Hide and Geek by T. P. Jagger

Author:T. P. Jagger [Jagger, T. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Two cigarette butts had been trampled along the edge of the trail. With all the rain, it was impossible to tell how long they’d been there, but I hadn’t noticed them earlier.

“Yankees Man,” I said. “He smoked.” I pushed the muddy cigarette butts around with the toe of my sneaker. “Do you think he’s following us?”

“If he is,” Edgar said, “that means he must know about the fortune and about us helping Max.”

Max’s face looked a little pale, but the sky was still overcast, so it may have been a trick of the light. “People cut through the preserve once in a while,” he said. “I see them from the house. Let’s hope it’s just someone taking a shortcut.” He looked over his shoulders, then peered into the woods. “But we should be careful.”

“No loud voices,” Kevin ordered. “If someone’s in the woods listening, we don’t want them to know what we’re doing.”

“Don’t worry, Kev. We know,” Elena said. “Let’s just go.”

So we did.

We took the trail past the Lookout, winding around until we could hear the river through the trees. A muddy track that must once have been some kind of road ran parallel to the river, and all we had to do was follow it. Which was easier said than done, since it was completely overgrown. Max insisted on going first, to clear the path for the rest of us. Still, briars scratched at our ankles as we walked. We’d been stomping through the weeds for ten minutes when we rounded a curve in the trail and Elena gasped and pointed.

A dozen gingko trees were planted ahead in a large circle, though what had once been a clearing in the middle of the trees was now a tangled mess of weeds and undergrowth. The trees were at least fifty feet high and beginning to show their fall colors, bright yellow bands forming on the ends of the leaves.

We walked around, examining each tree. Sauce helped by snuffling around the trunks. But there was nothing.

“Now what?” Edgar asked. “Do we have to climb a dozen different trees and hope we find something?”

“I recognized the saying from the back of the gingko leaf,” Kevin said in a low voice. “I think Pastor Fernlaw quoted it from the Bible in one of his Sunday sermons.”

“So what’s it mean?” Elena asked.

Kevin grimaced. “I don’t pay that much attention in church.”

Max pulled out his phone and tried to Google it, but he couldn’t get a signal. Cell reception stinks in the nature preserve.

“Read the clue again, Gina,” Edgar said.

I pulled out the wooden gingko leaf and read the words carved into its back: “ ‘She is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither.’ ”

Elena studied one of the nearby trees. “What about the she and fruit in the verse? Before my abuela moved in with us, she lived in an apartment with a gingko tree nearby. Every year, the tree’s fruity seeds would drop and stink up the whole neighborhood.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.