Chapter Four
Waking up was a lot harder that morning than it had been yesterday. The ground under her sleeping bag wasn’t any softer than it had been, but Alexa didn’t mind it as much. She opened her eyes, saw that it was daytime, blinked, and closed them again. Just five more minutes, she told herself. She fell back asleep.
She wasn’t sure what woke her. Maybe it was a noise, maybe the realization that there was no snooze button to push, but she was suddenly completely awake and alert. She lay perfectly still, listening, and heard nothing. Still lying down, she turned her head first one way and then the other, looking. She didn’t see anything, so she drew back the top of her sleeping bag and sat up.
It wasn’t early morning. From how high the sun rode in the sky, it wasn’t even late mor
