The Hunted by Roz Nay

Author:Roz Nay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

19 STEVIE

It’s quiet in the hut on my own. The light is softer. I know I should be out with the others, meeting people and making an effort, but ever since Leo laughed at me on the boat, I’m beginning to feel creeped out whenever he’s nearby. I sit down on the bed, the rope scratchy beneath my thighs. Is Leo flirting with me or laughing at me? He seems to find it funny that I care about Tamsin, but I haven’t done anything wrong. So how is it that I feel like I’ve been busted?

Leo also seems to know I’m uncomfortable in cars. It’s as if he’s managed to look inside my head, tallied all the ways in which I’m struggling, and decided to visit them one by one. I know Jacob told Leo I get claustrophobic, but he shouldn’t be gifting him anything else, not when he doesn’t know Leo’s intentions. It could be he’s not as charming as we first thought.

I open the top of my pack, roll out my sleeping bag, lie down on it. In the rafters of the hut are thick cobwebs, the clack of little creatures scurrying. At night, I’ll need to get out my mosquito net. Maybe Jacob and I should go and sleep in the other hut, the smaller one Duran mentioned that’s just for staff. But honestly, I’m not sure I want to. And there it is again: the persistence of a bottom line. Tiny flutters of warning start to pulse in my brain. What is it that you really want, Stevie? And the problem is, Leo might have gotten to the answer before me. All I know is I want to sleep near Tamsin. I close my eyes, flooded by a wave of panic.

When I was sixteen and my life exploded, Nattie gathered up all the pieces. But the truth is, she only handed me back some of them.

“Stop that now this minute,” she’d say, old mottled hand on my knee as we sat in her living room, cups of tea beside us losing their warmth. “We’re closing that lid, child, and we’re not looking in there.” She steered me through those days, a tugboat in the whirl of a storm, allowing me some instincts while outlawing others, tethering me to the sturdiest landmass she could find. Herself. And Jacob Jones.

In Nattie’s defense, she was only trying to simplify. But what if important parts of myself got lost in the trade? I’m not as straightforward as she wanted me to be. I’m not. Already I can feel the edges she scored in hard black starting to blur. Something skitters in the rafters above me, a pattering of insect feet, too many of them all in a flurry. Take a deep breath, Stevie, take another and calm down. Do not blow up your life all over again.

Everything’s fine. I’m in Africa. It’s unfamiliar. I’m in mourning. I’ve been with the same guy for seven years. Tamsin is fun and exciting, or—even more powerfully—she thinks I am.

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