Gravediggers (3 page)

His
camera? My eyes fly from Ian to Peter, then back again, desperately trying to discern what just happened. “I don't understand—”

“Incredible,” snaps Peter Jacob. He clenches his hands into claws in front of his face. “No wonder you don't have any friends.” He shakes his head and storms off. After a moment, Ian follows him, throwing his hands in the air.

And now I'm alone again. The woods feel vast around me, as big and empty as the pit in my stomach. All my research on camping supplies and survivalist techniques becomes a flash in my mind, a useless blur of facts that I can't focus on right now.

Make some friends.
That's the test my parents keep putting in front of my face, and I'm sure there's a method for acing it, but I'm totally lost. I wish I'd studied what to do when someone makes you feel like this. Instead, I'm earning a solid F.

The group trudges onward, and I follow, the vast expanse of the mountain feeling somewhat like my heart right now—huge, dark, empty.

 

 

 

Chapter Three
PJ

A
re you kidding me? First, I get tossed into the sticks like some kind of guinea pig used to study the effects malaria and overexposure have on an everyday kid. And now you tell me that the one thing keeping me sane out here—my camera, my eye to the world—isn't allowed, because . . . why? Because I might actually get a recording of something cool that you've never seen in however many boring years you've picked flowers at Homeroom Earth? These counselors probably got sued once because some jerk had his smartphone eaten by a badger, and now I have to suffer for it.

Really, what are they going to do with my camcorder? At least with other kids' mp3 players and smartphones, you can watch TV or listen to music or whatever. All you're gonna see on my camcorder is Ian and me, a bunch of wildflowers, the opening shots to my werewolf movie (it's still in production; rewrites have been extensive), and maybe my sister's sixth birthday (I don't know; I might have deleted that).

If I don't get that thing back the
minute
the bus starts—

I'm not completely lost. I still have that little handheld camera with the pop-out USB drive, the one I got for Christmas. But I haven't yet learned all of its features. And besides, I know the camcorder so well, its weight, its shot radius. And without it . . .

Without it, it's just me, here. Surrounded.

I almost go to Ms. Brandt to plead my case, but she's so intense in her flower picking that I don't dare bother her. Besides, I've got to talk to her later about calling home tonight. If my choices are camera or phone call, I have to choose the call. Kyra is counting on me.

My portable will have to do. It's better than nothing, I suppose, better than
this
, wandering through a field without a real eye to guide me. It's a water wing when I need a life preserver, but it'll keep me afloat. It's just that the resolution on my handheld is so much worse than my camcorder. There's probably no way to re-layer it on my computer.

Maris hands out laminated sheets with medicines we're supposed to create by collecting certain types of flowers. Mine says I have to put together a bouquet that will create a vitamin supplement. “Don't forget,” she says, “first one to collect their entire bouquet gets to have their flowers made into an actual poultice to take back to their parents!”

No one's explained to me what a poultice is yet. There are way too many flowers to tell which ones match my sheet. If I were filming this, I could zoom in, study each plant to see if it matches my sheet, but I don't dare lean in that close right now. Flowers are pretty because they're dangerous. That's how nature works.

I put my hand in my pocket and wrap it around my handheld camera, and all the trees and flowers around me seem just the tiniest bit less terrifying.

Sweat beads on my forehead; it's too hot for all this stooping and picking. Some giant poisonous bug goes flying past my face. Every plant I touch spews a cloud of pollen directly into my nasal passages. One part of the path is lined with this vine that I'm positive is poison
something
. What is it—leaves of three, leave it be, leaves of four, it'll make your throat close up and your heart stop?

Ian's not much company, acting miserable because he's not allowed to go hunting for dead bodies with his teammates. (What kind of idiots
want
to go looking for a bunch of people who
died
in these woods?) There was a time when he would stand up for me, tell me not to listen to the other guys when they made fun of me like Sean and Mitchell did earlier. Lately, though, he's either trying to get me to act more like the other guys on his basketball team or he's pretending like he doesn't notice me.

“It's not
that
big a deal, right?” says Ian. “You probably weren't going to get much good footage out here anyway, right?”

“Whatever” is all I can come up with.

I bet at least ten of the things on my parents' list are in the forest as we speak. Mom and Dad were right—it's ridiculous, the school forcing us to take part in this nature program. I wish I was home, in the living room, watching
Night of the Hunter
and explaining the camera work to Kyra.

The woods look exactly like where
Friday the 13th
was filmed. It wouldn't surprise me if some masked madman was sharpening his machete out there right now. Which is a scary thought but could be cool, if I could get it on film.

“It's not even me you should be ticked at,” he whines, “it's Queen Brain.”

A few yards away, Kendra Wright picks some skinny yellow flowers. Her coffee-colored skin stands out from all the green grass, and her puffball hair looks huge among the flowers, like a giant brown dandelion (Ian always jokes that that's where the Queen Brain is—most of the hair is just a big pulsating megacortex, like the mutants in
This Island Earth
). When she turns toward us, though, her face breaks my heart, mouth tiny and downturned, eyes soft and watery behind her glasses. And then it hits me that I was a jerk to her, and that unlike everyone else, myself included, she's totally alone. No friends, no partners, just her.

She got my camera taken away, which yes, is killing me. But . . .

“I'll be right back,” I say to Ian.

“What's up?” he asks.

“Just give me a second.”

When I reach her, Kendra holds a yellow flower that looks like a bird's claw. She twirls it in her hands, not really looking at it.

“Which one's that?” I ask.

“A glacier lily,” she says softly. “It's used for skin diseases.”

“So you're, what, making Neosporin? Or just hand cream?” She doesn't even hint at smiling. I guess honesty will have to do. “Look, uh . . . sorry about yelling at you like that, earlier.” She nods, but stays silent. “It's just that my camera is . . . really important to me. It lets me . . .” How do I explain this? Do anything? Remain in control, rule the world? That sounds crazy, even to me. “Anyway, it was mean, what I said to you. I'm sorry.”

She gulps, blinks, and tries to smile. She looks up at me but stares over my shoulder, never in my eyes. “It's fine. If I'd known it was yours, I wouldn't have told Ms. Brandt about it. I thought it was Ian's.”

“I totally get that. He was really obnoxious about your smartphone, so you had every right.” She nods. “I'm PJ, by the way. I don't think we've ever really talked. Weird, right?”

Her brow furrows. “Wait, I thought your name was Peter. Peter Jacob.”

“Yuck, no one calls me that. It's PJ.” I hold up my thumbs and pointer fingers to make an imaginary marquee. “Think of a film poster. ‘Directed by PJ Wilson.' Sounds a lot better than ‘Peter Jacob,' right?”

“I suppose,” she says. “I'm Kendra.”

“Sure, yeah. So . . . what are you trying to gather flowers for?”

“Boils,” she says.

“Appetizing.”

This time, it works—she blinks, then smiles, which is the best I'm going to get, I think. “Yes, it's disgusting. I guess that's why they made poultices for it.”

“Okay, what's a poultice?”

Blink, gulp. “Oh, it's like a salve? Sort of a soft . . . clump of plants that people used to put on wounds. Before they knew about antibiotics and disinfectant.”

“That's cool. I didn't know that.”

Her face glows like the sun. Obviously, I've made her day by allowing her to teach me some pointless trivia. “Yes,” she says. “Mostly used during medieval times. I actually just emailed with a boy from England who made one for his father's leg recently. I can forward the email to you when we get back from—”

“Guys!
”
Suddenly,
Ian's next to us. He grabs my arm with one hand and points into the woods with another. “Look! Out there in the woods!”

“Back off, Ian,” says Kendra, taking two steps away and glaring at him. “Whatever you're doing, I'm not interested.” She scowls at me, like I'm part of some prank setup on Ian's part.

“No, really, look,” says Ian.

“Why?” She crosses her arms. “You think that if you distract me, you can put a snake in my hair or something, don't you? Just leave me alone.”

“Will you just
look
?” he whispers, and his voice is intense enough that Kendra and I finally follow his finger out into the woods. For a second, I figure he's just being ridiculous, and then the crack of a twig off in the forest tells me he's on to something, and we're not alone.

There's something in the woods, walking around us. Something big.

I'm fine. It's just an animal. I'm not going to throw up. No. Wait. Okay. I definitely might throw up.

The silhouetted shape looks enormous as it moves between the trees, gracefully, calmly. There are four legs, a broad body, some kind of lowered head, and something else, hard to see. Kendra and I crouch down next to Ian, doing our best to barely breathe.

“What is it?” whispers Kendra.

“I can't make it out,” whispers Ian.

A bear. A dragon. Death on four legs.

No
, says a voice in the back of my head,
it's footage.

My hand scrambles into my back pocket, and I pull out my handheld video recorder, savoring the simultaneous
“Cool . . .”
that Ian and Kendra whisper upon seeing it. The woods appears on its tiny screen, and the familiar feeling drifts over me, washes away the anxiety buzzing in my head and the nausea gurgling in my stomach, replaces it with a calm sense of control. Now the forest has a border around it, a light, an angle, and I'm the master of it all. I'm the director. None of this can harm me because it's just a movie, my movie. I'm boss here.

I step past Ian and Kendra, then kneel low in the tall grass to try to hide the sun behind the trees, get decent enough light to showcase the silhouette. I hold down the power button for three seconds, and the tiny red Record light flashes on—but not before letting out a shrill electronic beep.

The head whips up, and a deer, a buck with a massive set of antlers, looks directly at us and snorts. Between the crown of horns hanging over his head and the aisles of regal trees on either side of him, he looks like a king of the forest. Black eyes, wet and wide, stare down the long nose, judging us with a weird sense of nobility, like how dare we try to capture him on camera?

Shots don't get much more perfect than this—it's as if the buck isn't looking at the camera, but at the viewer
through
it. His white chest barrels out in front of him, and the whole forest seems to shake as he tenses his massive body.

“Homeroom Earth, day one, just after lunch,” I mumble. “Flower picking has been interrupted by the presence of an animal.”

“Check it,” whispers Ian. “That's a twelve-point buck.”

“That can't be true. . . .” Kendra mumbles out a count, and then whistles. “You're right. Twelve points at least. Gosh, and look at his coloring.”

All my fear of this creature is gone—now I want more, reaction shots, slow motion. We need full coverage. “Let's get closer,” I whisper, inching forward.

I barely move when the buck turns and bounds off into the woods, flashing us the white flame of his tail.

“Wow, how cool was that?” I narrate. “The glory of nature, right before us! On the first day, no less—” Something blue and worn fills the screen—a pair of jeans. “Ian, you're in my shot.”

“Come on!” yells Ian, trotting toward the woods. “Let's go after him!”

“Is that a joke?” asks Kendra. “There are four rules here, Ian. This is the
first one
.”

I click off my camera, and reality seeps back in—Ian, Kendra, and me, puny against the endless woods ahead of us. For a second, Ian's idea sounded tempting, but now, in real life . . . “Maybe she's right, man. Let's head back to the group.”

Ian stares back at us with this look of frantic disappointment. “Footage!” he yells at me. “Research!” he yells at Kendra. When we don't move, he mumbles, “Fine, forget both of you.” Then he's off, sprinting after the buck with all his might, crunching through a field of glacier lilies and into the trees.

“Oh, wow,” says Kendra.

“I know,” I say. “Should we tell Ms. Brandt?”

“Maybe,” she says, “maybe you're right.” She turns and heads slowly toward the path, but when I stand up to follow her, she's frozen in midstride.

“What's up?” I ask.

She looks at me, then out into the woods at Ian's disappearing back. “Well,” she says, “it's just . . . ”

“You're not actually thinking about—”

She's gone before I can finish the sentence, bounding after Ian as fast as she can go.

“Wait!” I call.

“Bring your camera!” she yells back.

Instinctively, I turn to call out to Ms. Brandt, but I'm greeted with an empty field. The rest of our class is gone, along with our teacher, our counselor, everyone. Suddenly, this field of brightly colored flowers is massive and deathly silent, and the only noise I can hear is the wind in the trees and Kendra's footsteps slowly fading in the distance.

What do I do? My options are slim. I can wait here and hope that someone finds me. I can run after our class and either get lost or rat on Ian, maybe lose my only remaining camera. Or I can—I can—

I can run for it.

And that's what I do. I lock onto Kendra's bobbing hair, and I run like crazy after her, gritting my teeth against the snakes and bugs and spores that I know are whizzing past me.