What they did not know, however, was that (a) the window in my tiny room actually opened wide enough for just about any size body to slip through, (b) two bodies had already slipped through it, in order to perform a small favor for me, and (c) instead of saying good-bye, like I was supposed to be doing, to Ruth and Scott and Dave, I was waiting for an opportunity to sneak out and find Shane, whom I knew now was not only not dead, but still on Camp Wawasee property.
“Remember,” I whispered to Ruth, “at the first Pit, when they read off the rules and regulations? One of them was that Wolf Cave was off-limits. What kid, hearing about Paul Huck and feeling persecuted himself, isn’t going to make a beeline for that cave? Plus he took all the junk food,
and
my flashlight is missing.”
Ruth went, in this very meaningful tone, “Do you have any
other
reason to suspect he might be there, Jess?”
The surprising answer was, “Yes.”
Ruth raised her eyebrows. “Really? What about all that stuff about how you need to enter REM-stage sleep in order to achieve … you know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I don’t need it, if I’m worked up enough… .”
I didn’t know how to put into words what had happened when I’d hugged Shane’s pillow. How the smell of his shampoo had filled my head with an image of him, huddled in the glow of a flashlight, and stuffing his face with Fiddle Faddle.
I don’t know how it had happened, or if it would ever happen again. But I had had a vision, while wide-awake, of a missing person… .
And I was going to act on that vision, and right what I’d made wrong.
“If you ask me,” Ruth said, “the stupid kid isn’t worth the trouble.”
“Ruth.” I shook my head at her. “What kind of Camp Wawasee attitude is that?”
“He’s a pill,” Ruth said.
“You wouldn’t say that,” I assured her, “if you’d ever heard him play.”
“He can’t be that good.”
“He is. Believe me.” The memory of the hauntingly beautiful music Shane had played was as sharp in my head as the vision I’d had of him, shoveling Doritos into his mouth by flashlight.
Ruth sighed. “If you say so. Still, if I were you, I’d let him stay out there and rot. He’ll come back on his own when the food runs out.”
“Ruth, a kid got lost in that cave and died, remember? That’s why it’s off-limits. For all I know, Shane might not be able to find his way out, and that’s why he’s still in there.”
Ruth looked skeptical. “And what makes you think you’ll be able to find your way out, if he can’t?”
I tapped my head. “My built-in guidance system.”
“Oh, right,” Ruth said. “I forgot. You and my dad’s Mercedes.”
Suddenly, the stillness that had fallen over the camp after the heavy rainstorm was ripped apart by an explosion so loud it made thunder sound like a finger-snap. Ruth clapped her hands over her ears.
“Whoa,” I said, impressed. “Right on cue. That boyfriend of yours sure knows how to create a diversion.”
Ruth lowered her hands and went primly, “Scott isn’t my boyfriend.” Then she added, “Yet. And he should know about diversions. He was an Eagle Scout, after all.”
The door to my bedroom flew open. Special Agent Smith stood there, gun drawn.
“Thank God you’re all right,” she said when she saw me. Her blue eyes were wide with anxiety. “That can only be him. Clay Larsson, I mean. Stay here while Agent Johnson and I go to investigate, all right? We’re leaving Officer Deckard and one of the sheriff’s deputies, too—”
“Sure,” I said calmly. “You go on.”
Special Agent Smith gave me a nervous smile I suppose she meant to be reassuring. Then she shut the door.
I stood up. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and headed for the window.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ruth muttered unhappily as she followed me. “You know, they’re probably overreacting with this whole Clay Larsson thing, but what if he really is, you know, out there, looking for you?”
I gave her a disgusted look over my shoulder before I dropped out the window. “Ruth,” I said. “It’s me you’re talking to. You think I can’t handle one little old wife-beater?”
“Well,” Ruth said. “If you’re going to put it
that
way …”
We slithered out the window as quietly as we could. Outside, except for a mysterious bright orange glow from the parking lot, it was dark. It wasn’t as hot as it had been, thanks to the rain.
But everything, everything was wet. My sneakers, and the cuffs of my jeans, which had only just started to dry off, were soon soaked again. Drops of water fell down from the treetops every time a breeze stirred the leaves overhead. It was quite unpleasant … as Ruth did not hesitate to point out, at her first opportunity.
“My ankles itch,” she whispered.
“No one said you had to come,” I whispered back.
“Oh, sure,” Ruth hissed. “Leave me behind to deal with the cops. Thanks a lot.”
“If you’re going to come with me, you have to quit complaining.”
“Okay. Except that all of this rain is making my allergies act up.”
I swear to you, sometimes I think it would be easier if I just didn’t have a best friend.
We’d only gone about a dozen yards when we heard it—footsteps swiftly approaching us. I hissed at Ruth to put out her flashlight, but it turned out our caution had been for nothing, since it was only Scott and Dave, hurrying to join us.
“Hey,” I said to them as they came trotting up. “Good job, you guys. They totally fell for it.”
Scott ducked his head modestly. “You were right, Jess,” he said. “Tampons do make good fuses.”
I glanced at Ruth. “And you said detention was a waste of my time.”
Ruth only shook her head. “The American public education system,” she said, “was clearly not designed with ingrates like you in mind.”
Dave glanced over his shoulder at the thick black smoke pouring from the parking lot into the night sky.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. He was panting, smudged with dirt, and covered in dead leaves and clearly exhilarated. I knew what he was thinking: Never, in his seventeen years of trumpet-playing, Dungeons-&-Dragon-dice-throwing geekdom, had he ever done anything so dangerous … and fun. “I was going to see if I could get extra credit for this from my chemistry teacher next semester. Lighting a van on fire with a Molotov cocktail has to be good for at least ten bonus points.”
“You guys,” Ruth said, “are insane.”
Scott looked wounded. “Hey,” he said. “We used appropriate caution. No children or animals were harmed in the execution of this prank.”
“No law enforcement officials, either,” Dave added.
“I am surrounded,” Ruth murmured, “by lunatics.”
“Enough already,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
We ended up not actually needing our flashlights to see our way around the lake. The storm had passed, leaving behind a sky that was mostly clear. A shiny new moon shone down on us—just a sliver, but it shed enough of a glow for us to see by, at least while there were no trees overhead to block its light—along with a light dusting of stars.
If I hadn’t realized it before, from the allergy remark, I knew by the time we were halfway around the lake that bringing Ruth along had been a big mistake. She simply would not shut up … and not because she wanted the whole world to know about her itching, watery eyes, but because she wanted Scott to know how big and brave she thought he was, taking on the FBI all by himself … well, okay, with Dave’s help, but still. I sincerely hoped I didn’t sound like that when I talked to Rob—you know, all sugary sweet and babyish. I think if I did, Rob would have told me to knock it off already. I hoped so, anyway.
I don’t know what Dave was thinking as we made our way along the shore. He was pretty quiet. It had been, I reflected, a big day for both him and Scott. I mean, they had gotten to meet a real live psychic, thwart some FBI agents, and blow up a van, all in one day. No wonder he wasn’t very talkative. It was a lot to process.
I was having trouble processing some stuff of my own. The Rob thing, if you want the truth, bothered me a lot more than the whole thing where I managed to find a kid without catching forty winks first—especially considering the fact that I am a vital, independent woman who has no need of a man to make her feel whole. I mean, I said I’d call him, and he’d said
don’t
? What kind of baloney was that? Is it my fault I have this very important career, and that sometimes I am forced to think first not of my own personal safety, but about the children? Couldn’t he see that this wasn’t about him, or even me, but a missing twelve-year-old, who, it’s true, couldn’t stop making fart jokes, but nevertheless didn’t deserve to perish in the wilds of northern Indiana?
Of course, there was also the small matter of my having dragged poor Rob into all of this in the first place. I mean, he’d come all the way up here, and driven me all around Chicago, and helped me deal with Keely, just because I’d asked him to. And he hadn’t expected anything at all in return. Not even a single lousy kiss.
And all he’d gotten for it was
a
pistol brandished at him by a member of the FBI.
I guess, when you took into account all of these facts, it wasn’t any wonder he didn’t want me to call him anymore.
But while this was perhaps the most personally troubling of the problems that were on my mind as we trudged toward Wolf Cave, it was by no means the only one. There was also, of course, the puzzling little matter of just how Dr. Alistair had found out about me. I didn’t believe Pamela had told him. It was strange that he had known where I was that afternoon, when Pamela hadn’t even known. I mean, I’m sure she suspected, but I hadn’t discussed my plans concerning Keely Herzberg with her. I figured the less people who knew about it, the better.
So how had Dr. Alistair known?
Then the moonlight vanished as we moved from the lake’s shore to the deeply wooded embankment where Wolf Cave was located. If I had thought the wet grass was bad, this was about ten times worse. The incline was really steep, and since it was mostly unused, there was no path to follow … just slick, wet ground cover, mostly mud and dead leaves. The others had no choice but to turn on their flashlights now, if we didn’t want to break our necks tripping over some root, or something.
In spite of our efforts to approach the cave quietly, we must have made a considerable amount of noise—especially considering the fact that Ruth would
not
shut up about her stupid ankles. It was pretty quiet, that deep in the woods. There were crickets chirping, but for the first time since I’d arrived at the camp, no cicadas screamed. Maybe the rain had drowned them all.
So it couldn’t have been all that hard for Shane to hear our approach.
Which might have explained why, when we finally reached the mouth of Wolf Cave—just a dark spot under an outcropping of boulders, jutting from the side of the steep hill we’d just climbed—there was no sign of Shane… .
Well, unless you count the candy wrappers and empty boxes of Fiddle Faddle that lined the narrow entrance.
I borrowed Ruth’s flashlight and shined it into the cave—really, the mouth was surprisingly small … only three feet high and maybe two feet wide. I did not relish squeezing through it, let me tell you.
“Shane,” I called. “Shane, come out of there. It’s me, Jess. Shane, I know you’re in there. You left all this Fiddle Faddle out here.”
There was a sound from within the cave. It was the sound of someone crawling.
Only the sound was going away from us, not coming closer.
“Let’s just leave him in there,” Ruth suggested. “The little jerk completely deserves it.”
Scott seemed sort of shocked by her callousness. “We can’t do that,” he said. “What if he gets lost in there?”
Ruth’s eyelashes fluttered behind the lenses of her glasses. “Oh, Scott,” she cooed in that unnaturally sweet voice. “You’re so right. I never thought of that.”
Yuck.
“Maybe,” Dave said, “there’s another way in. You know, a wider side entrance. Most caves have more than one.”
“Shane,” I called into the cave. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t give Lionel a strike. I swear he’s got one now, okay?”
No response. I tried again.
“Shane, everybody is really worried about you,” I called. “Even Lionel missed you. Even the girls from Frangipani Cottage miss you. In fact, they miss you the most. They’re holding a candlelight vigil for you right now. If you come out, we can panty-raid them while they’re praying for you. Seriously. I’ll even donate a pair of my own panties to the cause.”
Nothing. I straightened up.
“I’m going to have to go in there after him,” I said softly.
“I’ll go with you,” Dave volunteered. Which was pretty gallant of him, if you think about it. But I suppose he was only doing it because he felt guilty over letting Shane slip away from him in the first place.
My gaze flicked over him. “You’ll never fit.”
Which was true. The only person small enough, of the four of us, to fit through that hole was me, and they all knew it.
“Besides,” I said. “This is between me and Shane. I better go on my own. You guys stay here and make sure he doesn’t sneak out any of those side entrances you were talking about.”
Nobody needed to tell Ruth twice to stay put. She plunked down onto a nearby boulder and immediately began rubbing her chigger-ravaged ankles. Scott and Dave offered me a couple of caving tips from their days as Cub Scouts—if you shine your flashlight into a hole, and can’t see the bottom of it, that’s a hole you should avoid.
Armed with this piece of information, I dropped down to my knees and began to crawl. It was no easy task, crawling on all fours and trying to see where I was going at the same time. Still, I managed not to fall down any bottomless holes. At least, not right away. Instead, I found myself inching along a narrow—but dry, at least—tunnel. There were, much to my gratification, no bats and nothing slimy. Just a lot of dried leaves, and the occasional scrunched Dorito.
One thing you had to hand to Shane: if it was attention he was after, he sure knew how to get it. His camp counselor was crawling through a hole in the ground after him, following his trail of Snicker bar wrappers and cookie crumbs. What more could a kid ask?