“Me too,” I told her while I drew my hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to hide my enthusiasm from Buzz Cut.
When we got outside, I leaned my head back, absorbing as much of the sun’s radiation as I could until my cheeks were good and smoldering. According to my pink watch, it was nearly six o’clock, and there wasn’t a whole lotta sun left for the day.
We were passed off to the drill instructor, the same short guy who’d smacked me with his rifle when they’d ambushed us in the desert. His freakishly developed body made sense now that I knew the workout regimen he put his people through on a daily basis.
He rolled his eyes, making it crystal clear we were a burden he didn’t care to be hampered with, but he stepped aside nonetheless, letting us join the rest of his squad, where they were already on the ground doing push-ups.
Training like this made me feel alive. And if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was back in Burlington, on the softball field with my coach calling out the drills and blowing her whistle. The only difference was this coach had a squat body and Popeye-sized forearms.
By the time we were running, I had sweat dripping down the center of my back and stinging my eyes. I was buzzing with energy even while I was wilting from the heat. But from day one it had been obvious Natty wasn’t exactly built for this kind of conditioning, and it was a challenge for her just to keep up. For her the only benefit of the exercise was being outdoors. Watching her run, the way she clomp-clomped along like her feet were made of iron, was almost painful, and the actual act of sweating repulsed her, something she complained about so much I wouldn’t have felt totally guilty to leave her in the dust.
Unfortunately, part of us being prisoners meant we were also bound to the buddy system, and Natty had been assigned as my official “buddy.”
“Look,” she panted. “Look.” The second time she said it, the word came out as an airy wheeze.
It took me a second to follow her rising and falling finger, and eventually see what she was trying to point to.
I almost stopped moving then, which almost surely would have gotten me banned from the daily drills, messing them up like that, but I caught myself in time and found my stride again.
She’d been pointing at Griffin. But not just Griffin—Jett was there too.
I squinted, trying to get a better look from where we were, which was suddenly far too far away from where they were on the opposite side of the field, over near the cafeteria. “What do you think they’re doing?” I asked, never taking my eyes away from Jett, who was walking alongside the Blackwater Ranch leader. He was clutching his laptop to his chest, and from where we were, it looked like Griffin was carrying something too. “Is that . . . ?” I lifted my hand to my eyes, trying to shield them from the sun. “It looks like she has Simon’s backpack,” I told Natty.
Natty saw too, and she nodded. “Yeah,” she rasped. “Think . . . so . . .”
“You think Jett’s helping her? That they finally cracked the codes to those files?”
I glanced quickly at Natty. She lifted her eyebrows and I realized it was her equivalent of a shrug.
“I wish I knew what the hell was going on here. And why they’re keeping us apart.”
Griffin and Jett stopped outside one of the few non-tent buildings here, one with a real foundation and wooden walls and crisp white paint that I’d noticed on our way to the cafeteria. I watched as Griffin knocked once before letting herself, and then Jett, inside. It was weird that she’d have to knock at all since she was the leader here.
I was about to ask Natty what she made of that when I realized we were no longer alone. Our drill instructor had joined us, keeping pace alongside Natty. Unlike Natty, whose cheeks were flushed so red she looked like an enormous sticky tomato, he’d hardly broken a sweat.
Even though he was several inches shorter, he somehow managed to look down his nose at us. “Since you ladies can’t seem to keep up, why don’t you hit the showers?”
“What? No, we’re fine. Really.” I knew I was only speaking for me, but I wasn’t ready to go back to our tent for the night.
But Natty was more than willing to take the out, and her plodding stopped and she bent at the waist, gasping for breath. We didn’t need a secret language to know she’d had enough “fresh air” for one day.
I guessed my buddy and I were hitting the showers.
I was frustrated with Natty for getting us kicked out of drills, and with the drill instructor, who gave me a cheerful wave as he took off with the rest of his squad, only too happy to be rid of us, and then with Buzz Cut, who swooped in the second we’d been eighty-sixed so she could escort us to the showers. It wasn’t that I couldn’t use a shower—I totally could, I stunk as bad as Natty, maybe worse after that sweat fest out there. It was just that I wasn’t looking forward to another all-night tic-tac-toe marathon.
We took our time, just like we did with everything now that time was all we had, and when I was finished, I wiped the steam from the face of my watch. It had to be dark out by now, I realized, as I tossed my sweaty clothes in the hamper, following Natty on our way out the door.
It was cooler now, too, as I trailed after her, letting her lead the way along the path to the cafeteria, which was our next stop.
Buzz Cut stiff-armed me across my chest. “Not you,” she said, her voice low. And then she nodded toward another girl who’d been waiting in the shadows. “Take her.” The her in question was Natty, and Natty shot me a questioning look, but I didn’t have the answers she was looking for.