It’s a spider. And not just any spider. This thing hasknees. Like, actual angles. It’s crawling, slowly but with purpose, and I swear it just looked at me.
I launch myself out of bed, releasing a strangled sound that might technically be classified as a scream.
Catching my breath, I scramble to the opposite side of the hut. “Think, Archie,” I mutter, pacing barefoot in the small space. “You’ve played in front of sixty thousand people. You can handle a bloody spider.”
But can I?
I rack my brain. What’s the plan here? A shoe? A towel? Bribery?
A knock on my door makes me jump a full foot in the air.
Glancing at the monster to make sure it hasn’t moved, I shuffle to the door and yank it open.
“Oh. It’s you,” I say, blinking at the silhouette in the doorway. Katherine stands before me, arms crossed, face unimpressed.
“What’s going on?” she growls. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Mmm, why does that sound familiar? “It’s nothing.”
Her eyes narrow. “You yelled.”
“Did not.”
She tilts her head. “Aww, did you have a nightmare or something?” she asks, her voice high-pitched and mocking, like a very annoying cartoon baby.
“Nope. Wasn’t even sleeping.”
She gives me an icy stare. “Then what happened that you had to ruin my sleep all the way in Uganda?”
I can’t help but glance toward the wall where the spider still clings.
She follows my gaze, then switches on her phone’s flashlight and gives me a pointed look. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
With zero hesitation, she walks over, grabs the spider—with herbare hand, mind you—and marches it outside, like this is an everyday routine for her.
I follow her in total awe.“Who are you?”
She doesn’t even look back. “Someone who needs to sleep. Now quit being a baby.”
I stare after her, speechless, as she stalks back into her hut.
Chapter 6
"Oh, if it isn’t our friend of the arachnids."
Kat
Turns out, some people reallyarescared of spiders.
I smile faintly to myself as I blink awake, still curled beneath my thin sheet. The camp is cloaked in stillness, save for the distant chirp of birds and the rustling of leaves outside. Through the slats in the window shutters, sunlight filters in—soft and golden, stretching long and lazy across the floor.
Archie’s strangled scream replays in my head like a highlight reel. I hadn’t meant to go over there—I’d actually been enjoying therare silence—but once he yelped loud enough to startle the geckos off the wall, I figured I had a civic duty to perform.
I swing my legs out of bed, grab my towel, and slip into my sandals. The morning air brushes cool against my skin as I walk the path to the showers, past low brush and a pair of goats chewing lazily on someone’s laundry line.
The water is tepid at best, but the view past the curtain is something else. Orange sky, palms swaying, birds soaring in the distance. No noise. No pressure. No emails. And—thankfully—no Archie.
Once I’m back in the hut, I pull on clean clothes, twist my damp hair into a low bun, and grab a protein bar from my bag. I eat it quickly on the walk over to the clinic tent, brushing crumbs off my shirt as I wave to a boy with a football tucked under his arm.