A momentary hush fell across the table. Jessica saw Ms. Thomas glance up, her interest piqued for a moment by the sudden silence, then turn back to her screen.

Constanza nodded. “Number three: Snake pit.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

“Okay,” Jessica said. “I’m going to guess that this snake pit is more on the weird side than the lame?”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “If you believe in all that stuff.”

“What stuff?” Jessica asked.

“Stupid legends,” Liz said. “Like, supposedly a panther lives there.”

“It escaped from a circus that came through a long time ago,” Jen said. “There are articles about it in the library, from the Bixby Register in the 1930s or something.”

“Articles you’ve actually read?” Liz asked.

Jen rolled her eyes. “Maybe I haven’t, but everyone—”

“And this panther’s, like, eighty years old?” Liz interrupted.

“Well, maybe not the 1930s…”

“Anyway, Jessica,” Liz said. “The snake pit’s just this lame place where you find old arrowheads. From the Indians. Big deal.”

“We’re called Native Americans,” Constanza corrected.

“But this is from the really old days,” Maria said, “before the Anglos moved all the other tribes here from the east. It was a village where the original natives of Oklahoma used to live—Stone Age cave people, not the Native Americans who live here now.”

“You’re right, that’s not lame,” Jessica said. “But it’s hard to imagine a Stone Age Bixby.”

“It’s not only arrowheads,” Jen explained seriously. “There’s this big stone that sticks up out of the ground, right in the middle of the snake pit. People go there at midnight. And if you build this certain symbol out of rocks, it’ll change right in front of your eyes exactly at the stroke of twelve.”

“Change into what?”

“Well…the rocks don’t change into anything,” Jen said. “They’re still rocks. But they move around.”

“Lame,” Liz declared.

“My older brother did it a year ago,” Maria said. “It scared him to death. He won’t even talk about it now.”

Jen leaned forward, still talking in a quiet, ghost-story voice. “And even though archaeologists have been working there for a long time, you can still find arrowheads if you look. They’re, like, a thousand years old.”

“Ten thousand, you mean.”

Jessica and the others turned to look across the library. It was Dess, the girl from Jessica’s math class, sitting alone in a corner.

“Okay…,” Liz said slowly, her eyes rolling a little for the other girls at the table. Then she whispered, “Speaking of lame.”

Jessica glanced back at Dess, who didn’t seem to have heard. She had dropped her head back into her book, reading through dark glasses, as if no longer interested in their conversation. Jessica hadn’t even noticed Dess, but she must have been there the whole period, camped in her corner of the library, books and paper splayed around her.