Page 16 of My Favorite Bad Decision
What a weird thing to dream. Nothing like that ever happened.
“You’d better be clothed,” he says.
“What?” I ask, just as the zipper slides up and his head peeks in, a mountain of dust blowing in with it.
He frowns, relief and irritation stirring in his eyes. “Jesus,” he says. “Answer when I call your name next time. You scared the piss out of me. It’s dinner. You slept right through the bell.”
I’m so tired, and I’m not especially hungry. Both of these are signs of oxygen depletion, but I’m too exhausted to care.
“I’m gonna skip it,” I mumble, rolling over, tucking myself into fetal position as I bury my face in my pillow.
The pillow is snatched out from under me. My cheekbone smashes into the sleeping pad.
“Hey!” I shout.
“Get the fuck up or I destroy it.”
My jaw falls open. “You wouldn’t.”
His eyes are flat and calm and definitelynotthose of a man who’s bluffing. “Won’t I?”
“Fuck you, Miller,” I growl, flinging the sleeping bag off me and reaching for my pants.
“Fuck you, Kit,” he replies, removing his head from my tent…but not returning my pillow. When I stumble outside, he’s waiting with narrowed eyes. He hands the pillow back, and I’ve got half a mind to climb inside my tent and make him fight me for it—there’s a strange charge in my stomach at the idea—except hewouldfight me for it and now that I’m out, I’m actually a little hungry. I throw the pillow inside and stalk toward the dining tent.
“You can’t just start blowing off meals,” he says. He is beside me effortlessly, though I’m walking as fast as I can.
“I know,” I growl. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Because you realized this was a terrible fucking idea?”
“Because I was trying to figure out how to make your death look like an accident and couldn’t remember which local plants were poisonous,” I reply. His mouth twitches. I’m fighting a twitch of my own.
And then I realize this moment has occurred just as we’ve reached the entrance to the dining tent, where six pairs of eyes have witnessed the exchange, this half second of accidental truce, and I feel as if I’ve been caught at something.
As if it’s suspicious somehow that Miller and I are here together, arriving late, almost smiling at each other. I flush and take the nearest seat that isn’t beside Gerald. Miller follows, taking the seat across from mine.
“We must check you,” says Gideon, holding a pulse oximeter in the air.
“It’s to test your oxygen levels,” says Gerald. “It?—”
“She knows what it is,” growls Miller, and our gazes meet again.
He knows far more about what I’ve been up to the past few years than I do him. And I wonder what else, exactly, he knows.
I really hope it’s not everything.
6
KIT
DAY 3: SHIRA 1 TO SHIRA 2
11,500 feet to 12,800 feet
It’s still dark when Joseph wakes me with his gentle morning greeting. My eyes open and for a half second, I just stare at the tent’s ceiling, wallowing in misery.
After my hard nap yesterday afternoon, I found myself unable to sleep. It was nearly two when I finally unearthed the handy stash of sleeping pills I’d brought, but the four hours of sleep I managed was not nearly enough.
