Bus to the Badlands Read online

  Mrs. Cupcake looked at me much kindlier now. “Thank you for helping them, Josh,” she said.

  “I hope you didn’t do any damage,” Jeff mumbled.

  “Do you want to check? Can I show you where it was?” I asked eagerly. I wanted to talk to Jeff about our discovery privately. Angela must have caught my drift because she started to go toward the bus, with most of the class in tow, telling the snake tale in great detail. Already it sounded like a boa constrictor.

  “I have to show you something,” I whispered to Jeff. He looked at me and realized I was serious. “Okay,” he said. He called to the group, telling them to wait by the bus. “I want Josh to show me where this happened. We’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

  We started back up the trail. “What’s up?” Jeff asked as soon as we were out of earshot.

  “I think we found something,” I panted, trying to keep up to his long strides. “I climbed up the side of the hoodoo to where Mark was and there was this rock sticking out of the cliff. Only it wasn’t a rock.”

  Jeff glanced at me sharply. “What was it?”

  For an archeological kind of guy, he wasn’t too bright. “Bone,” I said. “I think it is dinosaur bone.”

  Jeff increased his speed and pretty soon saw where we had climbed. “Hmmm,” he said, surveying the hoodoo we had scrambled up.

  “There, see that bit that sticks out? It isn’t rock. And there are no trees, so it’s not a root.”

  “Hmm,” Jeff said again. He left the trail, stepped down the ditch and then up the side of the hoodoo toward the cliff. “You stay there!” he ordered over his shoulder. I watched him clamber up alongside the muddy tracks we had left and scratch the same place I had. In no time he came back.

  “You were right—that is no rock,” he said once he was back on the trail, slapping me on the shoulder. “You may just have made a discovery there, boy!” Then he let out a roaring laugh. “All the time I’ve worked here I haven’t found anything, and you, a kid from the city, find this! Must have been the rain.” He shook his head and laughed again. “Nature has no favorites, I guess.”

  I felt excitement bubbling up inside my stomach. “I did? I really discovered dinosaur remains? You didn’t know they were there?” I asked him in disbelief.

  “No. Of course, we know that they can be anywhere here, but no, we never know where they might be discovered next, if at all.”

  I felt a tingle down my spine. I, Josh Jamieson, had discovered a dinosaur bone! “What will happen now?” I asked as we started to head back toward the group.

  “Well,” Jeff said, “I’ll come back with our chief paleontologist. We’ll get him to confirm, and then we’ll start excavating.”

  “Everything okay?” Mr. Jenkins asked when we got back to the bus.

  “Yes, very well,” Jeff said with a laugh in his voice, but that was all that he said. He looked at me and added, “You can’t go on the bus like that!”

  I guessed I did look pretty bad, all caked in mud. He made me strip down to my boxer shorts. He waved away my protests, saying, “If you were swimming, you’d look like that too.” On the bus, everybody was killing themselves laughing.

  Only the thought that I had made a great discovery let me live through this. “Just wait,” I growled at Mark as I got on the bus in my underwear. “Just wait, and we’ll see who gets the last laugh.” I could tell he was dying to know what Jeff had said about the bone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The following night Jeff came to our camp. We had just finished dinner in the cafeteria. We had corn on the cob and ham. The mashed potatoes were pretty gross, and we had flicked more off our forks than we had actually eaten. We were piling up the dishes when he walked in, accompanied by a man with gray hair.

  All my friends were surprised to see Jeff again. I wasn’t.

  Jeff called us all together. “Hey, everybody,” he said, “this is Dr. Johansen. He is our chief paleontologist.” He singled me out. “Ken, this is Josh.”

  I could see Mrs. Cupcake wondering what I had done this time. I smiled and shook hands with Dr. Johansen. He looked at me and smiled too.

  “Well, young man,” he said in a deep voice, “you may have strayed from the path and you may have had to get on a bus in your underwear”—he winked at Jeff—“but you also made quite a discovery.”

  The whole class looked puzzled and crowded around us. Mr. Jenkins looked at me, obviously wondering what it was I had done to warrant this visit. “This young man,” Dr. Johansen started to explain, “discovered a new dinosaur site.”

  There was a second of silence before everybody started talking at once.

  “Josh did??”

  “He did what?”

  “How?”

  “Where?”

  “When?”

  Dr. Johansen put up his hand to silence everyone and then told the story of what had happened. He told the part of the rescue pretty accurately, so he must have talked to Jeff about all that too.

  “It wasn’t just me,” I interrupted. “If that snake hadn’t been there, Mark and Ang wouldn’t have left the trail, and then we’d never have seen the bone.”

  Dr. Johansen nodded and then told us how they’d gone back and identified the bone. He said that dating and excavating would begin soon.

  “What kind of dinosaur was it?” Dudley wanted to know.

  “Will they call it a Joshosaurus?” Mark yelled.

  “I don’t think we’ll go that far,” Dr. Johansen replied. “While it is never a good idea to go off the path when you have been told not to do so, we know that circumstances, like rain and a snake, were beyond your control. So we would like to honor your discovery.”

  He smiled at me and then addressed Mr. Jenkins and Mrs. Cupcake. “We would like to name that specific site after your school. We’d like to name it the Pleasant Valley Excavation Site.”

  Mr. Jenkins looked pleased and proud. “Wait till we tell Principal Smart about this!” he said, grinning.

  Mrs. Cupcake positively beamed. “Well,” she exclaimed, “this has certainly been a memorable field trip!”

  Dr. Johansen said there would be a sign at the site with the school’s name on it. Then he proceeded to give us something even better. “I have here a gift certificate for your entire class,” he said, “to the local pizza parlor. Tomorrow night you may all dine at Chunky Cheese Pizza at our expense!”

  A roar went up from the group. Dudley slapped me on the shoulder, and Jesse hugged me. My friends put me on their shoulders and carried me around the dining room. Then they almost dropped me when Jeff called goodbye.

  We watched as the paleontologists put up the sign at the site the next day, making our school as immortal as a dinosaur.

  “This is great!” Mark said. “We saved our whole school from extinction!”

  Dudley overheard him and grinned. “I told you our school had something to do with dinosaurs!” He was referring to a poem he had written about our teachers being as old as fossils.

  Before we left Drumheller, we stopped at the pizza parlor to gorge on deep-dish pepperoni-and-salami pizza. The owner seemed pleased that we honored his place with a visit. Dr. Johansen must have paid him well—he kept refilling our glasses with soda and putting new steaming-hot pizzas on our tables. I pulled stringy cheese off with my teeth. Dudley collected everybody’s olives. I ate pizza until I thought I’d explode.

  That night we shone flashlights around our cabin and told ghost stories. Dudley was by far the best at making up stories. We tried to sneak outside and scare the girls, but Mr. Jenkins stopped us in our tracks and made us go back to bed.

  Mrs. Cupcake came to tell us that she had phoned Mr. Smart and that the local newspaper wanted to interview us about our fossil discovery. We were going to be famous!

  “Next thing we know they’ll want to make a movie about us!” Mark laughed. “Yes, Jurassic Pleasant Valley!” Dudley chuckled.

  The next morning we all climbed back onto the school bus for
the trip home. Most of the kids were wearing new dinosaur caps and dinosaur T-shirts. I pulled some grape bubble gum out of my pocket. It would be a long drive, but going to the Badlands had definitely been a memorable experience. I climbed onto the bus and slid into the seat next to Mark. Funny, I thought, how dinosaurs can still have an impact today.

  Margriet Ruurs is the author of many award-winning books for children. She enjoys speaking about reading and writing to students at schools around the world. Her adventures have taken her to such countries as Myanmar, Pakistan, Laos, Tanzania and many others. Margriet was born in the Netherlands but has been a Canadian for most of her life. She lives with her family on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. For more information, visit margrietruurs.com

  Chapter One

  WHERE IS KYLE?

  Shelley couldn’t sit still. “How much longer until we get there?” she asked.

  “That’s the twenty-hundredth time you’ve asked,” said Dad.

  Shelley giggled. “Dad, there’s no such number as twenty-hundredth,” she said.

  “We’ll be there soon,” said Mom.

  Shelley sighed. “Soon” was taking much too long. She couldn’t wait to get to Gray Rocks Lake and see Aunt Joan and Uncle Ray. And Topper. But most of all, she couldn’t wait to see her cousin Kyle.

  Last summer, Shelley and Kyle went swimming, hiking, paddleboating and picnicking. They built forts and made a tree house and played explorers. They even had their own special club. It was called The Beach Club. Shelley had thought up the name because the beach was their favorite place to play.

  “Look, Shelley,” said Mom. She pointed to a sign on the road.

  “Gray Rocks Lake,” Shelley cheered. “Yay! We’re almost there.”

  A few minutes later, Dad turned onto a grassy driveway. Shelley scrambled out of the car. “We’re here!” she shouted.

  The screen door flew open, and Uncle Ray and Aunt Joan rushed out.

  Everyone hugged and kissed. But where was Kyle? I’ll bet he’s hiding until the hugging and kissing is over, thought Shelley.

  A friendly brown dog ran out of the bushes.

  “Topper!” cried Shelley. Topper wiggled and wagged. She dropped a rubber ball at Shelley’s feet. The ball had once been white. Now it was gray. It was lumpy and lopsided. She barked for Shelley to throw the ball.

  Shelley picked up the ball and threw it across the grass. Topper raced after it.

  “She’s happy to see you,” said Aunt Joan. “She misses Kyle.”

  Misses Kyle? Shelley’s heart sank. Where was Kyle?