Free Return of the Homework Machine by Dan Gutman Page B

eighteen-foot neoprene raft that could seat the five of us comfortably.
    SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
    Mr. Murphy woke us up and made us put on life jackets before we could get into the raft. That’s when it occurred to me—what if we found all those treasures and gold and stuff that we read about in that article? How would we get the stuff back up to the rim? Mr. Murphy said that if there were any treasures, they belonged to the state of Arizona. Bummer!
    We all wanted to find the caverns anyway. I wanted to see for myself.
    KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
    After we pushed the raft off, the boys were acting all macho, grabbing the paddles and shoutingout silly orders. They totally didn’t know what they were doing. It was fun to watch. They are so immature.
    JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
    The boys were being boys—splashing us with the paddles and so on. Like it was all fun and games. But suddenly, we hit some white water and Snik almost fell out of the raft. That straightened him out quick.
    We all had to paddle really hard to avoid the rocks on both sides. The river pulls you along, but you still have to steer. It was fun, but a little scary, too. It was my first time rafting.
    SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
    The water smoothed out as we got close to Ninety-Four Mile Creek and Trinity Creek. This is the area where there are rock formations with Egyptian names—Tower of Ra, Horus Temple, Osiris Temple, Isis Temple, Cheops Pyramid. We put down our paddles and got out binoculars. I started scanning up and down the north side of the canyon. I was looking for an opening in the canyon walls, or maybe a shadow. The secretcavern could have been covered up by trees or bushes. We knew it had to be around there, if it existed at all. With five pairs of eyes, we figured that one of us would see it.
    MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
    I had read the Phoenix Gazette article very carefully, line by line. But still, I had only a very general idea of where the caverns might be. I knew they had to be pretty well hidden, or some tourist would have stumbled upon them a long time ago. And they were probably pretty high above the river. We’d have to climb up to them if we saw them. Thousands of years ago, when people inhabited caverns, the Grand Canyon wasn’t as deep. Maybe it was a short climb up from the river. Now, it would be a longer climb.
    Of course I was well aware that the whole story I had read could have simply been an elaborate newspaper hoax. In all probability, there were no secret caverns, no hidden treasures. How could ancient Egyptians have found their way to the Grand Canyon in the first place? How could they cross the ocean? It just didn’t make sense.I remember that’s what I was thinking, when suddenly our raft bumped into another raft.
    SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
    We were all looking up at the canyon walls through binoculars when our raft crashed into another raft. It was tied to a branch at the north side of the river. Except for the paddles, the only thing on the other raft was a picnic cooler. Everybody freaked out a little, because we hadn’t seen another soul on the river since we started out.
    I climbed on the other raft and looked for a name or something. That’s when I saw the writing on the back of the cooler. It said PROPERTY OF RICHARD MILNER .
    Oh, I remembered that name. He was the guy who was stalking us when we were using the homework machine. He seemed a little nutty. We put two and two together. Ronnie and Milner must have teamed up. They were looking for the treasure too.
    KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
    I couldn’t believe it. They beat us there!We all looked up, thinking we would see them climbing up or down the rocks. But they weren’t around.
    BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
    I knew right away what happened. Ronnie must have taken our chip from the homework machine and put it into that portable GPS he was always carrying around. That would have been the only way to find the caverns.
    KELSEY