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  “Look,” Mia said, pointing to the rear window.

  “That’s strange,” said Hannah. “There’s writing on the window . . . and it’s backwards.”

  They got in the car. Looked in their rearview mirror. The words had been written in mud: Beware of the jeweler’s son.

  “That was what Miss Jones said to us in the library,” said Mia.

  “Jasmine must have written it.”

  “I guess. But why?”

  “Probably to spook us,” replied Hannah.

  “It worked,” Mia said. She had the eerie feeling that someone was watching them.

  Chapter 4

  “Now class,” Mr. Crapsnik said. He had a cold so he sounded even more nasally than usual. “We are going to embark on our first field trip. Remember to get with the buddies you picked last week.” He looked over at Mia, Hannah, and Jasmine. “And stick together.” Even Mr. Crapsnik could tell there was trouble in paradise.

  “Man, things really can change in a week,” Mia said under her breath.

  The class waited for the bus in the cool fall air. Everyone boarded when it arrived. Hannah sat next to Jasmine, who was by the window. Mia was across the aisle from them.

  “So,” Hannah said, trying to make the best of the situation. “I haven’t seen you around much.”

  “I’ve been super busy,” Jasmine replied. “Spirit Week is going to be so much fun!”

  Jasmine was on the homecoming committee. Homecoming was only two and a half weeks away. She was in charge of Spirit Week, which took place the entire week of homecoming. That week was always packed with all kinds of fun events. Teachers even wore school colors and gave out less homework.

  “So what crazy things do you have planned?” asked Mia as she leaned over the aisle of the bus to talk to Jasmine.

  “Oh, you know, the usual,” Jasmine said coldly.

  “No I don’t know,” said Hannah. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “I promised the senior class president I wouldn’t. She’s in charge of the whole thing. Wouldn’t want to let down a good friend. Hmmm?”

  “You don’t have to be mean about it, Jasmine,” Hannah said. “We’re still friends. We even tried to sit with you at lunch yesterday—”

  “But there wasn’t room to sit by me because I have other friends,” Jasmine interrupted.

  “Keep it down now, kids. We’re just arriving at the Big Bog. I want to go through some rules.” Mr. Crapsnik talked about staying with your buddies, completing the bog scavenger hunt activity—the purpose of that day’s field trip—and not going to the caves on the other side of the bog. He pointed to a shadowy area with no trees. “It is completely off limits. There are dangerous sinkholes. You will fail if you fall in a sinkhole.”

  Mia, Hannah, and Jasmine got off the bus. Jasmine grabbed the activity instructions and stormed off.

  “Jasmine, wait!” Mia chased after her.

  She stopped and turned to Mia, now just a few feet behind. “Stop following me! I don’t want your friendship. I don’t need it. You can take your little three-on-three tourneys and secret trips to the bog and shove it! I’ll find new friends.” She turned around and walked away.

  Chapter 5

  Mia could feel a lump form in her throat. It felt like she was losing another person she loved. She swallowed her sadness down.

  “She’s just angry,” Hannah said as she caught up to Mia. “You know Jasmine. She doesn’t think before she speaks.”

  “Yeah. I guess I just miss the way things used to be.”

  “Me, too.” Hannah felt heavy. “Sometimes growing up sucks.”

  Mia knew exactly what she meant. After losing Grammy, and now this, she felt like life was really kicking her butt.

  They walked silently to the bog’s edge.

  “I guess we better look at our assignment,” said Mia. “What’s first on the list?”

  “Woman walking across the bog,” said Hannah.

  The color left Mia’s face. “You can’t be serious.”

  Hannah could hardly keep a straight face. “Peat moss. That’s first.”

  They looked up over the bog. Green and red fuzz coated the mucky water.

  Mia started to laugh at how obvious the first item was to find. “I hope the entire list is like this. We’ll be napping on the bus in no time.”

  “Let’s look for some of these animals,” said Hannah. “Northern Leopard Frog. See any?”

  “Yuck. No, thank God.”

  The edge of the bog was slippery with greasy mud. A blackbird cawed. The birds that had been singing earlier that morning fell silent. The bog sucked up any sound around them into its mossy carpet.

  Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. As if all life around the bog was holding its breath.

  She screamed.

  “What?” yelped Hannah.

  Mia was pointing and flailing around. “Your legs!”

  Hannah had eight slimy amphibians stuck to them. A ninth one crawled up her shoe.

  “Salamanders!” Hannah carefully picked each one off of her pant legs. “I used to find these things under our deck when I was like six.” She held the last one up so she could make eye contact with it. “Aren’t they cute?” She turned it toward Mia.

  Mia squealed and leaped back. “Disgusting. At least it’s one less slimy thing for us to find. Now on to more nastiness.”

  “I hear some frogs over there. Come on. Follow me.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  Mia let Hannah lead the way.

  Above the girls, the sky shifted, as if someone had pulled a dull purple curtain over its blueness. Hannah and Mia were looking down: Hannah looking for frogs and Mia trying to avoid frogs. They didn’t notice how far they were from the rest of their classmates.

  “Hannah! Look at this.” Mia had found a pitcher-shaped plant filled with water. Floating in the water was the decaying flesh of a baby bunny. Its eyeballs gone, fur dissolved. All that was left were threads of gray muscle and pearly-white bone.

  Hannah groaned. “That’s the pitcher plant on our list. It can eat insects and small animals.”

  “I didn’t realize how big a small animal actually was.” Mia was crouching down. “Look at the poor little guy.”

  They continued walking around the bog.

  “Plants can eat animals,” Mia said warily.

  “I guess, and salamanders can attack humans.”

  “And dead people talk to the living!” said Mia.

  “Only at the bog,” said Hannah.

  They both tried to laugh even though it was more unnerving than funny.

  “Frog!” Hannah reached for it. The frog leapt forward. Hannah slipped and landed in the mire. Greasy mud soaked through the knees of her jeans. They ran after the frog, not noticing how far they had gotten from the bus and the others. Every time they got close enough to grab the frog, it would leap out of their grasp.

  “He’s too quick,” Mia said. She looked up. They were almost at the opposite side of the bog. She noticed the purple sky, which reminded her of the evening when she saw the woman walking across the bog. “I think maybe we should turn back, Hannah.”

  “Now? No way!” Hannah was all in. Her hair was stringy with mud; her shoes were weighed down by clumps of mud; her clothes looked like she had been mud wrestling. “I am going to catch a frog if it’s the last thing I do!”

  There were frogs bouncing everywhere. Hannah took off after them. It brought back memories of when she used go frog hunting with her dad as a little girl. She started to laugh while she chased them. She dodged tree branches and bushes as she ran. There had to be at least a hundred now, all leaping in the same direction, and all just out of Hannah’s reach. They came to a clearing where the frogs instantly scattered in different directions. Hannah looked up. Mia had caught up to her.

  They were in the shadowy area of the bog. It was like a natural graveyard, without the headstones. Small mounds covered with feathery grass looke
d like new graves, while the sinkholes looked like the dead had escaped. Hannah and Mia carefully wound their way around the many sinkholes. They tried to stay on mounds that felt like sponges beneath their feet.

  There was a flash of gold in a large crack on the side of a mound that Hannah was standing on.

  “Check this out.”

  “What is it?” asked Mia.

  Hannah bent down low. It was perfectly round and smooth with some sort of a chain. “It looks like a locket or something.” It was hard to tell what it was because it was covered in mud.

  Hannah reached for it with her whole body, her tippy toes the only anchor keeping her from face-planting into the mud. She was almost touching the metal object when the ground slid beneath her feet. The mound collapsed into the earth, making another sinkhole.

  “I got it!” Hannah cried from inside the sinkhole. “Look at this.” Despite the mound collapsing, Hannah still managed to grab the shiny object. “Mia! Check it out—a pocket watch.”

  Mia couldn’t. She was transfixed by the gray, lifeless hand sticking out of the newly exposed dirt. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She could only look at the stiff icy hand that seemed to reach out to them. It was delicate with thin fingers and nails that looked like they had at one time been well kept. It was attached to an equally lifeless body.

  By now Hannah realized there was something wrong—very wrong. “Mia, what is it?” Turning around, Hannah screamed. The body lay inches away. Hannah scrambled out of the sinkhole.

  “She looks like she’s sleeping,” Mia said. “Look at the dress.” It was an underdress.

  “Who cares what she’s wearing,” said Hannah. “I almost touched a dead person.”

  Maybe it was because Mia had just lost her grandma or maybe it was morbid curiosity, but she began to scan the dead woman. Looking for anything that might tell Mia who she was or where she came from. “She’s missing an earring.” Mia was right. Underneath the body’s long hair, she had only one emerald earring in her left ear.

  Hannah couldn’t look at the body. She was trying desperately to pretend it wasn’t there. “This pocket watch . . . it has an inscription on it. In every jewel lives a memory. May you have as many memories as I have jewels, my son. Your loving father, S.E. Trefare.”

  But Mia wasn’t listening. She was deep in thought. “Do you think it’s the Zurner woman the atlas talked about?”

  Hannah was trying not to feel anything, which was almost impossible. “Listen, Mia. If we don’t get out of here now and tell someone, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

  Chapter 6

  By the time they reached Mr. Crapsnik and the rest of their class, they were out of breath. Mr. Crapsnik had to ask the girls to slow down. “Take deep breaths.”

  “Body . . . bog . . . in the bog . . . a hand . . . cold . . . the frog led us there,” Hannah stuttered.

  Mia had to take over. “There is a body sticking out of the mud in the bog. Over there!” She pointed to the shadowy, forbidden area. Then she added, “I know we weren’t supposed to go over there. Please don’t fail us.” All Mr. Crapsnik did was grab his phone and start dialing.

  Within minutes, police arrived. They were able to carefully exhume the body and clear off most of the mud.

  “When you examine the body,” the detective said to another officer, “it looks like it has only been dead for a few hours. But if you consider where the body was located and how much sediment had built up around her, you’d think she’d been there for a good two hundred years.” He scratched his head. “Plus, we haven’t had a missing persons report in years.”

  The coroner put the deceased woman into a black bag. Mia could see all of her now. She once again noticed the earring in the woman’s left ear. A small vine of gold ivy and delicate emerald leaves that wove their way down the side of the mysterious woman’s earlobe. Despite the trauma the woman may have gone through, that tiny earring still had a little sparkle to it.

  “She’s missing her right earring,” said Mia.

  “By golly, it is missing. Well that sort of thing is bound to happen when a person is busy dying.” The detective didn’t even look at Mia or Hannah while he spoke. He checked his cell phone and moved away.

  “Don’t worry, ladies,” Mr. Crapsnik offered in a reassuring voice. “Everything will be okay.”

  “Thanks,” Hannah said. It wasn’t like Mr. Crapsnik to be so nice.

  He nodded. “Don’t worry about your grade on today’s project either. Turning up a missing person is more than I expected anyone to do on our class scavenger hunt.”

  The students started boarding the bus. Mia and Hannah took a seat in the back. Jasmine hadn’t gotten on yet.

  “Can you believe what just happened?” said Hannah.

  “I know,” said Mia. “And I can’t stop thinking about that woman running towards us when we went to the bog for the first time. The woman had long, dark hair. She even wore a white flowy dress kind of like the one on the body.”

  “Do you think it’s the same person?” Hannah asked.

  “I . . . I think it has to be,” said Mia, sounding more certain now. Suddenly, she could feel it deep inside her. “It was like everything kept leading us toward her body,” Mia said.

  “Maybe we just helped a ghost finally find some peace,” replied Hannah.

  They sat quietly in the peace of knowing they had brought closure to not just the ghost, but potentially to the family of that dead person. Perhaps some good could come from tragedy.

  The bus started up and began to lurch forward.

  “Wait!” shouted Hannah. “Where’s Jasmine?”

  She stood up, looking quickly through the rows of seats. Not one student on the bus had Jasmine’s long dark hair. “Mr. Crapsnik! Jasmine. Where’s Jasmine?”

  Chapter 7

  Mr. Crapsnik ripped the phone he’d been using away from his ear. “Stop the bus! Everyone stay seated. You and you”—he pointed to Mia and Hannah—“come with me.”

  They split up, yelling Jasmine’s name. A few minutes later, Jasmine and a boy came sheepishly marching out of the trees. They clearly had been doing more than just completing the scavenger hunt activity Mr. Crapsnik had assigned.

  “Jasmine!” Mia hugged her. It had been such a weird day. She couldn’t have handled losing Jasmine.

  “You are in big trouble!” Hannah led Jasmine and the boy onto the bus. “Just sit down and act like you have been here the whole time.”

  “Mr. Crapsnik!” shouted Hannah. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Jasmine is on the bus. She was just sleeping.”

  Mr. Crapsnik turned bright red. “It has been a very big day. It’s probably a good idea for all of us to sit still and be silent.” Wisps of hair bounced as he talked. He kind of looked like a young Albert Einstein, except for the bald spot on the top of his pointy head.

  “Who’s that?” Hannah asked, glancing at the boy next to Jasmine as she walked by.

  “Eddy,” replied Jasmine. She was definitely trying to show him off; after all, he was tall, muscular, and had big brown eyes that seemed to look right through a person. “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “He’s a bit more than a friend, I’d say,” Mia said quietly, trying not to let Eddy hear.

  Jasmine replied loudly enough for Eddy to hear easily. “He knows the bog like the back of his hand. He’s amazing. I just followed him around and we got Mr. Crapsnik’s activity done within minutes.” She turned to the young man who was staring blankly out window. “You are so smart.” She put her hand on his knee.

  “You go to school here?” Hannah asked Eddy suspiciously.

  “Yep.” He didn’t even turn to look at her.

  “Why haven’t I seen you before?” Hannah did not like this guy.

  Jasmine answered for him. “He goes to our school,” Jasmine chimed in. “I can’t help it if you’re too stuck up to notice him.”

  “Oh, come on. All you think about is yourself and how you look.” Hannah r
emembered the first day of school when Jasmine wore those bracelets and how she had carried on about how “gorge” they were.

  “Jealous much? You just can’t get over the fact that I don’t need you or Mia.”

  Eddy had turned to look at Hannah and Mia now. He had a smile on his face, almost like seeing the three of them bicker gave him pleasure.

  “Alright, kids! Sit down! Everyone just be quiet for a while!” Mr. Crapsnik looked like he was about to pass out.

  Hannah glared at Eddy, then turned and walked to the back of the bus. Mia followed. She paused and said to Jasmine, “I’m just worried about you, Jasmine.”

  “Well don’t be! I know what I’m doing.”

  Behind Jasmine’s back, Eddy winked at Hannah. Then his dark eyes narrowed. His stare burned into Hannah. She had a flash of fear pulse through her, like the moment you wake from a nightmare then realize it was only a dream.

  Chapter 8

  “No, Principal Mock,” said Jasmine, “you are not doing the Stanky Leg.”

  “Are you sure? ’Cause I can make my leg look like rubber.” He started wobbling his legs. “How about the Nay Nay? I’ve been working on it for a while now.” His arms started flailing. He looked like one of those floppy air dancers outside the used-car dealership.

  Jasmine had to bite her lip so she wouldn’t burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mock. That won’t be necessary. We’re going to be sticking with the original choreography from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

  “I see. Well I can get crunk with that.” He was kind of shaking his head as he made air pistols with his hands. “This principal knows how to get his freak on.” He pretend-shot into the wall behind Jasmine.

  “Great!” The laughter was rising up inside of her. “I can’t stay. Keep on practicing the dance clip I sent you.” She darted to the nearest bathroom to burst out laughing. Then she immediately thought, I have to tell Hannah and Mia. It was out of habit.

  For the past few days, Jasmine had been hard at work solidifying last-minute Spirit Week plans. Each day had a different activity. Monday it was Backwards Day. Tuesday was Pajama Day. Wednesday was Twins Day, when couples and good friends would come to school dressed alike. Thursday was Costume Day, where students would dress up like anyone but themselves. Finally, on Friday, everyone was supposed to wear green and black to show school pride at the pep rally.