Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2)(67)

“There are nine chapters,” Kyle pipes up.

“Three!”

“Six, if you—”

Abby frowns. “Wait… you guys meet here to watch—”

“Star Wars.” Jess sighs. “They’re not the droids we’re looking for.”

“They’re not the Resistance,” Bells says, and groans. He thought there was a secret organization with resources and plans and ideas, and it turns out the adults were right. They are just kids who don’t know anything and who need all the help they can get. They spent so much time on this wild goose chase, and all they have to show for it is a movie-watching club.

Brendan is silent, looking at his feet. “But you… you encrypt all your messages,” he protests. “You must be the Resistance, the amount of trouble you take to cover your tracks.”

Thomas laughs. “Well, we are participating in some highly illegal activity, you know. And having meetings like this is a huge risk, especially with the Authorities constantly sniffing around for contraband.”

“Wait,” Kyle says. “You mean you’re looking for actual people who want to… overthrow the Collective?”

“Yes!” Emma says. “Do you know them?”

Thomas looks at Kyle, who shrugs. “We resist the law that says all pre-Collective media must be turned in for inspection and official approval. We are all things subversive, we are—”

“A bunch of nerds.”

*

Bells doesn’t say anything; he can see how dejected everyone is on the way back to the car. The secret-movie-watching club might have been fun, and Cal and everyone seemed friendly. But they came all the way out here and spent so much time decoding those messages, which did turn out to be Thomas and Kyle’s flirtations after all. They didn’t find the Resistance.

“We also need to get out of this canyon,” Jess says. “Flash floods.”

“It took us two hours to hike in here!” Bells protests.

They find the trail easily enough, but the clouds get heavier and heavier overhead. The birds grow ominously silent, and then it begins to rain. At first it’s pleasant, a welcome relief from the usual heat, but the droplets keep falling, falling, and then the rain turns from a light drizzle to a downpour. Bells’ clothes stick to his skin, and he hears the not-so-far-off rumble of thunder.

“Lightning will be coming soon,” Jess mutters. “We’re hiking in the middle of a wash. We don’t want to be here when all the water gets going.”

Bells tries to remember if their trail takes them higher on the way back to the car. No, they stayed pretty low to the ground the entire time.

Another rumble. The rain falls harder. Jess is counting beneath her breath. “It’s getting close.”

The reddish-brown dirt seems to slick up and close off to the rain. Water rolls right off, forming puddles and rivulets, heading down, down, down. The earth smells rich and wet, but Bells can’t appreciate it because they’re here, hours away from the car, with no shelter from the storm.

Emma shivers.

Lightning flashes, lighting up the sky in the distance, and then thunder rolls; thick and heavy. He curses. “How far was that?”

“Twelve miles,” Jess says. “Look, I see a cave. If we can get there, we’ll be out of the rain and we won’t be the tallest things out here. I don’t think I’d survive getting hit with lightning again, the real kind this time.”

Bells shivers, looking at the faint outline of Jess’ scar traveling down her neck. The strange pattern makes him think of branches, or veins.

“Come on,” Abby urges. “Off the trail.”

“Hell yeah to high and dry,” Emma says, taking the lead.

It’s almost like they’re in a movie. Bells can picture it: the dramatic red-gold landscape, the rain relentlessly pouring down, all of them miserably hiking, and a narrator bemusedly describing the events… And so our stalwart heroes ventured on in the rain…

“Are you kidding me, Jess? This is, like, almost vertical!” Emma snaps.

“It’s not bad,” Jess says. “Look, there’s a handhold there, and a foothold over there. I’ll go first. Just watch me.”

Scrabbling for footholds, Jess nimbly scampers up the rocks. They’re large boulders, not exactly vertical as Emma had complained, but, yeah, there’s no way Bells is doing that.

Jess stops, turns around and stands her ground, holding out her hand. “Look, just go quickly and don’t think about it, Bells. We’re actually close to the cave.”

Emma nudges Bells. “Here, you can go first. I’ll be right behind you.”

Bells nods and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t look down, just concentrates on Jess in front of him pointing out where to hold and step. Some of the rocks are slippery because of the rain, and a few times scattering loose pieces make him nervous, but he can scramble up to where Jess is as long as he doesn’t think about heights.

Emma follows without too much trouble and squeezes his shoulder. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” Bells says. “And you too, I mean, you’re kind of at a disadvantage.”

“Hey,” Emma says, but there’s no heat in it, just a soft, pleased smile.

Bells grins at her and rests his elbow on top of her head. Emma huffs, but she scoots closer to Bells and wraps her arms around his waist when Jess motions for them to make room for Abby and Brendan.