“What’s up?” I ask as I join her.
Then I see it—boots, cargo pants, backpack.
“It’s time,” she says.
“For what?” My heart gives out a heavy thud, and I am wide awake.
“I need to get going.”
The words are ambiguous. When Katura gets up and heads to the main path into the jungle, anxiety sweeps over me.
“Katura! Where?”
I know where she is going. She’s had a fixation on the Westside for some time, but I want to stretch time. When she gets to the Westside, there will be Archer and questions, and he will come for me and Dani because that’s how we got here in the first place.
I trot after Katura, who walks in that usual military stomp that is faster than my trot. Her fingers are hooked under the straps of her backpack. She is determined.
“Kat!”
I don’t want her to leave. Not just yet. I am already out of breath, and she looks like she is taking a casual stroll. The distance between us is growing.
“Kat! Wait up!”
I stop and lean with my hands on my knees, panting.
She turns around abruptly and puts her hands on her waist.
“Listen, babe.” She stares at me with what looks like pity and irritation. “You are adorable. And a good-hearted human. But I need to get to the Westside.”
I push off my knees and walk up to her. “Will you tell me why?”
“Why?” She smirks. “We came here for this, remember? And your cousin is on the Westside. Though a certain someone seems to have bewitched you here.”
“They say it’s not what you expect.”
Katura exhales loudly in irritation and cocks her head. “You don’t know until you are there. Pull your head out of your ass, babe. You’ve only been here for less than two weeks, and already you are happy cleaning fish and gardening and running in the rain with your boy toy.”
I blush at the mention. “And what do you think they make you do there to work your way around that place?”
“You don’t try, you don’t know.”
Gah! She is stubborn. And right. But she doesn’t know about me and Kai and Archer. Now that I think about it, meeting Archer petrifies me.
“So let’s stick around,” I plead, “find out more from the others, and figure out a plan.”
I know there is no plan.
“I have a plan.” She smirks.
Well, shit. Of course, she does.
She narrows her dark eyes at me. “It’s about the boy, isn’t it? Kai. You know him from before. And not just from going to the same school.”
I exhale loudly. “I know him, yeah.”
“You like him.”
“Yeah.”