Unknown (The Secret Life of Cassie Martin #1)(18)
I would’ve done the same thing if given the choice. Their friendships started years ago, but they only met me yesterday. I’ll go along with this.
I put my hands on his face, but instead of being gentle, I squish his face. Everyone laughs, and the tension diminishes but doesn’t vanish altogether. Jay sticks his tongue out at me, and I think he’s going to lick me, so I let go and cringe away from him. This causes them all to roar with laughter, again.
Parker, who still kneels on my left, grabs my hand. “Thank you for believing in us. I know you don’t trust us yet, but I hope you will.”
He lets go and stands to do a quick survey of the room as Noah, Jay, and Lucca sit on either side of me. “This is our room. We can do what we want, say what we want, and store what we want in here. I’ll give you each a key. If you enter, please make sure you lock the door behind you so no one comes in to see what we have planned.”
I giggle a little, and all eyes shift to me. A little information never hurt anyone. “I can pick that lock in thirty seconds or less. I brought my tools with me. I’m sure I’m not the only one with that skill, so if there’s something important you want to store here, we’ll need to find a hiding place. If we can’t find that, we should take it with us and hide it somewhere else.”
The boys mull this over. The meeting revealed no secrets as to why we need secrets. This is a game, and we’re here to play it. I feel like I’m in a Mission Impossible movie.
Before I stop myself, I say, “We should also check the room for listening devices or cameras. If all of this is mission critical, then they might employ other measures to track us.”
Lucca moves a curl that fell from my bun behind my ear. “Oh, it’s good we have you on our team. I wouldn’t want to work against you. You have a devious mind.”
I must’ve made a face because Noah pipes in. “Not a vindictive mind, just a mind that thinks about both sides of the situation. He’s right that we’re lucky to have you. The rest of us would’ve gone on the assumption that our stuff was safe. We wouldn’t even think about how to protect our plans. We can be a little cocky when it comes to that kind of thing because we’ve been doing this for so long. As far as I know, no one has ever stolen anyone’s plan, or at least been successful at it.”
“Someone”—I focus on Jay—“stole my original paperwork so I don’t know the rules. Is stealing against them?”
Jay’s not the least bit embarrassed. “No. The only things you can’t do are change teams or purposely hurt someone. People do get hurt. I haven’t seen the schedule yet, but there’ll be a time when we have to do things like relay races, capture the flag, and the like. People will run into each other and fall. That’s about the extent of it, though.”
Thinking about the races, I wonder if we’ll have to swim. I bet the lake is involved in some of these quests. Panic crashes through me at the idea, and I start to hyperventilate.
Parker rushes over to me. “No one is going to attack you again. We’ll protect you.”
“I can take care of myself.” I try to take deep breaths to calm down. I’m going to have to tell them. “Except when there’s water involved. I can’t swim.”
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?” Jay demands.
Was that just yesterday? I feel like I’ve been here a week already.
“I didn’t know you, and I don’t like to show weakness in front of anybody. People tend to exploit that. I guess me passing out was a good thing since no one realized I couldn’t swim. Are we going to have to swim during any of this? Can we skip those tasks?” I hope for confirmation that no swimming will be involved.
“You’ll have to be able to swim. There’s a mandatory task at the end where we have to do several days of tracking and wilderness life. Last year, we had to traverse the lake.” Jay rubs his temples as he works on the issue. “We can try to build some sort of raft, but we may have to swim in parts as the raft will take too long to make, and it will be too heavy to carry around with us.”
I reach over and touch his arm. “Hey. We have time before that happens. Let’s focus on this week. In our free time, we can go down to the lake or over to the pool to help me learn. The lake may be better since there will be fewer people to see what we’re doing. Just because I don’t swim doesn’t mean I can’t. I’m a quick learner. We’ll be okay.”
Jay nods, but his eyes unfocus as he ignores the rest of us. I point to Parker to put us back on track.
Parker picks back up on our security issues. “Once we get through our required business for today, we can check the room out and make some decisions on what we need to do.”
We all agree, and Parker pulls a page out of his planner. “We have to come up with a team name. I have no preference, but everyone throws out a name or two, so we can work on making a short list.”
The boys throw out names. Clearly, they spent the last year contemplating this. I, on the other hand, have no idea. I do laps around the room. Movement helps me concentrate. I also need to tune them out, or I won’t be able to come up with anything.
Before long, everyone moves around, and energy builds in the room. With this experience known to the guys, they’re ready to jump in feet first. This contagious excitement helps me brainstorm ideas. What’s a good name for a group of people? What if that group is a girl with a bunch of guys? I giggle at the direction of my thoughts.