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We refilled our canteens. I showed her how to wet the rag in her backpack and put in on the back of her neck. Gunner appeared out of nowhere to congratulate us on getting this far so quickly.
“We should have approximately three more miles to cover and I’m guessing it won’t all be like this.” I waved and pulled Sarah along with me back to the bikes. “You better go see how the other girls are. Something may have bit them already.”
“That’s funny. Boy, is Tina such a fake.” Sarah shook her head. “I hope Sawyer sees it so we can get her out of here.”
“You like him?” I asked. “Like, enough to marry him?”
“Yeah, what I know of him so far. But money makes everything better, so I can learn to live with him if I have all this money.”
That’s disappointing to hear. He wants the opposite of that. Oh Sarah, I wish you hadn’t said that.
We biked another half mile. Sarah needed to stop for another drink, which gave me a minute to look at the map again. My dad always had a quicker way to get to the destination if I could figure it out. I’d bet anything these guys did the same.
“Jade, look over there.” Sarah called for me to stop. “Hurry, come here.”
I turned my bike around. “What’s wrong?”
“Look up there at all of those parrots. They’re so pretty. I need a picture.” Sarah turned around, taking a selfie. “You want a picture?”
“No, I’m good, come on we have to go. Up ahead we should get to an opening. The map shows a transportation change.” I turned my bike off the wood walkway and went through the bushes. “Follow me.”
“Jade, you’re crazy. What if there were animals in those bushes?” Sarah said when she caught up to me.
“Well, look what I found.” I pointed to the shed with four ATV’s. “I’ll bet there’s a water station in there, too.”
My canteen was still pretty full, but Sarah had drank most of her water. She refilled and we chose an ATV. Sarah sat looking at the ATV controls.
“Do you know how to drive one of these?” I got off of mine and went over to her when she shook her head no. “Listen, it’s easy. It’s just like a car, or even a bike. This is the gas and this is the brake. “You’ll be fine. Let’s practice for a minute.”
We did a few circles around the shed, then she gave me the thumbs up and we were off again. At one point I thought I saw Gunner in the bushes, but it was a split second and whatever was there was now gone.
“This is way better than biking,” Sarah smiled. “We should have been cruising around the beach on these before now.”
I slowed to an idle when we came to water. “I think it’s shallow enough to go through it.” I reached down and grabbed a rock and threw it in the water. “Yeah, we can go through this.”
“Are you sure?” Sarah didn’t follow. “What if it gets deeper?”
“I don’t see any deep water on this section of the map. Hurry up.” I folded the map and put it in my backpack so it wouldn’t get wet. “Just go slow.”
The water was only about six inches deep. I could hear Sarah laughing behind me, so I knew we were gonna get through this. Ten minutes driving through the shallow water, I spotted the marking I saw on the map. I held up my hand to stop.
“Come here and look at the map with me,” I said to Sarah. “This is the path we took so far, and this here is where we’re trying to get to.”
“Okay, so then we have to follow this path along this path and we should get there in a mile or so. Is that right?” Sarah asked. “Wait, this looks like water up ahead. Does that symbol mean deep water?”
“Yep, which means we can’t take these through it. So, what are we supposed to do?” I asked out loud, really just asking myself. “Unless when we get to that deeper water there will be a change in transportation.”
“But if we go this other way it looks like we’ll still get to our destination.” Sarah traced the path with her finger. “Yeah, it’ll get us there but take longer.”
“Look at the size of the path. It’s thicker bush and we’ll have to walk it.” I showed her what I meant. “I think we should try this shorter path. What’s the worst that happens, we have to come back here?”
“It could mean we lose a bunch of time and then they beat us.” Sarah scrunched up her nose, thinking. “Nah, there is no way they are even as far as us. Tina is probably complaining about everything.”
“Okay, so we agree we’re gonna take the shorter route?” I asked.
“Yep, I’m trusting you.” Sarah turned her ATV back on and we took off.
We came to the spot on the map that had me really stumped. The deeper water was ahead of us. We parked the ATV’s and walked in opposite directions of each other, looking for some way across it.
