Lenny waved toward several large buildings set back in the trees. “Those are off-limits,” he said. “It’s just where we keep the boxes of toilet paper and drain cleaner and the pumping equipment for the toilets and whatnot, so you’re not missing much. If you need a grown-up and can’t find one, go to the dining hall instead. There’s always somebody there.”
Danny couldn’t remember anything being off-limits last year, and wondered if this had anything to do with the Bottle Rocket Incident.
“Now then,” Lenny said, leading them back to the buses. “Your suitcases should be unloaded, so find your counselor for your cabin assignments!”
Cabin assignments were quick and easy. “Dragonbreath, Danny!” and “Elwood, Wendell!” were called in short order. Much to Danny’s relief, he and Wendell were in the same cabin … and Spencer wasn’t.
“Yes!” hissed Danny under his breath. He punched Wendell in the arm. Wendell punched him back.
Christiana was in one of the girls’ cabins, of course. An extremely enthusiastic young alligator counselor came down to collect her.
Danny caught Spencer looking at him. He wondered if his cousin had seen him and Wendell punching each other, and felt a twinge of guilt. Then he remembered the last three levels of Poison Sands, where he had died and been wa-waaaaah’d at more than seventeen times. The guilt immediately disappeared.
The next few minutes were a whirl of unpacking, meeting the other guys in the cabin, and claiming bunks. (One of the nice things about Wendell was that he was always willing to take the bottom bunk.) When they went to dinner, Danny caught sight of Spencer across the room, at a table full of kids. He was talking nonstop to a small gecko who wore a glazed expression.
That was good. Clearly Spencer was fitting in fine, and more importantly, had found someone else to bother.
Girls sat with girls, and boys sat with boys, that being the immutable law of the universe, and since you ate with your cabin mates, it wasn’t challenged here. Danny caught sight of Christiana with her snout on her hand, looking bored senseless.
“Poor Christiana,” said Wendell.
“Maybe she’ll sneak a sheep’s brain into the cabin,” said Danny.
When they went to the big campfire after dinner and got to toast marshmallows, Christiana broke ranks with the girls, stomped over, and plopped down next to them on their log.
“My counselor is named Heidi. She believes in better living through nail polish.”
“Have a marshmallow,” said Danny. “They’re gonna tell ghost stories.”
“I hate ghost stories,” said Christiana, taking a marshmallow and stabbing it viciously with the wire skewer. “Instead of trying to collect data, everyone always winds up running away screaming. Most of these ‘ghosts’ are probably nothing more than garden-variety serial killers.”
“You do remember last Halloween …”
“Vividly,” said Christiana. “That’s different. But there’s no proof that, oh, the so-called ghostly hitchhiker, say, is anything but a person who knows about the story and has a twisted sense of humor. And the mental patient with hooks for hands isn’t a ghost at all.”
“Oh give it a rest,” said Danny. “They’re starting.”
“Not that long ago,” said Bags, the assistant head counselor, “in a camp not very far from this one …”
It was a good story. Bags told it well. Then Lenny got up and told the one about the Ghost of the Bloody Finger, and then another counselor told the one about the Thing That Ran Across the Road.
And when that was done, they sang the camp song “Hail to Thee, Camp Jackalope,” which was admittedly not that great, but it was tradition.
Hail to thee, Camp Jackalope
Our home away from home
We won’t get poison oak, we hope,
And never shall we roam.
There were twenty-seven verses, all in the same vein.
Danny, aware that this was how nerds had fun, let it pass. As far as he was concerned, no matter how bad the song was, it was the start of a great summer camp.
A VERY WRONG TURN
In the middle of the night, Danny woke up and had to pee.
This was a more complicated process at camp than it was at home. At home, he just fell out of bed and staggered down the hallway to the bathroom, which had an ancient night-light with a happy daisy on it.*
You could conduct the whole process without having to turn on the light or even wake up all the way.
At camp, however, you had to unzip the sleeping bag, climb down from the top bunk while trying not to step on Wendell’s head, go outside the cabin, and walk down a path in the freezing cold. (Danny had been surprised, the first year, to learn that a desert is only hot during the day.) Instead of night-lights, there was a single uncovered yellow lightbulb by the boys’ bathrooms, which had moths and beetles swarming around it in a fluttering horde. The bathrooms were also very cold, and there were more moths inside.
Still, Danny had been to Camp Jackalope twice before. He knew the drill. He navigated the moths, the cold, and the winding paths without a problem.
He did get a bit lost on the way back, though. One unmarked asphalt path looked a lot like another, and five of them converged on the bathrooms. Was his cabin at the end of that one? No, that was the cabin he’d been in last year. Was it by the big boulder?
He picked one that looked vaguely familiar and started down it. He’d gone about twenty yards when he realized that he was on the wrong path, but he continued, hoping that it would join up with the path leading back to his cabin.
It was awfully dark, but it didn’t bother Danny. He’d been in haunted cellars and rat-infested sewers, which were much darker, and the stars over the desert were brighter and fiercer than anywhere else he’d ever been.
The path dead-ended at a building.
Danny blinked. It was one of the storage sheds, but surely the big Keep Out sign was new?
The Bottle Rocket Incident hadn’t done that much damage. And Lenny had said that the storage sheds were just full of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. You didn’t need a sign like that for toilet paper …
“Hey! Who’s there?”
Danny jumped. A webbed hand landed on his shoulder.
“What are you doing out here, camper?” barked Lenny.
“Oh!” Danny was relieved to see it was only Lenny. “I got lost on the way back from the bathroom. How do I get back to Cabin Six?”
Lenny laughed. “Oh, is that all? Here, I’ll walk you back.”
Danny was a little embarrassed to have the frog walking with him like he was a little kid, but since the alternative was to keep blundering down paths and risk ending up at (horrors!) the girls’ cabins, he fell in step with Lenny.
“Is that Keep Out sign new?” he asked.
“Oh,” said Danny.
“Right,” said Lenny. “Here’s your cabin. Be more careful in the future.” He turned and hurried off, nearly hopping.
Danny peered after him, puzzled, and wondered where a counselor could be going in such a hurry, when all the campers were supposed to be asleep.
The trouble didn’t start until the third day.
They had had two full days of swimming, hiking, capture-the-flag, and extract-Wendell-from-the-mud-after-capture-the-flag …
It had been wonderful. There had even been crafts, and Danny had made most of a lanyard, an object so obviously useful that nobody could bring themselves to ask the counselors what the heck it was used for. Even the combined brain power of Wendell and Christiana couldn’t figure it out.
Earl, the counselor in charge of crafts, was really excited about lanyards, though.
Really excited.
Spencer came over during lanyard making and watched over Danny’s shoulder.
Then Spencer started talking about some other TV show and Danny considered feigning death, but then Earl came by to talk very seriously about code-bearing lanyards used during World War II and by the time he stopped, th
ey were overdue for lunch.
After lunch was a trail ride. Trail rides were the very best part of Camp Jackalope. Danny loved horses, but he hardly ever got to ride one. He had begged his parents for a horse for two years, on the grounds that they could keep it in the backyard, but they hadn’t budged.
Crafts and s’mores and swimming you could get at almost any camp, but real horseback rides … that was something special. And Danny got to ride a horse named Bandit, which was an awesome name for a horse. He even got to groom Bandit after the ride.
Of course, there was a bit of a problem when both Danny and his horse decided that it would be a great time for a gallop. The horses behind them suddenly shared this opinion, and there was a great deal of screaming from campers who had not previously been on top of a galloping horse and did not care for the experience.
Fortunately for Danny, the counselors all assumed that Bandit had run away with him. Since three campers had fallen off their horses and the reins of two others had become so hopelessly tangled that they had to bring one of the horses in backward, Danny felt it might be wise not to correct this impression.
It was midway through the third day when it occurred to Danny that he hadn’t seen Spencer in a while. The younger dragon had been lurking around the shore during swimming in the morning, but now it was late afternoon, and Danny had gotten through both crafts and capture-the-flag without either awkward hero worship or a recap of the entire third season of Vegetable Detectives.
“I didn’t see him at lunch either,” offered Wendell. “I mean, not that I was looking …”
Danny didn’t particularly want to see his cousin, but if Spencer had gotten into trouble, his mom was going to blame him. He was already on thin ice after the Bottle Rocket Incident, and if she took it in her head to clean his room while he was at camp, there were several things in there that she would probably be less than pleased about. (He’d meant to throw out that potato, but then it sprouted, and he was sort of curious as to what would happen …) Losing Spencer would make it a lot worse.
They had an hour of free time before dinner, and Christiana joined them outside the main lodge. She was wearing toenail polish and an expression of wounded dignity.
“The lanyard was bad enough, but this is too much,” she said grimly. “I am being threatened with mascara. I am going to file a complaint, and then bite someone.”
“We’ve got bigger troubles,” said Danny. “Spencer’s missing.”
Christiana frowned. “Have you told a counselor?”
“Um. No.” Danny was always loath to involve adults. “Should we?”
“Well, if you’re sure he’s—”
Across the soccer field, emerging from the trees, was Spencer. He was looking around worriedly, as if afraid someone would notice him, and then he slunk along the edge of the trees until he reached the end of the field.
“Well, he’s not dead,” said Christiana.
“Good enough for me,” said Danny, hopping off the porch. “Let’s go see if the rope bridge is still there. I bet if we stand at the bottom and pull down on the middle, we can use it like a giant slingshot!”
“He looks like he’s up to something,” said Wendell, looking back over his shoulder.
“C’mon,” said Danny. “He’s seven. What could he possibly get up to?”
*Danny had begged for a new night-light for years, preferably something with fangs and maybe lasers, but had so far been unsuccessful.
A MYTHICAL DISCOVERY
The next morning, Spencer wasn’t at breakfast.
The head of his cabin came over to ask Danny if he’d seen his cousin.
“Um,” said Danny. Spencer vanishing, even if they found him again, would be trouble, and letting Spencer get into trouble was going to bring the Wrath of Mom down on him. “I—uh—”
“He probably wasn’t feeling well,” said Wendell. “I bet he just went to the bathroom.”
“He’s a really pukey kid,” said Danny, which was true. Spencer threw up a lot, sometimes in moving cars, sometimes just from the excitement of one of the TV shows he was describing.
The counselor grimaced. “If we can’t find him—”
“We could go check on him,” said Danny quickly. “We’re done with breakfast.”
Wendell was not actually done with breakfast, but sighed and put down his spoon. They hurried from the dining hall together.
“Do you know what that was?” asked Wendell sadly. “That was frosted cereal.” “So?”
“Oh,” said Danny. “Hmm.”
Wendell sighed again. “Oh, well … You think Spencer’s really sick?”
“Probably not. But we should check.”
No sooner had they come around the corner of the main lodge, though, than Danny grabbed Wendell’s shoulder. “Hsst! Look!”
Spencer was sneaking out of the kitchen, hiding behind one of the Dumpsters. He was carrying something. Danny squinted.
“Is that … a bag of dinner rolls?”
“Looks like it.”
“But where’s he going?” asked Wendell. “And what does he want the bread for?”
“Maybe he’s building a fort out of dinner rolls.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Look, there’s only one way to find out.”
Spencer kept looking behind him, which made following him difficult, but he was also seven and rather slow, which helped. Danny and Wendell followed as he entered the woods.
Once under the trees, Spencer stopped checking behind him and started hurrying. The trees rapidly gave way to shrubs as he headed for one of the many canyons near Camp Jackalope, and began to descend the slope.
“Do you think he’s running away?” Wendell asked.
Danny shrugged. Running away from an awesome camp and into the desert with only a bag of dinner rolls was pretty dumb, but Spencer wasn’t a rocket scientist. They probably wouldn’t even let him in to space camp.
They started down the rocky slope after him. There were no trees at the bottom, and Danny spotted a couple of honest-to-goodness cactus. It was genuine desert down there.
At the bottom of the canyon, Spencer suddenly stopped and looked behind him.
“Oops,” said Wendell.
Spencer’s eyes went wide, and he started to run.
Pebbles bounced and slid around them as they ran down the slope. Wendell missed a step, nearly fell, caught himself, and slid dustily to the bottom, yelling.
Spencer was running down the canyon. It was a dry wash, an old streambed that only had water when it rained. The dirt was packed hard, and Danny was pretty sure he could catch up to Spencer eventually—if one of them didn’t step in a hole or trip on a rock first.
“Spencer, wait! What’s wrong? What are you doing?” Danny wished his mother could see him, being responsible and everything. She’d better appreciate it later. The next time he needed a new video game, for example.
Danny was gaining. He could hear Wendell panting behind him.
“Spencer—”
The little dragon suddenly cut sharply to one side. There was a shallow cave there, barely more than a depression under a shelf of rock. Danny skidded to a halt as Spencer dove into the cave.
“Go away!” his cousin yelled. “Go away! I won’t let you hurt him!”
“Hurt who?” asked Danny, approaching the cave.
“Go away!”
Wendell trotted up, wheezing. “What’s he—pant, pant—talking about?”
Danny took a step forward and leaned down to look into the cave.
Spencer was crouched under the rock shelf with his arm around something.
Something alive.
Something that Danny recognized immediately, but had never expected to see.
IT’S A DRAGON THING
Danny was not particularly surprised by the fact that jackalopes really existed. Being a dragon himself, he had firsthand experience with legendary things lurking around the edges of everyday life.
Wendell needed a minute.
>
“That’s a jackalope!” he said. “But they’re mythic—”
He stopped.
He looked at Danny.
He tried again. “But they’re impossib—”
He stopped.
He looked at Spencer.
Danny thought the whole question of whether they existed or not was stupid, since the jackalope was clearly sitting right there, so he skipped to the important part.
“How did you find one?” he asked Spencer.
Spencer hunched his shoulders. “He found me. And you’re not gonna take him away!”
“Relax,” said Danny, sitting down on a rock, “nobody’s gonna take anybody away.”
“Well. …” Spencer looked at the jackalope. The jackalope looked at Spencer. It had big liquid eyes, like a Japanese anime princess. It put a paw on his arm, and the little dragon nodded.
“Nobody in my cabin would talk to me. They were all bigger and they just pretended I didn’t exist. And you didn’t want to hang out with me either, and I had nobody to talk to, and I didn’t want to be here anyway. I don’t even like horses.”
“So I came out here,” said Spencer. “I mean, I went for a walk, because I wanted to—to be alone—” He gulped a little.
Wendell knew perfectly well that meant that Spencer wanted to have a good cry in private, but it didn’t seem diplomatic to say so.
Danny, who thought “diplomacy” was that thing you got when you graduated from high school, opened his mouth to say “Were you crying?” and then closed it again because Wendell was punching him in the arm.
“Err. Right. Yes,” he said instead.
Dragonbreath: Revenge of the Horned Bunnies Page 2