First Kiss: The Ghost Bird Series: #10 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) (40 page)

I hoped she wasn’t having a bad time. I knew it was tough fitting in when you felt alone.

The tent flap had been closed. When we got out, the other girls were sitting in folding chairs around the fire.

“Yay!” they cried when they noticed us. “They’re awake! Now we can start!”

Taylor, April, and Emma were there. They pointed at the two remaining folding chairs nearby. “Come sit,” Taylor said.

“Hungry?” April said and then pointed to a cooler. “There’s burritos and coffee if you want.”

“Or water,” Taylor said. “And there’s some Pop-Tarts and crackers in the cooler.”

“Burritos?” Lake asked, and headed toward the cooler.

I waited until Taylor and April weren’t paying attention anymore and I snagged Lake’s elbow to whisper to her. “They’re black bean and avocado burritos. Spicy.”

“Ew,” Lake said. “Black bean is okay, but I don’t like avocado. I’ll take a Pop-Tart.”

We found strawberry Pop-Tarts and water and brought them back to the seats. Had Taylor and her team only brought spicy burritos? I wondered if I could exist on Pop-Tarts and water for the week. Luckily, I’d eaten a lot at lunch with the hamburgers and potatoes, and still felt fine. I hoped lunches like that were normal for camp. I wondered if we could team up with the guys around dinner time.

When Lake and I sat down, Carla gave us two minutes before she stood up. “Okay, now that we’re settled, I wanted to go around the circle and have us all kind of talk about how we found out about the Academy and maybe go over what we learned today.” She looked at Taylor and the other older girls. “Maybe you can fill in any holes we’ve got?”

“Sure,” Taylor said. “We’ll take turns, too.”

“Well, I was hoping—” Carla said, glancing toward the younger girls, who were looking eagerly at her.

“Might be best for us to start,” April said. “We’re your hosts tonight. You should know who you get into tents with.” She laughed, as did her teammates.

Carla sat down in her chair and nodded, seeming to lose her bossy nature.

Maybe Taylor had informed her team about Carla because April, Taylor, and Emma went through early chapters of their Academy careers, explaining how they tried different groups, and it took a while and some team changes for them to figure out what—and who—worked best for them.

“You never know with your group,” April said. “One day, you run into people and you just click. You just know.”

“But you had to work together on something and stick with each other for a while,” Carla finally said after letting Taylor and her team speak for a long time.

Taylor shrugged. “Technically yes.”

“So we should stick together,” Carla said, smiling with some complacency.

“For now. However, you might also not be a best match within even your first team,” Taylor said. “People switch all the time. You have to be open to change.”

“They give up?” Carla asked.

“No,” Taylor said. “Sometimes you just don’t get along. Your manager might make suggestions to meet other people he feels might be a better match for you.”

“Do we have a manager?” one of the girls asked. “Mrs. Rose?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Not until you’re officially invited to join the Academy. Your manager could be anyone, and he or she will basically be your team and family lead all in one for a while until a council feels you’re ready to take over and assign your own lead. They teach you about the Academy, help you find a role to fill, give you jobs.”

April snapped her fingers. “And that’s another thing, did they tell you about women within the Academy? Our jobs?”

Everyone shook their heads, including Carla and me.

“Are we given different jobs than the guys?” one of the younger girls asked.

“No,” April, Taylor, and Emma all said together and then laughed. April stood from her chair, her big sweater hanging big over her body. She folded her arms against her chest as she walked behind the circle of chairs, speaking as she did. “And technically yes. Us girls,” she began, “we’ve got some of the most dangerous tasks within the Academy. And because there’s so few of us, we’re called on more within the Academy than the boys.”

“We’re recruiting more girls,” Taylor said. She crossed her legs and leaned back shaking her head and smirking at April. “Every year, we find a few more.”

“But it hasn’t been enough,” April said. She paced some more around the circle. The fire lit up her features, causing an orange glow the more the sun set beyond the trees. The trees blocked most of the sun and only looking straight up toward the sky could I tell it was still just sunset. I still needed to find a way to track time until my meeting with Kota…

“Why does this feel like a ghost story and you’re trying to scare us?” Carla asked.

“It’s the campfire,” Lake said.

“Because you
should
be scared,” April said, stopping short to put her hands on her hips and give the girls a look. “This is no joke.” She pressed her hand to her chest, covering her heart. “I might be a little dramatic, but this is one of the most important lessons you’ll ever be told about the Academy.”

The girls silenced then, listening intently, watching April as she continued walking around the circle. Taylor and Emma sat back, occasionally whispering to each other but allowing April to take the stage.

“You see, while we can say boys and girls can do the same job, that’s not always the case with real life. Especially when it comes to undercover work. In certain places, only a girl can blend in.”

The group was dead silent. Taylor caught my eye, her expression serious as she gave me a slight nod.

I bowed my head, looking at my dirty jeans. Kota had warned me about jobs within the Academy, and that we might be asked to do them. Still, I had to know. “What...what kind of...?”

“Come on,” Lake said over me. “Give us some examples here.” She turned to me. “That’s what you were trying to ask, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“All jobs are different,” April said. “However, women are often called on to be bait.” She stepped around the circle, stopping behind another girl, eyes wide. “Or decoys. Or blending in and overhearing secret conversations if anyone underestimated us.”

“Give us a real example,” Carla said.

I watched April closely, wanting to know, too.

“For example,” April said. She came through the circle and stood closer to the fire in front of Taylor, so her face was lit up with a flickering orange glow. “A few years ago, I was asked to join a state-sanctioned foster home. Most of them are okay, and the Academy will occasionally send kids in to make sure the homes are safe and clean. However, this one had a high report of girls running away.”

“That’s usually a sign of abuse,” Taylor said. “The occasional foster kid running off is common, but if it’s an unusually high number, it can be a sign that there’s abuse of some sort.”

April held up her palm toward Taylor. “I’m telling this story, hang on.” She refocused on us. “Because it was the girls who were running, there was no point sending in a guy. The Academy had to ask one of us.”

“They asked April,” Emma said.

April nodded and moved on. “I suspected the father in the household, but I wasn’t sure. My second week there, their biological son invited me out for ice cream, and seemed really cool, until he tried to force himself on me.” She bent her head back and laughed. “He would never have gotten the chance if I hadn’t been so caught off guard by blackberry swirl.”

“So he got into trouble?” Carla asked.

“Of course!” April said. “He got a good kick in the crotch and blackberry swirl in the face. He told me he’d tell his parents I came on to him, and some other stupid nonsense. But I had collected evidence. Had my cell phone on record at the time. I was lucky I’d had it on. He didn’t seem bad to me and I was thinking of saving the battery power.”

Taylor finally stood up, smoothing down her brown skirt and standing next to April. She put an arm around April’s shoulders. “The point is, you will all be asked to go into awkward situations, sometimes to fish out an abuser. It’s one of the more common jobs.”

I was holding my breath, in awe and a little bit of shock at learning about this part of the job. I didn’t know what to think yet. Could I do this?

“It isn’t the only type of job we get,” April said. “But sadly, it’s one of the worst.”

“Why don’t we report them to the police?” someone asked.

“We do,” April said. “But getting evidence is the key. We would never ask an abused person to go back into such horrors to get evidence. We take it on ourselves. Sometimes, that isn’t so easy.” She pulled away from Taylor to focus on us again, the orange glow brighter as she appeared to get dangerously close to the flames. “I do what I do to protect other girls. I’m strong because of the Academy and the support group it provides and the training I’ve had. I know I will bounce back. When what I do helps others, it makes me stronger, and I’ll endure anything...” she paused, looking each one of us in the eye. “Anything...Hell and back...to ensure the safety of girls who are unable to speak up for themselves.”

“But you will never have to do it alone,” Taylor said. “And that’s not the only type of work we do. You may not be asked to do this at all. There’s so much work we need to do that only girls can do and jobs will be assigned according to your strengths.”

I stared at the fire while Carla and the other girls continued to ask questions. Kota hadn’t wanted me to join the Academy because he was afraid of me getting picked to go into such dangerous situations.

For the first time, I wondered if he was right. Would I be able to handle going into a foster home to find out what was making girls run away? It would be an assignment the boys couldn’t follow me into. However, if the Academy approached me and asked me, could I say no? If it meant preventing someone going through what I’d gone through, it was tempting to say I could. I stole secret looks at the other girls and thought of the younger ones from that morning, eager and ready to participate, and how I might be willing to help any of them.

However, images came to mind of Mr. McCoy, Jade...my own stepmother, who I’d thought to be my mother for so long.

It was horrible, and I’d had the boys help me so much. Could I willingly go back into such situations again? There were other jobs we could do. I helped once with Luke getting a camera. What if I focused on those jobs?

Was it different when you were aware and went into a situation knowing you were looking for evidence when it came to abuse? I wasn’t sure.

April stood by and listened as the other girls spoke, but I suddenly had a different view of her altogether. If she had been through all of that and still went in to take on such challenging Academy jobs, then she was the bravest girl I’d ever really known.

Could I ever be half as brave?

♥♥♥

As the girls continued talking about the Academy and then themselves and their backgrounds, I tried to gauge time using how long it had been since sunset.

Did Lake have a phone or watch on her? She was sitting back, eyes half open, staring into the fire. I wasn’t sure if she was even listening to the other girls. Despite not knowing much about her, I’d felt her to be more of an ally. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was a boy, or how she didn’t seem fazed by Gabriel and the others when they were around.

“Lake?” Carla said, dragging our attention to her.

Lake sat up a little, blinking, making me think she’d been half-asleep. “Yeah?”

“Want to talk about yourself?”

Lake shook her head and sat back. “Uh, not really.”

Carla frowned. “Just tell us where you’re from.”

“Not from here,” she said.

“Is Lake your real name?”

“Is Carla
your
real name?” Lake asked with a raised eyebrow and a frown.

Taylor had been sitting by while the other girls talked, but now she stood and sliced her hand through the air. “Carla, we never force people to talk if they don’t want to.” She looked at Lake. “And Lake, I understand you might be tired and not want to participate, but we are always respectful to other Academy members. Always.”

Lake tilted her head, looking toward the ground. “Sorry,” she said. “I just don’t feel like talking about myself.”

Carla opened her mouth but Taylor cut her off. “Totally understandable.” She looked at the group of girls. “I know some of you must be exhausted. You’ve had a long day. Why don’t we make our way to the latrine and get some showers going? We’ll get to bed early.”

The younger girls jumped up, excited for a shower and bed. Carla, however, was still frowning as she moved along. We folded our chairs and April and Emma got to work putting out the fire.

Lake leaned into me to whisper as we put our chairs away. “That Carla’s pushy. I don’t like her.”

I didn’t want to say anything negative about her, even though I agreed with Lake. What I didn’t understand was why Carla was so eager to keep us all together.

Maybe there was more to Carla’s story than either of us knew. She was here and there was a reason why she had been invited.

“What time is it?” I asked Lake.

She pulled out a cell phone and checked the time. “Eight thirty-ish,” she said.

It was close. Could I stall for a half hour at the latrine?

I got my kit together and decided to join the girls to the latrine, planning to hang around and get ready to meet with Kota.

It wasn’t like I was going to shower.

As a group, we headed to the latrine, Lake and I trailing behind.

At the entryway to the bathrooms, Lake hesitated. She had a few clothes she’d borrowed from me, sans underwear and a bra. She wasn’t exactly my size, but a simple T-shirt and stretchy cotton pants should fit.

I paused and caught her elbow. “Something wrong?”

She stopped, looking at the latrine and then back down at the camp. “I don’t know if I should go in.” She looked at the ground, her hair falling over her face. “I don’t think I should get in the shower.”

If she was a boy, it would probably confuse the other girls. However, did she feel uncomfortable going over to the boy section? She could have gone in with the guys, but maybe she thought the other girls would notice and realize she was a boy. How confusing her life must be.