Gone!

When I woke up the next morning, camp seemed kind of quiet.

And then I realized why. It was quiet. That’s because Fish wasn’t screaming us awake at the crack of dawn.

In fact, dawn had already cracked.

“What’s going on?” I said when I came outside.

“Fish and Pittman are gone,” Thea said. You could see where their tents had been—but no tents now. Just a couple of Sarge-shaped dents in the ground.

“Hey!” Diego said. “What’s that?”

When I looked where he was pointing, I saw a note stuck into a big pine tree with a Swiss Army knife.

“Fish,” I said. It had to be.

D.J. got to it first and ripped it down. The rest of us all huddled around while he read it out loud.

Everyone stopped at the same time and looked around. Did that mean Pittman and Fish were out there somewhere?

Probably. And by probably, I mean, of course they were.

Thea took the note out of D.J.’s hand and turned it over. That’s where the rest of the instructions were.

“Break down camp per normal,” she said. “Pack gear per normal. Follow the markers to the head of the Highline Trail.”

“What’s ‘pernormal’?” Burp said. “Is that like abnormal?”

“You’re abnormal,” D.J. said.

“Shut up, Burp,” Burp said. “I mean—shut up, D.J.”

“Everyone shut up,” Thea said. “It says here—”

“Since when are you in charge?” Carmen asked her.

“Why? You think you’re in charge?” D.J. asked Carmen.

“Can’t we just focus and try to get out of here?!” Thea broke in. “I don’t know about you guys, but I want to go home.”

There was something about that word—home. It seemed like everyone heard it and figured out that Thea was right. The one thing we all wanted was to get out of there. But first we had to escape. The only way to do that was to start moving.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Burp said.

“We can do this,” Thea said.

“Do we have any choice?” Carmen said.

And that’s when it started to rain.