Answer:
chi
Explanation:
Vinny slipped, and dropped his towel in the mud. He
picked it up and tried to brush it off, but instead smeared
the mud spot around until the towel resembled something
someone’s dog had slept on. “Tst,” he said.
Joe-Boy, hiking down just behind him, laughed. “Hey,
Vinny, just think, that kid walked where you walking.”
“Shuddup,” Vinny said.
“You prob’ly stepping right where his foot was.”
Vinny moved to the edge of the trail, where the ravine fell
through a twisted jungle of gnarly trees and underbrush to the
stream far below. He could see Starlene and Mo farther ahead,
their heads bobbing as they walked, both almost down to the
pond where the boy had died.
“Hey,” Joe-Boy went on, “maybe you going be the one to
find his body.”
“You don’t cut it out, Joe-Boy, I going . . . I going . . . ”
“What, cry?”
Vinny scowled. Sometimes Joe-Boy was a big fat babooze.
They slid down the trail. Mud oozed between Vinny’s
toes. He grabbed at roots and branches to keep from falling.
Mo and Starlene were out of sight now, the trail ahead having
cut back.
Joe-Boy said, “You going jump in the water and go down
and your hand going touch his face, stuck under the rocks.
Ha ha ha . . . a ha ha ha!”
Vinny winced. He didn’t want to be here. It was too soon,
way too soon. Two weeks and one day.
He saw a footprint in the mud and stepped around it.
The dead boy had jumped and had never come back up.
Four search and rescue divers hunted for two days straight
and never found him. Not a trace. Gave Vinny the creeps. It
didn’t make sense. The pond wasn’t that big.
He wondered why it didn’t seem to bother anyone else.
Maybe it did and they just didn’t want to say.
Butchie was the kid’s name. Only fourteen.
Fourteen.
Two weeks and one day ago he was walking down this
trail. Now nobody could find him.
The jungle crushed in, reaching over the trail, and Vinny
