Time Crunch: (A Chase McCord Novel) by Shane Barker

Author:Shane Barker [Barker, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2019-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

15 A Billion Stars

THE HIKE BACK to the stream was miserable.

Chase still felt pain like the world’s worst sunburn, but it mostly just hurt when he touched it, or when his skin chaffed against his clothes.

And the urine-soaked mud on his face, arms, and legs was beginning to dry. It was caked on like glue, hardening fast, and kept his neck and hands and elbows from moving as well as usual.

And the smell …

Chase couldn’t believe he hadn’t smelled it right away. But he’d been in such agony the pain had overwhelmed his other senses.

I smell like I’ve been swimming in a sewer, he thought miserably. And then realized, Actually, that’s exactly what I did.

And right after I took a bath and washed my clothes, too!

Ugh!

The worst thing, he thought, was that the smell probably wasn’t going to go away. He knew a kid who once fell into a Scout-camp outhouse. The kid had washed himself clean, of course. He’d washed himself, changed his clothes, and washed himself again. He’d doused himself with his leader’s aftershave. But he still claimed the smell was with him. He hardly ate anything for the rest of the week, claiming everything smelled like … outhouse.

Ugh!

Jeez, I hope that doesn’t happen to me!

ZACH WAS TRUDGING along in silence, as if knowing Chase had lost the desire to talk, if not actually the will to live. Chase was still put off, though he knew the accident wasn’t anyone’s fault. It wasn’t his fault—or Zach’s—that he’d fallen into the fire fern. And even though Zach had him smearing himself with mud made from dinosaur pee, he knew he hadn’t had a choice.

There was nothing else he could have done.

Just one of those things.

“Thanks,” Chase said after a minute.

Zach turned. “Huh?”

“I said thanks. For helping me.”

Zach looked back suspiciously. “You’re not mad?”

Chase shook his head. “No. I mean, what else could we have done? I couldn’t have made it all the way back to the stream. And I’m actually kinda impressed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think I would have thought of it. You know, finding a place where some dinosaur had taken a leak.”

Zach grinned. “It was one of my better moments. But I think there’s actually some science to it.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve heard that surfers pee on themselves when they get stung by jellyfish. Might even pee on each other.” He shrugged. “Urine somehow relieves the pain.”

“Oh, yuck!” Chase shuddered at the nasty image. And then said sternly: “I don’t care how bad it hurts, I’m not gonna let you pee on me!”

Zach held up his hands. “Hey, I wasn’t offering, man.”

He shook his head.

“It’s just too bad.”

“What’s too bad?”

“That I don’t have my cell phone. If I could have gotten a picture of you covered in dinogoo, it’d make the school newspaper for sure. Maybe even the yearbook.”

Chase made a rude noise. “And I suppose it’d be too much to ask …”

“Ask what?”

“Not to mention this? You know, when we get back to school?”

Zach made a rude noise of his own.

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