Free Running Scared by Gloria Skurzynski Page B

around the corner.”
    â€œI don’t know where, and I don’t want to know,” she answered. “It’s a guy thing. Just find someplace where I can’t see you or hear you and get it over with.”
    That wasn’t hard. All they had to do was walk 20 feet from where Ashley sat and she wouldn’t be able to see them, as long as Jack shielded the lantern with his hand.
    As for hearing them—he wasn’t going to worry about that.
    When he and Sam returned from their little side trip, Sam slumped back onto the ground, lowered his head, and once again stopped talking. Silent as the stone, he faced the wall, biting the edge of his thumbnail. When Ashley told him to stop, he quickly switched to biting his bottom lip instead, which Ashley chose to ignore.
    â€œHello—we’re back here.”
    Jack’s cry hung in the air, like words in a cartoon bubble. A thick, black silence settled over them, dark and heavy. No one seemed to want to say much. After half an hour Jack told them they should get a drink, since it was important to stay hydrated. Following the sound of the drips, he led them to a cave puddle a hundred feet from where there were sitting, a clear pool invisible except for the candle’s golden reflection. Ashley was the first to try, squatting down on all fours and lapping the water like a dog. Raising her head, she said it tasted fine, and Sam drank it without comment. When the cool water slipped down his own throat, Jack realized how thirsty he’d become. From years of scouting he knew that the problem in staying healthy when lost wasn’t lack of food, but liquid. It took a month to starve but only hours to dehydrate. Shaking his head, he drove the thought from his mind. They’d only be here a little longer, at the most. Any minute now they’d be found.
    â€œHello. We’re back here. Anybody?”
    Silence. The cave was silent as a—tomb! That phrase kept coming back to haunt Jack’s brain, like a gong that wouldn’t stop ringing. He needed to get some real conversation going here, especially with Sam, who seemed to be shrinking deeper and deeper inside himself.
    â€œCome on, Sammy, talk to me,” he urged. Sam didn’t respond when Jack prodded him with questions, when he brought up stupid things Ashley had done at school, or talked about their visits to other parks. Nothing worked. Sam stared off in the darkness, his eyes vacant, his shoulders hunched, hands limp, and after a while, Jack gave up. Sam would be OK once they were out of Left Hand Tunnel, which would be any minute now. Things always seemed worse when wrapped in darkness.
    â€œHello—we’re back here. Help us.”
    6:41. Leaning against the wall, Jack let his mind wander. Formations that looked like giant mushrooms seemed to sprout from the walls, and his thoughts began to connect in patterns as crazy as the cave ornaments. In his mind’s eye he could almost see the Elk Refuge, 50 acres of flat marsh bristling with cattail and wild geese where his mother worked with wild animals. The Refuge was ringed by low mountains, not the majestic Tetons but smaller, plainer hills that seemed to hold the marshes in the palms of their hands. A few shallow caves had been carved by the howling Jackson Hole wind, nothing like the deep, twisting caverns of Carlsbad, but little caves that seemed to pockmark the yellow stone. A family of cougars was said to live in one of them, and the smaller ones were supposedly filled with snakes, although Jack didn’t believe either story. He remembered pointing out the caves to Sam, telling him he’d take him on a hike someday, but Sam had resolutely shaken his head no. Later, the social worker, Ms. Lopez, explained that Sam had hardly ever been out of his cramped apartment, that he’d been left in front of the television set for hours and hours, which was one of the reasons he was so fearful of new things. Now, as