Careful to be quiet, they followed Luke to his tent. Like everything else that he possessed, the tent looked like something only a rich kid would have. Aria asked Luke if there was anywhere to use the bathroom. He pointed to the left and told her, “We mostly just find a place in the woods.” She left the boys to walk to the perimeter of the property and climbed over the fence into the scrub sage and stunted oak trees surrounding the lot. Making sure that there was no one around to catch her, she peed in the tall grass before climbing back over the fence to find Luke and Taylor again.

Luke guaranteed them, even though they never asked, that tomorrow he would help them to find a place there to establish their own camp if they wanted. But that night he invited them to stay with him. Aria watched him hurry to push everything in his tent over to one side to make room for them. His lengthy conversation with Taylor had not ceased, it simply buzzed through exaggerated whispers. Even though Aria had slept almost the entire day, she was still so tired that when she lay down on the other side of Taylor, who was thrilled to be sandwiched between her and Luke and Palin, the airy sound of their voices quickly lulled her to sleep.

Aria was glad to be taken under someone’s wing, even if that someone was as obnoxious as Luke. She was glad that the deafening noise of the city could only be heard as a breath in the distance. She was glad to have the pressure of Taylor’s incessant need for conversation temporarily taken off her. She was even more glad that, contrary to what she had feared just hours earlier, she was not spending the night alone.

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12

The metallic twang of an old Martin guitar being poorly tuned pulled Aria from her slumber. The sun had been up long enough that it had made the condensation on the inside of the tent tepid. She listened to whoever was playing the guitar stop and start again and again, trying to master a song that she had never heard before.