Lost Cipher Read Free Page B

thought Lucas.
    Inside the office, a redheaded woman standing behind the front desk looked their way and smiled. Her hair was drawn back in a long ponytail, and her face was tanned and sprinkled with freckles. The woman wore the same light blue T-shirt as the lifeguard outside.
    She was busy talking with a short, dark-skinned man and a boy about Lucas’s age. Mexican or something , Lucas figured. The boy might have been a little older than Lucas, and even though he was shorter, he looked solid enough. He wore a pair of basketball shoes, and the green backpack leaning against his leg looked new. Unlike Lucas’s buzz-cut dirty-blond hair, the boy’s was longer, nearly in his eyes, and shiny black like a chunk of raw coal.
    The woman behind the desk gave the father and son directions to a cabin, telling them they could pull up behind it to unload. As the boy hoisted the pack onto one shoulder and turned to head out the door, he caught Lucas’s eye and gave him a quick, nervous nod. The look on the boy’s face reminded Lucas of the feeling in his own stomach.
    Lucas’s grandmother stepped up to the counter to introduce herself, and the woman at the desk shook her hand.
    â€œWelcome to Camp Kawani,” she said, smiling. “Hope you didn’t have any trouble finding us. I’m Maggie Cates.” Then, without glancing at the list of names on the counter, she turned to Lucas and stuck out her hand. “I’m guessing you are…Lucas, right?”
    Lucas remained silent but shook her hand. He recognized her name as the one on his invitation. Outside, he heard the pickup’s doors creak open and slam shut and the sound of crunching gravel as the truck headed toward the cabins.
    â€œLet’s get you checked in,” Maggie said, looking him over.
    She spent a minute going over some forms with Lucas’s grandmother, then spoke to Lucas as his grandmother signed them. “Did you check the place out before you came in?”
    â€œSort of,” Lucas replied.
    â€œGood. I guess you noticed we have two rows of cabins. Boys are on the left, girls on the right. That big building down at the end is the bathhouse, with bathrooms and showers.” She grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s modern, not like an outhouse or anything, but you still have to walk to get to it.”
    â€œSure,” Lucas muttered, not bothering to tell her he had outhouse experience.
    â€œIf you need to make a call home, you’ll have to make it from the office here. I don’t know if you have a cell phone with you, but we don’t have coverage down in this valley, and even out by the road, it’s pretty spotty.”
    Lucas nodded. He’d never had his own phone, but he didn’t plan on calling home anyway.
    â€œOur dining hall is up in the woods past the lake.” She pointed to a map of the camp on the wall behind the desk. “If we’re not out on the trail somewhere, that’s where we eat all our meals. The recreation barn next to it has a climbing wall, ping-pong and pool tables, and some other good stuff.”
    Lucas was only half listening. Outside he heard a small engine start up. A man on a mud-covered, yellow-and-black four-wheeler motored past the window behind Maggie and turned up the road into the cabins. He was towing a small trailer loaded with boxes and cans. The driver gunned the engine loudly, like he was about to accelerate, and looked over his shoulder at the office window. Easing off the throttle, he shot a wave back at Maggie through the blue smoke of the four-wheeler’s exhaust.
    Maggie waved back and shook her head. “My brother, Aaron. You’ll meet him later. That four-wheeler’s his favorite toy. That’s probably part of your dinner it’s hauling up the hill right now.”
    â€œDo we get to ride it?” asked Lucas, though he already figured the four-wheeler was off-limits. He’d never had one of his