flashed them a genuine smile, forgetting for a second how mad she’d been at her fellow O’s on the plateau.
“Hi.” Allie’s lips twitched into a tight micro-grin, but her face was pale and her navy blue eyes clouded with fear.
“Hi. Don’t bother with the knots, they’re grade-A Wilderness Girl–certified.” Skye sighed, her turquoise eyes flashing angrily in a shaft of dust-flecked light.
“What do they want?” Charlie whispered. Skye and Allie looked as scared as she felt.
Allie shrugged and furrowed her brow. “We just got here. They won’t tell us anything. That food was a trap. Why else would they not be eating it themselves? Obvious-leh they’re not counting calories.”
Skye chortled bitterly, uncrossing her legs to stretch them out on the canvas-covered ground. “Obvious-leh. But the real feast is coming soon. Alpha, medium rare.”
“You don’t really think—” Charlie started, but her sentence trailed off.
The three Jackie O’s sat in brooding, scared silence for a minute, but then one of the G.I. Janes unzipped the door and stuck her head in. “We’re bringing you some grub. After you eat, you can go to the latrine for a supervised pee. Then you hang out here until we’re ready to start the Tribunal.”
Charlie grimaced. Sounded like a terrible few hours, but she’d definitely eat the food. She was too hungry to care anymore. They weren’t going to poison the Jackie O’s now, not before the Tribunal…
Wait. The wha?