Linked

by Gordon Korman

  Even after everything that’s happened, with me being a complete idiot, and knowing that no one’s going to be there to support me, I want to do this.

  “Yes, Rabbi. Thank you. I’ll be there.”

  My parents are still in the office. Dad’s on his computer, and Mom is nervously rearranging our yarmulke collection. Both look up as I step into the room.

  I shoot them a shaky thumbs-up. “We’re on.”

  The first time I set foot in Chokecherry, Colorado, I thought I’d been banished to Devil’s Island. It was too small, too isolated, too far away from all my friends. The local kids were unwelcoming beyond belief. They made the scientists’ families feel like unwanted intruders. I told my parents that it didn’t matter to me if they found a live Stegosaurus knocking down telephone poles with its spiky tail, much less the droppings of a long-dead one. I wanted out. I was just that unhappy.

  I didn’t know the half of it.

  If I never hear the name Link Rowley again, it’s still going to be too soon. No, scratch that. I won’t hear that name again. Even if somebody ties me to a chair, sticks headphones on me, and pipes “Link Rowley! Link Rowley!” in an endless loop at top volume, I will train my brain to block it out.

  I have never felt so betrayed. So dirty. So used. When I think of the hours I spent training that creep to get ready for his “bar mitzvah,” I could beat myself over the head with something. While I worked hard so he wouldn’t make a fool of himself, he must have been laughing at me inside. It wasn’t enough for him to deface our school with a swastika. He had to string along the stupid Jewish girl with that phony story about his grandmother and the Holocaust. Worst of all, he pretended to be as outraged as the rest of us while Pamela went on her own swastika streak, when the whole time, he was the one who’d started it.

  And now we have a paper chain 378 miles long—an astounding achievement for any town. The Guinness Book of World Records keeps calling Mayor Radisson to set up a time to come to Chokecherry to witness it officially for their book. But instead of being rightfully proud, everybody just feels like suckers, thanks to Link.

  There was a time that I even stopped hating Chokecherry because we were involved in something unique and wonderful and we “egglets” were right in the thick of it. When Link was coming over practically every day so I could help him study—and even getting to know my family—I thought I’d found a real friend. Forget that. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Link’s first contact with my family was to dump fertilizer on us. Well, it continued just like that … and the stink keeps getting worse and worse.

  I can’t stand being at school, even though there’s no chance of running into Link, because he’s been booted out. The only good part is that ReelTok has folded up his tent and is no longer staking out the school from the park across the street. Supposedly, he hasn’t left town yet. He’s been seen at his hotel and at a few local restaurants, and his rental car has been spotted around the area. He’s still vlogging from Chokecherry, but I wouldn’t watch that if you paid me. On the jerk scale, he’s not much lower than Link.

  It’s funny—the school is no different from what it was at the beginning of the year. There are no swastikas because Link and Pamela are both gone. And there’s no paper chain either, since that’s been farmed out all over town. But the effect of the last couple of months hangs over the building like a bad smell. It’s not that people are ashamed of it. But no one wants to think about it because it brings up Link and Pamela and the swastikas and stories of what happened forty years ago. Instead of an accomplishment, it’s turned into an embarrassment. And when the subject does come up, you hear a lot of grumbling about what a waste of time and energy and paper, and before you know it, a couple of kids are arguing over whether or not the Night of a Thousand Flames really happened.

  It’s breaking Michael’s heart. For all his complaining, he nurtured that chain from the very first links all the way to six million. As for Caroline, I think she’s on the verge of a breakdown. After so many weeks of cutting and looping, gluing and volunteering, you couldn’t get the kids here to show up for a school activity if you were handing out gold bars. Now that she sees all that progress evaporating, the seventh-grade president is afraid she’ll never have a chance to be eighth-grade president. She’s even talking about extending the paper chain another five million links in memory of the victims of the Holocaust who weren’t Jewish. No takers. Chokecherry Middle School is paper-chained out. I’ve started hating every minute I’m at that place.

  One morning, I wake up just as Dad is leaving for the elementary school with Ryan.

  “What happened to my alarm?” I holler downstairs.

  “I turned it off,” Mom calls up to me. “Your father and I are worried about you, Dana. We’ve decided you could use a mental health day off school.”

  I don’t love them minding my business, but I’ve got to admit that sounds like a pretty great idea.

  “I’m all right,” I tell Mom once I’ve managed to drag myself to the kitchen. “I just wish Dad could dig up the rest of those dinosaurs so we could move out of this town. Even the North Pole would be an improvement. Walruses don’t carve swastikas into the ice with their tusks. At least I think they don’t.”

  My mother sighs. “You know your father and me well enough to understand that nothing ever happens fast in the world of paleontology.”

  I groan. “The fossils are a hundred million years old. Why does it take longer than that to dig them out of the ground?”

  “It only seems longer,” Mom says patiently. “Speaking of fossils, that’s what Dad and I have in mind for you today. When’s the last time you went on a dig?”

  My vision of this glorious day off darkens a little. It’s not that I don’t like the digs. What could be cooler than unearthing an ancient bone that’s been hidden for tens of millions of years? But anything that old is so fragile, so delicate that getting it out of the ground without smashing it is a weeks-long process of picking and stroking at it with a shrimp fork and a paintbrush. Not exactly high-action stuff.

  Dad comes back from delivering Ryan, and we head out. First, we drop Mom off at the office in town. I swear I can still smell the fertilizer in that place even though that incident was two months ago. Which reminds me that Link should have been the prime swastika suspect right from the start. Nobody else gets such joy from doing stupid, destructive things. I guess I can’t blame Chokecherry for that—this isn’t the only town to give some juvenile delinquent a free pass because he happens to be popular and good at sports. Anyway, Link seems to have run out of free passes with this latest stunt. Nobody forgives swastikas.

  It’s about a twenty-minute ride into the mountains to what Wexford-Smythe University calls the Shadbush County Excavation Site.

  Dad rolls down the windows. “Smell that air.”

  I pull my coat tighter around me. “It’s too cold.”

  “Lighten up, Dana. You don’t forfeit your right to complain if you admit there are a few nice things about Colorado.”

  I smile in spite of myself. Nothing smells as clean as cold mountain air, and the views are really beautiful.

  We veer off onto a dirt road that ends at a small parking area. There are a few other cars and a food truck with cooking smells coming from the metal chimney. A five-minute walk through the trees leads us to a huge clearing about the size of two football fields. There are half a dozen spots where scientists, in hard hats, gloves, and safety glasses are down in the rock and dirt, working. It’s as quiet as a chess tournament except for the clinking of hammers, the shaking of sieves, and the low buzz of conversation between colleagues. There are cartons of varying sizes and a large roll of foam wrap.

  “I kind of expected to see a giant Triceratops skeleton carved halfway out of the ground,” I comment.

  My father laughs. “No such luck. If we come up with a fragment of bone the size of a golf ball, it’s a big deal. And it wouldn’t be from a Triceratops anyway. That�
��s a Cretaceous animal. All our findings so far have been from the Jurassic period.”

  “Even the poop?” I ask with a smirk.

  “Believe it or not, droppings don’t come stamped with a species label,” Dad deadpans. “But the samples we’ve had dated are consistent with the bones we’ve found.”

  Watching paleontologists pulling things out of the ground—mostly worms—isn’t A-list entertainment. After the first couple of hours of nothing, you stop waiting for somebody to yell “Eureka!” and haul a Brachiosaurus femur out of the dirt, holding it over their head like the Stanley Cup. When I complain that I’m bored, Dad gives me a paintbrush and sits me down so I can “help.” I’m pretty far from everybody else, though, so it’s obvious that’s he’s put me where I can’t do any harm. I’m on solid bedrock, and the bristles of my brush are like hamster fur. All of Jurassic Park could be directly below me, and I’d never get close—not without dynamite.

  We stop for lunch, which takes place at the food truck in the parking lot.

  “How does it feel to be where the action is?” Dr. Yee, Andrew’s mother, asks me as we accept our hot dogs.

  Action? Is that what paleontologists call this?

  We only break for about fifteen minutes. Dr. Yee explains that this is because the days are getting shorter, so we have to make the most of the daylight hours. She seems really pumped up about it. The only way these scientists can keep their sanity is by convincing themselves that they’re on the verge of an earth-shattering discovery.

  So back I go to my paintbrush and my solid rock. As cold as the day is, the sun is warm, and I lie on my back to soak up its rays. I’m half-asleep when the commotion reaches me. Scientists are rushing toward the edge of the clearing, where a couple of them are struggling to pull something out of the ground. Something big.

  I get up and run like everybody else, my heart pounding in sudden excitement. I understand now. The hours are long, but the moments, when they come, are spectacular. They are uncovering part of an animal that’s been lost for a hundred million years or more!

  “What is it?” I gasp. “A leg bone? A rib?”

  “It’s nothing,” Dad says, his voice dripping with disappointment.

  “But the size of it!” I exclaim. “Whatever dinosaur it’s from, it must have been a big one!”

  My father shakes his head. “Take a closer look, Dana. It’s too straight. It’s not a bone; it’s modern lumber. We’ve been finding pieces like it for a couple of weeks now.”

  I stare at the “find.” He’s right. It seems like an old two-by-four, discolored, mud-encrusted, and partially decayed. “Why is it black?” I ask.

  “Scorch marks.” My father flakes off some of the dark shell with his chisel, revealing blond wood underneath. “There must have been a small building up here that burned, and they buried the debris. We’ve just been throwing them in the woods.”

  “Can I see the other pieces?” I feel stupid telling a bunch of PhDs that they don’t know what they’re looking at, but the fact is they don’t. When you’re searching for hundred-million-year-old bones, you don’t waste your time on burnt two-by-fours. You don’t bother to think about what those two-by-fours might mean.

  Dad leads me to the edge of the clearing. Just inside the trees, there are seven or eight planks in a similar burnt condition. If this used to be some kind of building, surely it wouldn’t be made of only two-by-fours. I step into the underbrush for a closer look. Each board has nail holes about three-quarters of the way up. On a couple of them, you can still see the stub of a crosspiece, burned black.

  “Be careful, Dana,” my father warns me. “There are nails in there.”

  I ignore him. “Dad, don’t you know what this is? Don’t you realize what you found?”

  The response is a semicircle of blank stares.

  “These are crosses!” I exclaim. “Burnt crosses! Don’t you get it? This is the Night of a Thousand Flames—what’s left of it anyway!”

  Dad’s eyes widen in surprise that gives way to some embarrassment. “How could we have missed that?”

  “When you’re looking for a dinosaur, you automatically ignore everything that isn’t it,” I tell him.

  Dr. Yee has an important question. “Who do we call about this? It’s a find—even if it isn’t our find. It’s a piece of history. People should know about it.”

  My father cocks an eyebrow at me. “How about your friend ReelTok? He isn’t very nice, but you have to admit that, when it comes to getting the word out, he’s the expert.”

  “No!” I’m shocked at the wave of anger that surges through me. “ReelTok is the worst person on Earth! Do not give that creep a scoop! The way he used this town to push his YouTube channel, I want him to be the last to know!”

  Dad produces his phone. “I’m calling Sheriff Ocasek. When word of this gets out, we’ll need security to protect our dig from souvenir hunters. This is going to be big news!” He throws an arm around me and pulls me close. “Nice catch, kiddo! When did you get so smart?”

  The light is fading, and the other scientists have all gone home by the time we get the okay from Sheriff Ocasek to head back into town.

  “I’ll keep a man out here until the university can hire its own security for the dig,” the sheriff promises. “Strictly speaking, it isn’t a crime scene.”

  “Forty years is a long time,” Dad agrees.

  Ocasek sighs. “Not sure it was considered a crime forty years ago either. It should have been, but it wasn’t. I’ve been hearing about this ever since I was a little kid, younger than your daughter. My parents used to talk about it in hushed whispers so I wouldn’t hear. I’d just about convinced myself it was a myth. And here we are.”

  “Times have changed,” my father offers. “Chokecherry’s a good town.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the sheriff says. “These last few weeks, I’ve seen things I never thought I’d see.”

  “You mean the swastikas in the school,” I put in.

  Ocasek nods sadly. “George Rowley’s kid. The Bynes girl. Who knew?”

  “There’s the paper chain,” my father points out. “Nobody would have predicted that either.”

  “I’ll give you that,” the sheriff agrees. “That’s pretty special. Not sure what we’re going to do with it, but what an achievement.”

  Sheriff Ocasek is one of those people who doesn’t show much emotion—like he’s seen it all, so nothing really impresses him anymore. But there’s a brightness to his expression when he talks about the paper chain. I keep picturing his face as we drive home. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s somewhere between pride and hope.

  As we pull into the driveway, Dad says, “Well, we didn’t find any fossils, but I think I’d call this a productive day, wouldn’t you?”

  Our headlights illuminate Ryan on the front porch, pushing a toy bulldozer. There, on his hands and knees, playing right along with my brother, is someone I never thought would have the nerve to show up at our house in a million years.

  Link.

  My father sizes up the murder in my eyes in a split second and hits the power locks before I can leap out the passenger door.

  “Dana—be nice.”

  “Nice?” I spit. “To him? Why?”

  “For starters, because Ryan is there.”

  “Fine, I’ll send Ryan inside, and then I’ll give that jerk the boot.” I unlock the door manually, storm up the walk, and climb the two steps to the porch.

  At the sight of me, Link jumps to his feet. He looks scared, which is exactly how he should be. He knows what’s coming and how much he deserves it.

  Ryan breaks the standoff. “Hi, Dana! We’re playing trucks!”

  My father sweeps ahead of me on the porch steps, grabs Ryan by the hand, and pulls him into the house with a curt “Link,” in our visitor’s direction. It isn’t warm and welcoming, but it’s a lot nicer than what I have planned.

  But when the moment is upon me, I clam up. There a
re so many creative words I want to hurl at him that I can’t decide which one to scream first. Plus, I’m afraid that Dad is lurking just inside the door, waiting to hear what I’m going to say so he can ground me for a hundred years.

  Link raises his arms. “I know. I get it.”

  “You know zilch,” I seethe. “If you think you can just say sorry and everything resets to zero, you’re even more clueless than you must have been when you painted that swastika!”

  He’s shamefaced. “It’s not that. I know you can never forgive me. I can’t really forgive myself. There’s no excuse for what I did. I could tell you that I’m not the same person as I was back then, but I’m not even sure that’s true.”

  I should be yelling. Instead, my voice is barely audible. “So why did you do it?”

  He shrugs. “It was the worst thing I could think of. And even then I didn’t really understand how awful it was. Not until the tolerance education unit—and by then it was too late.”

  “Not too late to go to Brademas and confess,” I remind him.

  He studies his sneakers. “I was scared. I know what people say about me. Stuck-up jock, thinks he can get away with anything. I was already in trouble for the fertilizer thing and half a dozen other stupid stunts. Nobody was ever going to believe that I did the first swastika, but not all the others. My dad pulled me out of sports over a little bit of lard on the road. I figured he’d disown me for this.”

  “So you lied to everybody,” I accuse.

  For the first time, Link looks as if he’s about to give me an argument. Then he nods wearily. “You’re right. I wasn’t honest with people. And before I knew it, the paper chain was taking off, and if I told the truth, it might have tanked the whole thing.”

  I’m not any less furious, but I can appreciate his dilemma. The paper chain belonged to everybody, but he was almost the poster boy for it. If Link had spilled his guts, it would have ruined everything. It’s still no excuse, but it’s easy to see how it all got away from him.

  I fold my arms in front of me. “So if you’re not here to beg for forgiveness, what are you here for?”