“Okay, let’s do it!” the teacher yelled. “One lap, and the first two around choose up sides for baseball!”
The class broke ranks and headed out onto the quarter-mile track that circled the football field. Two of the guys — Zack Cater, who was in Michael’s English class, and someone whose name Michael thought was Sky, and who lived down the road from him — took off in the lead. Instantly, Michael knew he had no chance of beating them. He might be able to put on enough speed in the first hundred yards to pull ahead of them, but by the second hundred he’d have fallen behind. Then, most of his energy having been spent on the first sprint, he’d wind up straggling in at the very back of the class.
Not good for someone who had made the track team just yesterday.
Worse would be the humiliation that followed when Zack and Sky left him until dead last to be chosen for the baseball teams.
Better to pace himself and finish somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Glancing around, he saw that there were only two other boys behind him, so he increased his pace slightly, quickly passing three runners, then closing on two more. Once he’d left all five of them behind, he steadied his pace, falling into an easy gait that should have carried him comfortably through the turn at the end zone, then back along the opposite side of the field.
Except that the strange feeling in his chest was getting worse and the muscles of both his legs were burning like crazy, and threatening to cramp up any second.
But he’d done a full lap yesterday, then whipped Jeff Kina in a sprint! What the hell was wrong?
Once again, as it had every few minutes this morning, his mind went back to the dive last night.
But it wasn’t just the dive he was thinking about. It was also the long hike across the rough lava, stumbling with every step.
And the fight with his mother, and the hours of sleep he’d missed. So what did he expect? All his body was doing was punishing him for last night.
A strange thought flickered through Michael’s mind: Was that what had happened to Kioki Santoya, too? If they hadn’t gone on the dive at all — if they’d just gone to a movie, and then come home early, as they’d first planned — would Kioki still be alive?
But that didn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t have made any difference what they’d done last night — what had happened to Kioki … had just happened.
For himself, though, the hike and the dive and the loss of sleep were costing him. Well, fine. If he had to pay for what he’d done, so be it. But he still wasn’t going to let himself finish last.
Determined to ignore the discomfort in his chest and the pain in his legs no matter what, Michael held his pace through the curve around the end zone, and started down the long straightaway. One of the boys he’d passed on the first stretch came up on his right and fell in beside him.
“Thought you were supposed to be real hot shit,” the boy said. Laughing loudly, he pulled away from Michael, deliberately twisting his feet to kick up a cloud of dust from the cinders that paved the track.
Michael tried to turn his head away, but couldn’t avoid sucking in some of the dust, and braced himself against the fit of coughing he was sure would seize him. But then he was through the gray cloud and suddenly felt himself building up speed.
He’d been right! Whatever it was, all he’d had to do was work his way through it! His legs were starting to feel a little better, and his chest was getting back to normal, so he notched up his stride and started to close on the boy ahead of him for the second time. They pounded down the track with Michael just a pace behind, and though the dust behind the other boy was starting to make Michael’s eyes sting, he could feel his strength surging back. As they headed into the last curve, Michael pulled ahead.
Now the finish line was just yards away. Michael poured all the energy he could muster into the final sprint. He passed one more boy, then crossed the line, his chest heaving and his legs burning again. It wasn’t until he dropped his pace back to a walk and turned to join the rest of the class that he realized the gym teacher had been watching him.
“What’s going on, Sundquist?” he asked. “Jack Peters told me how good you were yesterday afternoon, but I’m sure not seeing it this morning. You feel okay?”
Michael hesitated. Should he say anything about the funny feeling he’d had his chest? Or the fire in his legs? But if he did, it was a sure thing the gym teacher would do the same thing the ones back in New York always had: send him to the nurse.
He wasn’t about to start that again. No way!
“I’m okay,” he said. “I just stayed up too late last night, that’s all.”
“Don’t let Peters hear you say that,” the teacher told him. “You want to stay on the team, you keep yourself in shape. Got it?”
“Got it,” Michael agreed, silently suspecting there was a rule somewhere that said gym teachers had to be jerks. He was about to turn away when the teacher spoke again, and Michael wondered if he’d known what he was thinking.
“Then take a few more laps. And while you’re running, you can think about the value of a good night’s sleep.”
While the rest of the class split up into teams for baseball, Michael started around the track.
He steeled himself against the pain as his legs began to burn again, determined that no matter how bad it got, he wouldn’t give in.
He’d built himself up, and he’d made the track team, and whatever was causing the funny feeling in his chest, he’d get through it.
Or die trying.
CHAPTER 11
Katharine gazed in awe at the office Rob Silver had been given on Takeo Yoshihara’s estate. Housed in a large pavilion that blended almost perfectly with the hillside abutting its far end, the two-room suite lay behind a beautifully carved koa-wood door. The smaller of the two spacious, airy rooms was equipped with a desk and filing cabinets, while the larger was filled with tables on which photographs, drawings, and models of native Polynesian buildings were laid out in a manner that was perfectly reflective of the innate tidiness they both shared. Beyond a set of French doors, she could see the gardens that spread across the estate. Aside from the view, Rob’s work space was at least eight times the size of her office at the museum in New York, and apparently whatever equipment Rob might need, Takeo Yoshihara supplied. Against one wall of the larger room was a second desk, supporting Rob’s computer, along with several printers, a scanner, and an array of other equipment Katharine didn’t recognize.
“Can you get me online?” she asked. “I want to start by looking at some files at the museum. I remember something that looks a lot like our skull—”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Rob said. “Let me have those Polaroids.”
Puzzled, Katharine fished the pictures she’d taken of the skull out of her bag, and watched as Rob placed them on the bed of a scanner, brought up a program that allowed him to manipulate images, and began rapidly entering instructions on the keyboard and clicking the mouse. A few minutes later eight views of the skull they’d uncovered in the rain forest appeared on the screen, each depicting it from a different angle.
Six more depicted the mandible.
Rob stood up. “What I want you to do is pick a few things that are unique, that you’d be looking for if you were hunting for similar skulls and mandibles.”
Lowering herself into the chair, Katharine experimented with the mouse and soon got the hang of zooming in on first one image, then another. Five minutes later she’d made her choices, and Rob showed her how to copy the small areas she’d outlined with the cursor so they lay on a blank screen like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “But they’re just fragments,” Katharine objected. “Even if you put them all together, you wouldn’t get a complete skull.”
Rob grinned. “Want to bet?” His tone was enough to warn her it was a bet she’d lose. “We’re going to tell
