“Adam Zapotica. What’s yours?”
“Jamie Jamieson, and our first problem is to get your bike through the fence. Go down into that gully.
He walked the bike to where she indicated, and she met him on the other side of the fence.
You’re not eighteen, are you?” she asked with a grunt. She was kneeling, trying to hold the front wheel of the bicycle straight and lift and pull at the same time. “Nobody under eighteen is allowed to be here, you know.” She acted as if she were explaining something to a five-year-old.
Adam tried to look indignant. “You think I don’t know that? Yeah, I’m not eighteen, but I’ll be ... uh ... seventeen in January.” He hated fibbing, but what else could he do? “Just how old are you, anyway?”
“Sixteen.” She sat back with a thump as the bike became unstuck and lunged toward her.
“Sorry about that,” Adam said. “How come you’re here then if you’re only sixteen?”
“My dad’s the preparator. I’ve been dragged to dinosaur digs since I was four years old.”
Poor you, Adam thought. He would have given anything to be dragged to even one dig.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go introduce you to my dad.” Then she turned with a jingle and a hop, and Adam followed.
CHAPTER 2
As Adam and Jamie walked toward the camp, he saw various kinds of accommodations huddled in a shallow valley.
“Where do you plan to sleep?” Jamie asked, scrutinizing his pack, which obviously didn’t hold a tent.
“Under the wide and starry. I’ve got a sleeping bag.”
“If Dad will let you stay, maybe you could use Norm’s place. He got a fever and had to go home. We aren’t sure if it’s a spider bite or what.” She headed in the direction of a big trailer.
“You seem pretty sure you can square it with your father.” Adam was worried. Okay, she was the boss’s daughter and she was pretty sure of herself. In fact, bossy might be a better word. But still ...
“Trust me,” she told him as she stepped through the open door of the trailer.
Two long tables littered with fossilized bones marked with numbers and letters stretched along the entire length of the trailer. Some of the bones were wrapped in burlap and covered with plaster of Paris, but many looked as if they had been varnished.
“Hi, Dad,” Jamie said.
A man carrying a clipboard was bent over one of the tables. “It’s about time you got back, Jamie. And who have you got there?” He peered at Adam suspiciously.
“This is Adam. He’s a professional artist and he’s got a letter from a Dr. Lawson recommending him to come and do artwork for us.”
A professional artist? Adam thought. Where did she get that from? He had never sold a painting in his life. Adam squelched the small voice of conscience trying to be heard. It wasn’t going to matter, anyway.
Mr. Jamieson shook his head. “Jamie, honey, you know the rules. We can’t make exceptions, or we’ll have them crawling out of the woodwork.”
“Aw, come on, Dad. He’s an old friend of mine.”
Adam frowned. Another one of her little white lies. He stared at a hollow-eyed skull on the table.
“Oh? I’ve never heard you mention a friend named Adam.”
“You haven’t?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “I met him at the Banff School of Fine Arts when I was doing that course there. Adam, why don’t you show my dad the letter and your drawings?”
She smiled at him in what she probably intended to be an “old friend” kind of way, but to Adam it seemed about as genuine as the expression on a toothpaste ad model.
“Hmm,” Mr. Jamieson said as he read the letter. “Not bad,” he added as he examined the drawings. He glanced at Jamie, then at Adam, then back at Jamie. “Well, I guess we’ll take a chance just this once. You’re absolutely certain you can vouch for him?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“All right. See to it he understands all the ground rules.” Mr. Jamieson offered his hand to Adam. “I’m Al.”
Adam rubbed the palm of his right hand on his jeans. “Uh, I’m pretty grubby.”
“It’s okay, son. No one can keep clean long around here.” Mr. Jamieson was clean. He was freshly shaven, his dark greying hair was short, and his beige cotton pants and white short-sleeved shirt appeared as if they had just come from the laundry. His dark-rimmed glasses magnified his light grey eyes.
Adam was overwhelmed. Here he was smack in the middle of dinosaur bones, and he could stay! There were a few misconceptions that had to be cleared up, but he would worry about that later. “Pardon?” he said when he realized Jamie was asking him something. “Sorry. My thoughts were wandering.”
“Have you had supper?”
Adam shook his head. “Are there any eggs in here?”
“No. Were you thinking scrambled or fried?” Mr. Jamieson chuckled and made a flipping motion with his clipboard.
Adam grinned. “No, I was thinking of whipping up a marble cake.” Things were looking better, Adam mused. Mr. Jamieson had a sense of humour. He was okay.
“No, seriously, son, we haven’t got any dinosaur eggs out yet. It takes a long time to prepare the site. We’ve taken off the overburden, marked the locations, and actually started on two of the nests. What are you up to now, Jamie? Find anything interesting?”
Jamie was taking bits and pieces from her canvas bag — they looked like a collection of rough little rocks that could be picked up on any roadside. “Not sure what this is.” She held one of the bits close to her face and squinted at it. “But I found another tooth.”
“You did? You’re a real bird dog when it comes to teeth.” Mr. Jamieson glanced at Adam. “Jamie’s on the trail of T. rex, so to speak. She’s found a few teeth, yet there’s no evidence the big guys actually lived here. We haven’t found any trace of skeletons, so ...” He shrugged. “Maybe they were just passing through and stopped for lunch.” He made his voice deep and gruff. “I’ll have a Euoplocephalus steak and a side order of deep-fried Ornithomimus wings, please.”
Adam stretched his head back to gaze at the ceiling, then pretended to write on the palm of his hand. “And how would you like that steak, sir?”
They all laughed, and Mr. Jamieson slapped Adam’s back.
“So when do you think you’ll actually get eggs out of the nests?” Adam asked, trying to make his voice sound natural, though his heart was beating faster than usual.
“What do you think, Jamie?”
“Probably tomorrow, Dad. With any luck.”
“Yeah. I’d guess tomorrow. But mum’s the word.” Mr. Jamieson regarded Adam sternly. “We’d like to keep the media people away until we’re ready for them.”
“Do you think Adam could stay in Norm’s place?” Jamie asked. “He was going to sleep outside.”
“Sure thing,” her father said.
“Thanks,” Adam said as Jamie led him through the camp. “I can’t believe this is actually happening. The only thing is ...”
“Yeah?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not a professional anything.”
“Your