finding the steadier, flatter piece of ground Flora had first pointed out.
Turning to face Flora, I call out, “Your t—”
The words die in my throat.
Flora isn’t on the opposite side of the river. She’s on the bank, right behind me.
Grinning.
And our packs are nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER 18
I should’ve known.
When Flora asked to hold my pack, I absolutely should’ve suspected something was up because obviously. In what universe would Flora be the sort of person who willingly holds someone else’s stuff? But I told myself that maybe she was just trying to be nice, and now it’s clear that that kind of thinking is going to be what gets me killed.
Awesome.
“Seriously, Flora,” I say, panic beginning to climb up my throat. “Where are our packs?”
She jerks her thumb over her shoulder.
“In the river.”
“The river,” I repeat, and some little part of my brain is insisting that I must have misunderstood her, that there’s no way she’d do something this stupid and reckless.
Then I remember who I’m talking to, and oh my god, all our stuff is absolutely in the river.
I look back down the incline toward the rushing water, and I think, there in the distance, I can see something bobbing along that might be a pack? But even as I go to take after it—apparently thinking I can outrun a river—whatever it was disappears out of sight, and I stop there, my feet muddy, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs.
“That shite was heavy,” Flora says. “They’ve probably sunk already.”
I thrust my hands into my hair, pulling it slightly from my head like the sting will make me wake up from this nightmare where I’m trapped in the wilderness with no supplies and a brat of a princess, but no. It hurts a little, and I’m still very much awake.
“Why?” I ask, then shake my head. “Why am I even bothering asking that? You probably don’t even know why you do the banana-pants things you do.”
“Banana-pants?” Flora echoes. Bah-naaah-naaah pahnts.
“Crazy,” I explain. “Insane. So freaking nuts it’s hard to believe.”
“Yes, I was able to use context clues to piece that together. I’d just never heard that saying before now. Banana-pants.” White teeth flash in a broad grin. “God, that’s useful!”
“You know what would be useful right now?” I counter. “Tents. A compass. Food. Water. All the things your bah-naaah-naaah pahnts ass threw in the river. Do you have any idea how cold it’s going to get out here tonight?”
Flora rolls her eyes. “Honestly, Quint, give me some credit. This is a very carefully-thought-out plot. I lose our supplies in the river, and of course later say we were overtaken by the elements, that it was an accident, and one that never would’ve happened had the school been more careful. That’s something you’re going to agree with, by the way.”
“I definitely am not,” I reply, but Flora flicks that away with one move of her elegant hand.
“We’re not even going to spend the night out here,” Flora continues. “Because!” She reaches into her back pocket, pulling out her phone. “I am going to call for help and tell them what happened. Very tearfully of course.”
Just like that, her face changes, corners of her mouth turning down, lips wobbling, eyes suddenly becoming huge and rather sparkly with fake tears. “Never been so frightened in all my life,” she simpers. “One moment we were trying to cross the river, the next ev-everything was in the water, and we were so . . . so scared!”
I cross my arms over my chest, glaring at her. “I’m not doing that.”
As quickly as it had come on, the whole Victorian Miss act is over, and she’s regular Flora again, unruffled, slightly bored. Shrugging, she looks down at her phone.
“I’ll just say you’re processing the trauma in your own way.”
I’m about to make quite the comeback to that, but then she frowns, studying the phone in her hand.
“I don’t have a signal.”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Of course you don’t. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Her head snaps up, and for the first time, something like Genuine Human Emotion appears on Flora’s face.
She’s freaked out.
Which is good—she should be—and also terrifying because I’m not sure what a freaked-out Flora even looks like, really.
She’s breathing a little faster now, her shoulders moving up and down, and I see her glance behind and below, like she’s hoping our packs will just magically not be in the river anymore.
“So this plan is ‘carefully thought out,’” I