Disclaimer: I do not own any Higher Ground characters. I did, however, make up the plot and the characters of Janey and Keith. And this chapter was unbelievably fun to write. Very fun; certain Cliffhangers are hilarious when put with certain other Cliffhangers.

Auggie had a pretty good sense of direction, so although the compass served him nothing but confusion, he and Janey were making pretty good time. As they moved along, following Auggie's quiet commands, the older boy grew tired of the silence.

"How's it going, chica?" he asked.

"Fine," Janey said, guarded.

Auggie scratched his head, not sure whether or not he should bring the previous day's events back up. "Do you mind if I ask what was up yesterday?"

"Hmm?" Janey asked, her mind wandering.

"I saw you in Peter's office," Auggie said. "Asleep. What's up?"

Janey was instantly alert. "Nothing." Who had he told? Juliette?

As if reading her mind, Auggie said, "I didn't tell nobody or nothin'."

"Oh." How was she supposed to respond to that?

"Janey, was it about your mom?"

"Leave it alone, Auggie," Janey snapped.

"Look, I don't wanna bug you or nothin'," he said, holding his hands up. "But I want you to know that you can talk to me…or to anybody here. We all gotta help each other."

"Yeah, like you and Juliette help each other out. What is that, make-out therapy? Doesn't seem to help her. She's still messed beyond belief."

Auggie stopped so suddenly that Janey tripped and fell over. She picked herself up indignantly, only to have her shoulders seized and shaken once sharply by Auggie.

"Shut up about what you don't understand," he hissed. "You don't know half of the crap Jules has been through."

"Oh yeah?" Janey said, her own voice quaking with fury. "How her mommy is a perfectionist who wants the best for her little Juliette? At least she cares!"

"You call that caring? You call being overbearing to the point of emotional and verbal abuse caring?"

Janey was silent.

"So just shut up about things you don't understand."

They went onward, the only interruption of the silence being Auggie's occasional brief directions.

Daisy and Keith were making slower timing, but they kept moving. Daisy announced that she had vague recollections of being around here before, and that was enough. Keith wondered if she was crazy. She certainly had some choice things to say.

"I'll have to read your cards," she told Keith, who watched her worriedly out of the corner of his eye. "But you must have some idea as to why you're here at this exciting little school of seclusion." When Keith said nothing, she continued. "Did you get in a lot of fights? Like you did yesterday with Scott?"

Keith sighed and shoved his hair out of his eyes. "No."

"No?" Daisy asked. "You don't get in a lot of fights?"

"No," he said.

"Well then," she said. "What happened with Scott?"

"I don't really want to talk about it," Keith answered, hoping that she would let it go.

"Go figure," Daisy said, twisting her face into something that remotely resembled a smile. "David give you a hard time last night?"

Keith shrugged. In truth, when they had been sent back to their cabins, not much had happened involving him. His bed was next to Auggie's and across from Scott's empty bed. David was on the other side of Auggie's, and the Latino boy had been quietly and subtly protective of Keith, keeping David from bothering him beyond a few sly comments about Scott's absence. Ezra and David had had a brief argument about what brand of soap was best, and then everyone went to bed. All in all, it had been an uneventful night.

"You're a real conversationalist, you know that?" Daisy asked sarcastically. "We're tied together at the ankles, buddy. You going to say more than three words?"

He already had, but Keith let the sarcasm go. "Look, I don't belong here." How many times had he said that? How many times had people just blown him off?

"Really?" Daisy asked. "That's fascinating. Because, see, neither do I." Keith's interest was caught. "And neither does Shelby, or Ezra, or David. Or Scott, you know…" Keith's spirits sank. She was being sarcastic again.

"Seriously," he said. "I mean it."

"There's always something," Daisy said wisely. "Everyone has their little problems."

"Oh yeah?" he challenged suddenly. "And what's yours?"

"Conked my father over the head with a golf club."

Keith moved as far away from her as their bound ankles would allow and hoped fervently that they were nearing the school.

Ezra and Juliette were quite possibly having the easiest time of it. Their conversations were light and easy, about anything and everything from the weather to The Scarlet Letter. They had known each other for several years, and had never really crossed paths in a negative way.

Around noon, they both felt a bit hungry.

"All right, Ezra," Juliette said. "You're the expert here. What's safe?"

Ezra looked about at all of the plants available. He nudged a few leaves, poked at a few berries, and finally selected several plants.

"What's for lunch?" Juliette asked.

"Huckleberries and blackberries."

"Oh," Juliette said, sitting on a log next to one of the plants Ezra had pointed out. She had already seen and recognized the blackberries, but she was glad that he remembered huckleberries, as she hadn't noticed them.

Picking the berries and handing half to Juliette, Ezra sat down on the log next to her and they ate with a comfortable silence.

Finally, Juliette opened her mouth for a reason other than eating. "What do you think of the new kid?"

"Who? Keith?"

"Well, Janey's not so new anymore, is she?"

"Guess not," Ezra said thoughtfully. "Keith, huh? He's awfully quiet."

"Were you there when he—"

"When he hit Scott?" Ezra asked. "No. Apparently it was plenty exciting though."

"I guess," Juliette said, making a face. She wondered if her original judgment of Keith as a quiet, sweet boy was completely untrue. Perhaps. Perhaps not. She knew that Scott had provoked several fights in his time at Horizon, so she was sure that at least part of the blame must have been his.

After a few moments of quiet, Ezra felt the need to break it. "How do you think the other teams are doing?"

"Hmm," Juliette said thoughtfully, as if the prediction were vital to their own success. "Auggie and Janey are probably doing okay. Auggie's got a good sense of direction, and Janey's kind of in a quiet mood today."

"Yeah, I noticed that," Ezra agreed. "How about Daisy and Keith?" He tried to keep his voice a bit disinterested, but in truth, he was nervous about Daisy maybe thinking that Keith was better worth her time than Ezra.

"Daisy's likely freaking him out with her strange topics." She glanced at Ezra and bit her lip. "Sorry, not strange, different."

"Nah," Ezra laughed shortly. "Strange works."

"And Shelby and David. We all know how that one's going." Juliette smiled.

Ezra laughed again, longer this time. "Indeed we do."

And Shelby and David would not disappoint. So far, the rope binding them together had broken seven times due to David's insistence on skipping and running it into things. Shelby worked on breathing.

"Think we're going the right way?" David asked jovially.

"We better be," Shelby said tightly.

A tree rapidly approached them. At the last second, David danced to one side, and the rope snapped across the tree trunk. Shelby stopped, her face freezing into a look of anger.

"David, that's the eighth time! You idiot!"

He grinned happily at her, as though she had just crowned him emperor. She knelt to retie the rope, and he bent sideways to stare at her backside. Immediately, she felt his eyes and stood up.

"That's it, you tie it."

Unshaken, he bent down to retie it, winking over his shoulder at her. "Don't pretend you didn't want that view." He wiggled his own backside at her.

Shelby resisted the urge to kick it. "I'm too busy pretending I don't have a sudden, inexplicable desire to kick out."

Maturely, he stuck his tongue out at her and crossed his eyes. Shelby rolled her own eyes and crossed her arms, turning her back on her partner. He finished with the rope and stood back up.

"We should sing or something."

"What!?"

"Yeah," David said. "A song by the Backstink Boys or something. You like those guys, right?"

"Not particularly," Shelby replied, inwardly trying to figure out who the Backstink Boys were and what kind of music they played. She decided they must be a heavy metal band or something of the sort, given their odd name.

Frustrated that Shelby had not been angry about his obvious slur of the popular boy band's name—she hadn't even seemed to notice—David tried to some up with a better plot to bother her. Nothing came immediately to mind, so he skirted around a log and snapped the rope again.

"David!"