“This one good?”
We were both smiling, my head tilted slightly in his direction. Any makeup I’d been wearing had long worn off, and we both looked exhausted, but it was actually a pretty nice picture. The morning sun cast a nice golden glow over our faces, and we looked relaxed, like we hadn’t just had a terrifying experience.
“It’s great,” I said.
Madison appeared from around the side of a tent. Her eyes darted to me and then quickly to Edan. “Have you seen my brother?”
“He was headed to that big tent, last I saw,” Edan said, pointing. “Hey—Madison.”
She’d started to walk away, and she turned to look back at us.
“We didn’t sleep at all last night. Is there somewhere we could take a nap?”
“Yeah. The tent I slept in last night is empty right now. This way.” She led us around to the outskirts of the campsite, where a long row of smaller tents had been set up. She walked to a navy blue one and pulled back the flap. Four sleeping bags were laid out next to each other.
“Thanks,” Edan said, ducking inside. He plopped down on the sleeping bag on the far right, so I took the one on the other side. Madison zipped up the tent and her footsteps faded as she walked away.
I stretched out and closed my eyes. I fell asleep to the sound of Edan breathing, the noises of the camp distant.
30
I jerked awake with a gasp, and for a moment I didn’t remember where I was. My hand fumbled for my weapons pack before I had even fully woken up.
The tent came into focus around me. I let out a sigh as I sat up. Right. I was safe. Relatively. I pulled the weapons pack a little closer.
Edan rolled over on his sleeping bag, rubbing his eyes.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” I pushed a hand over my head and discovered my ponytail was wildly out of place. I pulled the rubber from my hair and shook it out.
“I was just having a nightmare about being eaten, so I’d actually prefer to be awake.” He stretched his arms over his head, revealing a patch of skin on his stomach.
“We’re traumatized for life, aren’t we?”
“I mean, we already were, so why not a little more?”
I barked out a laugh. “Sure. At least we did this one to ourselves, right?”
“That was exactly my logic for coming.”
“Mine too.” I tied my hair back again. “I don’t know why some of our team came, honestly. When they talk about deferring college or missing their siblings’ birthdays back home . . .” I shook my head. “Sometimes I want to be like, Noah, dude, what are you doing here?”
“He wants to help people. Plus he’s awesome at this.” He sat up, scrubbing a hand down his face. “But I know what you mean.”
“Some of them are just way better people than I am.”
“Lots of people are better than me,” he said. “You get used to it.”
I laughed again, but the way he said it made me think that he was sort of serious.
“Thanks for keeping me sane last night,” I said, because I thought he should know that he had.
He looked at me in surprise. “Did I?”
“Yes. If I have to almost die again, I wouldn’t mind having you around.”
A smile spread across his face. “Same.”
The zipper at the front of the tent moved suddenly, and Archer’s face appeared at the flap.
“They sent me to wake you guys up,” he said, and I tried not to look startled. Archer spoke so infrequently that I’d forgotten what his voice sounded like. “We’re leaving.”
“Where are we going?” Edan asked.
Archer shrugged and tossed me a phone. “Noah said that’s yours.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed my weapons pack and crawled out of the tent. Archer handed me my backpack. “Did you see what Edan posted on Instagram?”
I shook my head.
“It’s nice, what he said.”
Edan smiled at Archer as he grabbed his bag. I opened Instagram as I trailed behind them. Edan’s post, the selfie we’d taken earlier, popped up on the top of my feed. It had thousands of likes and comments.
This girl has saved my ass like four times now. Clara risked her life to help me yesterday, and I’d be dead if she hadn’t. And I’d be dead several times over if it weren’t for the rest of team seven. Trust me, they’re all just as awesome as they look on video. More so, even. I’m incredibly lucky to be surrounded by badasses like Clara.
I smiled, glancing up at Edan. He was already with the rest of the team, standing near the road with their luggage. They were all crowded around Madison and Noah, who were sitting on top of a suitcase. Noah had a tablet in his hands.
“Clara! Come see this!” Priya called.
“What is it?” I asked, walking over and standing on my toes to see over Dorsey’s shoulder. A clip from an American news station was playing on the tablet. Noah scrolled back so that the video started over.
“We’re getting reports that one of Grayson St. John’s American teams scored a major victory today in France when they took out a breeding nest.”
The footage switched to the side of the road where we’d just been. It was jumpy, disjointed footage, but I could clearly see Patrick landing a direct hit to a scrab. The bottom of the screen said footage courtesy of Noah Cohen.
“You already posted a video of this?” I asked.
“Yeah, Madison helped me comb through all the footage and we got it up as fast as possible.” Noah held his fist out to her without looking up from the screen. She gave it a bump.
“The footage you’re seeing is of American team seven, a team made up entirely of teenagers.” The reporter said the last word like it
