Kalahari Read Free Page B

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on his chest, then took my shoulders and quickly kissed my forehead. “Thanks, sweetie. I’ll be back tonight. Everything will be fine. It’s just a few hours, and I have the radio. Got yours?”
    I tapped the radio clipped to my belt. Dad sighed at my expression of unease. “If you really want me to stay—”
    “Just hurry,” I said. “And don’t do anything stupid or heroic, all right?”
    His grin did little to soothe the constricting knot of worry in my gut. He climbed into the Cruiser and cranked it. “You can look after these guys for a few hours, honey. You’ll be fine,” he said. Sam stood a short distance away, watching solemnly, and I could see that even from up in his tree, Joey had heard what was happening. The tents behind us opened, and the other three emerged curiously to see what the fuss was about.
    Dad leaned out far enough to grip my shoulder. He had that look in his eye, the one that could stop a lion in midcharge. “Love you, Sissy Hati.”
    Theo returned with bottles of water, jackets, and my dad’s old shotgun, and he jumped into the passenger seat.
    “What? You’re taking Theo?” I grabbed hold of the windowsill, standing on the footstep below the door.
    “Hey, now!” said Theo. “Can’t keep me out of the action!”
    “He’s the only one who can track them,” said Dad. “We’ll be back before dark, I promise!”
    He stomped the gas, forcing me to jump back from the vehicle. Hank seemed to have caught my dad’s anger, chugging like a locomotive. Theo threw me a wide smile and a cheery wave. You’d have thought he was going on a picnic.
    “Be careful!” I yelled, but he was already gone, churning up a whirlwind of dust and sand, massive tires crunching over the dry brush as Hank hungrily devoured the land in his path.
    Sound travels extraordinarily far in the rolling Kalahari. A minute later, I was standing in the same spot, still hearing the Cruiser’s roar. Then I turned on my heel and froze. Five pairs of eyes stared back at me.
    For a moment, my brain went blank and I had no idea what to say or do. Dad was supposed to have taken the group out on a drive to spot the nearby animals while I made a light lunch. That was The Plan. We’d been working on it for days—sectioning these two weeks into carefully premeditated activities designed to give our guests maximum exposure to the gritty, unglamorous face of conservation fieldwork, so that they could return home with their cameras loaded with shots of themselves saving the planet.
    Instead, there I was in the middle of the Kalahari wilderness with no Dad, no Theo, no Hank, and no Plan—with four Americans (and one Canadian) wholly unsuited to this place and this life. I looked at them, they looked at me, and I think we all came to the same realization:
    This had been a bad idea.

TWO
    A n hour before dark, I sent them all out to gather firewood. Joey and Sam took off like a shot, eager to explore, and Avani wandered off with a bit less zeal. Miranda promptly sat on one of the logs around the fire pit and began buffing her nails, looking not the least bit ashamed, as if the request to scrounge firewood couldn’t possibly have been directed at
her
. Kase looked from her to the bush, then settled for something in between, picking up tiny twigs around the tents. I stared at Miranda, who ignored me, then sighed and gave it up.
    In minutes, the first three returned with armfuls of wood. In this waterless scrubland it was easy to find dry kindling. They piled the wood by the pit, and I knelt in the sand and began stacking the pieces together, stuffing dry grass beneath them to catch the flame. Kase deposited his handful of twigs beside me, then sat with Miranda, who cuddled against him.
    It took one match to light the wood, and it flared up instantly. I’d seen entire stretches of land go up like that—all at once, bone-dry wood almost instantaneously combusting. Bushfires were common out here but still dangerous.