Infiltration by Sean Rodman Page B

is why I do it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” she asked.
    â€œWhy I do this…what we do. The exploring. I like finding hidden treasures that are right in front of everyone. Beautiful things that most people take for granted.” I looked at her as I said it. I didn’t mean to sound smooth, but it kind of worked out that way. She gave me a little smile.
    â€œThat’s pretty sweet, Bex.”
    I decided to seize the opportunity. I leaned in for a kiss. But before we connected, I heard Jake swear and I froze. I looked in his direction and saw the problem. The bright beam of a flash-light was pointed right at us.
    â€œHold it!” a deep voice barked out from the shadows.
    A guard.
    We scrambled back toward the hole that I’d ripped through to the stage. Jake got there first and dropped down the rope into the tunnel. Then I held the rope steady as Asha descended. By the time I was climbing backward down the hole, the guard was close. Too close. I let the rope slither fast through my hands and winced as I felt my fingers burn.
    With a thump, I hit the tunnel floor and rolled. Jake and Asha helped me up. Then we were moving fast through the tunnel, our footsteps echoing loudly in the tunnel. But the guard didn’t stand a chance of catching us.
    By the time we were back on the street, we were still hyped on adren-aline. All the way to the bus stop, we kept laughing and retelling the best bits of our adventure. All that adrenaline eventually crashed out of us. On the long bus ride back toward our neighborhood, I just felt tired and hollow. Asha was asleep on my shoulder. Jake was snoring too, his head against the bus window.
    The city at night scrolled by outside. I imagined we were floating along, sealed in a glass bubble. A perfect bubble. I had an awesome girlfriend. My best friend always, always had my back. I was even doing all right at school. And at night I was a superhero, able to go where no one else could. I didn’t want anything to change.
    I still had that feeling the next day when I met up with Asha again. We were in the first-period biology class at school. I’d first met Asha when she was assigned as my lab partner. Things had worked out pretty well. We’d been together for a couple of months now.
    I was good at the textbook part of biology. But I don’t have a high tolerance for gross. Asha, on the other hand, watched splatter films for fun. She wanted to go to med school and be a doctor. The dissection we were working on was particularly nasty, so she took the lead on it. Some sort of reptile was staked to a tray in front of us.
    â€œPass me the scalpel,” she said. She smiled a little as she began carving away at the thing in front of us. I carefully kept my eyes on her and away from the green goo.
    â€œBex, you are such a wuss,” she said without looking away from her work. There was a squelching sound from inside the thing’s body cavity. Ugh.
    â€œHey, I can be brave. I’m good at dark tunnels. Spiders, totally fine,” I said. “Just not slimy dead things.”
    â€œWhatever,” she said. She paused to pin down a flap of reptile skin. “ So I heard back from Camp Kinnikee.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Was that the one up in the mountains or on the coast?”
    â€œThe mountains. Turns out they decided to give me the head camp counselor job!” She waited for me to get all excited. When I didn’t, she seemed a little thrown. She started speaking faster. She still didn’t look at me.
    â€œHere, hold the tray for me. Anyways, the pay is way better than what I could make working at the café. I’ll make over four thousand dollars.”
    My stomach was squirming, and it wasn’t the dissection that was bugging me.
    â€œI won’t even have to spend money on food ’cause we eat in the cafeteria at the camp,” she kept going. “And because it’s in the middle of nowhere, I