by Dan Gutman
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
I spent my whole career in the military. Except for the practice range, not once did I pull the trigger on a gun. Never got into a fistfight. Never hurt another person in my life. But I know how to defend myself. They trained me for that.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
They were circling around each other, like boxers. The only difference was that Kinkaid’s dead body was between the two of them. I was paralyzed. We all were. The girls were crying and yelling for them to stop.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
Milner kept saying we had to leave or he’d kill us. He was crazy! Mr. Murphy kept telling him that if he put the sword down, we would leave.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
Finally, Milner lunged at Mr. Murphy with the sword.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
Mr. Murphy kicked the sword out of his hand.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
The sword hit Milner on the side of his face.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
He put his hand to his cheek and saw the blood on it. He was real mad! He took a wild swing at Mr. Murphy with his bare fist.
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
In martial arts, they teach you to use physics. If somebody lunges toward you, their forward momentum can be used to your advantage.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
Mr. Murphy ducked the punch and shoved Milner aside.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
Milner tripped over Kinkaid’s body and lost his balance. That’s when he fell down the steps.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
Milner went head over heels down the steps and over the rock shelf. We all ran over. His legs went over the edge.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
He was hanging there with his elbows up on the ledge for a moment or so.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
He was struggling to hold on.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
He looked up at us. There was a pleading look on his face. But there was nothing we could do.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
And then he slipped off the edge.
Chapter 9
May
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
Even now, I still can’t believe it happened. It was all so fast. One second he was standing there, and the next second he was gone. May I have a tissue, please?
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
For a moment, we were all frozen. We just stared. Like statues. Then we all rushed down the steps. Everybody was freaking out, even Mr. Murphy. And nothing freaks him out.
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
This was not the first time I had seen a man die. But it was the first time I had seen a man die by accident. It was my fault. I was the adult in charge. I had failed. It’s a failure I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
I leaned my head over the ledge and the others held on to my legs so I wouldn’t fall off. At first I didn’t see anybody down there. Then I saw somebody floating in the river. Facedown. He wasn’t moving. He must have hit the rocks on the way down.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
It was my fault. I could have stopped it. I could have stepped between the two of them while they were fighting. But I froze. And in that instant, a man died. If only I had a time machine, so I could go back and erase that mistake.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
I hope he didn’t feel too much pain. I was pretty sure he was dead. You don’t survive a fall like that. It would be a miracle for him to still be alive. I said a prayer.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
I felt really alone. The others were part of a group. Milner was gone. Probably dead. And it was my fault. I was the one who brought him in on the treasure hunt. If I hadn’t, he would still be alive today.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
I was crying. He wasn’t a nice man. I didn’t like the guy or anything. But even so, you don’t want to see that happen to anybody. I had never even been to a funeral before, and now—in the space of a few minutes—I had seen one dead man, and another man die. I was in shock. We all were. We just sat there silently for a long time.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
What should we do? That’s what we were all asking. My first thought was that we should keep our mouths shut. I didn’t want to tell anyone else what happened. Nobody else had to know. Nobody could tie us to Milner.
But I realized that was stupid. The police were eventually going to find Milner’s van parked at Lee’s Ferry. Somebody was going to find his raft. People had probably seen me meeting with him at the visitor center. Somebody would report him missing. And I was sure that one of the others would spill the beans. They’re all so honest. They wouldn’t know how to tell a lie if their lives depended on it.
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
There was no question in my mind what we had to do. We needed to alert the police right away. I’m not just saying that because I’m sitting in a police station. It was the right thing to do.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
When Mr. Murphy said we had to notify the police, I didn’t argue.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
I don’t know why we did it, but we all hugged. Even Ronnie. He was part of our group now too. He was a jerk and all, but he had been through it just like us.
When I first met Kelsey and Snik, I didn’t like them either. But we had been through a lot together with the homework machine, and we became best friends.
Mr. Murphy took out his cell phone to call the police, but he couldn’t get a signal.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
I went over to Ronnie and told him to give me the GPS. I didn’t ask him, I told him. And he gave it to me. I opened it up right there and pulled out the chip. The little red light was still attached to it, and it was blinking. It’s amazing that such a tiny thing could cause so much trouble. I put the chip in my pocket. I gave the GPS back to Ronnie.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
Snik said that we should agree on our story so we would all say the same thing to you police folks. Well, we jumped all over him. What story? We had no story. We would just tell the truth. What happened to Milner was an accident. He was crazy. He would be fine today if he hadn’t gone loco and started swinging that sword around. Mr. Murphy did what he had to do to protect us from getting hurt.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
They were all mad at me just because I used the word “story.” I didn’t mean we should lie about what happened. I just wanted us to be consistent so nobody would get into any trouble.
One thing was amazing to me. The one person who wasn’t sure that telling the truth was the right thing to do was Mr. Murphy.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
Mr. Murphy said we should tell the truth, of course, but not necessarily the whole truth. He said that if the police found out that he fought with Milner and threw him down those steps, they might decide that a crime had been committed. And if Milner turned up dead, the crime would be murder. It made a certain amount of sense—at the time, anyway.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
I thought Mr. Murphy was right. What purpose would it serve to tell everybody there was this big fight and that he threw Milner down the steps?
We could just say we saw a body floating down the river. That was the truth. I did see a body floating down the river. Leave it at that. People fall off the cliffs in the Grand Canyon all the time, right? Milner could have been one of those guys who liked to pee off high places. Or maybe he was getting his picture taken and took a few too many steps back. After all, Ronnie said Milner was drinking. If the body was found, there would be alcohol in his bloodstream.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
We shook hands on it. I thought that would be the end of it.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
I didn’t feel good about what we decided. We saw more
than just a man floating in the river. We saw a man get out of control with a weapon, and we saw Mr. Murphy disarm him. In the process, the man fell down the steps and over the ledge. That’s what we saw.
I’m not very good at lying. And withholding the whole truth is not that different from lying. Some people can stare you right in the face and say something they know isn’t true. I don’t want to be one of those people, but I wish I could do that sometimes.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
We were about to climb down when I remembered something—the treasure. They hadn’t even seen it yet. I took them into the room where the Buddha and all that other gold stuff was.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
It was amazing. Just amazing. Like a museum carved into the rock. I never saw so much gold before. I couldn’t really appreciate it though, because of what had just happened with Milner.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
We didn’t know what to do about it. Should we take some of that stuff with us to prove we found it? Leave it? Contact the historical society when we got back? It was Ronnie, of all people, who came up with the best idea.
RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6
I said we should forget about the treasure. Don’t tell anybody about it. Just leave it there for some future generation to discover. The treasure was nothing but bad luck anyway. Maybe it was cursed, like the tomb of King Tut. That Kinkaid guy discovered the treasure, and he was dead. Now Milner was dead. I didn’t want anybody else to die. We all just wanted to get out of there.
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
We climbed down from the cavern and started making our way back. As soon as my cell phone was able to get a signal, I called police headquarters and reported that we had seen a body floating in the river. That’s all I said. When the officer asked me if I could give her any details, I said no.
It was stupid. I feel terrible about it. I apologize. It was wrong to deceive you folks. But I hope you believe me that what happened was an accident.
POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH: LOG BOOK
May 1, 11:23 a.m.: Gerald Murphy, teacher at Grand Canyon School, reports body floating in Colorado River downstream from Bright Angel Campground.
May 1, 9:12 p.m.: Found white van parked after hours in lot at Lee’s Ferry. Arizona plate #SDF759. Registered in the name of Richard Milner.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
We went back to school the next day, and nobody said anything. I think I was still in shock. We just glanced at each other nervously. But I knew that I would never be the same person after what happened. I felt like I wasn’t a kid anymore. I had seen somebody die.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
I didn’t even know Milner, but I had the same feeling as when my dad died. Like a part of me was missing. I started watching the news on TV to see if Milner’s body turned up. I mean, it was floating in the river. At some point it would wash up against the rocks and somebody would find it. But there was nothing about it in the newspaper or on TV. They just had all these reports about Canyonist nuts wandering around because the end of the world was coming.
POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH
The tourist season don’t usually start up around here till school lets out and people take their vacations. But in the beginnin’ of May, these lunatics were just streamin’ into the park in droves. I never seen anything like it! They all had this glassy look in their eyes. When you talked to ’em, they’d just say the world was gonna end on Mother’s Day, and they wanted to be here.
It got to be a real problem. You’d be walkin’ down the street and there would be three of ’em standing on their heads, and chanting. Folks would complain. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t arrest these loonies. There’s no law against standin’ on your head in public. Maybe there should be.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
I had wiped the website clean as soon as I saw that people didn’t realize Canyonism was a joke. But it didn’t make any difference. The crazies had printed out the whole website and made copies of it to give to their friends. They would walk around reading it like it was the Bible.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
We only had a few more weeks of school left. Nobody had found Milner’s body. We began to relax and stop thinking about him all the time. Even if they found Milner, I figured there was no way anyone would know we had anything to do with his death.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
We were a little team now. Not just the four of us. Mr. Murphy and Ronnie were part of the team too. Because we knew a secret that nobody else knew. It wasn’t a good feeling. Not for me, anyway. I wanted to tell somebody. Anybody.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
I was keeping an eye on Brenton. When we were using the homework machine, he was the one who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. If he hadn’t spilled the beans, we would probably still be using it today to do our homework. We never would have catapulted the computer into the Grand Canyon. None of this other stuff would have happened. Brenton isn’t good at keeping secrets.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
I had no intention of telling anyone the full story of what happened to Milner in that cave. I had put it behind me. But something else was weighing on my mind—the chip. I had been carrying it around in my pocket ever since I got it back from Ronnie. I didn’t want it out of my sight. It had caused too much damage. In the wrong hands, it could do a lot more. I decided that we had to get rid of it once and for all.
BRENTON’S MOM
Brenton told me that a few of his friends were coming over after school. And their teacher, Mr. Murphy, too. I had met him on Back to School Night, and he seemed very nice. I made cookies.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
We all went over to Brenton’s house for a meeting. He took us down in the basement and we sat around the Ping-Pong table. Then he took out the computer chip and put it on the table in front of us. That blinking red light was still attached to it. I hated that thing.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
Brenton said we had to get rid of the chip, and we all agreed. Even Ronnie. The question was, how would we do it? Catapulting it into the Grand Canyon obviously didn’t work the first time. Everybody had an idea.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
I said we should just crush it. I could smash that sucker with a sledgehammer in a second. Bam! No problem. Done. But nobody liked my idea. I don’t know why. Usually simple solutions are the best ones.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
I’ve been to this website called “Will It Blend?” This guy with a high-powered kitchen blender takes everyday objects and sees if he can chop them up into tiny little pieces. So he takes, like, a baseball. Or a cell phone. And he blends it. It’s cool. I suggested we try to blend the chip. But nobody wanted to ruin their blender.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
People were suggesting that we flush it down a toilet, bury it underground, burn it in a campfire, all kinds of crazy stuff. I remembered one of those Terminator movies, where these machines take over the world and decide they’re gonna get rid of the human race. Every time the good guys think they kill one of their cyborg assassins, it finds a way to come back to life. We were gonna have to come up with a foolproof method of getting rid of the chip forever.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
It seemed to me that the right thing to do would be to turn the computer chip over to the police and let them figure out what to do with it. They would know a way to dispose of it safely. But everybody started yelling at me. They all said that if the authorities got ahold of a chip this powerful, they would use it to create some super weapon and start another war or spy on American citizens. They may have been right. I don’t know.
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
I casually mentioned that I wished there was some way to make the chip disappear. Just get it off this planet so it would never hurt anyone again. Well, Snik got this gleam in his eye and instantly I knew what he was thinking. Both of us had the same ide
a, almost at the same time.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
We could build a rocket. We could shoot the chip into space. It was brilliant! Genius!
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
I was against the idea. Building a rocket is expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous. There’s a good chance you can have a misfire. What if the thing lands in a populated area? Or on somebody’s house?
They begged me. Snik and Brenton actually got down on their knees. I thought it over and decided we had no other choice. We had to get rid of that chip. And the safest way to get rid of it permanently would be to shoot it into space.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
The boys got all excited at the idea of shooting the chip out of the Earth’s atmosphere in a rocket. It didn’t seem possible to me. But Mr. Murphy spent, like, his whole career working for NASA. So he knew what to do.
MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
The question is, where does the Earth’s atmosphere end and space begin? There’s no precise answer. It’s not like there’s a strict border line, like on a map between two countries.
But most people don’t realize how thin the atmosphere is. The planet is sort of like a human cell, and the atmosphere is like the protective membrane around it.
JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
Mr. Murphy told us there are traces of oxygen and nitrogen a hundred miles up. But almost all of our atmosphere is the troposphere, which is only about seven miles above the surface of the Earth.
SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
Seven miles? Who knew? No wonder people like Kelsey get so worked up about pollution and climate change. A seven-mile layer of protection surrounding the planet didn’t sound like very much. I always thought it was like fifty miles at least.
KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
So if we could build a rocket that would fly seven miles up, we could get the chip out of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was the only way.
Ha! Talk about rocket science!
BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
When I was little, I used to read books about the space program all the time. I remember that when a spaceship returns to Earth, it has to enter our atmosphere at a very precise angle. If it doesn’t, it will either burn up during reentry or bounce off the atmosphere and float into space. So if we could get a rocket—with our chip inside—above the atmosphere, chances are it would float away or burst into flames upon reentry. And either one would be fine with us, because we just wanted to get rid of the chip.