I roll my eyes.
“I’m serious!” Jack doesn’t crack a smile—he may really be serious. “There’s nothing wrong with eating bugs. In other countries, people do it all the time. I don’t know why bugs are so taboo in this country.”
I make a face. “Because they’re super disgusting?”
Warner smirks. “I don’t think Claire is going to eat bugs.”
“I can cook them,” Jack says. “That will entirely change the taste. I mean, you wouldn’t eat raw meat. Cooked insects are actually not too bad. I ate them a bunch of times in the scouts.”
I genuinely don’t think he’s teasing me. He think we’re going to be lost long enough that we’re going to have to cook and eat insects.
I don’t understand how we’re still lost. Warner has a map and Jack has a compass. Between the two of them, we should be able to find something. Jack was a freaking Boy Scout, as he has told us a million times before. Why is he unable to follow a simple map?
After the brief rest for sustenance, we get up and start walking again. But this time, Noah hangs back with me.
“Hey,” he says. “Can I talk to you?” He glances up at the guys a few yards ahead of us. “Alone?”
“Okay,” I say.
My heart speeds up. I touch Jack’s sweatshirt, which is tied around my waist now that the sun is high in the sky. Is Noah going to tell me he knows all about me and Jack? I don’t want to have that conversation right now. If he asks me, will I admit it? I don’t know. I don’t want to lie to him, but a revelation like that is going to make the next week very uncomfortable.
As soon as we get outside earshot of Jack and Warner, he lowers his voice several notches. “Something is wrong,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He glances up at the two of them, then back at me. “Warner’s map. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s wrong. Nothing is where the map says it’s supposed to be.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, and…” He shakes his head. “I looked at a map before we left for the trip, and I don’t remember that fork in the road or anything from Warner’s map. Also…” His brow furrows. “I don’t trust Jack’s compass.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You don’t?”
He nods. “I know Jack is supposed to be Mr. Wilderness, Boy Scout, whatever, but I know the sun rises in the east, and that’s not where the compass says east is.”
“Oh…”
“Also…” He takes a deep breath. “Claire, I think we’re going around in circles.”
“You… you do?”
He nods. “I recognize things I’ve seen before. Very specific things, like this gash I saw in a tree. And… and that squirrel.” He points to a squirrel lying dead and rotting in the dirt. I have to admit, there is something familiar about it. I remember seeing that squirrel before. “I think that compass is taking us in circles.”
I frown. This is the last thing I expected him to say. I thought he was going to accuse me of infidelity. This might be worse. “So… what are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” He rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t trust them to find our way out of here. I think… I think we’d be better off on our own.”
“We?” I cough. “You want me to come with you?”
He blinks at me behind his glasses. “Well, yeah. Of course I do. You’re my wife.”
But we hate each other. I don’t say the words, but he must be thinking the same thing. We’ve hated each other for years now. And especially during the entire drive here.
Yet now that we’re lost out here, he doesn’t seem quite as angry at me anymore.
“I think I can find my way out of here.” He glances behind him. “My dad used to sometimes take me hiking when I was a kid, so I know what to do.”
I’m surprised by this revelation. Noah’s father died when he was in college, before I met him. He rarely talks about him. “You never told me that.”
He shrugs. “It was a long time ago. But I remember the map. These woods aren’t that big. If we weren’t going around in circles, we’d have hit civilization by now.”
“You think so?”
Noah nods firmly. Granted, I’ve never thought of him as very good at outdoorsy stuff like hiking, but my husband is a very smart man. He’s a physicist. He wouldn’t make an assertion if he didn’t feel confident it was true. He wouldn’t want to go off on his own unless he believed he could find civilization.