Tent City (22 page)

“Dani, no offense, but you look terrible. What’s happening to you? You look like you haven’t eaten in weeks. Are you sick?”

I try not to be hurt by her comment, but I know she’s right. I have the proof in the image I saw in the mirror this morning. I do look terrible. I’ve been so wrapped up in surviving and taking care of Brody that I haven’t taken care of myself.

“Kit, I don’t want to think about all of that. I just want this morning to be just you and me and some kind of girl’s day. Take care of me please.” I give her a pouty look and try to make light of it. She gives in and continues with the comb.

My hair is too tangled in knots to even get the comb through once and I ask her if maybe we should cut it. She scoffs and tries to work her way through.

She finds it impossible and orders me back into the water. It takes me a while to get undressed because the fresh clothes are sticking to my wet skin.

I get in and she and immediately douses me with conditioner. She lathers it and saturates it so that the comb can finally make its way through. She squeezes the last drop from the bottle.

“Sorry. I know Grant gave you that.”

“He can get more on the next raid,” she says.

“It was your favorite.”

“Only because he gave it to me. And there’s sure to be more where that came from. Now sit still,” she says, as she easily glides through my slimy locks.

We spend the next two hours getting me back to some sort of normal. She has saved my hair. She has exfoliated my skin and gotten it soft with lotions. My fingernails have been trimmed. She applies cream to my cracked and broken lip and immediately I feel the relief. Finally, she places my wet hair in a braid and announces me complete.

“No makeup?” I ask, surprised. Given this opportunity, I would think she would be all over the entire makeover procedure.

“Nope. You are beautiful just the way you are.”

I do feel better. My skin and hair feel soft and supple again. She puts me in a pair of tan khakis and soft pink tank. She even allows me to wear her prized leather moccasins. She must have really been feeling sorry for me. She loves those boots.

As we are walking back to camp, I realize that I haven’t felt this good since before we left.

We are just coming around a cluster of trees when I see a figure darting in and out of the rocks on the perimeter of the watering hole. It’s moving very quickly and I stop frozen. He appears to have been watching us and I let out a gasp, as I realize I was naked minutes ago. I can’t be certain, but it looks like Wes.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” she answers with concern on her face. Her arms instinctively cross over her chest, as though she was the one bathing in the river.

“Probably just patrol,” she adds, as we stroll back to camp.

I walk over to collect Brody from Callie’s when I hear Bentley shouting at Callie.

“There you are! What were you thinking?” He’s now yelling at me. He is red in the face and running his fingers through his hair.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, calmly leaning over to Brody to ask him what he’s building.

I’m not going to let Bentley ruin my good mood. It looks like Callie has found Brody some wooden blocks and he’s making a play cabin. I lean down further to engage Brody in hopes that Bentley understands I’m not in the mood for a lecture. 

“Can I speak to you outside please?” he asks, not so much of a question, but a demand.

Callie shoots me a sympathetic look and I know not to ruffle his feathers anymore. So, I follow him out.

“Seriously?” He’s got a hand on his hip and I bite my cheek to keep myself from laughing.

“You think this is pretty funny huh? We have rabies running rampant all over this forest and you pick that time to go off for a stroll in the forest? What were you thinking? You couldn’t take a guard with you? What about Brody?” His last question gets my attention.

“What about him?” I steel myself, now ready for a fight.

“What if something had happened to you? Then what about him?” He’s going for low blows and not letting up.

“Nothing was going to happen. We just went down to the waterhole. Not that it’s any of your business. I needed a bath. Do you think I need a guard for that? Or is that why you sent your spy? Don’t you think bathing is kind of private?”

“Spy? I never sent anyone, although I would have if I would have known what you were up to.”

“Wes?”

“No, I never sent him.”

“Then why was he there watching us?”

I feel like I might have overstepped here. It might not have even been Wes and I could be getting him in trouble, but I wanted to hurt Bentley back. He thinks he’s so smart and he’s the boss of everyone around here. It just popped out of my mouth because I knew it would shut him up.

“You were at the watering hole?” He has lost his fury.

“Yes.”

“And you say Wes was there?” he asks, eyes intent on me waiting for my answer.

“I guess I can’t be sure it was him.”

I wish I could take it back. I wish I had never said anything. He storms off and I can only hope that he cools down.

I should’ve known better than that. The argument explodes immediately after he leaves Callie’s cabin. He must have found Wes right away. He hasn’t even given him a chance to explain before he’s on top of him and throwing punches.

Wes is big, but not as big as Bentley. Bentley has at least 20 pounds on him and he’s being driven by some kind of rage. He has that same focused look on his face that I saw in the woods the night I was attacked. Panic
rises like bile from my stomach.

Brody has come out to see what the fuss is and I ask Callie to take him back in. I can tell she wants to be out here, but she does what I ask. She has as much invested as anyone, as I know what she feels for Bentley is more than just friendship.

Wes has not been completely defeated. He has at least gotten Bentley off him and turned him over enough to be able to stand again.

“How could you?” Bentley yells at Wes.

“I didn’t do anything! Why are ya taking her word over mine?” he screams, jerking his head back right before Bentley could connect.

Bentley is shouting obscene things at Wes, and Wes is denying everything. I am mentally kicking myself again for having said anything.

They are back to the ground and it’s a combination of fists flying and wrestling moves, each trying to outmaneuver.

I feel the urgency picking up as I worry Bentley may do to Wes what he did to the boy in the forest. I scramble trying to think of what to do. Instead of approaching Bentley to try and get him to back off, I run towards Grant’s tent.

It takes me a while to get there, as his tent is almost outside of Tent City, but I find him there with Kit. I explain to him quickly what’s going on and he races back to the center of camp.

The fight looks to be in a bit of a standstill, as Bentley has Wes pinned. Grant doesn’t say a word. He just rushes in like a bull and knocks Bentley off him. Bentley is taken by surprise and gets to his feet. Grant holds up his hand as if to say, ‘back off’. Surprisingly, Bentley stills. Wes looks absolutely enraged. He spits out a mouthful of blood and mutters something about bros before hos and limps away.  

I see Jack standing there, as if he has been watching the whole thing. Bentley stomps off to his cabin, probably to clean himself up. He looks pretty beaten with both eyes already swelling. I want to follow him, but decide it’s probably not a good idea right now. Instead, I walk over to Jack, remembering last night and wondering if it was a dream.

“So I had a dream last night,” I tell him with a shy smile.

“Oh yeah?” he asks.

“Yes, you were in it.”

“This I have to hear.” He smiles.

“Well, it began with me catching a bug of the crazy and running into the forest of wild and deadly creatures. They were about to eat me alive when this very handsome prince came riding up on a white horse and picked me up right before being devoured by a poisonous sea creature.” I say making mock scary gestures with my hands. Slightly embarrassed, I put them back down as I realize it’s Jack who’s listening and not Brody.

He looks at me expectantly and I recover, hoping I’m not blushing and continue, “Then he took me back to his castle, showered me with gifts that had a strange and heavenly scent of baby powder. The prince then proceeded to tell me all the secrets of the universe.”

“Sea creatures in the forest? That must have been some dream.” He’s still smiling. “So then what happened?” he asks.

“I woke up. So,” I say, changing the subject because as fun as this is, I still can’t get the picture of the fight that just happened out of my head, “did you see that whole thing?”

“You mean Bentley and Wes?”

“Yeah. Why didn’t you do anything? He’s your brother after all.” The last line hangs in the air awhile because we are still not talking openly about that situation.

“We don’t get into each other’s business. Besides, Wes had it coming. He’s been leering for weeks. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

“What do you mean leering?”

“What? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? He’s got a thing for you and Kit. Ever since you two got here, from the way I hear it. I’m kind of surprised Grant hadn’t gotten to him first. He follows Kit around like a puppy dog. It sounds like he got a pretty good look at you guys down at the river. He deserved it.”

Heat is burning up my neck and flushing into my cheeks. So it was him after all.

“I better go check on Bentley, I guess,” I say, hoping to forget about the water hole.  

“Why don’t you leave that to me?” he says. “We can walk over together. I’m sure he’s at Callie’s. You can pick up Brody and maybe I can stop by later. I would love to hear more about this dream.”

I pick up Brody and head back to my cabin, but not before I get a peek at Bentley. I tried to give him a look that meant I’m sorry, but he was preoccupied with Jack picking at his face. I noticed that Jack wasn’t nearly as gentle with Bentley as he was with me.

I walk away smiling, as I realize that maybe they’re on the mend. When Jack first got here, they were barely speaking. It seems as if the ice is about to thaw.

At camp supper that night, Wes was nowhere to be found. He just packed up and left. I don’t know why that surprises me after what happened.

Jack says it’s not the fight so much that had Wes bothered. It was being outed as a peeping tom that probably drove him out. Jack said he was humiliated.

Where will he go now? As far as I know, he’s been with Bentley for a long time. Even though he was a creep, I still fear he will be picked up by The Council. 

Supper tonight has a light and happy feel despite what’s happened. Bentley looks beat up, but almost satisfied, maybe with the memory of the brawl. He’s nothing if not a scrapper. Both eyes are swollen shut, but Callie is hovering over him and he doesn’t seem to mind the attention. She brings him extra food and we sit around and talk about what to do with the infected animals.

“I think we’ve got em all,” Grant says.

“We can’t be sure,” Bentley adds in. “We still need to have patrol until this situation is figured out. Besides we have bigger problems than that. I need to go on another raid. Jack needs some medical supplies and we are running low on some of the dried goods.”