First Kiss: The Ghost Bird Series: #10 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) (23 page)

Nathan perked up. “Maybe that’s what we should do this afternoon. We could make a new map.”

That started a discussion about how one starts a map and how we could scour the campgrounds, and then who would track everything.

I leaned into Victor. I was interested in making a map, but my voice was gone right now.

Victor was quiet, too, not joining in the conversation. He leaned into me but did nothing else. His eyes flickered to life with a low flame of curiosity.

When Kota returned with Silas and the other guys, towing another table, Nathan jumped up to give them a hand. They settled the table at the end of the first, making one long table together.

“Good,” North said, piling hot dogs on a plate. “These almost burned.”

There were black grill marks on the hot dogs but they looked fine. There was a flurry of movement as Luke got out more drinks for everyone. Each one of us got a hot dog and bun, and bags of chips got passed around. There were basic ketchup and mustard passed around.

I sat quietly through the bustle. Victor made my hot dog. Nathan made sure I had enough corn chips on my plate. It was easier to be out of the way rather than bumping into everyone trying to reach for anything. I told them thank you.

“Aw,” April said. She’d finished her coffee and had gotten a second one. She looked over at Nathan with a smile. “You guys are so sweet to her. That’s so nice to see.”

Nathan, Victor, and I shared glances, and then I happened to look to Kota.

Kota’s attention had shifted to us. He stood at the head of the table, a plate in his hand. He smiled weakly. “I hope it’s not inappropriate,” he said.

Taylor put up her hand to stop him and put down her Sprite to speak. “No, guys, you don’t understand. So many girls these days complain about guys doing nice things, that some have stopped doing them because they don’t know what to do. Opening doors, or fetching a soda. Those are things you can ask your friends or family to do, but if a guy offers to do it for his girlfriend, suddenly it’s an issue.”

“Oh my god, I hate that,” said Emma. Her bright blue eyes opened wider as she spoke. “There was a girl—not Academy—but she got a compliment about her hair that she just had done. Some guy complimented it... and she yelled at him about how sexist he was.” She sighed and shook her head. “I feel like the level of girls trying to fight for equality goes a little overboard in some areas. Compliments and niceties should be extended on either side. We shouldn’t be complaining. We should be offering niceties back.”

April picked up her hot dog. “I’ll admit, I like the change of thinking in some areas, but attacking nice deeds is getting out of hand. I’ve opened doors for other people, including guys. And I rather like the door being opened for me. The way some girls talk, I’m supposed to yell at you about being sexist.”

Gabriel spoke up. “What the hell?” he said. He looked right at me. “So you’re supposed to snap at me when I open a door for you now?”

“No!” All three of the girls said together. They looked at each other and laughed.

April continued, pointing at me but looking at Gabriel. “Listen, don’t start this. Open her door. It’s a nice thing. She might open your door, too. But some girls, if a girl opens a door for another girl, they’re okay with it, they say it’s nice. If it’s a guy, though, they say it’s sexist, like they assume she can’t open her own door.”

“It’s just wrong, though,” April said. “I mean, okay, sometimes you have to be a little careful, but you should always be respectful and realize if someone is doing a nice thing for you.”

“Doesn’t look like you guys have that issue,” Emma said to me. “Sometimes you work out in the field and you have to pretend to get friendly with people.” She looked right at me. “You’ll see. You have to be aware of social trends, be prepared to talk to anyone.”

Me? Talk to anyone? I looked at the others. Did I need to learn social trends, like yelling at guys who opened doors for me?

“Hey,” Nathan said, looking at Kota to get his attention. “We’re talking about making a new map of the camp since this one is outdated.”

Kota liked the idea and the dynamic changed as it turned into a plan. It was Ian, April, and Kota who started organizing who should do what.

I thought of things to say, but the others talked so fast and freely, that I never got a chance to say anything at all. I finished my hot dog and chips before anyone else because they were talking so much, seeming to forget about food.

The only other one who was quiet was Victor. He finished his plate, too, and then I felt his hand on my leg. He squeezed encouragingly.

I held onto his leg, too. I craved that stability the support of having him close.

I was about to face a week of activity with other Academy people. The two groups were friendly and helpful, what I’d witnessed in the guys, especially when I was first getting to know them. They were so eager to help and to jump in and get things done. These new faces seemed to ignite energy into them, and the plan to map the campground sent a wave of excitement through them all.

I shared glimpses with Victor, though, and while I was curious about the other teams, nothing changed in my heart. I wanted to stay with them. In a small way, I didn’t want to know other teams at all. Being around them meant I couldn’t hold hands or do other things with the guys. It meant watching what I said. I didn’t know if they’d ask me personal questions and what I should say if they asked simple things like about my parents or school.

When Kota talked about mixing up the groups to help scout, my hand tightened on Victor’s leg. The new teams seemed okay, but I wasn’t really ready to get mixed together with other teams yet. What would I talk about with them?

His grip on my thigh held firm, his thumb slowly rubbing back and forth.

I leaned into him. “Stay with me?” I asked, hoping that no one could hear it but him. I didn’t want to appear rude, but I felt a little awkward at the notion of teaming up with the others when I didn’t know them that well.

He leaned in and whispered, his lips against my ear. “I will. Don’t worry. You won’t be out of our sight while we’re at camp. Ever.”

I knew he’d never break his promise. I swallowed back a little wave of emotion and tried to calm my nerves.

Luke spoke up loudly, drawing our attention. “Sang should be on my team since I’ll be doing the drawing,” he said. “She’s got the best sense of direction.”

“I can help,” Ian said. He took off his baseball cap, scratched at his short brown hair and then put his cap back on. “I can draw a decent map.”

“She can come with the girls if she wants to,” April said.

Victor almost spoke up Taylor beat him to it. “I don’t think we should split up like that,” she said. “I know it’s fun, but we should really focus on our skills. You’d be better with...” She looked at Luke and then Kota. “Well, let’s figure out a plan.”

Emma had brought her tablet and turned it on, and someone pulled up a Google map of the island, showing a bird’s eye view. We compare it to someone else’s phone showing a Google Earth overview, but it was hard to see any roads through the trees. We looked at the map given to us by the camp, and then another paper road map someone had picked up at a nearby gas station. It showed the roads and the entrance to the camp, but none of the details of the campground itself.

Kota pointed to the campground map. “This is our site, on the north side of the island. There’s a few trails on the south side of camp, but I don’t know how far they go before you hit wild section of woods. Somewhere beyond that set of woods is the other camp, the hunting camp, but it’s a good few miles.”

“We could go south along the beach,” Ian said. “And mark on a map where there are paths going in and where they lead.”

“And then follow the last path in again and make sure they connect with the camp properly,” Kota said. “Start in the corner and work our way in. We could go,” He pointed to Ian, himself and Nathan in turn, and then looked at the girls. “Are any of you wearing boots?”

Emma raised her hand. “And thick jeans—the brush is pretty thick.”

Kota nodded. “You can join us if you’d like. We’ll be in deep woods, though. We might need to go get some bug spray and water. I’ve got radios we can use back at camp, but I’ve only got nine.”

“We should only carry maybe two per team, making sure to leave one for Luke and whoever stays with him to draw the map,” Ian said.

“I’ll stay with him,” one of the guys said. I couldn’t see who it was from where I was sitting, but Luke waved and gave a thumbs-up.

Kota pointed back to the map. “And then the rest of you can split up, following the main roads. There should be cabins and an RV section as well. Let’s make sure we know where everything.”

“Do we need put echo trackers for the campground managers or the rangers?” one of the guys of the other team asked. “Do we need to worry about that?”

Kota touched at the corner of his glasses, looking at the map but clearly thinking. He looked up at me and then at the camp’s map. “I don’t think we really need to. Unless they start getting too nosey about us. Do we have supplies just in case?”

“I’ve got trackers,” the guy said.

“I’ve got some, too,” Victor said. “They’re in my car.”

“We could put them on their cars now without much harm,” the guys said. “So when they drive out, we’ll know.”

“Better to put them on their shoes,” Victor said. “They might not take a car with them everywhere.”

Mouths fell open across the table.

“You put them in shoes?” several people asked together.

The question surprised me. I hadn’t been surprised to hear their suggestion to track the rangers, as I’d heard them track with phones. But why were the other teams’ members shocked? What kind of things did other Academy groups do?

“They don’t last very long,” Victor said. “Because when you walk, it puts pressure on the devices and they can break.”

“And no big battery support,” Luke said.

Victor continued. “But they’ll go for a while with a fresh battery on them, and by mid-week, we should know their patterns well enough. I’d say tap their cell phones, but it’s a little extreme and there’s hardly any signal out here.”

“They probably have radios, too, though,” April said. She leaned on the table with her hands pressed to the wood. “We could keep the signal going with the battery attached to it.”

Victor shook his head and made gestures with his hands like holding a radio. “Radios are trickier because they pick up on signals and will create feedback noises. It might be more noticeable, probably not worth it.” He smirked. “Speculation of course. We don’t need to do all this but always good to think it out just in case.”

Ian blew a breath out from between his lips. “What kind of jobs do they have you all on that you’re doing this type of stuff?”

“PE classes,” Nathan said with a small smirk.

“And lunch,” Luke said and chuckled.

“This is nothing,” Gabriel said.

“It’s a long story,” Kota said. “But let’s focus on this map making.”

Everyone split up as evenly as we could. Gabriel would come with my group to fix the faded signs along the way using paint one of the girls had on hand.

Luke and Victor decided it was better if they teamed up to introduce themselves to the rangers, and also scope out their place and determine if we needed to worry about them.

Gabriel, Silas and I were joined by Taylor and April. Before we left, April grabbed one more coffee for the road.

“I’m going to have to grab some more for you for the rest of the week,” Gabriel whispered to me as we fell behind the two girls. “She does have a coffee addiction.”

Taylor—who seemed to be her team’s leader—led the way, giving us directions. April stayed up front with her while I walked with Gabriel and Silas trailed behind us.

After a stop for the girls to get the paint, we tracked back to the road that came in from the main gate. Starting there, we took every right until we hit the end of the paved road areas. April wrote on the map where things were. Gabriel painted signs along the way.

I walked beside Silas, saying nothing and following along.

It took up a good portion of the rest of the afternoon to get through even half of the campground, and there were roads that continued beyond where we were focusing on, turning from paved to gravel. It was suspected the gravel roads led to campsite areas, although one sign marked a path as a hiking trail.

We stopped to let Gabriel paint the marker.

“They gravel their hiking trails?” April asked, holding the map and a pen. “That’s kind of distracting on a hike.”

“It might just be the start of the trial,” Taylor said. She blew a breath out and shifted some of her long brown hair away from her sharp-featured face. “This might be a two-day job. We’re not covering nearly enough ground, and it’ll get dark soon.”

“We could split up,” April said. “Cover more ground and get more done.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Gabriel said, painting white letters on the wood post. “We’ve only got the one radio.”

“Those with the radio should be the ones going out in the gravel sections,” Taylor said.

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up, though,” Gabriel said. He looked up toward the cloud-covered sky, through the tops of trees. “You could end up on the other side of the camp in the dark.”

“Girls aren’t afraid of the dark,” Taylor said. She looked at me and winked. “Are we?”

I shrugged in reply. I really didn’t want to be far away from our camp in the dark, especially when the temperature was starting to drop. My tongue hadn’t moved the entire time we were out. I wasn’t needed as a directional navigator since we were following the roads.

Taylor lifted a brown eyebrow. “Do you talk at all? I don’t think I’ve heard your voice yet.”

I smothered a frown. I didn’t like getting pressured into talking. I didn’t really have anything to say.

“She talks when she wants to,” Silas said, his voice spooking even me. The others jumped slightly, except for Gabriel, who remained focused on the sign.

“She’s fine,” Gabriel said. “All I’m saying is that it’s getting late. It’s going to get really fucking cold soon. This isn’t an emergency map-making project. We should focus on the paved roads as much as we can and then head back. We can get up early in the morning, and finish out the paved road maps before the others get here.”