Waypoint: Cache Quest Oregon
Copyright © 2010 Shauna Rice - Schober
All rights reserved.
ISBN: I-4537-2I66-5
ISBN-I3: 978I45372I667
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61550-936-2
For Madison and Lillian,
May you seek adventure in the simplest of things, even a box of cereal.
Special Thanks to:
David: for all your support, and not allowing me to give up.
My awesome editorial team: Stephanie Curry and Laura Estes.
Brilliant artist, Josh Jones, you make it easy to judge a book by its cover.
Subject matter experts: Ben and Megan Curry.
Tamera and Logan Merry: for all your work and modeling on the book trailer.
Lacey, Catherine, Kinsy, Anna, Desi, Paul, Mom and Tonya, for listening to me vent, cry, and almost give up, over and over again.
Contents
“Y
ou can do this Ben! Just use your right hand and grab the purple handhold above you.” Mrs. Freeman yelled.
“I’m stuck! It’s too far!” Ben screamed shakily. His hands were covered in sweat, making his grip almost impossible. Chunks of his blonde hair were sticking to his face. If he let go for even a second to clear the hair from his eyes he knew he would fall, let go to move a hand to another handhold—yeah right! The climbing wall was just too high, so what if everyone else made it to the top; he didn’t need to do this. It wasn’t as if they could hold him back from the fourth grade if he couldn’t climb a stupid fake rock wall.
Ben looked up again, trying to shake the hair from his eyes. He saw the large tan tree-like legs of Mrs. Freeman towering above the climbing wall. She was looking down with disgust; he didn’t know what would be worse; her being upset with him or his classmate’s making fun of him. As he looked down he could feel the judgment from all of the kids. They looked up at him, with their big teasing eyes. He analyzed the situation…was it worth it? Suddenly his stomach made the decision for him and vomit came into his mouth, he swallowed it quickly.
“I’m climbing down.” Ben yelled, trying to control the heaving of his stomach and the shaking of his knees, he wasn’t even sure if he could lift his leg to move down the wall.
“If you can climb down, you can climb up, Benjamin!” Mrs. Freeman yelled. “I know it’s scary but c’mon, everyone else did it!”
“I’m not scared, I just don’t want to!” He closed his mouth quickly, not sure if the lump in his throat was another portion of the sloppy Joes he ate for lunch.
Finally he was able to lift his foot and then lower it to the foothold below him, but as he tried to move his hand he lost his balance and fell off the wall, the safety harness made a loud snap as it became taut holding his weight. Now everyone was laughing, including Mrs. Freeman, as she wobbled down the stairs. Ben was swinging from side to side like a piñata,
at least I’m not on the wall anymore,
he thought.
Mrs. Freeman unhooked the safety rope from the pulley on the wall and lowered Ben to the bright blue gym mats that covered the floor. As he was trying to unbuckle the safety harness his fingers kept sliding off the clip, he just couldn’t get a grip on the metal with his sweaty, grimy hands.
“C’mon Ben, we’re waiting for you.” Mrs. Freeman called out. “Having a problem with the harness clip? Boy those hands aren’t working for you at all today, are they?” She said smugly as she stomped over to him.
Why is she being so mean to me, isn’t she supposed to be helping me?
Ben thought. Not wanting her to come any closer to grab the buckle, he stepped back and pulled the harness down around his ankles, as he was climbing out of it, his shoe got stuck in one of the loops and tripped him. He fell backwards on the mat, his arms flailing about as he tried to regain his balance.
“This can’t get any worse.” He mumbled to himself. Just then he felt Mrs. Freeman’s shoe nudge the side of his stomach.
“Feet aren’t working for you either, huh?” She laughed a throaty, hoarse laugh as the words came out of her mouth.
Ben pulled himself to his feet with a sigh. He could hear his classmates whispering and giggling as he made his way to the bleachers. He sat, and then shivered as the cold metal seat sent a shock down his legs.
“You okay Ben? You look a little red.” She pointed at him; she had no respect for quitters, but almost seemed to be enjoying this a little too much.
“I’m just hot.” Ben mumbled as he looked at his shoes.
“Okay everyone, settle down,” she instructed. “Since today is the last day of school, I’m going to let you leave class early to go clean out your lockers.” A few boys whooped loudly with excitement. “Once your lockers are clean, you may come and ollect your report cards. So, okay, go!” she commanded with a clap. The bleachers shook as the students practically bounced off of them, most were very excited that this was potentially their last class with Mrs. Freeman for the rest of their lives.
Ben’s best friend Matt ran up to him. “Hey man, you okay?”
“Fine.” Ben snapped, clearly not wanting to talk about what had just happened.
“Oh okay, whatever man. Why do you think she’s giving us our report cards, doesn’t the school mail them to our parents?”
“Who knows, she probably just wants to have one last chance to torture us before school is over.” Although he wasn’t looking forward to talking with Mrs. Freeman again, a feeling of relief overcame Ben. This was hopefully the last day he would have one of her classes, suddenly he smiled.
Ben’s backpack was bursting at the seams. In fact, he had to sit on it to squash most of his stuff so that he could even get it zipped. Not only was his backpack huge, but now it had a horrible odor. Ben knew he should have just thrown out all those old gym socks, they were so old they were sticking together at the bottom of his locker. His mom would freak out, he couldn’t wait to see the look on her face as she unloaded that backpack! He would have to remember to make sure that he told his dad about it, so they could both watch. He laughed to himself as he made his way down the dim hallway that led to Mrs. Freeman’s office.
As he made the last turn his stomach began to churn. Whenever he had to speak to her he couldn’t think straight. He would stutter and stumble over his words. He realized that he was actually afraid as he lifted his hand to knock on the bright orange molding that surrounded her office door.
“Yes,” she called. He stepped into her office, and quickly looked down to the floor. “Awe, Ben, good I want to have a little chat with you.” She rested her large arms on her desk. “You play sports right?”
“Um…yep, baseball, basketball, and uh, I do karate.”
“So why is it that you can do all of those things and yet you don’t seem to try in my class?”
“I’m not good at the stuff we do in class.” He stammered.
“Well you would be if you tried! I want you to think about that this summer. The things we do in my class are to prepare you for life, it’s not like you will be a professional baseball player.” She shook her head in disgust.
“I don’t think I will have to do cartwheels, or climb walls, or ever have to balance on a beam for my job either.” Ben was shocked that he was actually saying these things, and he wasn’t scared. It felt strange, but good.
“Well you never know, and don’t ever smart off to me like that again! Anyway, I see you did well in all your other classes, so your parents shouldn’t be all that upset about you getting a ‘needs improvement’ in my class. You do need improvement, you know.” She said as she raised the green report card and handed it to him. He snatched it quickly from her.
“Um, yep, got it! See ya!” He said as he turned quickly practically flying out of her office. He ran down the long hallway, his backpack bouncing and hitting him in the base of his skull. He didn’t even care though, that was his last class with Mrs. Freeman for the rest of his life. “YES!” He shouted with excitement as he pushed open the heavy metal door of the gymnasium. His last day of the third grade, his last day of school for three months and his last day of ever having to talk to Mrs. Freeman again, the day was turning around.
He ran quickly to his sister’s classroom, worried that she would try to walk home alone; but as he approached her classroom she wasn’t waiting in her normal spot. Megan would always wait at the bench outside the door, always.
Shoot!
Maybe she was inside just saying goodbye to her teacher.
The only person in the classroom was Mrs. Thomas; she was standing on a table removing posters from the walls.
“Um, Mrs. Thomas?”
“Oh, hi Ben! Happy it’s the last day?” she was always so nice.
“Yeah, um where’s Megan?”
“What do you mean, she isn’t outside?” A look of concern came over Mrs. Thomas’ face. Ben turned and started running toward home. “Wait Ben, let’s call your mom!” she yelled, but he couldn’t hear her, and kept on running.
Ben threw open the front door and tossed his bag on the floor. As he ran into the kitchen he saw his mom and his aunt sitting at the counter.
“Mom, I can’t find Megan! She wasn’t at school!”
“Alert the authorities!” Aunt Lacey joked waving her hands in the air like sirens.
“Shut up!” Ben yelled in a panic.
“I picked her up,
genius.”
Lacey replied.
“See mom this is why I need a cell phone! No one told me, I ran home, I thought she was lost!”
“Ben, when you can pay for a cell phone, you can have one. I’m sorry Lacey didn’t wait for you.” His mom slapped her sister’s arm, “you freaked him out.”
“I’m fine! I just didn’t want to get into trouble for ditching her.” He lied.
“Uh huh, sure…” Lacey said as she took a gulp of her iced coffee.
Ben grabbed a box of cereal from the cupboard and poured himself a bowl. Then he reached in the box and dug through it to find the toy the box was advertising.
“Nice
Ben, that’s gross, get your hand out of there!” His mom groaned.
“Got it!” Ben pulled out what appeared to be a toy compass wrapped in plastic. His aunt immediately grabbed it from him.
“Mine now!” She laughed as she tore open the plastic with her teeth, spitting the shreds on the counter.
“Give it back!” Ben lunged over the counter grasping for it. Lacey smacked his hands playfully blocking him. She pulled the instructions from the package and threw them on the counter, Ben snatched them up.
“Cool a fake compass!” she said sarcastically as she tossed it to Ben with disappointment. Ben shoveled a huge bite of cereal into his mouth as he grabbed it, allowing cereal to fall off the spoon onto the counter. He continued to eat as he read the instructions that came with the toy.
“I can win ten thousand dollars!” Ben announced.
“Well I can win twenty million dollars; I bought a power ball ticket.” Lacey joked.
“No one is winning anything, you’re both dorks! Now Ben you have belt testing tonight for karate, we’ll leave in two hours, so if you want to play you better go now,” his mom said.
“Yeah, run along Ben, your mom and I have important matters to discuss.” Lacey joked, and then started to loudly slurp the rest of her coffee from the cup. She then proceeded to lick the inner edges of the cup trying to savor every last bit of whip cream.
“Whatever.” Ben said as he put the compass in his pocket, grabbed his cereal and headed to his bedroom.
“So,” Ben’s mom turned toward her sister, “are you gonna get a job this summer?”
“No, I have summer classes starting in about a month, so getting a job would be a waste of time,” Lacey replied as she thumbed through the instructions that came with the toy compass. “I think I might just go to Mexico for a few weeks, just hang on the beach, ya know?”
“No, I don’t actually, ya know ‘cause I’m a grown up.” Ben’s mom said with a roll of her eyes. Lacey continued to read over the instructions, ignoring her sister’s comment.
“Find the treasure, win ten thousand dollars.” She repeated to herself. “You know what this is?”
“Yeah, a toy compass.” Ben’s mom replied.
“They’re coordinates, I mean it’s longitude and latitude, if you can figure out how to get to these exact coordinates, this says there is a prize of ten thousand dollars! Ben was right!” She beamed as she jumped up, and slid into the computer chair across the room. “Ben! Get in here” she yelled. “Hey sis, you mind if I use your computer?” she asked as she logged on.