Escape Under the Forever Sky by Eve Yohalen

house and go to a stupid school and stupid dinners with stupid boring people. And Mom knows! She knows it’s awful, and she knows I hate it, and she doesn’t care. All she cares about is her job.” I took a deep breath. “I want to come live with you.”
    â€œOh, Lulu, I’m sorry.”
    â€œShe’s not!” I shot back.
    â€œFirst of all, your mother is not ‘she.’ And second of all, Mom loves you and cares about you very much.”
    â€œWell, she’s got a great way of showing it.”
    â€œLet me ask you something, Lucy. Why are you so angry with your mother?”
    â€œI just told you,” I said. “I have no life, and it’s her fault!”
    â€œSo you say. But why aren’t you mad at me?”
    I hadn’t thought of that before. Why wasn’t I mad at him? After all, they made all their decisions together. “Because you’re nice. Because you care.”
    â€œMom cares, too, Lucy. Look, when we decided Mom would take this ambassadorship, we both thought it would be a great chance for you toexperience a new culture. It’s true, we didn’t anticipate how much Mom would be working, but you’re old enough to appreciate that this job is a very big deal for her. It’s a huge honor and a big step up in her career. I don’t think your life is so terrible that you can’t make the best of it.”
    I was stunned. I had expected him to take my side, and instead he’d made me feel like a selfish brat. Indignant rage had felt so much better.
    â€œLucy?”
    â€œFine,” I said grimly. “I’ll make the best of it.”

    But I didn’t try to make the best of it, did I? Just as Mom never tried to see things from my point of view, I never tried to see them from hers. And where had it gotten me? Up a tree. Literally.

Chapter Fifteen

    M Y REAR END was sore from sitting on a branch for so long, and my back was killing me where a knot in the trunk had dug into my skin. These new afflictions, along with all my other aches and pains, meant that just two hours into my escape, my already-minuscule odds of survival were sinking even lower. I hadn’t heard Markos, Dawit, Helena, or the dogs for more than half an hour, but I was terrified that the minute I climbed out of the tree, they’d show up. I also knew I had to get moving. The question was, Where? How was I going to find other people?
    Water
.
    Teddy had once explained that because there’salmost no plumbing outside the major cities, villages have to be near a natural water source. So if I could find water, maybe I would find people.
    I tried to remember what Dahnie had said about finding signs that water was near.
Follow animal tracks
. Well, so far I hadn’t seen any animal tracks . . . but I had seen animals, hadn’t I? The colobus monkeys had all leaped away in the same direction. Maybe they were on their way to find water.
    I felt a flicker of hope that was almost big enough to call excitement.
Maybe I can actually do this
.
    I scrambled down the tree as fast as I could. It was easy until I reached that horizontal branch. There was no way to jump back onto the rock without breaking my neck, so I hung from the branch and dropped to the ground about six feet below.
    Damn it!
I landed right on the sharp end of a broken tree branch. I could tell from the pain that it was bad. Fighting back tears, I sat down to inspect my foot. Sure enough, there was a big gash in the arch, near the ball of my foot. Blood flowed pretty freely—it wasn’t gushing, but it was more than just a bad scrape. Feeling utterly hopeless, I sat there slumped over withmy face in my hands.
I can’t do this. I’m an idiot. Can’t, can’t, can’t do it
.
    Except I had to. There was no turning back now. Furiously, I pulled off my T-shirt and tore a hole in it with my teeth. Then I ripped the bottom four inches off in one long strip. Ignoring