Chloe, Queen of Denial
Naomi Nash

Across barren sands, an oasis waited for me, green and cool and shimmering with water. Sunlight made the dunes painfully bright, but my slitted lids held no moisture. Only two miles to go, and I could drink long and deep. "Water!" I croaked, but no one was there to hear me.

Then I heard a voice whispering my name. "Chloe."

Hold on. Was I hallucinating? Or was I already dead? I’d been told that people lost in the desert sometimes heard voices . . . right before they went totally insane. I shook my head, hoping the motion might jar out the voice. Where had it come from? Behind me was only my shuffled trail in the sand, which even now was being erased by desert winds hotter than the ground underfoot. Ahead of me was nothing but wasteland. And above, Egypt’s white-hot sun, blazing down as if it wanted to burn from the landscape any trace of me it could find. You’re going to die here, I told myself. You should never have stepped foot in this most ancient of lands. You’re a fake.

I shook my head again. No. I had absolutely no intention of dying here. I had not come all the way from Seattle to collapse in the wilderness, my corpse picked over by buzzards, with no grave other than the shifting sands. The oasis was only two miles away, and there I could quench my thirst with water, sweet water. . . .

"Chloe." I heard the voice again. "Chloe! Wake up!"

For like, a split second after I opened my eyes, I was convinced my friends had rescued me from certain death in the middle of Egypt’s endless sands. But no. I seemed to be in a dark space, lying on a cot that had transformed my butt into a lumpy sack of potatoes. I hadn’t been saved at all. I had been sleeping. When I licked my cracked lips, I realized how thirsty I was. No wonder my dreams were of the desert.

No. Wait. The past week came flooding back to me. I was in the desert. In Egypt. The Valley of the Servitors, working on the tomb of Tekhen and Tekhnet, to be precise.

The four-letter word that came flying out of my mouth was one everyone in my family had used at some time or another, but it wasn’t one I usually said louder than a whisper. My tentmate Sue Chatterjee must have heard it though, because her face suddenly appeared over the tips of my toes. "I know!" she said.

Huh? That didn’t make sense. And what was she doing down there?

"But Chloe . . . don’t move, okay? It’ll be all right." Sue’s brown eyes stretched wide with fear and concern. She had a habit of gnawing on the tip of her big dark braid whenever she was nervous, but now she was practically sucking the color right out of it.

"I’m okay," I said sleepily. What time was it? Was I late for breakfast? "I was only dreaming."

When I tried to sit up in my cot, Sue pointed at my stomach and screamed loudly enough to shatter glass. "Don’t move!"

I froze and scrunched up my face. Okay, who substituted crazy powder for her Tang this morning? There was nothing on me except for a little woven bracelet someone had left there. It was kind of pretty, all stripes of black and greenish-brown with fringy bits. . . .

To my horror, the bracelet lifted its fringy bits and began to crawl in my direction. That was no jewelry. A scorpion was slowly making its way across my blanket! When suddenly I sucked in a lungful of air, the scorpion stopped, quivering its tail as if it was about to strike.

Don’t move? The heck! Somehow I think–and I bet about ninety-nine percent of the world population would agree with me on this–that when a girl wakes up and sees a scorpion perched on her belly, moving is the first thing she wants to do! I peered at Sue over my blanket’s edge, heart pounding so furiously that it seemed to be flopping around the inside of my mouth. For the first time I noticed the other Dig Egypt! kids crowded outside around the flap tent, all of them watching me. None of them were doing a thing. Oh no, that would be too helpful. They all merely stood there, looking at me as if I was dead already.

Over my racing pulse, my brain registered how annoyed I was at that.

Three nights ago, right after our arrival at the camp, the archaeologist in charge of excavation had presented a long lecture on desert survival tactics. Between her warnings on snakes, insects, disease, rabid dogs, and emergency terrorist evacuation procedures, she’d so badly scared the six of us on the excavation team that we all wished we still wore diapers.

Desperately my mind chugged away while I tried to remember vital information that was only coming back to me in dribs and drabs. Okay, Dr. Battista had said there were green African scorpions and black African scorpions. One of them was bad news, the other not so much. But which was which? Black for bad? Green for poison? This was important stuff here, so why wasn’t I remembering anything she’d said?

Oh yeah. Maybe because the adults in charge decided to give us all that lifesaving information immediately after I’d spent twenty-one hours on airplanes from Seattle to New York to Paris to Cairo, followed by a bumpy drive in vans from Cairo to Luxor, so that I’d felt like a zombie extra from Night of the Living Dead, that’s why.

Smart, folks. Real smart. I cursed whoever it was who’d had that bright idea.

Meanwhile, the scorpion certainly wasn’t hailing a taxi and toddling off for a night at the opera. On pointed claws it marched up the blanket, readying its tail to strike after every one of my shudders. I was going to die, right here and now, just like in my dream. The only way I would get home from Egypt would be in a body bag. Thanks bunches, Mom and Dad!

No. Nuh-uh. Not this time. I absolutely refused to die unshowered and in my sleepwear. "Sue," I said softly to my tentmate, "clear the others away. I’m going to do something." I bet neither kid on the restoration team, both snug in their real beds in a converted monastery house miles away, had to deal with this kind of crap.

"I got a shout out for Dag," I heard Bo call from outside. "Just keep cool."

"Ms. Sorensson is coming," Sue echoed. "She’ll know what to do."

I was sunk. Our flaky chaperone would take one look at the scorpion and run in the opposite direction. On second thought, the scorpion might take a look at Dagmar Sorensson and scamper away, scared for its life. Still, it wasn’t a chance I wanted to take. "I’m not waiting for that red-headed clown," I barked back. Immediately I noticed how strained and strange my voice sounded. Could they hear it too?

"Please please please please please don’t do anything, Chloe."

"Okay," I said aloud. "You . . . just . . . stay . . . calm." I didn’t know whether I was talking to myself or to the scorpion. Maybe a little of both. "I’m going to . . . that’s it." I slid my hands from under the covers to the top of the blanket until the scorpion suddenly paused. Did they have noses? I didn’t think so. Still, it looked as if it was sniffing in my direction. "That’s right," I told it, swallowing heavily. "Be still."

Thank goodness I had tucked in the bottom of my blanket the night before–in case some bug or mouse or snake had decided to crawl up under it, in fact. Fat lot of good that had done to keep deadly bugs–arachnids, whatever–from setting up shop on my vital regions. My foresight had given me a perfect anchor for the blanket, though. I began to lift the rough covering up and away from my body.

Outside the tent, Deidre Pierce shrieked as simultaneously the scorpion suddenly dashed two inches in the direction of my face. Annoying, that. "Too fast," I told myself, slowing down my movements. "It’s okay, little scorpion." I kept my voice down to a whisper, aware that everything was so quiet around me now that I could hear the chatter of the cooks and the sound of clashing dishes from the mess tent, halfway across the camp. "It’s okay." With some extremely gradual lifting, I managed to raise the blanket a good three or four inches from my body. The scorpion stayed very, very still.

While I to the creepy-crawly, I pulled myself up to a sitting position, holding the blanket as motionless as possible. There was a tense moment when it began to pull away from one of the corners, but within a few seconds I was able to swing my feet over my cot’s edge. No mean feat, considering how trembly my legs felt.

"Okay." I used my sing-song voice, very softly. "Is everyone away from the flap? Because I’m going to get rid of this very nice . . . sweet . . . good scorpion." By now I’d managed to ease myself to my feet, the top edge of the blanket still in my hands. The only way the thing could hurt me now was if it jumped at my face. They couldn’t do that, could they? Could they jump? Only Mexican beans jumped, right? Maybe I didn’t want to know.

I heard noises from the other kids when I shifted myself around so that I faced the bed, but all my attention was so focused on the deadly little bundle of sharp pointy bits and venom circling the middle of the cot. With my left hand I tugged the bottom end of the blanket from the bottom of the bed frame until it was completely loose. "Okay," I said, ignoring the slight shake in my voice. The kids would panic if I didn’t make myself sound calm. "Everyone stand clear." I held my breath. This was it.

"NOW!"

I grabbed the four corners of the blanket and, holding it as far away from my body as I could, stooped and ran out under the tent flap. As fast as my legs could take me, I ran and ran to the edge of camp, where the slope ended in a sharp drop to the canyon below. Pebbles cut into the soles of my feet, but I didn’t care. At any other time I would’ve grudgingly admired the sight of the ancient catacombs carved into the cliffs below, almost colorful against the sunrise. With a lethal critter in tow, however, let’s just say I was not in a rosy early morning mood. I flung out the blanket over the edge of the cliff like I was shaking the dust and sand from it. "Buh-bye!" I yelled after the scorpion, expecting my gesture to send it sailing out into the air and over the cliff.

Only nothing flew out.

Oh crud. I dropped the blanket on the ground. Against its gray weave I saw no trace of scorpion. No scorpion goo from being banged against the tent pole. Nothing. Gingerly I grabbed one of the corners and flung it over. Nothing there, either. But then where. . . ?

"Chloe!" One of the Tousson twins called out in his deep voice from the camp’s edge. When I turned, all the Dig Egypt! kids were watching me. For the first time I noticed that most of them still wore the t-shirts and sweats that we all used for nightclothes. Sue must have roused them straight out of their beds. "Behind you!"

I followed the direction of the Tousson twin’s finger. I’ll be darned if the little fiend wasn’t skittering in my direction, hell-bent on plunging its twitchy stinger into the fleshiest part of me it could find. I was so startled by its velocity that my legs instinctively twitched as I yelped and jumped…

…and side-kicked the scorpion right over the slope edge. I barely felt it brush my toes as it went flying out into the air. It was with amazement that I watched it fall and disappear beyond the rock beneath our feet. Wait a minute! I did that?

"Whoa!" said Bo, running forward.

Before I even realized what I’d done, I was surrounded by the other kids. One of the twins–I still had a hard time telling Seth apart from Cyrus–was clapping me on the back. Someone was picking up my blanket and folding it. Several more were congratulating me. In my thudding head I couldn’t even distinguish the gabble into words, but I knew I didn’t deserve a word of it.

When my eyes cleared and I looked back to camp, I found the path blocked by Kathy Klemper, and looming behind her, Dagmar Sorensson. Dag wore a head of curly red hair cut into an unfortunate wedge I hadn’t seen since I stumbled across some of my mom’s more painfully embarrassing record albums from the eighties–she looked so much like a fast food clown that we called her ‘Rona McDonald’ behind her back. Well, that’s what I called her. It had kind of caught on among the excavation team kids, though.

It was obvious ol’ carrot-top had been giving some new kid a fifty-cent tour of the archaeologist’s camp. He trailed behind her with his suitcase, shoulders slumped, his face hidden beneath his baseball cap.

Even though the rest of us still wore our sleepwear, Kathy was already in her khakis. Her tight ponytail hung down in a perfect tress at the back of her head. Don’t ask me how she kept so tidy–after three days of not washing it, my short black hair was a greasy mess of tangles and snarls that I kept concealed with a bandanna most of the day. Kathy’s expression was so spiteful that you could have collected it in fancy spray bottles and sold it as Calvin Klein’s Utter Disdain. "There she is," she said in one of those voices that could curdle wet concrete. "Did you see, Ms. Sorensson? Chloe kicked local fauna over the cliff." I’d known I hated Kathy three hours into the project; three days in and I wished she’d been the one I’d kicked.

Just the month before in tenth grade English I’d read a short story about a guy named Dorian Grey who never seemed to grow older, though the painting of himself he’d stuffed in his attic practically collected Social Security checks. I had a private theory that Dag had some kind of similar deal going on with her laundry. Her uniforms never wrinkled or grew dirty, but somewhere in someone’s attic was a basket filled with filthy clothes that smelled like rotting corpses with a twist of skunk. I suspected Dag was using more water than her ration. "Chloe Bryce!" she snapped.

I tried not to watch her wedge of orange hair bob atop her head as she stomped over. "How many times I am telling you? Little birds and bees of the desert regions of Egypt are not to be made the trampling upon. We are being guests here. We tread with the light foot!" Dagmar’s Swedish accent always made me feel as if I was lurching around in a rollercoaster.

"My foot are the light foot!" I protested ungrammatically. She made it sound like I made a habit of drop-kicking every Egyptian bird, bug, and mammal I saw! "That scorpion trampled on me!"

"If it makes the trampling on you, it is from you disturbing the tomb of the dead," Dagmar proclaimed. For someone who worked at an archaeological site, she had a weird superstitious streak. "It is curse! You will be being dead from bite of scorpion!"

When Kathy Klemper had the nerve to smirk, I muttered with no little bitterness, "Sounds like you’d be happier if I died of a scorpion bite."

"I am hearing nonsense," Dag continued. "I am your chaperone, yah? Here to be ensuring safety and happiness for all childrens?" Once she’d volleyed that lie, she launched into an address that was intended to cow me with its volume and intensity. By the speech’s end my head was reeling. It was also starting to feel a little baked as the Egyptian sun inched its way over the top of the mess tent.

"Got it," I said when she took an opportunity to breath. "You betcha, coach."

Ooops. Wrong word. I could tell as soon as it left my mouth. Her left eyebrow flew up like it was counterweighted to a heavy pulley. "Chaperone," she said in a tone chipped out of dry ice. "Now is time to be dressing. We have full day ahead. You, new young boy, I show you to your tent," she added. The new kid stood behind her, shifting his weight under his heavy backpack. An iPod was strapped to his waist, but its small earphones had been tucked into a pants pocket. The boy had been staring at me all through Dag’s speech, but it was only at that moment I once more noticed him.

When our eyes met, I stood still, stunned. My flesh had turned to stone.

I couldn’t tear away my gaze from the boy’s brown eyes. Curly brown hair spilled from under his backwards-facing baseball cap onto the nape of his neck. His jaw line sported a trace of brown stubble, as if he hadn’t shaved in several days. "Oh my god," I whispered.

"Ohmigod, who cares?" Sue whispered to me. "He talked to you!" To Mallorie she explained, "Le bel homme a parlé à mon mate du tent!" Mallorie looked as dubious as ever.

The five of us started shuffling our way back to camp. The sounds were now louder of people rousing themselves and getting ready for a day’s work. The rusty water tank was creaking ominously, the way it did when its water supply got low–which was always. And over it all I could smell sausages for breakfast.

I wasn’t hungry at all, though. I couldn’t even stomach the thought of food, or of washing the grit from my face with the half cup of water I’d be allotted for the day. All I could think about was Connor–a boy I already knew. Who was from my school. Who was only a grade ahead of me.

And who was going to bring everything I’d hoped to change about myself crashing down around me? Connor Marsh. Because the voice in my dream had been dead right. I was a total and utter fake, and he was the one person who would know it.

 

BUY THIS BOOK NOW