Chaos Theory (Nerds of Paradise #2)(46)

“Hurry up, Clementine.” She swatted his arm to keep herself from bursting into tears. “We’ve got food to forage for.”

The forest for might have looked green and lush, but it wasn’t exactly a prime place to find edible vegetation. They were lucky that it had rained overnight, because the damp brought with it an abundance of mushrooms. Melody put on her botanist hat as she pointed out to Will which ones were delicious and which ones would kill you. If only she could have been certain he wouldn’t start nibbling on the poisonous ones out of whatever lingering anger his outburst at camp had left him with.

“At least the sun is coming up,” she told him as they reached the stream, now overflowing and rough with rainfall.

Will just grunted as he refilled their bottles.

Melody shook her head and sighed. “We can probably catch a few fish too. Although it’ll be easier when the stream calms down a little.”

Another grunt.

“I don’t know why people these days think it’s so hard to survive out in the wilderness,” she went on, more to fill the uncomfortable silence than because she thought Will was listening. “Native Americans survived for centuries out here, and their lives were rich with natural abundance. Mom always taught us that there is a lot we can learn from the various tribes’ ways of living with nature instead of fighting against it. And you need to stop beating yourself up for not being omniscient.”

“Hmm, what?” Will straightened from where he’d been adding purification tablets to their water bottles.

“Oh, so you are paying attention.” Melody grinned and went to stand next to where he was sitting on a big, flat rock that jutted out into the stream. Figuring it would make a nice spot to dry their clothes, she unbuckled and shrugged out of her backpack.

“I always pay attention to you,” Will said, sounding ironically distracted as he swished the stream water around with the tablets in the bottles.

“Really?” She sat and unzipped her backpack, tugging out a wadded-up pair of trousers. She shook them out, then lay them flat on the rock.

“What are you doing?” Will asked, setting the bottles aside.

“I’ll tell you what I’m not doing.” She glanced to him as she drew a handful of damp socks out of her backpack, eyebrow raised. “I’m not avoiding the question I just asked you.”

He frowned. “You didn’t ask me a question.”

“Yes, I did.” She set her socks out on the rock like strips of bacon in a frying pan. Bacon that would have been really nice to have right then. “You said you always pay attention to me, and I answered with an implied, loaded question by saying ‘really’?”

He rolled his eyes. It was better than his defeated frown. “You’re incredibly hard to ignore.”

“I’m hard to ignore?” She dug back into her backpack for her spare mud-stained shirts. “I’m laying all my wet things out to dry, and you should do the same.” She switched back to his question, then bounced on to, “I think you have a hard time ignoring anyone.”

“I’m good at ignoring people,” he said. “And we have to keep moving. There isn’t time to dry our stuff out.”

“If we don’t dry out our socks, at least, we’ll get foot fungus and probably some sort of flu on top of it, and then we’ll have to call for rescue, like those folks.” She nodded up to the sky. Far, far in the distance, the helicopter was dipping down toward the trees.

“Again?” he sighed.

Melody shook out the last of her shirts and spread it in the growing sunshine. It was still early morning, and the rock had a long way to go before it was warm, but it was better than the still-damp ground.

“I would have thought you’d be happy that so many people are dropping out of the competition so fast,” she said.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, then reached to unzip his backpack. “I would have been, up until this morning.” He started pulling out his own, folded clothes, spreading them out on the rock alongside hers. “Now I’m just worried that whoever is cheating might end up hurting someone.”

“Hmm. Good point.” With a sigh, Melody unlaced and pulled off her boots, then the socks she was wearing, setting them in the sun. It was way too cold to walk around barefoot, but she’d rather deal with cold feet now than cold, wet feet for the rest of the day.

With everything laid out where it had at least a chance of getting dry, she stood and walked back to the muddy shore.

“What are you doing?” Will asked as she passed him.

“Man, you sure are nosy,” she said with a laugh. It felt good to welcome her happy back after the frustrating interlude they’d just gone through. Even the cold squish of drying mud on the stream’s bank didn’t bother her as much as it would have. “I’m searching for further breakfast foods,” she called over her shoulder.

“Just be careful.” Will stood and followed her. When he caught up to her as she searched through the vegetation growing along the side of the stream, he asked, “What are we looking for?”

“Nests.” She stepped carefully around a cluster of rocks and made a beeline for a clump of lowlying bushes close to the water’s edge. “It’s that time of year when all sorts of waterfowl will have built their nests around here. If we’re lucky, we might even snag a duck for lunch.”