"Would you stop staring at them?" Charlie chided under his breath.
I glared from across the fire at the three kids happily munching on the hotdogs that Derek "found" but wouldn't tell us where he got.
My guess: not hotdogs.
"They're eating our food." I squinted at them.
"They're kids." Charlie gestured with an open hand, his tone: 'are you serious?'.
"Still," I grumbled back, continuing to stare. "What were you two idiots thinking?" I looked at him, then at Derek.
"We can't even take care of the five of us, and now you wanna add three more?" I lectured.
"I mean, have you looked in the mirror lately?" I continued, not realizing I was slowly raising my voice, and the kids were now staring at me, the hotdogs forgotten.
"Charlie, you look like a stained glass window. And Derek, oh ho, don't even get me started on your stupidity." I waged a finger at him.
The kids stared entertained and open-mouthed at me ranting.
"I mean, we need to check your sanity. As you've so astutely demonstrated, cars don't fly." My hands were now flinging every which way, and I realized I'd at some point in my speech stood up and was now towering over the guys.
"And you!" I hissed at Tyler.
"Wha- me? What did I do?" Tyler choked on a bit of hotdog, his tone defensive.
"Hah, what did you do? Well, first of all, you ran off by yourself without permission. You announced to the whole world the inside intentions of the facility, pissing everybody off. Yeah, thanks for that, as if they weren't already mad enough. You started a fire." I enunciated.
"Then, while we were almost free, you jumped out of the sunroof and died!"
"Derek was the one who drove off the cliff!" Tyler accused, pointing a finger at him from across the fire.
The kids eagerly munched on the ends of their hotdogs, following our pointing fingers over who was to blame.
"Hey, I saved our asses!" Derek shot back at Tyler. "And yours, thank you very much. You think Grace just helped you out of the goodness of her heart?"
"Wait, you got Tyler help, but not us?" Charlie criticized, now looking at Derek in a mix of agitation and 'lemme get this straight'.
"Tyler was our help!" Derek flicked his wrist to his brother. "I didn't tell him to set the fire." Derek glared at Tyler, defensiveness creeping in his tone.
"Well, what did you expect me to do?" Tyler barked.
"I expected you to..." Derek began in a scathing tone.
"HEY!" I shouted at them.
"I'm the one doing the yellin' notchu." I hissed at him to be quiet.
"Now, shut your yap." I pointed. "And back to you two." I glared at Charlie and Derek.
"What in the world were you two thinkin' kidnappin', three elementary kids? One of us almost died today." I enunciated,
"Both of ya's got shot, and Max is missin'. And you want to add three tiny kids to all that hoopblah?"
Sorry, when I lecture, my grammar suffers, and the g's seem to just drop off my words.
Habit.
Well, it must've worked cause it shut them right up. The little boy was so entertained that he dropped his hotdog right in the fire as he stared at me open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
* * *
"Where do you think he is?" Charlie whispered softly as he stared up at the blanket of stars twinkling brightly above us.
I turned over on my right side to face him, gritting my teeth as I rolled over onto my bad leg that Derek had pulled the shattered glass out of hours before.
We were laying out on the grass with a lightweight reflective blanket Charlie found in the black emergency backpacks we'd snagged.
"Max?" I asked, but Charlie stayed quiet, clenching his jaw.
"He knows what he's doing. If anyone can make it out here, it's him." I rubbed Charlie's bicep before scooting closer to him.
He moved his arm up and around me so I could close the space between us, lying my head on the side of his chest.
"You don't think we'll make it?" Charlie said, slightly surprised, making an effort to look down at me.
"Not if those urchins keep eating all our food." I laughed, only half-joking.
I felt Charlie chuckle and squeeze me a little tighter.
A moment of silence passed before he spoke.
"We made it." He said thoughtfully, rubbing his thumb back and forth over my upper arm.
"Amazingly enough we did, Charlie, amazingly enough." I agreed, turning my face into him, breathing in his musky, woodsy scent.
I closed my eyes dozing off happily for the night.
Man, it felt good to be free, even if we had to break a few ribs in the process.
