The Lost Cipher Read online

  “Hang on, George!” Alex yelled, but his words were lost in the ominous whine of the cable.

  George, however, had no intention of crash landing.

  Just when he reached the deepest part of the lake, the crowd on the hill heard a distant cry.

  “THUUUNDER…BUUUTT!!!”

  Lucas and Alex both whispered, “Oh no,” as George’s body dropped from the cable in a high-velocity plunge toward the lake.

  Free from the T-bar, he brought his knees tightly to his chest and filled each hand with a generous fistful of rear end. With the precision of an Olympic diver going for the gold medal, he tucked his head and aimed his butt at the surface. Still bellowing when he hit the water, he executed a perfect entry, capping the cannonball with an enormous splash that echoed across the valley like an artillery blast.

  By the time he surfaced and waved back at them, the other campers were cheering madly and howling with laughter. Lucas saw the smile drop from Zack’s face.

  The counselor was speaking angrily to someone on the radio, so he didn’t notice Lucas and Alex leaping from the platform. They ran past the line of campers down to the lake edge and dove into the water. Lucas reached George first, just ahead of the lifeguard from the lake platform.

  Swimming up, they saw that the younger boy was treading water and laughing loudly. Satisfied that George wasn’t injured, the lifeguard gave a quick thumbs-up to the counselors at both ends of the zip line and turned to swim back to shore.

  “So how’d it look, fellas? Nice entry? Good splash?” George asked.

  CHAPTER 7

  “You have…got…to be crazy,” Alex replied in disbelief, gasping for air from the panicky swim out to George.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucas snapped between breaths. “Zack ain’t gettin’ away with it.”

  “Hey, Lucas, come off it,” Alex replied. “The counselors are pissed enough. They’ll take care of him.”

  “Aww, who cares, you guys?” said George. “It was good entertainment, wasn’t it?” Despite treading furiously, he started to sink a little lower. “Look, can we get outta here before I drown?”

  They swam back to the edge of the lake and hauled themselves out. When they were up on the bank, George pointed up to the zip line platform in the trees.

  “You guys are gonna miss your turn if you don’t hurry back.”

  “What about you?” Alex asked. “You deserve another turn too.”

  “No, I’m good. Anything after that ride will just be a letdown for my fans. You guys go on back. I’m gonna go dry off.”

  He turned to walk along the lake back to their cabin. Alex started to walk back up to the woods, but Lucas didn’t follow right away. He was still watching George lope toward the cabins.

  “You coming?” Alex asked.

  Lucas turned to follow Alex, shaking his head as he caught up. “He’s mad,” he said through gritted teeth. “He just won’t let anybody see it.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, I don’t know about you, but I seen enough trouble lately. I don’t need no rich kid handin’ me even more.”

  “Yeah. I know. It stinks. Maybe they’ll put Zack in another cabin.”

  Just as Lucas and Alex began walking back up the hill, they saw Maggie and Aaron emerge from the trees. They were leading Zack in the opposite direction, toward the cabins and office. When Lucas drew close enough to see the cocky grin Zack was wearing, his anger boiled over.

  Before Maggie could ask them if George was okay, he charged toward Zack and planted both hands hard on his chest, cursing him as he did. Zack staggered backward a few steps, but the bigger kid didn’t go down like Lucas had hoped.

  Aaron immediately restrained Lucas in a bear hug, not noticing Zack coming back at them.

  With Lucas’s arms pinned at his sides, Zack swung a right that caught him flush on the temple, a blow that flashed stars inside Lucas’s head.

  In a split second, Alex was rushing Zack, but Maggie stepped between them, her hands keeping them apart.

  “ENOUGH!” she shouted angrily.

  Zack ignored her and growled at Lucas. “Bring it, redneck.”

  “I will!” Lucas shouted back. But his left ear was ringing, and he was still wrapped in Aaron’s arms.

  “Maybe we’ll both bring it,” snapped Alex over Maggie’s shoulder.

  “Works for me,” Zack replied with a smirk.

  Maggie gave them both a hard shove in the chest. “I said ENOUGH!” She turned to her brother. “Let go of Lucas.”

  Aaron released his grip on Lucas but positioned himself so that Lucas couldn’t get to Zack. Lucas wanted to rub the side his head, but he wasn’t going to give Zack the satisfaction of knowing the punch had hurt. Bad.

  “Lucas and Alex!” Maggie shouted. “Get up the hill! Aaron, you have a little talk with them on the way up.” She put a hand on Zack’s shoulder and herded him toward the office, but Zack shook loose of her grasp and faced Lucas.

  “Maybe we’ll have a little talk later too,” he said, still smirking.

  This time Aaron stepped threateningly toward the bigger boy and pointed toward the office. “Go,” he growled.

  Zack pretended to shake in fear, as much at Aaron as at the other boys, but he turned to go with Maggie.

  Aaron put his hands on Lucas and Alex and led them toward the zip line.

  “So what was that crap all about?” Aaron asked, not trying to hide his anger.

  “Zack coulda killed George!” replied Lucas. “And he thought the whole thing was a joke.”

  “And that’s for us to handle, not you,” said Aaron. “Right?”

  “Are you going to handle it?” asked Lucas sarcastically.

  “Yes,” Aaron snapped back. “We will. Do you think this is the first time we’ve had a camper acting recklessly?”

  “Well, I’m not rooming with him,” said Alex. “That’s for sure.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Aaron, “not after that. We keep a cabin empty just for situations like this. That’s where he’ll be tonight. Maybe for the rest of the week.”

  “So he gets a cabin to himself?” said Lucas, shaking his head. “Probably exactly what he had in mind.”

  “Do you have a better solution, Lucas?” said Aaron.

  “Sure,” interrupted Alex. “Just send him home.”

  “Well,” said Aaron, “I’m sure that’s what Maggie will be talking to him about in the office, right after they call his father to discuss the whole thing.”

  Lucas wanted to tell Aaron that was exactly what Zack probably wanted too—to just go home. The bigger kid was probably using the counselors, and they didn’t even know it.

  They stopped at the back of the group of campers lined up for the zip line.

  “You two try to have some fun today,” said Aaron. “And don’t even think about keeping this going with Zack. Any more fighting, and Zack won’t be the only one we may have to send home early.” He finally cracked a smile, trying to lighten up. “Seriously, guys, I wouldn’t even talk to him unless it’s to kiss and make up.”

  Lucas looked at Alex. “That sure ain’t going to happen,” he grumbled.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lucas, Alex, and George managed to steer clear of Zack the rest of the day. The older boy showed up for dinner, seemingly fine after his time in the office with Maggie. In fact, after he sat down with some other boys closer to his age, he did a lot of smiling and laughing. Most likely, Lucas figured, about the scare he had given George.

  Lucas had just about concluded that Zack wouldn’t even be punished when, near the end of dinner, he saw Aaron walk over and whisper something in his ear. Zack slumped a little then got up and joined the workers in the kitchen who were already scrubbing pots and washing dishes. Lucas heard later that Zack had gotten kitchen duty for a couple days as punishment. He
’d be rising early to help with breakfast and staying late after dinner to clean. To Lucas, it still wasn’t much for risking George’s life.

  As the sun was setting, the whole camp gathered around the fire ring where a fire was already blazing. The only time Lucas was forced to talk was when they went around the circle, introducing themselves. Some of the kids seemed to think everyone ought to know a lot more about them, but he kept his introduction short—“Lucas Whitlatch, from West Virginia.” It wasn’t worth telling them “Indian Hole,” because no one but his kin and a few more knew where that was, and it wasn’t near any other place they would know either. Mostly he was thankful no one had to talk about why they were all there in the first place. After the counselors were done telling them some more about the camp and the hike they were going to take the next day, he stayed close to Alex and George but didn’t say much. George did enough talking for all three of them anyway.

  The next morning, the campers met up at the fire ring again before the hike. Lucas filled a water bottle at the sink in the bathhouse and threw an apple into his daypack before hurrying out to join the rest of the group. So far he had avoided running into Zack alone since the incident on the zip line.

  All three counselors leading the hike that morning wore their blue Camp Kawani T-shirts and carried hefty daypacks with water bottles stuffed in both sides. Two of them looked like college kids—a wiry guy with a red beard and ponytail who introduced himself as Rooster and Sarah, a tall girl with a blue bandanna tying back her long, blond hair. Aaron was the leader.

  A few campers grumbled when he reminded them that today’s hike was only a “leg stretcher” for the longer, overnight trip they would start tomorrow, but he laughed off the complaints. “Hey,” he said, motioning up at the ridgeline, “we’ve got twenty thousand acres here. And the best part is up there.” He huddled with Rooster and Sarah for a minute before barking, “Okay, let’s go,” and setting off at a brisk pace up a trail into the woods.

  The first part of the hike was all uphill, following a series of long switchbacks that worked their way up the side of the forested valley. Lucas was happy they’d started early. Even though the trail was mostly in the trees and the sun was just rising across the valley, the climb was hot and muggy.

  Every once in a while, the hikers stopped at a rock outcrop or a break in the trees that opened up to views over the lake and cabins below. From up high, Lucas could see the layout of the entire camp, including the entry road leading out to the main highway. The sight of the way back home brought on a sudden rush of homesickness, and he spent the next half mile thinking how nice it would have been to be back in Indian Hole, eating his grandma’s breakfast.

  It wasn’t long before the tough climb had separated the two dozen campers into three groups. In front were mostly older kids, including Zack, with Aaron keeping them from getting too far ahead. Most of the rest of the hikers were in the middle group, including some girls sticking close to Sarah and talking noisily as they walked. Lucas was in the last group with Alex, but not because they were slower than the other hikers. Instead, they hung back because George, red faced and soaked with sweat, was trudging up the side of the valley like he had a refrigerator on his back.

  “Somebody…tell me…if we’re almost…at the top,” he wheezed. “I don’t think…I can lift…my head.”

  “Dang, George, we ain’t even come a mile yet,” Lucas told him. For him, the hike was no different than the hundreds of times he’d been to the top of his own mountain.

  Alex came up behind George and unzipped his pack. The younger boy was too exhausted to resist.

  “Maybe I can take some of your load for you,” he said. He looked into George’s pack and found two full bottles of water, a melted and misshaped package of jumbo Snickers bars, along with the roll of George’s personal toilet paper. He grabbed the roll and held it in front of George’s face.

  “Expecting an emergency, George?” he asked.

  “I’m not…gonna…use a…pine cone,” George huffed.

  Lucas took the toilet paper from Alex and put it back in George’s pack. Then he and Alex divvied up the rest of the items in George’s pack to lighten his load.

  “Thanks, guys…” George gasped. “I owe you.”

  After more uphill slogging, the slope began to ease, and the hikers crested the ridge. When Lucas cleared the trees, the view that opened up was as beautiful as any back home. At the top, the forest gave way to a broad meadow dotted with blue-gray boulders covered in splotches of bright green lichens. Ridge after ridge of blue mountains rolled off into the distance, each one a little lighter and hazier than the last. The only signs of people were the red and white dots of barns and houses in tiny pockets of pasture far below.

  Out of the forest, the air was drier, and a breeze rustled the grass, cooling the sweat that had soaked Lucas’s shirt. Aaron was right—it was way nicer up here, and it reminded Lucas of another rocky spot on their mountain back home.

  A spot that would soon be gone forever.

  Lucas had first caught wind of the plan for their mountain when he’d heard his grandfather on the phone not a month after the soldiers came. But it was more strangers driving up their road, this time in a shiny, mining company pickup that told him for sure. His grandpa had limped down to meet them. The men had unrolled a big map on the hood of the truck and talked over it for a long time, his grandpa doing a lot of pointing up at the ridges above the hollow. When the men shook his grandpa’s hand one more time and headed into the woods and up the mountain, Lucas knew right then that the place more special to him than any other was going to die just like his pa.

  He’d wanted to scream at them to stop. It even crossed his mind to find his pa’s rifle. Instead, he just watched them disappear into the trees. Three hours later, he heard their truck start up and fade away down the road out of Indian Hole.

  Lucas fought his grandparents about it as hard as a thirteen-year-old boy could. He told them they didn’t need to sell, that if they could just hold out for a few more years, he could get a job when he turned sixteen. He reminded them that his pa, their son, had wanted the mountain protected, that it was one of his last wishes.

  But his grandma had told him that his pa wanted Lucas protected even more, wanted them to have a future, and that the company’s offer was enough to put them in a real house closer to town where it wouldn’t be so hard to get him to school, with plenty left over to get his grandpa the doctoring he needed. In the end, there was nothing Lucas could do to stop it. A tiny, traitorous part of him even understood that selling the mountain was the only way his family, or what was left of it, would survive. But it wasn’t the selling that was so bad—even his pa would have understood that they’d need the money with him gone. Instead it was the total destruction that made it so terrible.

  He had seen that kind of destruction up close only once, when he and his pa had hiked all day along the high ground connecting their mountain to Signal Ridge. After hours in the trees, surrounded by green, seeing the mountain top operation had felt so much like a punch in the gut that he was sure his knees had wobbled at that first sight of it.

  They had looked straight down into an ash-gray valley that had once been as high as the ground where they stood. Giant yellow machines crawling across the pulverized landscape looked like insects next to scars cut two hundred feet high into the sides of the mountain. Bigger still were the terraces of leftover rock stacked in jarring, unnatural lines and looming over a poisonous lake the color of wood smoke and trapped against the foot of the barren mountain by a steep, gray dam. Lucas remembered thinking how impossible it seemed that something as small as a man, even hundreds of them with their machines, could do so much damage to something as big as a mountain.

  And now, worst of all, he knew that this was his mountain’s future too.

  He and Alex sat down on a slab of rock and pulled out their water bottles while
George made a big show of falling facedown in the grass. Without lifting his head, he reached out a sweaty arm and fumbled in his pack until he found a melted Snickers bar. Zack had found another rock, and Lucas was relieved to see he wasn’t paying his ex-roommates any attention.

  After the break, they wandered the ridgetop until midmorning, resting for a final time on a huge flat rock that jutted out into thin air on one side. Sitting on the edge with a fresh breeze in his face and the dome of a cloudless sky all around him, Lucas felt like he was riding the nose of an airplane. He wished he could stay up high all day and not return to the gloom of the forest.

  But Aaron wanted them back in camp for a late lunch, and soon they were walking downhill, along a trickle of water that grew into a noisy little creek lined with mossy boulders. Occasionally the trail crossed the water, but Lucas made no effort to keep his boots dry. At every crossing, he let the water soak through to cool his overheated feet.

  George had just started dreaming out loud about how good the lake was going to feel when Aaron suddenly turned around and put both hands up to stop the caravan of hikers. After the shuffling of boots stopped and Rooster and Sarah had quieted the last talkers, the soft gurgle of the creek was the only noise in the forest. Lucas figured Aaron had seen an animal and was hushing everyone so it wouldn’t run off.

  But over the splashing water, he heard sounds that didn’t belong deep in the forest. The metallic clink of a tool striking rock. And voices.

  Aaron huddled with the counselors. After a few seconds, he and Rooster crept off through the woods while Sarah went down the line of campers, her finger to her lips.

  “What’s going on?” asked George. “Are they moonshiners?”