The Vigilante's Handbook (Misfits #1)

Fifteen: This Is Not a Democracy

Even though it was nearly summer, nearly what would be graduation, it certainly didn't feel like summer. It didn't even feel like spring. The air was so cold that I could see my breath before the sun touched the horizon. It had been an uncharacteristically cold spring at Paramount Lake, and apparently, it had been here too. I guessed we were north of Lincoln City. Or so far south that we had crossed into the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere. Or we were above Lincoln City in the mountains at a higher altitude. Making guess based on the weather was useless.

As night drew closer, panic started to spread. I wasn't sure we were going to make it through the night if it kept getting colder.

"I could always freeze a tree and heat myself up like a campfire," I volunteered. No one looked impressed at my ingenuity. They would like it when we were facing below freezing temperatures in the middle of the forest with no other source of heat. Then they would come groveling.

Miguel must have seen my revenge plan already forming because a gentle hand came to rest on my shoulder. I didn't have to look at him to see his face. It was burned in my mind. The line between his eyebrows was forming again. At some point, Miguel had become my impulse control and that line was paying the price.

I breathed out a puff of air. It hung in front of me. Then I shrugged off Miguel's hand. I'd had enough of his silence for today. I wasn't in the mood to be comforted. I wanted to curl up in my warm bed at Paramount Lake Apartments and take a nap.

I wasn't surprised we were in a forest instead of having a movie night. Sure, I had been surprised to wake up in the woods with no one around. And no one had been expecting the ambush in the auditorium. But now that I had some fresh air and silence courtesy of Miguel, I couldn't say that it didn't make sense.

My whole week had been getting progressively stranger and progressively worse. I just couldn't wait to see what karma brought next.

No, I didn't know how we ended up there in the forest, freezing and probably contracting pneumonia, but that didn't change the fact that we were here. More people should learn to accept that. Then when they ended up in a motorhome too small for three people and nowhere else to stay for the night, they wouldn't freak out.

There wasn't enough space to panic. The motorhome had beds for three, six if we wanted to get cozy. That still left one person without a cushion to rest on when night came. And night was coming.

Stitch had found the RV first. Its frame was bitten by rust, all four tires were deflated or missing, and the exterior was altogether unassuming if you could overlook the fact that it was in the middle of a forest with no roads leading to or from its parking spot. We were all walking in the opposite direction of Julien's team in a loose clump when Stitch pointed out its cracked plastic siding.

Currently, all seven of us were taking refuge inside the old beast, trying to figure out the best way to not die in the next several hours.

So far, the RV was helping.

Though the walls were rusted through in some places, which made an ominous howling sound that had drawn Stitch's attention in the first place, the tin structure kept the wind out for the most part. That already made it feel warmer. And with all of us piled in, the windows shut, and the door locked I could imagine that we might be able to produce enough body heat through the night to fight off the worst of the hypothermia.

Stitch and Ariana were perched on the full sized bed over the cab of the motorhome. The ceiling was low, hence why the two shortest had been exiled up there, but there was a thin foam pad that sort of worked as a mattress. The table could have once been converted into a bed with cushions that became a mattress too, but they must have been eaten away entirely by the wildlife or chucked years ago because only exposed hardwood remained. Miguel and Lucia had claimed that. Lucia because it was the center bed in the RV and therefore the best speaking platform. Miguel because that was just where he ended up.