The Mystery of the Third Lucretia | Rescuing Seneca Crane | The Adventure at Simba Hill

ADVENTURE AT SIMBA HILL

Chapter 1: Camellia, Lucas, and the Personal Cooling System

ONE WORD and i hack u 2 pieces and throw u 2 the hyenas.

One word about what?

I stared at my phone. The text was from my best friend, Lucas Stickney. We’re both girls.

I texted back, wtm? That stood for what the meep? Meep is what Lucas and I substitute for the kind of words fourteen year olds like us aren’t allowed to say in front of adults, and using it has kind of gotten to be a habit.

The text came back. STARVING hyenas.

I still had no clue.

It was a snowy Sunday afternoon in December. Mom was on the other end of the couch leafing through a magazine as we watched old 30 Rock episodes from Netflix. She must have seen my expression out of the corner of her eye, because she looked up from the page and said, “What’s going on?”

I did a palms up, but before I could tell her, I heard people coming up the stairs to our duplex. The next second there was a knock.

The minute I opened the door I understood.

Lucas was on the landing. Starting at the bottom and working my way to the top, she was wearing: a pair of hiking boots, the kind made for summer, with vents on the sides (her feet must have been freezing in the cold Minnesota weather); a pair of something like cargo pants stuffed into the boots, with bunches of pockets, and zippers around the calves and around the thighs so you could turn them into cropped pants or Bermuda shorts; a white shirt with sleeves that could be rolled up and buttoned with a tab to make them short sleeves; and a journalist vest, with even more pockets than the pants. And to top it all off, one of those safari helmet things. It was hard and white, with a strap under the chin and—I couldn’t believe it—a little bitty fan on an arm hanging over the brim right in front.

Lucas stood there for approximately twenty seconds staring at me, her eyes daring me to say a single word.

I tried not to smile as I took it all in, but I’m not sure I managed it. Mom was standing behind me. I wondered if she was able to keep a straight face.

Finally Camellia’s head popped out from behind Lucas. “I wanted to give y’all time to get the full effect,” she said in that big Southern accent she uses when she remembers.

Camellia—or, as Lucas calls her, the Fair Camellia—is Lucas’s mom.

“Doesn’t she look like she’s just come out of the African shrub?”

Lucas rolled her eyes. “It’s bush, Mom. African bush.”

“Bush, shrub, whatever.”

“Come in! It’s cold in the stairwell!” Mom said. From the sound of her voice, I was almost one hundred percent positive she was trying not to laugh.

I should explain about Camellia. First off, she’s beautiful. She has red hair and long legs and big blue eyes, and she spends at least two hours every day working out with her own personal trainer, so she’s gorgeous. As for her accent, she’s lived in Saint Paul for more than seventeen years, so sometimes she forgets to use it and it goes away almost completely.

Camellia loves Lucas and her brother, who Lucas calls the Brat Child, but she seems to love shopping almost as much as she loves her kids. She’s totally into looks and clothes. The problem is, Lucas is totally not into looks or clothes.

When Lucas and her mom were in the living room and the door was closed behind them, my mom managed to come up with, “That’s a very impressive outfit you’re wearing, Lucas.”

Lucas kept drilling me with the look that I knew meant something about feeding pieces of me to starving hyenas, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to look enthused.

Camellia was holding Lucas’s winter coat draped over a stack of gift-wrapped packages. Mom took the pile and put it on the coffee table.

“I had just the friendliest clerk at REI,” Camellia gushed as she waved away Mom’s offer to take her full-length fur. “He was cute, too. He just showed me every little thing Lucas would need for goin’ on safari. All the fabrics are made to stay cool in hot weather, and they can be washed out in the sink and dry in no time.”

“And the pith helmet? Did that come from REI?” Mom asked.

Pith helmet? Was that what it was really called?

Camellia turned to gaze at the hat with something like rapture. Lucas was looking up cross-eyed at the fan.

“No, I found that in a special catalog,” Camellia said. “It’s a personal cooling system! Don’t you just love it? I thought it was so practical. I mean, in Kenya, the girls are going to be at the equator. It’s hot at the equator.”

No meep, Sherlock.

Camellia looked at Lucas and clasped her gloved hands together. “Okay, honey, show ’em!”

Lucas rolled her eyes again. “MO-om!”

“C’mon, punkin, it’s the best part!”

Lucas looked at me again. Her expression had changed. Now it said, “Please save me!” Then she reached up under the hat brim, flipped a little switch, and the fan started blowing on her face.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

Lucas said with mock enthusiasm, “There’s an outfit just like this for you, too. Including the hat.”

The thought knocked the smile off my face.

Camellia took the wrapped packages from the coffee table, handed a small one to Mom, and gave the rest of the stack to me. “I figured that since Allen and I were responsible for gettin’ your uncle to take you along on his trip, the least we could do would be to provide one of your outfits. Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.”

Mom, obviously trying hard to keep from laughing, said, “What do you say, hon?”

I realized I was standing there with my mouth open. “Um, thank you so much for the . . . really thoughtful gift, Camellia.”

“Well, we’d better run. I have more gifts to deliver. Lucas, are you comin’?”

“Why don’t you stay?” I asked. “We’re watching 30 Rock.”

“Yeah, you can hang out,” Mom said. “We’re going to have pizza later. Cossetta’s.”

“Yum. If it’s Cossetta’s I’m staying. If that’s okay.” She looked at her Mom.

“I’ll just get along, then,” Camellia said.

“We’ll see you again before the holiday.” Mom opened the door for her.

“Merry Christmas to y’all,” Camellia said. “Bah-baah.” (That’s bye-bye in Camellia language.) She disappeared, her mink dragging on the stairs behind her. I wondered how anybody could walk on Minnesota’s ice in boots with five-inch heels, but if anybody could do it, it would be Camellia.

Mom closed the door. Lucas pulled off the hat, sighed, leaned against the door, and closed her eyes like a drama queen. “Welcome to my world.”

I should probably explain why Camellia was shopping for Lucas at REI, instead of Nordstrom’s, like usual. My uncle Geoff was going to Kenya over Christmas vacation. He was going to a cave where some archaeologists had been digging up artifacts. (That’s what they call the art and pots and other things they find in really ancient sites.) He’s an archaeology professor at the University of Minnesota, and he’s always running off to where somebody is digging up treasures from thousands of years ago. He was making this trip to join one of his former students, who’d been working most of the year at this archaeological dig at a place called Simba Hill.

Lucas had been thinking and talking about Africa every chance she got since the monthlong Africa Awareness Project at the school she goes to. So of course when she found out Uncle Geoff was going to Kenya, she told Camellia and her dad, Allen the Meep. Lucas’s dad is a famous attorney who goes all over the world working for clients. He almost always wins his cases because he’s one of the world’s greatest arguers. If arguers is even a word.

Well, first thing you know, Allen sets up this private meeting with Uncle Geoff where he asks if Lucas and I can go along on the trip. The deal was that Lucas’s super-rich family would pay for both of us, because, first, they want Lucas to have all of these experiences, which they think will help her get into Harvard, and second, it would be their way of thanking me for being such a good friend to Lucas and even saving her life once.

As an added bonus, Allen said he would make a large donation to help pay for the archaeological dig itself. Archaeologists are always looking for money to fund their work.

Well, that did it. Uncle Geoff immediately said yes.

(I know that Allen doesn’t sound much like a meep when I say all this, but he really is one. Take my word for it.)

Anyway, a couple days after Christmas, there Lucas and I were with Uncle Geoff, in Africa, on safari, with dangerous wild animals running around loose, in the middle of a ring of smugglers that was almost more dangerous than the animals, and—well, that’s what this story is about.

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