From the Jump(31)

I stare at his shadowed face in disbelief. Clearly, elephants are not better. They have much longer, thicker legs. Even if they don’t attack the tents, which they could easily do with their tusks, there’s nothing to stop them from stepping on us.

“You can see them,” Deiss says, misinterpreting my disbelief. “The moon and the stars are pretty bright, so it’s lighter outside than it is in here. They were all around that tarp over the kitchen area when I came out. Hopefully, they’ll get whatever they smelled and keep moving.”

“I don’t want to see them.” I’m still panting. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to deliver any more oxygen. I gulp at the air, but the tent is too small. There’s no air left in it. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

“To where?” Deiss laughs. “We’re safer here than running around like a midnight snack.”

My eyes widen, and my fingers squeeze at my thighs. The dry, oxygenless air gets caught in my throat. I try to cough it out.

“Hey.” Deiss’s voice softens, and he leans toward me. His hand strokes my back. “Are you all right?”

No.

I think I’m having a panic attack. At the very least, I am very definitely panicking. I don’t want to get stomped on by an elephant. Thanks to the personal trainer I’ve only recently parted ways with, I haven’t been consuming any dairy. My bones probably have the consistency of old chalk.

I shake my head, unwilling to admit to any of this aloud. Not only is Deiss fine, but he left his tent for mine. He went outside, where the elephants are, because he knew I’d be scared. There is no way I’m confessing that the basic act of breathing is beyond my current capabilities.

“What can I do?” Deiss asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. But what I really want to say is, Make me forget where I am.

Deiss might be, I realize, the one person who actually is capable of making me forget where I am. He’s already done it once, on the boat. I could ask him to do it again.

“Distract me,” I blurt out.

“What?”

“Do what you did on the boat.”

He stills, as the meaning of my words sinks in. Something sparks through the air between us, a kind of heat, probably from my own embarrassment.

“You want—” Deiss’s voice has gone deep, making him sound like a stranger.

“I just wanted to be distracted.” I wave my hand. “Forget it. It was a dumb idea.”

“They’ll be gone soon,” he says gently.

There’s another loud clatter outside, and my heart leaps from my chest to my throat. I tense and peer at the flimsy top of the tent, my hand reaching for Deiss’s arm. I don’t realize I’ve made contact until his fingers come to rest over mine.

“We’re okay,” he says, gently trying to pry my hand loose.

I’m squeezing too hard, but I’m not sure I can stop. It’s his fault if he ends up with bruises; I’m meant to be alone in here. If Deiss had stayed in his own tent, I would’ve managed to present as cool and calm by morning. He’s peeked under a closed hood, and everyone knows that’s how you get burned by the engine.

“We’re going to be fertilizer,” I say more to myself than to Deiss.

“What?”

“Our bodies will be trampled, so they’ll just leave them here.” The details unveil themselves as I work through the scenario. “Why would anyone want to load up a bunch of bloody corpses and drive them back to town? It would be like chumming the waters in a sea of sharks.”

“Liv,” Deiss says, a little louder this time.

“Wild animals would be diving teeth-first into the vehicle.” I can hear the shakiness in my voice, but it sounds farther away than it should. I squeeze into Deiss’s forearm, finding the bone beneath the muscle. “They definitely wouldn’t risk it. They’ll leave us here. Maybe they won’t even tell anyone that we died. I wouldn’t, if my business depended on people feeling safe. It sounds much better if we just disappeared, doesn’t it?”

My voice cracks at the thought that my mom will assume I’m yet another person who has abandoned her.

“Nobody’s dying,” Deiss says. “And nobody’s disappearing, either. It’s just elephants.”

He sounds so earnest that I find myself laughing in response. It’s just elephants. It’s just a herd of animals that weigh up to fourteen thousand pounds each. Of course Deiss isn’t worried. He’s so loose that an elephant could step on him and his organs would probably slide to one side and take a nap until the pressure let up. My organs, on the other hand, would pop like tightly stretched rubber bands. My heart and lungs already feel stretched beyond their limits. They don’t even need to be fully stepped on. A little swing of one of the elephants’ trunks should be enough to shatter them like ice.

“Hey,” he says.

My laughter has turned into sharp little gasps. I look into his face. His eyes are just dark orbs outlined in white. I try to focus on them, but there’s another crash outside the tent. It sounds nearer this time, and a shriek rips out of my throat.

He leans toward me, and the padding of his thumb presses lightly against my lips, silently warning me to be quiet. I don’t know if he’s worried about me freaking out the elephants or our friends, but I hear the whine in the back of my throat that says another scream is on standby, straining to be released. Deiss seems to hear it, too, because his fingers slip down my jaw and over the tension before wrapping behind my neck and pulling me forward.