Buried Secrets by Kristi Belcamino (book recommendations for teens txt) 📕

realized she hadn’t given herself enough time to get to the museum so by the time she parked, the reading had already started. She slipped inside the door at the back of the room, hoping she wouldn’t be disruptive.

At first, she scanned the seating area, looking for an available seat nearby, but then her eyes landed on the archeologist who was speaking and she drew back. It was the man who had spoken to her at the exhibit. He was seated before a name plate at the table in the front. His name was David Caldwell. The archeologist who found the sunken treasures. The other archeologist, Malcolm Land, a wiry, blonde-haired man who looked a little like Crocodile Dundee, was staring at her. Dallas could feel her face flush red, but then it got worse when he paused in mid-sentence and raised an eyebrow at her.

A few heads turned. A few people made noises that seemed to scold her for coming in late. She pulled back her shoulders and dared anyone who was scoffing to look her in the eyes. Nobody did. She knew the people in the audience were acting that way because they thought she was rude for coming in late, but she also knew why David Caldwell, had raised his eyebrow at her and stopped talking.

It was clearly a “Gotcha” moment.

But why?

The man, David Caldwell, continued speaking and Dallas caught her breath at his words.

“The discovery of Cleopatra’s tomb would be as monumental as Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922,” he said. “It would be the most significant archeological find in a century.”

He wasn’t telling Dallas anything she didn’t already know, but hearing it said out loud sent a chill down her spine.

Ever since she was a little girl she’d been obsessed with Cleopatra

Dallas knew the exact moment in her childhood when it happened.

Her father, who had left them when she was a baby, had shown up at their Arizona house at dusk.

At the time, Dallas had just returned from an utterly disastrous time at summer camp involving her nearly drowning where she had been mocked and taunted by her fellow campers and forever earned an unfortunate nickname.

Over the years, her father dropped in now and then, staying for a day or two and then leaving again. He would send her postcards from around the world with pictures of the places he was photographing for National Geographic.

And on birthdays and Christmas, he would send her exotic gifts, such as hand-carved dolls from Tahiti or scorpions encased in amber.

On this day, when her father arrived unexpectedly at their house, Dallas had been home from camp for a week, but was still morose and pouting about the humiliation she’d endured. Her mother had been sympathetic, but not to the point of babying her. Instead, her mother had talked about getting Dallas private swim lessons and helping her learn aerobics.

Even my mother thinks I’m fat, Dallas said, feeling sorry for herself.

On this night, her mother had been sitting on the edge of her bed trying to coax Dallas to come downstairs and eat dinner when the doorbell rang. Their dogs, three giant labs, went wild.

When they moved out to the Saguaro-dotted desert, her mother had said she was either going to buy a shotgun or a pack of dogs. She wasn’t going to spend her nights out here alone in the desert.

Her dad came to visit and bought her mother a gun, saying dogs were too much work.

But then six months later, he showed up again with three lab puppies he said had been abandoned.

“Three?” Her mother’s voice contained a joy and excitement that was contagious. Her mother grabbed her father and kissed him and hugged him. Dallas was used to it. Even though her dad didn’t live at home, her parents were clearly still in love. She no longer begged him to stay. Her mother said he was a “free spirit.”

Then that one summer night, when the dogs were going bonkers, Dallas saw her mother’s eyes dart to her bedroom across the hall where the shotgun was on the closet shelf. Her dad had said that the gun didn’t even need to be fired—any prowler would run for the hills just hearing her mother chamber a round in the shotgun.

Her mother was up now and across the room. Dallas caught up to her downstairs where the dogs were still barking like banshees at the silhouette of a man standing in the open doorway.

It was her dad. Dallas ran and hugged him as hard as she could.

After pouring themselves glasses of whiskey, her mother and father settled themselves on the front porch furniture. Their faces were barely visible from the fairy lights strung across the porch. In the distance, a cow bellowed. Chickens scratched and clucked on the side of the house. The smell of the neighbor’s fresh cut alfalfa field traveled on a breeze and Dallas inhaled deeply, sipping on her own Kool-Aid and listening in on the adult conversation.

She didn’t want to miss a second with her dad. It was hard to tell when he would leave again.

She looked down and saw a garden snake slithering under their feet. She leaned over to pick it up, letting it slither through her fingers in an endless circle.

Her father had jumped a little when he saw the snake.

“I forget those little guys are harmless. Some places I go, you see a snake, it could be a rattler or a Cobra. Most of the time when I see a snake, it’s one that wants me dead if I don’t kill it first.”

“Cobras?” Dallas asked sleepily, stroking the snake’s head. “Will they really kill you? Like they did Cleopatra?”

Dallas and her mother had watched a movie with Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra the previous winter. Her mother had rented it after Dallas asked about the necklace her mother always wore. It was an Ankh, her mother said.

“It’s a symbol of life,” she said. “It’s an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol that represented