Artifacts

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

Copyright © 2016 by Pete Catalano

ARTIFACTS by Pete Catalano

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9968904-8-9
ePUB ISBN:
978-1-944816-73-5

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-944816-74-2

Published by Tantrum Books for Month9Books, Raleigh, NC 2760
9

Illustration and design by Deranged Doctor Design

Cover Copyright © 2016 Tantrum Books for Month9Books

For kids who have dreamed of going to Camp Runamuck together … there’s always next year.

My name is Jax Murphy, and I’m twelve years old. I live in a small town near Charlotte, North Carolina, and my friends and I are less than two weeks from our last day of sixth grade. We have a
big
summer planned that should be exciting … and exhausting.
Only two more weeks!

But first,
I have to sit through boring days of class after class where all the teacher does in that
looooong
est forty-five minutes ever is tell you how the school year was harder on him than it was on you.
I’ve heard that before!

I feel like I’m going to explode, and sitting through class these next few days just might kill me, but it’ll all be worth the wait. Don’t take my word for it. Just look around my room.

Camp brochures are …
everywhere!

Scattered across the bed and floor, unfolded and tacked to my wall, and stapled to the back of my door. Spread out on my desk, numbered from one to fifty depending on which activities I wanted to do first … and starred for how many times I wanted to do them … all the time.

Only two more weeks!

I shot a look at the calendar and the first Saturday of summer.
The
Saturday with the gigantic red circle drawn around it and two of the most
awesome
words I’ve ever read inside it:
Camp Runamuck
. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. Exclamation point.

“You might as well go ahead and kiss it, Jax,” Korie Cecchetti said, crawling through my window. Korie’s a crack-up. Well, she cracks me up. That’s why we’ve been best friends for as long as I can remember.

“Wait! What?” I jumped back, pretending not to know what she was talking about.

Korie laughed. “You’re staring at that calendar like you’re in love with it.”

“Dork,” I said, more embarrassed she had caught me than mad she said something about it. And, of course, I foolishly tried to defend myself. “What do you expect? The five of us are about to have an
awesome
time at Camp Runamuck running … amuck.”

I had to be careful to remember how many times I was using the word
amuck
.

“It might not be the five of us,” Korie said.

“What?” I said. I felt like the coyote when catapulted into the side of the cliff when he tried to get the Road Runner.

Korie shrugged. “Crunch may have to stay behind and go to summer school English.”

“Crunch is great in English.”

“Crunch handed in a couple of his brother’s old reports on the books Bartholomew assigned us to read,” Korie explained. “It looks like he’s great at something, but it’s not English.”

“
Holy Hannah
!” I said, the room spinning as fast as my whole plan was swirling down the drain. I reached out for the calendar and Korie slid a chair over to break my fall.

James Bartholomew teaches sixth grade English like a warden runs a prison. It’s his way or the highway, and I was afraid Bartholomew was going to leave poor Crunch splattered like road kill before he was done with him.

“Is there anything we … I mean he … can do to change it?”

“I don’t know,” Korie said. “He and his parents have a meeting at the school this morning.”

“Jax!” my mom called up the stairs. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

“Be there in a minute,” I yelled down. “You’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered to Korie. “I’ll meet you outside.”

“And bring Korie with you,” Mom added. “I saw those black high tops pass by my window. Please remind her that next time she comes over, we do have a perfectly good front door for her to use.”

I nudged Korie. “We do have a
perfectly good
front door.”

“Come on.” She elbowed me on the way out of the room and we thundered down the stairs to breakfast.

“Morning, Mom,” I said, running behind her and kissing the air somewhere in her general direction so Korie didn’t think I was weird.

“I hope you kids are hungry,” Mom said.

“Toad,” I said, smacking my younger brother in that big, fat head of his.

“Good morning, Korie,” Mom said.

“Morning, Mrs. Murphy,” Korie said, sliding into the chair next to me. “It’s so nice of you to ask me to stay for breakfast.”

“You stay for breakfast every day.” My dad laughed, coming into the kitchen, kissing my mom and smacking both Toad and me in the back of the head. “Every morning we watch you climb up the trellis outside the kitchen window and into Jax’s window. Hey, next time you go up that trellis, remind me to give you a paintbrush so you can touch up a couple of spots for me.”

Korie smiled. “Will do, Mr. M.”

Dad laughed. “Yeah, that just kills me. Once you get caught, you two come rumbling down the stairs like a herd of elephants, pretending like it never happened.”

Korie looked at him. “Pretending like
what
never happened?”

Dad cracked up. “Good girl!”

“You talking about Jax?” my older sister Dana asked, stumbling down the stairs. “I pretend like he never happened all the time.” She paused. “And we won’t have to pretend if you sign those papers for boarding school I left out for each of you. And I do have copies in case you threw them out. Oh, hi, Korie,” she said sweetly. Then she turned to me. “Creeper.”

I smiled. “Sister Creature.”

“Jax, don’t talk to your sister like that,” Mom said.

“Oh, and Creeper was so much better?” I turned to Dana. “Why are you so nice to Korie and I get Creeper?”

“I like her,” Dana said. “And she’s not related to me.”

I fell into her trap. “Which means?”

“Which means nothing coming out of her mouth can embarrass me,” Dana said. “And everything coming out of your mouth embarrasses me. She’s so cool and you’re so …” She shivered and squirmed rather than answer.

“I’m … what?” I wasn’t letting this go, but I have to admit I may have forgotten Korie was still in the room.

Dana snickered. “You’re … you! You dance around the house with your favorite Pixar movies. You’ve watched
Goonies
and
Home Alone
like a bazillion times! At least Korie tries to act a little grown up, but …”

“Butt.” Korie cracked up and fell into me.

“There goes that argument,” Dad said.

Dana groaned and went back to her breakfast.

“You kids finish up,” Mom said. “You’re going to be late.”

There was a
crash
at the back door. Followed by a thud, a series of rants and raves, some very loud grumbling and rumbling, and what sounded like
a lot
of pushing and shoving.

“The Wahoo brothers,” I told Mom, jumping off the chair and running to the door, trying to get there before they broke it off the hinges.

The moment I turned the knob, the door flew open and slammed against the side of the cabinet as the Wahoo brothers tumbled into the kitchen.

Tank and Mouth Wahoo are twins who were born at nearly identical times, but there’s absolutely
nothing
identical about them.

Mouth is the smaller, quirkier, and
louder
of the two. He spends most of his day annoying the crap out of us … and the rest of it running from Tank.

Tank is ginormous. Nearly five-feet-ten and one hundred and seventy pounds, he’s the biggest kid at our school and has the strength of about five middle schoolers rolled into one.

It takes a lot to make Tank mad, but if you do, you’d better run.

And Mouth was usually running … a lot.

“Hey,” I said, watching them roll around on the floor, struggling to get back to their feet. Finally, Mouth pushed up off Tank’s back and stood up.

“You gonna lay around there all day?” Mouth said to his brother.

Tank stood up and glared at Mouth. The glare was followed by a grumble, and that usually meant the battle was going to start again.

“Why can’t you just meet them at school so my kitchen door doesn’t always get bashed in?” Dad asked.