Dad pulls into the parking lot at a building marked PARK HEADQUARTERS. Ranger Winnie is waiting at the curb. Feet spread. Hands behind her back. Eyes barely showing beneath her Smokey the Bear hat.
“Morning, Winnie,” Dad calls out. “Here are your new recruits.”
“Thanks, Lucas. Pick ’em up ’bout four.”
“Have fun, kids,” Dad says as X, Glinda and Bobby Ray jump out of the truck. Héctor climbs out of the back end and crawls into the front seat. “Héctor will be back to eat lunch with you.”
“Fun?” I whisper, walking past his door.
Smiling, he tosses me the floppy hiking hat Mom packed.
I watch him drive away, a hollow feeling in my stomach.
“Cassandra!” Ranger Winnie yells from the front door. “Get your butt in here. You’re holding up the works.” She gives me an up-and-down look as I walk inside, her eyes stopping at the pony logo on my pink polo shirt. “What do you think this is, girl? An amusement park?”
“No, ma’am,” I mumble, hustling after Glinda, Bobby Ray and X.
It’s a prison, I think. And the warden’s name is Winnie.
“Take a seat,” Ranger Winnie says, leading us to a room with a long table. “You’ll sit in the same place this afternoon. No moving around.”
I sit on one end, X on the other. Glinda and Bobby Ray fill in the middle chairs.
Ranger Winnie stands in front of us, still wearing her hat, still clutching her hands behind her back. She tells us we’ve been enrolled in the Junior Naturalist Program as guides to help summer students.
“I set up this junior guide position as an experiment because I’m swamped this summer. Don’t know if I’ll continue with it or not, it all depends on you. That means you’re going to be in my spotlight, so don’t screw up.”
“Experiment,” Bobby Ray whispers. “Oh, geez. Frankenstein was an experiment.”
“Héctor’s not old enough,” Ranger Burns continues, “but because he can’t stay alone, I’ve agreed he can hike with you once you finish the training. Understand?”
She makes eye contact with each of us. That looks says we’re supposed to do something. We look at each other, then back at her.
“You’re supposed to acknowledge you understand the terms and conditions,” she says with a sigh.
X and Bobby Ray mumble, “Okay.” Glinda mutters, “Why not.” I hunch my shoulders and nod at Ranger Burns.
She rubs her face with both hands, looks at us again. “You’re to call me Ranger Burns. Grown-ups can call me Winnie, but for you, it’s Ranger Burns. Kids aren’t taught to respect their elders these days. That’s one of the things you’ll learn working for me. Respect for people and the natural world. Now, raise your hand if you have questions.”
No one raises a hand.
“Ask anything you want,” she says. “You’ve got to be curious about something.”
“Uh, okay.” I inch my hand upward. “Why were you searching cars leaving the park yesterday?”
“What have you heard?” she asks.
“Something was stolen,” Bobby Ray says.
The dagger and skull tattooed on X’s arms draw my eyes like magnets.
“Artifacts,” Glinda says. “My parents heard it was prehistoric artifacts.”
Ranger Burns nods. “Plano points and a spearhead. Plano refers to a group of hunter-gatherers that lived here about five thousand years ago. The points are different from a lot of others you see in that they’re not fluted.” She looks around the table. “You know what that means? Fluted?”
Silence.
“Means these points haven’t been hollowed out. They disappeared from a dig site that someone either knew about or stumbled onto. Archaeologist at the dig took a short lunch break and discovered them missing when she got back. Reported it right away, and that’s when I started searching everyone going out—thoroughly. Little buggers are small, can be hidden easily.”
I raise my hand again. “So points are just arrowheads? But I don’t get it. Lots of people have collections of arrowheads. Museums, even.”
“That’s right, they do. But even moving an artifact is a federal offense in a state or national park. You see one—which you shouldn’t if you stay on the trail—let it lie. Sometimes wind will uncover one. You do find one, mark it on your map and report it to me. And caution people against picking one up should they happen upon one.”
She looks around. “Anything else?”
X’s hand crawls into the air. “What’re you going to do if you catch them?”
“Same thing that’s done to any criminal.”
“Pretty serious, huh?” he says.
“As a heart attack.”
She looks around again. “Get your questions out of the way now. I’m pretty good at reading faces, so I know you have more.”
Bobby Ray’s hand inches up. “What if somebody needs to go potty and there’s not a bathroom close?”
“Go potty . . .” Ranger Burns shakes her head, looking tired. “If you’re talking number two, Bobby Ray, then you find a big bush, dig a hole and bury it. It would be a good idea to carry some TP and a digging tool in your backpack. Hand trowel . . . collapsible shovel. Just make sure you don’t sit down on a rattlesnake or an ant bed.”
Rattlesnakes? Ant beds? The hairs rise on the back of my neck.
Ranger Burns looks around again. Waiting.
I raise my hand once more. “Why us? I mean, why’d you pick us?”
“Now, that’s a good question. You got tagged because you’re longtimers, not short-timers . . . and because I know your folks. What you’ll be doing is fun, but serious. I need people I can rely on.”
“So we’ll be teachers for other kids that enroll in the program?” X says.
“That’s right. Which means, you need to know the park inside out and upside down. You’ll start a week from today, next Monday. That gives you plenty of time to complete the activity guide training and learn your trails.”
“We got a head start,” X says. “Héctor and I already hiked some of the trails.”
“I’ve been hiking them for six years,” Glinda says, sounding bored.
Six years? I look at Glinda, dumbfounded that she’s been hiking since she was something like six.
“That’s good, Glinda,” Ranger Burns says. “But you need to know names and locations of everything in the park, not just the hiking trails. People will ask you all sorts of things, some of them pretty dumb. Doesn’t matter, we treat every question with respect.” She pauses. “Any of you want to bail out, now’s the time to do it.”
She looks around the table, lingering when she reaches me.
I want to run from the room, but there’s no place to go.
“All right,” she says, nodding. “Here, Cassandra, hand out these activity guides so I can see how much you already know. That’ll give us a starting place.”