Geogirl. Kelly Rysten

I…I… I think so,” he chattered. He splashed to a standing position and attempted to turn on the light while shivering. He was soaked from head to toe. “Here!” He said. “Catch!” He waited for me to acknowledge that he was throwing something and then flung the GPS up to me. I ran across the bridge to catch it and my foot went right through a rotten board. I was lucky I was young and healthy as I sunk to my knee and fell forward right in the middle of the bridge. The GPS clunked across the boards and fell off the other side. I was glad the farmer was gone as I pulled my leg out of the hole and pulled up my pants leg to assess the damage. My shin was scraped a little but I wasn’t really hurt. I’d frightened Twiggy a lot more than me. He came splashing up the river bank and tender-footed it up onto the bridge.

      “Are you okay?”

      “Better than the bridge,” I said. “Does the flashlight still work?”

      “For now. Does the GPS still work?”

      “I don’t know. It went that way.”

      “Hey! You have shins, too!” he said as he gave me a hand up.

      “I bet I even have calves attached to them.”

      We climbed down the river bank to find the GPS unit lodged between two rocks, the water lapping dangerously close.

      “It already took one dunking,” Twiggy said. “But they tend to be a little water resistant.”

      Twiggy picked up the GPS and looked at the screen.

      “Isn’t that just like a GPS?” he asked. “It wants new batteries.”

      “We hope it wants new batteries,” I said. “And we hope I didn’t kill it.”

      “It really does want new batteries. It has a ‘low bat’ message on it.”

      “Well, where was it pointing to before it took up bridge diving as a hobby?” I asked.

      “You’ll have to come under the bridge,” he said as he strapped the flashlight onto his head.

      “Oh! So that’s how it goes!” I said. “That certainly looked like a strange flashlight to me.”

      “It’s a headlamp.”

      “It’s a geek label,” I said.

      He just smiled because he thought it was a compliment.

      “If I go under the bridge I’ll get all wet,” I complained.

      “A little water never hurt anybody. Besides, I’m taking you back to your room after this.”

      “No you’re not. I’m turning in my keys, remember?”

      “Oh… yeah. So what are you going to do?”

      “I was going to go geocaching with you.”

      “Okay, well, hmm…” he said.

      About this time I could hear my mother lecturing me about thinking things through before promising to go off on crazy hunts without having a plan in place, a destination in mind and funds to pay for it all.

      “Let’s see what we can do if we only get a little wet,” he said as he dripped water all over the riverbank and my shoes. “Maybe the flashlight will help.”

      I sat down and took off my shoes and socks, then pulled my pants legs up as far as they would go.

      “See? I do have calves,” I said.

      “Amazing,” he said. “I never knew.”

      He put his arm around my shoulders and pointed the headlamp up at the underside of the bridge.

      “See where the light is shining?”

      “Yeah.”

      “That’s where the GPS said ground zero was.”

      I always associated ground zero with the spot bombs fall but I decided it was a geocaching term I better get familiar with.

      “Okay, maybe it’s not too deep there,” I said.

      “Come around here where it’s shallow,” he said as he led me back into the river. The rocks were slippery and I gave up very quickly on trying to hold the ends of my pants legs up. I needed my hands to balance as I slipped and slid my way under the bridge.

      “See? Isn’t this fun?” Twiggy asked.

      “There aren’t fish in this river, are there?” I asked.

      “No, of course not,” he said, but I didn’t believe him.

      “Trout and little guppies are fine,” I said. “I’ve even caught a trout once. But I don’t like those spooky catfish. They’re ugly. And they have wiggly whiskers.”

      He laughed, “Never fear. I will protect you from the catfish. Now where is that cache? The description said a light should reveal where it is hidden.”

      We heard a clunkada, clunkada, clunk as a vehicle drove over the bridge.

      “I guess they know which parts of it will support them,” I said. The car stopped and somebody got out. He clumped over the bridge until he reached the hole I’d left behind. He gazed down through the hole to the river below.

      “Howdy!” he said.

      “Hi!” Twiggy and I chimed back.

      “Old bridge gets older every day,” he said.

      “Yeah, bridges do that,” Twiggy said.

      “Havin’ fun down there?”

      “Yeah, we are,” Twiggy answered.

      Just then the man flinched like something hurt his eyes. He jerked back and we couldn’t see him when he stood up. He bent back down.

      “What’cha doin’ with a headlamp on?” he asked.

      “Snipe hunt!” Twiggy said. “They’re attracted to light!”

      “Uh huh, yeah, right,” the man said. “Well, y’all take care down there.”

      “Okay.”

      After the man left I said, “Snipes don’t like light. You have to hunt them at night and they like bacon.”

      He just looked at me as if he didn’t understand a word I said.

      We waded around and Twiggy shined the light from every spot around ground zero that we could stand safely. My pants got soaked. The water was cold but after a while we got used to it. I was getting a stiff neck from looking up at the bridge. Then an idea hit me like a bright light in the darkness.

      “Twiggy?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Where were you standing when you talked to that man?”

      “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. Why?”

      “Well, figure it out. I think you shined the light on the cache while you were talking to him. He was talking to us just fine and then something hurt his eyes. Like a bright light appearing all of a sudden.”

      “We should have seen it if that happened.”

      “Not if it happened really fast and the reflection went through the hole.”

      “If the reflection went through the hole then there has to be a direct line from where that guy was standing and the cache. Go up and stand where that guy was standing. I’ll walk around down here and try to line up on the hole again.”

      “Okay.”

      I waded to shore, climbed out, then climbed the bank to the side of the road and walked out onto the bridge. I looked around to be sure there were no cars and then looked for the hole my leg had gone through. I found it and waited for Twiggy to find it from underneath. I could hear the