Page 27 of Badd B*tch

"I took a six-month contract away from home, Tea. Destination unknown, except for somewhere in Alaska. An ounce of flower isn't that shocking. You're just the most straight-laced person I’ve ever met."

She widened her eyes, nodding. "Well, yeah." She pointed at herself, fingertip touching her nose. “Naval officer? Responsible for the lives on board my aircraft? Type-A, rule-following bitch supreme? Yeah, that's me."

"Bitch supreme?" I echoed, snickering.

"I know myself. To thine own self be true, and I'm a bitch. I know it, and I own it, and I rarely apologize for it. I've been as successful as I am at least in part because of it. You know how hard it is to succeed in the world of military aviation at all, let alone as a small, not-exactly-ugly woman? Yeah, bitch supreme."

"Not exactly ugly is a funny way of pronouncing the words 'fucking smokeshow,' I said.

"I don't know about that, but thanks, I guess."

"I don't think you're a bitch."

"Yes, you do. You're just scared to say so."

I laughed. "No, I'm not." Yes, I was. "You're who you've had to be, to live the life you've lived."

She frowned, puzzling through my statement. "Hmmm. Sounds like prettied-up bullshit to me, Jax." She gestured at my pile of stuff. "We gotta travel light. No extra shit."

I picked up my laptop, spinning it in my hands along its diagonal axis. "This is a three-thousand-dollar custom machine. I’ve got projects on here I’ve worked on for months. I have backups and cloud saves, but…"

She winced. "I understand, Jax, I really do. But that's weight you aren't gonna want to carry, trust me. Please, please trust me on this. Every ounce counts when you're trekking through the wilderness like we're about to."

I sighed. "I imagine there’s gonna be some sort of salvage of the wreckage, at some point."

"Yeah, considering the value of the thing—even as a wreck—I'd say that’s a safe bet.” She took the laptop from me. "I'll stash it for you. When we get back to civilization, we'll make sure the salvage teams bring it back for you."

“Yeah, yeah. It's just a laptop, at the end of the day. Stash it and let's go."

"Well, we gotta put the pack together." She glanced up, then shot me a droll look. "And oh look, there's mine."

I followed her gaze—way, way, way up near the top of a towering, hundred-foot-tall pine a few yards away, where a tiny scrap of brown leather dangled from a branch. Only a hundred feet, but it may as well be a thousand, for all we could reach it: the lowest branch was twenty feet overhead, so no way we were climbing up to get it.

"Nothing irreplaceable in it anyway," She muttered. "It's just the bag itself I'd like back—my sister gave it to me when I got my PPLH." She sighed, visibly putting that line of thought aside. "Let's go through your suitcase. We want another hoodie, maybe a spare t-shirt or two, and socks. If you have thick jeans in there, I’d change into those. Joggers ain’t gonna cut it out here, pal."

I opened the suitcase, found a pair of jeans, and then decided a full outfit change was called for—jeans, T-shirt, flannel shirt, and the hoodie tied around my waist; nights were cool, but it was already warming up, and once we started moving, I'd get hot.

"I'll go change,” I said. “You just… whatever you think we need, take."

"No sentimental, irreplaceable items in here?" she asked.

I shrugged, shook my head. "Nope. That hoodie is sentimental, though," I said, indicating the one she had around her own waist.

"Well, it's coming with, so go change. We need to start putting miles behind us."

I did so swiftly and returned to find her zipping up my ratty old cranberry and black Jansport, the same bag I’d used all throughout high school. She had a device about the size of a cell phone strapped to one shoulder strap—the PLB, personal locator beacon.

She lifted the bottle of soda, giving me an amused look. "I thought you said you didn’t drink dew."

"I don't." I sighed, rolled my eyes. “That's my little brother's idea of a joke. He knows I hate that stuff and thinks it’s peak humor to troll me with it like that.”

"Well, thanks to your brother, we now have something to carry water in." She cracked the top and took a sip. "Ew. Warm, flat, and gross." She handed it to me. “Here. We might as well just drink it."

"Nasty, but okay."

"You know Mt. Dew was originally created as a whiskey mixer?" Tea said, accepting the bottle from me and taking another sip, wincing in disgust.

I stared at her. "Whiskey and Mt. Dew? Gag."