But Nico and Jake were super pumped about the whole thing, calling it “an adventure,” so I’m trying—again—to be the cool girlfriend, who is up for anything. Sometimes I think if I can just keep pretending to be her enough, I’ll eventually become her.
Brittany and Eliza are both wearing similar expressions of resigned indulgence. Amma, on the other hand, has been right at Nico’s side, asking a million questions: how long is the airstrip, when was it in use, did people actually live here, on and on, and Nico is, of course, eating it up even though most of his answers boil down to, “Um … I don’t know.”
Next to me, Eliza nudges my arm. “Should we be taking notes?” she asks in a low voice, nodding at Amma, and I snort.
“Some people are definitely acting like there’s a test later,” I whisper a little too loudly. Amma glances over at me sharply, even though I don’t think she actually heard what I said.
But maybe she picked up on the tone, because she steps away from Nico, sulkily folding her arms across her body.
She runs hot and cold, that girl. Brittany and I had spent the day after the almost shark attack on the Azure Sky, and Amma hadn’t joined us, hanging out on the Susannah instead. It didn’t seem to bug Brittany, but I could hear them whispering in their cabin at night, and I wondered if they’d been arguing.
Not for the first time, I’m glad Jake and Eliza are here, too. Having extra people definitely helps defuse any possible tension.
The six of us stand there on the beach, looking into the jungle. Nico and Jake each hold machetes, both of which came from the Azure Sky. It had seemed like an insane amount of macho overkill at first, but now, as I stare into the thick vegetation just a few feet from shore, it makes sense.
“So, you guys are seriously going to hack through this shit like Rambo?” Brittany asks, one hand on her hip, her eyebrows raised.
“Only way to do it, love,” Jake replies. He’s not quite as well put-together today, trading his shorts and button-downs for an old T-shirt and a baggy pair of khakis, an ancient pair of sneakers on his feet.
The machete makes a whizzing noise as Nico swings it, thwacking into a thick vine with a sound that’s both damp and meaty, making me shudder a little. “Fucking sick,” he mutters, little-boy excitement gleaming in his eyes, and Eliza laughs.
“God, you are such a dude.”
She over-enunciates, drawing out the vowel, duuuuude, and Nico laughs, too, shrugging.
“It’s fun. You wanna try?”
He hands her the machete, and she wraps her fingers around the handle, testing the weight of it before swinging. Her stroke isn’t nearly as hard as Nico’s, and the blade gets stuck in the vine she was attempting to slice.
“Bugger me,” she says, tugging, and Jake steps forward, adding his grip to hers as they pull the machete back.
“Harder than it looks, eh?”
As the blade pops out, Eliza staggers back a little, bumping her back into Jake’s chest, and he uses the opportunity to duck his head and press a kiss to her neck.
“I’m sweaty!” Eliza objects, but he only grins and kisses her again, on the cheek this time.
“We’re all sweaty,” he reminds her, then gestures up to the sun overhead, already beating down on us even though it’s barely nine in the morning. “And we’re gonna get a lot sweatier before the day is out.”
He’s not lying. Jake and Nico take turns cutting through the underbrush, and I pull at stray vines and branches with my hands, Brittany, Amma, and Eliza all doing the same. It still seems like it takes us ages to make any real progress, and I’m just about to suggest we take a break, when suddenly, the vegetation opens up a little more, and we’re in a clearing.
It’s so humid in the jungle that I feel like I can’t breathe, and the air that enters my lungs is thick and heavy. Underneath my rash guard, my skin has grown prickly and itchy, and even the backs of my knees are sweating.
But there’s something beautiful here, too. Beautiful and wild and strange.
“It’s so quiet,” Amma says. There’s a low drone of insects, and the rustling of the leaves overhead as the trees sway in the breeze, but other than that, there’s no sound, not even the waves from the beach, as if the jungle has closed around us, sealing us in.
“It’s like church,” Brittany adds, then reaches for Amma’s hand. “Like that church in Italy, remember?”
I see Amma’s throat move as she swallows, the way she squeezes Brittany’s hand, and I think back to that photo of them on Brittany’s phone. In moments like this, it’s easy to see why their friendship works even though they’re so different. Shared experiences do that to people, and I wonder if when we leave Meroe, we’ll have this kind of bond, too.