The Journey Home (12 page)

“Me too,” Jake said. “But there is one thing . . .”

“What's that, hon?” the waitress leaned down to ask.

“Do you know if there are any buses to Riverton or Casper from here?”

The waitress frowned and pressed the end of her pencil into her chin. “There's a Greyhound that stops out at the gas station on the highway,” she said, “but not till two p.m.”

Jake pursed his lips, considering it.

If we can just get to Riverton,
he thought
, we'll be able to get a bus halfway across the country. It would sure beat trekking through snowdrifts.

The waitress added, “I know that's hours until the bus gets here, but you boys could go take a dip in the hot springs while you wait.”

“Sounds good,” Taylor said.

Suddenly the waitress frowned, looking out the window.

“What's up,” Jake asked.

“That dog of yours,” she started. “Wasn't he just out there?”

Jake twisted his neck and looked out at the sidewalk, a feeling of dread stabbing his full stomach.

“Oh no . . . ,” Taylor began.

“Cody!”

14
Jake and Taylor grabbed their things and sprinted outside.

“Jake!” Taylor cried, frantically looking in all directions. “Where did he go? Do you see him?”

Jake didn't reply, but his heart was in his throat. He quickly scanned up and down the street but didn't see a trace of Cody anywhere.

“Oh, man!” Taylor cried. “We shouldn't have left him out here alone, Jake! He probably got scared and wriggled his way free!”

Jake knelt down to the base of the sign and saw that the rope Taylor had used to tie up Cody still lay in the snow, intact.

“It looks like he got out of that loop you tied,” Jake said.

“What are we gonna do?” Taylor asked, pacing back and forth in the snow.

“What would Dad say if he was here?”

“He'd tell us not to panic.”

Jake nodded. “Right. So let's calm down and use our heads.”

Taylor took a deep breath and began scanning the snowy ground. “Look,” he burst out. “Are those tracks?”

Jake and Taylor hurried to a spot a few feet away. The sidewalk hadn't been cleared yet, and it was still covered by a thick layer of snow. The boys knelt down and, sure enough, found a fresh set of tiny dog tracks heading east—as clear as any deer trail snaking through a forest.

“That's Cody,” Taylor exclaimed. “Let's go!”

Hitching their packs as they walked, the boys quickly set off after the terrier. They didn't bother putting on their snowshoes, as most of the slush had been shoveled away from the streets and sidewalks. Fortunately, enough snow remained for them to follow Cody's footprints as they headed across a bridge that spanned the Bighorn River, and then turned north. Jogging now, the boys followed the tracks for another couple of blocks, until they passed a sign reading
HOT SPRINGS STATE PARK
.

Rising more than a hundred feet high to their right, a dramatic ridge of red rock stretched across the horizon. A few gnarled trees clung to the ridge, along with patches of sagebrush, but mostly it seemed barren and
desolate, like the mountains around Kim and Haiwee's place.

“Look at that!” Taylor exclaimed, pointing toward billowing clouds of steam rising up from the ground.

“Must be the hot springs,” said Jake.

The boys hurried over to a twenty-foot-high slimy lump of rock with water streaming down from the top of it.

“What the heck is this thing?” Taylor asked.

“I think the minerals from this hot springs built it up,” said Jake. “It's all made from calcium or something like that.”

Taylor wrinkled his nose. “It stinks like rotten eggs.”

“Sulfur from the hot springs,” Jake explained. “Still want to swim in it?”

Taylor was about to answer, when instead he shouted, “Hey, Jake! There he is! Over there!”

Jake spun around to see Cody in the middle of a large group of kids gathered outside a building a hundred yards away. A sign next to the building read
MUSEUM
in giant letters, and two full-size motor coaches stood parked in the parking lot nearby.

“C'mon!” Taylor yelled, rushing toward the building. Jake ran after him.

When they reached the crowd, Taylor pushed his way through to Cody, who was wagging his tail and soaking up attention from a dozen students.

“There you are!” he cried, squatting down to wrap his arms around the dog.

Jake also made his way through the crowd, relief washing through him.

“You had us worried!” Jake good-naturedly scolded Cody, as he knelt down to pet him.

“Is this your dog?” a redheaded boy asked. A second, almost identical redhead stood next to him.

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “He decided to go exploring.”

“He's cool,” said a girl with short brown hair and pink glasses.

“Yeah, he's all right,” Jake muttered, rubbing Cody behind his ears.

“What are you guys doing here?” Taylor asked, straightening up while keeping an eye on Cody to make sure he didn't take off again.

“We're from Madison Junior High School. I'm Max, and this is my brother Marty,” Max told them.

“Let me guess,” Jake said, reading his Bulls sweatshirt. “Chicago?”

“Yeah,” said Marty. “We came out here to Casper for a band competition, then drove out here to Thermopolis for the dinosaur museum.”

“Did you win?” Taylor asked.

The girl with the pink glasses scrunched her nose. “No. Robby dropped his clarinet during our final number and then knocked his music stand over trying to pick it up.”

“It wasn't his fault, Tess,” insisted one of the twins. “Lucy poked him in the butt with her trombone slide.”

Jake and Taylor laughed.

“So, what about you guys?” Tess asked.

Fortunately, before they answered, a portly woman with curly black hair stepped out of the museum building. “Okay, everyone, listen up! We've paid for all of you, so you can go in, but remember, we only have an hour before lunch, so don't waste any time.”

Excited murmurs swept through the students, and they began filing into the building.

“Well, thanks for catching our dog,” said Jake, turning away.

“Hey, do you want to come in with us?” Max asked.

“Yeah, Jake! Let's do it!” Taylor said. “Our bus doesn't leave for hours. C'mon, please?”

Jake hesitated. Was it really safe to leave Cody again?

“
Please
, Jake,” begged Taylor. “It's a dinosaur museum!”

With Taylor, the twins, and Tess staring at him, Jake couldn't say no. Besides, hanging out with a group of kids would help them blend in more.

“Just watch out for Mrs. Ratzlaf,” Marty warned him, pointing at the heavyset woman. “She's a
demon
.”

Taylor tied Cody outside—more securely this time—and gave him the bundle of food from the diner. The two boys left their backpacks and snowshoes behind the ticket counter and did their best to blend in with the schoolkids pouring into the museum.

All around them stood incredible fossils and replicas
of some of the most amazing animals ever to walk the earth. As the boys joined the class on the museum's “Walk through Time” tour, Taylor started calling off names left and right, from allosaurs to
T. rexes
, velociraptors to
Microraptors
.

After hearing Taylor spit out another half dozen dinosaur species, Max and Marty grinned. “I guess you must be a superbrainiac,” Max said.

Taylor blushed. “Me, a brainiac? No way.”

“He's just got a special thing about dinosaurs,” Jake explained to the twins.

Later, they paused at a special exhibit of Stone Age tools, and Max let out a whistle. “Man, I'm glad we don't have to live like cavemen did.”

“Yeah,” Marty said. “It would have been a nightmare. Hunting for your food. No computers. No video games!”

Max laughed. “No breakfast cereal. Imagine getting up in the morning and you've got to go pull the guts out of a deer, or whatever.”

I don't have to imagine it,
Jake thought.

“You know, some people still live like that now,” Jake said.

“Really,” Marty said, confused. “That must suck.”

Jake looked away, embarrassed. Even though it
did
suck sometimes to live like that, he suddenly felt defensive. It wasn't Max's and Marty's fault. They didn't know all the things Jake and Taylor had seen or been through. But their ignorance still stuck in his throat.

After the museum the band members went to a local pizza place for lunch—the only place in town big enough to handle all of them. Jake and Taylor tagged along, again leaving Cody tied up outside. Despite inhaling a huge breakfast, Jake and Taylor demolished half a pizza each. It felt just like being back at school with their friends, and soon Jake and Taylor had completely let their guard down.

Watching Taylor wolf down a third of a slice of pepperoni in a single bite, Tess said, “You guys are human garbage disposals. How do you stay so skinny?”

Hiking over mountains,
Jake thought.
Digging out of avalanches. Walking miles in snowshoes.

Taylor waved away the question. “We get a lot of exercise.”

Jake had to grin at that. It was true, after all.

As Max was chewing his last mouthful of pizza, he nudged Jake. “Uh-oh, Ratzlaf is coming!”

“Let's go, Taylor,” said Jake.

The pair of them stood up, ready to make a break for it, but the rotund curly-haired band instructor was already moving across the floor, making a beeline for their table. If they left now, they'd just draw even more attention to themselves.

“What do we do?” Taylor asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“Sit down. Just act normal.”

Jake and Taylor sat down again, hunched low in their seats.

Mrs. Ratzlaf stood at the end of the table.
She looks like an army sergeant,
Jake thought.

He glanced up at her before he could stop himself. There was an enormous mole on her chin. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

“Look at this mess,” Mrs. Ratzlaf said, sounding revolted. “What a bunch of animals. You are
not
acting like ambassadors for your school.”

A few students mumbled “Sorry,” but most said nothing, choosing instead to hang their heads in guilty silence. Jake and Taylor stared at their plates.

Mrs. Ratzlaf started to shuffle around the table toward Jake. He could practically feel her hot breath on his neck.

“Finish up, all of you,” she said from behind him. “Our bus leaves in fifteen minutes.”

Jake reached for his Coke and took a noisy, rattling slurp.
Act normal,
he told himself. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and caught in his eyebrow. It tickled.

Across the table he saw Taylor swallow hard and lift a slice of pizza to his mouth. Taylor's eyes kept flicking up to above Jake's head, where Mrs. Ratzlaf loomed over him.

Jake couldn't stand it. He wanted to run.

In the next moment a heavy hand clamped down on
his shoulder. Mrs. Ratzlaf's huge head leaned over. Her eyes glared into his.

“And who might you be, young man?” she demanded. “You're not in my band, that's for sure. Where are your parents?”

Jake's throat locked up. He couldn't say a word.

The woman leaned in so close that Jake could smell her sour breath. “I think we'd better have a little chat.”

15
Taylor looked at Jake, panic darting across his features. Marty and Max looked his way too as he began stuttering a reply.

“Uh, well, we were—”

“Mrs. Ratzlaf, don't you remember?” Marty jumped in. “They were in the band from Denver that got second place in the jazz competition.”

The band director's eyes narrowed, looking from Jake to Taylor and back again. Jake held his breath. Any second now she'd call the police, or at least kick them out of the restaurant.

Mrs. Ratzlaf sagged, doubt creeping across her face. “Huh. I thought you looked familiar.”

Max added, “Jake plays trumpet and Taylor plays alto sax.”

Mrs. Ratzlaf brushed him off, irritated. “Of course, I
remember now. Congratulations on your second place. What I don't understand is what you're doing
here
?”

“Uh, after the competition,” Jake picked up, “our parents decided to bring us to Thermopolis for a day.”

“Yeah, we've been wanting to come for a long time,” Taylor added.

“Our mom and dad are still back at the dinosaur museum,” Jake lied, “but when we ran into Max and Marty, they said we could hang out with you guys for a while.”

He stopped himself before he gave in to the temptation to keep talking.