Chapter 7: Ill-Met by Moonlight
Now began another hard march through the forest in pouring rain. After the kids struggled back into their wet clothes, they trudged, often through ankle-deep mud, into the inky darkness. Rain poured in miniature waterfalls down the broad leaves of the forest’s understory. Men marched with them, men on every side in saturated green fatigues, each with an AK-47 in his arms, each snarling in French too quickly for Nancy to follow. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared like the end of the world. Now and then, one of the girls stumbled, and then she got a cold gun barrel against her back—or else a buttstock made a sharp, wet thwack as it stung her shoulders. Twice, Junie B. flexed her raw, burned hands and looked ready to start something. Both times, Cam calmly laid a hand on her arm.
Judy cradled Mouse and tried in vain to shelter the cat from the rain. Droplets hung off the ends of Mouse’s whiskers. The cat’s fur was matted, and her eyes were half-lidded with misery. Finally, too big to carry, padded alongside Amelia, who had to pull the dog out whenever she unwittingly plunged into one of the deep pools that marked the dark, uneven ground.
The thunder made Nancy jump. Whenever she did so, she compulsively clutched Judy’s sleeve, which only made her more irritated and embarrassed. And she wasn’t the only one in an ugly temper: she could see that Judy’s ring was pitch black, darker even than the night that surrounded them.
It was obvious that she, Judy Moody, was in a mood. Not a good mood. A bad mood. A mad-face mood. A forced-to-march-through-the-jungle-at-gunpoint-in-a-thunderstorm mood. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 7”