“I can’t even deal with you right now. I—I’m leaving,” Greer barked.
I grabbed the tent zipper. “Not until you actually explain things to me.”
Greer easily picked me up and moved me out of the way. I dove for the zipper again.
“Stop, Waverly. Just stop. I’m not an idiot and I’m no fool so stop!” He moved me out of the way, opened the zipper, and disappeared into the forest.
Well, he thought he was done, but I wasn’t. I’d been lied to, and the truth kept from me. I’d been locked up, captured, strangled, forced to watch the unthinkable, and I was done with not having answers.
Outside, the sky was light, the moon gigantic. A warm breeze shook the shadowy branches. He wasn’t in the immediate area, but he was close. I took a guess he’d gone up the hill.
When I found him, Greer was sitting on a fallen log. To my surprise, he wasn’t on the phone. He held his head in his hands, his hair falling over his face. Even in the dark, I saw how tired he was, how stressed. I realized then that Greer didn’t have a phone call to make but just needed a break from me.
It had been a long day, longer for him than I had considered. He tilted his face up to the sky, his eyes closed.
I leaned back against a tree, content to watch him. He’d rescued me, risked his life repeatedly. A light breeze ruffled up his hair, and I was awestruck by him. For the first time in my life, I understood why Dad liked observing Mom so much. I guessed sometimes watching someone made you feel better, although I couldn’t think of any other person I’d like seeing more than him.
Under all my emotions—anger, worry, loneliness, terror—I felt a new one I didn’t understand. It was deeper than all of those, deeper and hidden, but there.
Ruining this moment of peace for him felt so wrong that I decided my questions could wait. He needed this. I was heading back to the tent, or at least that was the plan, but like everything else in this godforsaken land, nothing worked out like it should.
For when I turned to leave, I came face to face with a huge blue and black creature straight out of prehistoric times. The beast so strange, that I couldn’t even tell what the thing was for a minute.
A bird. It had to be at least six feet tall. This thing was the size of Big Bird but with none of the pleasantness. The huge thing had a red swaying wattle like a turkey. There was a helmet on the bird’s head.
“Oh, sh—” I stopped mid-word because the bird’s cheeks puffed, and it gave me the growl of a raptor.
I didn’t know what to do. I had nowhere to run. I couldn’t get around the bird. It was too big and fierce. It squawked again, and that’s when I saw its feet. At the end of each of the bird’s middle toes was a long talon perfect for ripping into a person. The bird’s eyes were wild. I was so dead. I couldn’t move, and my eyes filled with tears. Apparently, it was my destiny to be killed by a bird.
The bird leapt towards me.
An arm grabbed my waist and pulled me to the ground, causing the bird to miss.
Greer picked me up, putting his body between me and the bird. The bird circled us. Greer circled too, keeping me behind him the whole time.
The bird roared. Greer pulled his cubox from his pocket and a giant dog projected out, snarling and barking. Greer threw his cubox to the ground. With the dog barking between us, the bird focused on the dog. It jumped at the projection, only to go right through the dog. The bird screeched one more time before moving on.
Greer turned to me. “Are you hurt?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
“What happened? Why did you leave camp?”
“I...I... have no luck with birds. ”
He almost smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to get you back to the tent. Come on.” He grabbed his cubox. “We don’t want to be here if the cassowary returns.” He pulled my hand, but my feet didn’t move. “Waverly, come on!”
“What was that?” My voice shook.
“What?” His fingers raked through his hair in frustration. “We don’t have time to talk right now.” Without another word, Greer threw me over his shoulder and bolted for the tent. Once inside, he put me down, zipped the tent, and slammed the red lock button.
“You have any idea how dangerous these woods are? Are you insane? Where are your sunglasses?”
“Sunglasses? Sunglasses? It’s night out there, we’ve been attacked by a stupid big bird on top of everything else and you bring up my stupid sunglasses.” I trembled as shock took over. It had been a long, hard day and now there was a giant, terrible bird in the forest.
Greer searched my side of the tent for the sunglasses. “It’s exhausting keeping you alive, and for what?”
“I didn’t know there were giant birds in these woods. How could I ever think some prehistoric monster was coming for me?”
“I told you—”
“Nothing. You tell me nothing. We have nothing to talk about, remember? We never have time to talk and with everything that has happened—”
“After everything—you still need an explanation! I tell you what you need to know.”
“Oh, like put on your sunglasses and eat up because we’re going to run, or go to sleep, but not once did you tell me about big dinosaur birds.”
He had nothing to reply to that, so he changed the subject. “What were you doing, anyway? Were you spying on me? Is that it?”
“I wasn’t spying on you.” I sat down on the end of Greer’s sleeping bag and I crossed my arms.
“Then what were you doing just
