CHAPTER THREE
The bus drove from their school down the highway. They passed a big building with a maze of pipes and tanks and vats attached to it. Hundreds of chimneys spewed smoke high into the air. Across one of the big white vats ran the words: SCHMOKE INDUSTRIES, MAKING THE WORLD THE WAY WE WANT IT TO BE.
Elliot reached below his seat and dug through his backpack. He pulled out a bar wrapped in shiny foil.
“What’s that?” Uchenna asked.
“It’s a snack bar.” Elliot held it out to her. It looked like nuts glued together with honey. “My mom and grandma make them for me. This is from my mom, because it doesn’t have raisins. My grandma always puts raisins in the bars she makes.”
“Interesting.”
Elliot eyed Uchenna skeptically. “Do you really think that’s interesting? Or are you being sarcastic?”
“No, I think it’s interesting. Grandmas are wrinkly, usually. Raisins are wrinkly, always. Coincidence? Of course not.”
“No, I definitely think it’s a coincidence.”
Uchenna pondered for a moment. “Nah. No way. Conspiracy.” She started drumming on the back of the big green seat in front of them. Her hands picked up speed, thumping with her left and tapping with her right. And then, to Elliot’s great surprise, she started to sing. Quietly and melodically:
“Old ladies are like raisins,
Not just because they’re sweet tastin’.
Some are brown,
Some are golden,
All of them are wrinkly,
And most of all . . . they’re amazin’!”
Uchenna stopped singing.
“Old ladies are ‘sweet tasting’?” said Elliot.
“Yeah, that part needs some work,” Uchenna muttered.
The big yellow bus pulled into a dirt parking lot. There were no other cars or buses there. The children filed off and stood in a clump.
Pine trees, tall and crooked and scraggly, stood in a line around the edge of the parking area. The wind blew dust into their faces.
“Children!” Miss Vole said, and somewhere a dog woke up. “It’s time to follow Professor Fauna!”
The professor led the group to the beginning of a trail. An old map, tattered, yellowed, and torn straight through the middle, was pinned to a crumbling plywood bulletin board. Elliot stopped and squinted up at the map.
“What are you doing?” Uchenna asked.
“I like to memorize maps when I go somewhere new, so I’ll know how to make an escape,” Elliot replied.
“Why would you need to make an escape?” said Uchenna.
“You never know.”
“How true,” said a deep voice behind them. They spun around. The professor was peering down from under his weed-like eyebrows. “You may indeed need to make an escape from the Pine Barrens, for as I have said, they can be deadly. But don’t bother trying to memorize that map. Between the many forkings of the roads, and the fire cuts that look like roads but are not, it is almost impossible to find your way out. It is almost like . . . a trap.” Professor Fauna smiled at them broadly, and then suddenly turned away.
Elliot and Uchenna watched the professor start for the woods. “Why would he say that?” Elliot asked. “Teachers are supposed to be reassuring. That was the opposite of reassuring.”
Uchenna just stared after the professor, shaking her head. “They say his office is a torture chamber, under the school. No one’s allowed in it. Even the janitors.”
“Whoa.”
“Also,” she added, “I heard he believes in unicorns.”