When the bells rang again, this time signaling lights-out across the camp, there was an audible groan, loud enough to get Liam chuckling. I didn’t realize how tired I was until we separated.

“Bed time,” he called, waving Zu over. She stood, brushing herself off, signaling something to the group of kids she was leaving.

The fire popped and hissed, buckling under a steady stream of water from a nearby hose. The sound it made was like an animal having the life squeezed out of it. And when the light was finally gone, settling down into a pile of unimpressive embers spread out among the ash, there was nothing but a screen of smoke to separate me from where Clancy Gray sat on the other side of the pit, watching me with dark eyes.

TWENTY-TWO

THAT WAS SOMETHING Clancy Gray liked to do, apparently—watch me.

Watch me while I sat out on the porch helping Zu lace her new tennis shoes before walking with her and Hina to the cabin serving as the classroom.

Watch me tease Chubs for being the first and only one to get bitten by a tick.

Watch me wait by the fire pit with Lee for Mike to arrive with what our duties would be during our time at East River.

All this watching from the window on the second story of the office, where he appeared to control everything and do nothing.

Mike had mentioned that everyone older than thirteen would be responsible for doing some work; I just hadn’t realized that the assignments were chosen for you. I didn’t mind helping out in the pantry, organizing and counting our supplies—but I would have so preferred being out with Chubs in the camp’s small garden, or running around the forest with Liam on security detail. It was strange not to spend my entire day with them.

The kids I worked with were nice enough; more than nice, actually. Most had never seen the inside of a camp but then again, I had never cooked a meal, so it wasn’t like any of us were winning in the life experience department. What I liked most was their brand of pluck. Lizzie, for instance, had been hiding out at East River for close to two years, having narrowly escaped capture by PSFs who had pulled her parents’ car over in Maryland.

“You just got out and ran?” I asked.

“Like the wind,” she confirmed. “Didn’t have anything on me at all, ’cept what I was wearing. I tried to meet up with my parents again, but they never went back to our old house. I got picked up by a tribe of Greens and brought here.”

That was another thing: most of the kids here were either Green or Blue, with a small tight-knit group of Yellows that didn’t really socialize outside of their own circle. Lizzie claimed that there used to be more, but the Slip Kid had given them permission to head out and form a tribe of their own.