happen.
But she didn’t want these kids to die either, if she could help it. Though taking them on, even temporarily, presented its own set of difficulties. Starting with the fact that she had a one-person backpacking tent and one sleeping bag and as far as she could tell Sam and Riley only had a bundle of smelly blankets.
Well, she would deal with that when it came time to deal with it. She wasn’t that tall and the kids were skinny, so maybe they could all squeeze in to the tent and Red could use a space blanket while the kids got in the sleeping bag. It would at least be warm with three bodies inside the tent, even if two of those bodies were small.
Red was so lost in the potential logistics that she didn’t even hear the two of them come up behind her. She didn’t jump when Sam spoke, but it was a near thing and she had to school her face before she turned around.
“All right, we’ll go with you,” Sam announced. She carried the backpack of granola bars and had put on a gray sweatshirt with a Gap logo across the front that was much too large for her. Red bet she’d scavenged the sweatshirt somewhere along their walk.
Riley also had a sweatshirt that was too big for his thin frame, although it at least looked like a kids’ size. Sam’s was something that had once belonged to an adult.
Jackets, Red thought. They needed jackets and sleeping bags and she would have to try to find a larger tent. And of course they would have to find more food and the kids would have to carry some of it.
Yes, there would be problems, but Red liked solving problems. Besides, she’d spent so much time fine-tuning her own pack that she knew exactly what Sam and Riley would need.
But they would have to go into a town, or a house. And that would mean danger.
You know what Dad would say about crossing bridges before you get to them, Red.
So she nodded at Sam and Riley and said, “I’m glad you’re coming with me.”
“It doesn’t mean we’re staying with you forever,” Sam said, her mouth set in a way that Mama would call “mulish” and Red recognized it because her own mouth made that shape on a regular basis.
“I understand,” Red said, and she did. Sam was reserving their right to take off in the middle of the night, or not continue north when Red wanted to continue north. She wanted to know that Red would respect their wishes and not order them around or try to force them to do anything they didn’t want to do.
“Okay,” Sam said.
They fell in beside her, Riley next to Red and Sam on the outside.
“I can’t wait to have spaghetti!” Riley said. “And that means we can have a fire, too, doesn’t it?”
“Dang skippy,” Red said. “Can’t boil the water without a fire.”
“And then we’ll be warm and we’ll have spaghetti. Do you know that our dad used to like to eat the dried spaghetti?” Riley said, his nose scrunched up.
“I don’t want to say your dad was weird,” Red said. “But that’s kind of weird.”
“I know,” Riley said. “It’s totally weird. My mom used to yell at him because he would come in the kitchen when she was cooking and pick at the dried spaghetti before she could put it all in the pot and every time she would say, ‘If you want to eat dried spaghetti then I won’t even bother cooking,’ and he would say, ‘But you don’t want your kids to starve, do you?’ and then she would smile and tell him to get out of the kitchen and he would steal some more dried spaghetti on the way.”
“She doesn’t want to know our whole life story, Riley,” Sam said. “You don’t have to tell her every single thing that comes into your head.”
Riley ignored this, as Riley seemed to do whenever Sam told him not to speak.
“How come you walk funny?” Riley asked. “Is your leg hurt?”
Red