Off the Wall (7 page)

“I'll look inside,” said Daria. And before either Jane or Lucy realized what she was doing or could stop her,
Daria had vaulted up onto the back of one of the armored horses and sat down behind the suit of armor.

She grinned smugly down at them from her perch.

“Get down from there!
Get down!
” said Lucy frantically. “You'll set off the alarm!”

But amazingly, no alarm rang. Maybe it hadn't occurred to the museum that anyone might actually climb onto one of the horses.

“You can't be up there!” hissed Jane.

“Too bad. I
am
up here.” Daria reached around and opened the knight's visor. Since she was sitting behind him, of course she couldn't see inside his helmet.

“Lucy, look inside and tell me what you see in there,” Daria ordered.

“How?” Lucy asked. “I'm nowhere near tall enough to see in there.”

Besides,
thought Jane,
what if she peeks inside and a mummy pops out? That would just about scare me to death.

But Daria wouldn't accept any excuses. “Jane can hold you up.”

“What? No, I can't,” said Jane.

“I'm not coming down until you look inside this knight's helmet,” said Daria. “I dare you.”

“Not again. This is ridiculous,” said Jane in despair. “Lucy, let's just get out of here.”

“No, no,” said Lucy. “Just hold me up for one second. I'll look inside the visor.”

Jane sighed. The night wasn't going to go very well if Daria kept daring Lucy to do things. “Well, I'm not lifting you,” she told Lucy. “I'll get on my hands and knees and you can stand on my back.”

“Ouch,” she said a second later, as first one and then the other of Lucy's feet pressed heavily down on her back.

Above her, she heard a metallic creak as Lucy lifted the knight's visor again. Then a metallic clang as she dropped it shut. Then the welcome thud as Lucy jumped back onto the floor.

And then the very
un
welcome sound of the sword from the knight's hand clattering to the floor.

Jane straightened up hastily just as Daria hopped off the horse's back. The three girls looked uneasily at one another, and then at the entrance.

When no guard came rushing in, the girls turned back to the sword.

“It must have been loose,” said Jane. She didn't sound very sure.

“Not glued in very well, I guess,” said Lucy.

“So what do you want to do about it?” asked Daria. “Should we try to put it back?”

Jane glared at Daria. “Thanks for getting us into this mess.”

“Lucy's the one who jumped off like a ton of bricks and dislodged the sword,” said Daria.

“I'm not putting that sword back,” Lucy said. “What if it falls again and hurts someone?”

“Well, we can't just leave it there! They might suspect that someone wandered around alone during the lock-in,” Jane pointed out.

Daria's lips tightened. She strode over to the sword and picked it up by the hilt with her finger and thumb. Holding it far away from her, she reached overhead and put it on top of a nearby cabinet.

“There. You can stop worrying,” she said. “Tomorrow, write a note saying where it is, then leave the note somewhere that someone's sure to find it.”

“Hey, that's not a bad idea,” said Lucy approvingly. “We can leave the note at the information desk on our way home. Good! That solves that. And now, back to the mummy. There was nothing inside that armor except
stale museum air. Of course, we'd have to check
all
the suits of armor to be sure there's not a mummy inside one of them.”

Jane stretched out her aching back. “There isn't a mummy in
any
of them,” she snapped. “It would have fallen apart. Mummies are all crumbling and rotting inside those old bandages or whatever they're wrapped in.”

“Wrong again,” said Daria, whose brief moment of helpfulness seemed to be over. “Egyptian mummies were well preserved. When scientists unwrapped King Ramses, he looked just the way he had when he was alive.”

Lucy shook her head. “Except that he was all shriveled up and leathery-looking. And his head looked just like a turtle's head. I've seen pictures in my social studies book.”

“What does it matter, anyway?” asked Jane. She didn't want to think about what King Ramses had looked like when he was unwrapped. “Let's move on to the dinosaur exhibit. And
no more dares
!”

“The experts can say whatever they want,” said Lucy. “But I say
Tyrannosaurus rex
couldn't have been all that scary in real life. Not with those puny little arms.”

“But look at those teeth,” Jane pointed out.

The three girls were standing under the hulking form of a
T. rex
skeleton. Its eyeless skull was glaring down at them. Its teeth—six inches long, the wall placard said—were definitely sharp. But its arms did look kind of useless.

Jane noticed that for the first time all evening, Daria looked impressed. She walked up to get a closer look at the humongous skeleton and read the information on the wall. “It says here that
T. rex
es had really bad breath,” she said. “Their teeth were covered with so much bacteria that they could give their prey a fatal infection. I guess if they didn't eat their prey first.”

“
That
I can believe,” said Lucy.

The
T. rex
skeleton had all kinds of company in the room. Compared to some of the other skeletons, it wasn't even that big. One dinosaur's skull brushed the ceiling, and its body was as long as the whole room.

“That isn't a real skeleton,” said Daria. “No animal was ever that big.”

“That's not what it says here,” Lucy replied. She was studying the information card. “This isn't even the biggest dinosaur! They've found one in Argentina that's a
hundred and fifty feet long. Just its
spine
weighs a ton. Two thousand pounds!.”

Daria looked as if she couldn't even comprehend what Lucy was saying..

“And look at these dino eggs!” said Lucy, stopping by a sheet of petrified mud. Eons earlier, a dinosaur had scratched a little hollow into the mud to use as a nest. “They're almost as big as I am. And this footprint is
bigger
than I am!”

She lay down next to the footprint to prove it, then hopped back to her feet. “Don't they have anything interactive in the dino exhibit? We might as well do something while we're looking around. Let's see what's in the other room.”

The next room had tons of interactive stuff, but it was obviously meant for children who were a lot younger than the three girls. For one thing, its main feature was a huge wooden jungle gym shaped like a dinosaur skeleton. There were also tables with dinosaur coloring books and a sandbox where kids could play with plastic toy dinosaurs. Jane noticed that someone had buried a lot of the dinosaurs upside down. There were a bunch of interactive displays, but they were disappointingly
babyish. All except one—the replica of a dinosaur skull with very, very pointy teeth.

Can You Imagine?
said the plaque next to the skull.
Allosaurus
needed these big teeth to chew his food. Dino meat was a lot tougher than a hamburger! You can feel how sharp they are, but be careful!

Lucy pressed a careful finger onto one of the skull's front teeth. “Yup. Sharp.”

“I'll pass,” said Jane.

Then Daria reached into the open jaws to touch one of the replica's back teeth—and the jaws snapped shut on her arm.

“Hey!” said Daria. “Is that supposed to happen?” She shook her wrist to free it, but the jaws stayed firmly closed. “What a strange thing to have in a children's room,” she said after a second.

“It must be broken. Maybe there's a spring inside or something. Does it hurt?” asked Lucy.

“As a matter of fact, it does,” said Daria grimly. With her left hand, she was trying to bend back the top jaw, but it wouldn't budge. “Hey, you two—how about not just
watching
me?”

Jane and Lucy both sprang to help her. “Jane, you
hold that side and I'll hold this one,” ordered Lucy. Carefully they grabbed the jaws, trying to keep their fingers clear of those huge teeth. “Daria, you press down on the lower jaw and—”

“And get bitten?” asked Daria angrily. “The only place to press down is onto the teeth!”

“Oh yeah. Sorry,” Lucy said. “All right, then, try not to move. Jane, lift your side when I say three. One, two, three!”

They pulled as hard as they could.

“I think it moved a little on my side,” Jane said after a few seconds.

“Mine too. I'll count again. One, two . . .”

This time, with a creaking sound, the jaws opened a tiny bit.

“Progress,” said Lucy. “Try again.”

“And try
faster
. My hand is starting to burn from the pain,” said Daria.

On their third try, the jaws finally opened—and Daria slipped her arm out. Both Lucy and Jane gasped when they saw how mangled and red the skin on her arm was.

“We've got to get something to put on that,” Lucy
said. “Or at least wash it so that—”

Daria interrupted her. “
Shhhh!
I hear something!”

“Matty? Is that you?”

It was a woman's voice. A guard calling to another guard? It had to be.

“Matty!” the woman said again. “Are you okay?”

Now they could hear footsteps. And they were coming closer.

For the third time the guard called out. Her voice was sharper this time.

“Who's in there? Stay where you are!”

“This way,” hissed Daria. She grabbed the hands of the other girls and all but dragged them across the floor.

Through the dim light, Jane realized that they were heading to the dinosaur-shaped play equipment. But they couldn't hide under that. The guard would be able to see right through the ribs!

No, Daria was leading them out through the dinosaur's ribs and to the other side. She pointed with her chin toward what looked like a pile of rocks. After a second, Jane could see that they had an opening that looked like a cave entrance. That must be where Daria wanted them to hide.

Jane's leg slammed hard against something. “Ouch,”
she said in a loud, normal voice.

“Quiet! Get down!”
Daria's whisper had the intensity of a shriek. She dropped to her knees and began crawling rapidly toward the play cave. Jane and Lucy followed her.

We can't fit through that,
Jane thought in terror. But Daria was scrambling through the entrance with Lucy just behind her. Jane took a breath and crawled in after them. Then, panting, the three of them leaned against the wall of the tiny chamber they had just entered.

It was completely dark. Jane put out a careful hand and touched the wall of the cave. It wasn't rock—it was something that felt fake. She realized that they must be inside some kind of make-believe cave.

“That was lucky,” said Lucy. “How did you know this was here?”

Daria shrugged. “I just noticed it. I was—”

Then she stopped.

Someone was walking toward them.

The guard!
Jane mouthed silently.

The footsteps were slow and steady, as if the walker knew exactly where she was going. Step, step, step . . . right toward the cave.

There's no door,
Jane thought. And without a door, she
could see that a light was coming toward them as well. It was swinging back and forth in slow arcs. A flashlight!

Step, step, step. Jane didn't dare move. But from the corner of her eye, she saw that the light was being trained on the cave.

In a few seconds the guard would find them.

Jane closed her eyes and waited to be caught. She was already imagining how she would try to explain this to Willow and Katherine. Would they be kicked out of the lock-in—and if they were, where could they go? How would she ever explain what happened to her mother?