LITMIR.BIZ

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      "Give me a couple of minutes, and I'll walk you home, Amy," I said, gathering up the tools. "I want to see what Fred is up to." As I pushed Amy's bike into their driveway, I observed a light shining from Fred's window. It looks like he's hard at work. "Can you see what Fred's doing?" I asked Amy. I waited outside the front door, kicking some fallen leaves with my sneakers.

      "Bill! Come on up," Fred yelled from his open bedroom window. I ran up the steps and rounded the corner to his room. An eerie, green-yellow, glowing light poured into the hallway. The computer was on.

      "Hey, Bill! We have a real mystery on our hands," Fred exclaimed, waving me into the room. "It's about the painting!"

      Fred was busy hunched over his computer table. He had a really fantastic room. Above the desk were shelves lined with dinosaur models. There was just about every type of prehistoric monster you could imagine.

      "What's up?" I asked. "You really took off in a hurry!"

      "Look at this, Bill," Fred said. He started typing on the keyboard and pulled up some information titled "Dinosaurs" in big, orange letters. "I knew something was funny about that painting, but I had to be sure!" he said. "I've been checking out when the theory of the Tyrannosaurus changed."

      I pulled up a chair and examined the screen more closely. "What changed?" I asked. "The dinosaurs look the same as I've always remembered." Fred looked confident and turned towards me. He was going to tell me the complete story.

      "You know, for years it was accepted that the Tyrannosaurus walked upright and dragged its tail on the ground," he explained.

      "So what?" I shrugged.

      "Well," Fred replied. "We've got a problem. The painting simply doesn't fit into the time period in which it was painted."

      "I'm sorry, Fred," I yawned, leaning back in the chair. "I still don't follow what you’re getting at. —So what's the problem?"

      "The problem is that the dinosaur painting was signed and dated by the artist in 1953. Every artist around that time would have showed the tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus," Fred replied. "Our painting doesn't. It shows the modern version of the way the Tyrannosaurus looks. This means that either the painting is a modern fake, or Arthur's theories about dinosaurs were ahead of their time!"

      "Couldn't he have just made a lucky guess?" I asked.

      "I'm not sure," Fred mumbled as he resumed typing on the keyboard.

      Suddenly, the echo of the downstairs phone broke the silence. "It's your dad, Bill," Amy called out. "Dinner time—you better get home!"

      "The mystery will have to wait," Fred said.

      "See you tomorrow," I said, walking out of Fred's room and down the steps towards the front door.

      "I'll try and find some more good stuff about the painting," Fred shouted from his room. My fast walk turned into a run. Dinner must be almost ready!

      That evening, my mind ran through all the events of the day. The flea market, the painting, and the mystery. They all spun in my brain as I fell asleep. It certainly wasn't a restful sleep. In one dream, I was being chased down the flea market aisles by a Tyrannosaurus rex. The real shocker was when the dinosaur started sneezing at me, like my sister April. Fortunately, I was saved by the buzzing alarm clock.

      CHAPTER 5

      Sunday afternoon started with a phone call from Fred. He was coming right over. It wasn't long before we were gathered in front of the painting in the little room. Even April and Amy had showed up. The complete patrol was there. Every eyeball scanned over our mystery gift on the wall. I spotted a small carpet leaning in the corner and rolled it out for us to sit on.

      Fred began to explain his mysterious discoveries. "From what you've told us, the painting must only be a couple of years old," April commented, looking very confident. "That's why the flea market people just gave you the painting. It simply wasn't worth anything!"

      "It sure does look old," Amy added.

      "Hey—I'll get a magnifying glass," I suggested. "Maybe we can find something new!"

      A few minutes later, I returned and started going over the entire painted surface. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, but it must have looked very impressive to Amy.

      "—Well, it's signed—Arthur 1953," I mumbled.

      "We already know that!" April blurted out. "Tell us something new!"

      My face must have turned bright red as I joined the others on the carpet.

      Fred started telling us how dinosaur displays in museums are being modernized. "You know, they're now using lightweight copies of the original fossilized bones. Plastics are now being used to build dinosaur skeletons today. They are exact castings of the real bones, only they weigh a lot less. They are able to construct some really great dinosaur action scenes!"

      "I read that the man who discovered the Tyrannosaurus rex in 1905 wasn't able to build the skeleton he wanted," April declared.

      "That's right!" Fred exclaimed. "His name was Henry Fairfield Osborn, and he was director of the American Museum of History in New York. He had the right idea about dinosaurs, but it was forgotten over time. His Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was displayed incorrectly for many years."

      "Why didn't they get it right the first time?" I asked.

      "Like I was saying, the original bones were just too heavy!" Fred declared. "They aren't even bone anymore—they're now solid rock!"

      "I heard that over millions of years the bone was replaced by minerals in the ground," April added.

      "Exactly!" Fred exclaimed. "The proper term is fossilized bone. They tried to assemble the Tyrannosaurus bones, but because they were so heavy, the tail was put on the floor for support."

      "Since the museum display was wrong, artists who did textbook illustrations of dinosaurs had it wrong also!" Fred snapped.

      "So everyone thought that this dinosaur walked upright, like a person," I mentioned, raising an eyebrow.

      "The modern Tyrannosaurus drawings show it walking with its head lower and its tail in the air. That's known as the new horizontal posture Tyrannosaurus," Fred said. "It's only been about twenty years since this new theory has been accepted. This brings us back to my problem with the painting. —If people were getting it wrong years ago, why didn't Arthur?"

      Nobody could answer Fred's question. We sat there in complete silence staring at the painting. Time seemed to stand still, and the painted dinosaurs started to look very real! I rubbed my eyes when I thought I saw the Tyrannosaurus breathing. Suddenly, Amy began to say something. "A long, long time ago, before cars and stores, I wish we were in the land of dinosaurs."

      As my eyes cleared, I noticed that the painting appeared to be very close to us.

      "Whoa!" Fred gasped. "Did the painting fall on us, or what?"

      "This carpet is really bumpy!" April complained. There was a burnt smell in the air, and it wasn't Mom's cooking. It wasn't even Dad's pancakes!

      "Boy!" Fred said irritably. "I better go home. Something weird is going on with my eyes!"

      "—I don't think we can go home right now," Amy said slowly.

      I stood up and examined the landscape in front of me. It looked exactly like the dinosaur painting. Orange-colored clouds swirled above us, and I thought I caught a glimpse of a very large bird flying by. We were definitely not in my home anymore! The others stood up slowly and glared at me.

      "Don't look at me!" I shrugged.

      "You did it, Amy," Fred snapped. "It was those goofy words that you said."

      "Wait!" I gasped. "Nobody move. Maybe this will go away in a few minutes." Distant volcanoes continued to spew dark brown trails of smoke. The rocky ground that surrounded us was covered with fine, gray volcanic ash.

      "It's not

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