Who cares?
And then it was 6:35.
I was surrounded by gray. Gray rocks. A gray sky. There was even a gray smell. That smell, I realized, was me. My shirt was soaked with sweat. I need a shower, I said, and this time I know I said it out loud.
I sat up and rested my hands on my knees. I bent at the waist and let my head drop down which shifted my weight just enough to cause me to slide downhill a few feet. I leaned back and caught myself. The sound of horses on pavement rattled around me as the rocks wobbled. There was no other sound. There were no songbirds singing. There were no crows cackling. No wind. And no voices. There should be voices. Someone calling to me. Someone shouting to see if I was hurt.
Maybe they couldn’t see me.
Leah! I shouted. Leah, I’m down here!
I don’t remember lying back down. I don’t remember closing my eyes. I don’t remember opening my eyes. I just remember being on my back and staring into a gray sky. The sky was close, like if I could stand, I could reach up and touch it. I sat up, tried to stand, flipped over, and rolled several feet down the slope.
This time there was pain. Most of the pain was in my knees and elbows. Pain can be a good thing, I thought. It lets you know you’re still alive.
I eased myself up on my aching elbows and looked down between my feet. The last time I rolled down a mountain a tree broke my fall. I looked down the steep slope. There was nothing between me and the fall to the bottom.
I glanced at my watch. It was 6:54—a.m. or p.m., I wondered. It had to be p.m. If it were the morning, it would have been dark when I first looked at my watch at 4:10.
And that’s when it hit me.
I have a concussion, I said aloud. I must have been knocked out when I first fell down this slope. I must have hit my head, no telling how many times, as I rolled down these wobbling gray rocks. I’ve never been knocked out before. I’ve never been unconscious.
They say if you’ve had a blow to the head, you’re supposed to stay awake. I had to stay awake. Between 4:10 and 4:45, I must have passed out. And all those other gaps in time . . . I must have been out. Now it was after six. I had to stay awake.
Someone would come for me if I could stay awake.
If I could just stay awake.
2
It started last Tuesday, because I had to see Leah. I mean, I didn’t have to see her. I just wanted to. Leah and I had become pretty good friends since she saved my life back in April. We stayed in touch through Facebook and e-mail, and every now and then she would send me something in the regular mail. One of the things she sent me was a photocopy of an article about fossil footprints.
Fossils are everywhere. No matter where you live, I’ll bet you could go out right now and poke around in a creek bed and find a fossil. Fossil footprints are not everywhere. When fossil footprints are discovered, scientists from all over the world get excited—even if those footprints are discovered in Alabama.
Now you see the problem. I swore I would never go back to Alabama. I was there in April and almost got killed. I was there in June and almost got killed. Now here it was August, and Leah wanted me to meet her in Alabama.
“It’ll be fun,” she said in an IM. “It’ll be like going back in time.”
“Yeah, back in time,” I wrote, “back to a time when people were shooting at me.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “What are the chances that someone would shoot at you again?”
“Judging from past experience, I would say chances are good,” I replied.
Seconds later the phone rang. I should have looked at the caller ID before I picked it up and said, “Hello?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” were the first words out of Leah’s mouth.
What was I supposed to say to that?
“You need to get down here before school starts,” she said. “I’ve been in touch with some folks from the APS, and they . . .”
“The what?” I interrupted her.
“What do you mean ‘what’?” she said.
“APS? What’s that?” I asked.
“The Alabama Paleontological Society,” she said.
“See,” I said, “there’s that word again.”
“Paleontological?” she said. “Paleontology is the branch of science that studies fossils.”
“I know what paleontology is,” I insisted. “That’s not the word I’m worried about. It’s that other word: ‘Alabama.’”
She said again, “Don’t be such a baby.”
What was I supposed to say to that?
“Look,” said Leah, “the APS goes out there every month, and they’re always finding new trackways. You know what trackways are, don’t you? Trackways are what scientists call a trail of fossil footprints.”
“I know what trackways are,” I said.
“And a lot of the trackways they find are from giant frogs and salamanders and things like your mom studies,” she continued. “They’ve got this one footprint from a giant frog they call ‘frogzilla.’ It’s, like, bigger than a man’s hand. That frog must’ve been huge. Maybe you could bring your mom back some footprints from a frogzilla.”
There was silence on the phone between Leah and me for a few seconds—silence between me and Alabama.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll check with my mom and dad. I’m not sure they can afford to send me down there right now. They’re spending a lot of money, you know, with my sister and me getting ready to go back to school and all.”
“All you’ve got to do is get here,” said Leah. “Some folks with the APS will put us up. We can stay with them, and I know you. You don’t eat much but granola bars.”
“I eat granola bars when I’m lost in the woods,” I said.
“Whatever,” said Leah. “You coming or not?”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised.
My mom thought it was a great idea. My dad thought it was a great idea. Neither one of them mentioned that being in Alabama and being shot at seemed to go together. The plans were made for me to meet Leah in Birmingham on the first Tuesday in August. I was going back in time.
Back in time to when giant frogs roamed the earth.
Back in time to Alabama.
