“Because the scrabs are rumored to be smarter there?” Edan asked.
“Exactly. It’s where I would go if I were looking for scrabs to train. And MDG will expect us to call the police, so they’ve probably already abandoned the farm site you were at.”
“What about our team?” I asked. “And the other recruits. Do we tell them?”
“Let me try to get a handle on this first.” Grayson’s phone buzzed in his lap, and he took a quick glance down at it before returning his attention to the road. “I’m going to make some calls and find out what I can. I don’t want people panicking and bombarding me with questions when I don’t know any more than they do.”
Grayson made a left, and the camp came into view. It consisted of several giant tents, some portable toilets, and lots of small tents on the outskirts of the area. The other Jeeps and ATVs were parked in the dirt in front of the camp, and a few more filled in around us as I stepped out. Noah pulled the camera off his Jeep and scurried toward a tent.
I leaned against the side of the Jeep with a sigh. “I need a nap.”
“Me too.” Edan looked down at his dirty clothes. “Maybe a shower first.”
“Sorry, none of those here,” Grayson said. “You can get cleaned up by the toilets, though. There’s a hand washing station. And we have Wi-Fi out here, but I’m getting you a SIM card right away. Julian should have told me one of his team members didn’t have cell service.”
“Dorsey needs one too,” Edan said.
Grayson sighed. “All right.” He pointed to the tent in the middle of camp. Luggage was piled up outside of it. “Your bags are over there, if you want to change.”
Edan and I found our bags in the pile and then headed over to the hand washing station. I had to change in one of the portable toilets, which was not easy (or fun), but I managed to wriggle into jeans and a clean T-shirt. When I was done, I found Edan shirtless at the sinks, splashing water on his arms.
I joined him, peeling off the old bandage on my arm that covered claw marks. I was going to need a new dressing. I pressed down on the foot pedal to turn on the water.
I glanced up at Edan as I washed my hands. It was the first time I’d seen his full tattoos. He had one I’d never seen before—birds flying across his back and over his left shoulder. He caught me looking.
“Is it rude to ask about your tattoos?” I asked.
He turned off the water. “No, I don’t mind. You mean, like, what they mean?”
“Yeah.” I wiped off my hands on my shirt. “You’re just eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you get them all recently?”
“No.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving droplets of water behind. “I was friends with a few artists. I started when I was . . . fifteen, I think.” He pointed to his Hufflepuff tattoo. “That one was first. Puff pride.”
“Sure,” I said with a laugh.
He pointed to the words way leads on to way on his right forearm. “That one was second. It’s from the Robert Frost poem. You know, ‘The Road Not Taken’?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone usually get something about the road less traveled tattooed on their bodies for that one? Way to be a rebel.”
“Thank you. And yes. Everyone gets a ‘road less traveled’ tattoo because they don’t actually understand what the poem is about. He’s actually saying that the roads kind of look the same, and later he’ll just put a spin on the story and say that he took the one less traveled. I, personally, always liked the part of that poem where he’s saying you can’t go back. You choose a road, and it takes you one place, which takes you somewhere else, and you just keep choosing and changing until you can’t go back. Way leads on to way.”
I almost said, Wow, that was more profound than I was expecting, and then realized it might be kind of rude.
But true. I’d clearly misjudged Edan. I got the feeling that Julian had done the same.
He flipped his left arm over to show me the tree. “That one was third, to cover the scar.”
I touched his wrist lightly, leaning closer to see which scar he meant. A long, jagged scar ran through the tree. It almost looked like one of the limbs.
“My mom put my arm through a window,” he said, before I could ask.
“And why a tree?” I asked quietly. I was worried that maybe it was too personal a question. Were Edan and I friends now? It felt like we were friends.
“A lot of reasons,” he said, his gaze moving from the tattoo to meet mine. “I like that trees have roots you can’t see. There’s a whole hidden history there. You can only see what’s above the ground, but it’s what’s underneath that’s really making it strong. So when I decided to get a tattoo to cover up the scar, it just seemed fitting.”
I looked back down at the tattoo, at the twisted roots, the branches, the leaves. Everyone always mentioned regret when they talked about tattoos, but I couldn’t see ever regretting this one.
He pulled his shirt on. “Hey, do you mind if we take a picture? For Instagram?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“Sure. Are you going to tell them we almost died?”
“I’ll probably make us sound more badass than that.”
“Perfect.”
He stood
