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Jade follows Dave as he marches through the desert, swiping at the sweat on her brow. “Are you sure there are dinosaur bones allllll the way out here?”
“I’m 100% sure, Jade. Don’t you trust me?”
“Well yeah, duh! I just don’t think that dinosaurs lived in the desert. I thought they lived in jungles and stuff where all the leaves are!”
“They lived all over the place, Jade. They ruled planet Earth before humanity swooped in.”
“Humans didn’t swoop in until millions of years later!”
“I’m speaking metaphorically, Jade.”
“What does metaphorically mean?”
“I dunno. Rose said it.”
Jade giggles, holding a hand over her mouth. “Okay. Well what kinds of dinosaurs are we looking for?”
Dave squints for a second like he’s straining to remember something. “I think the velociraptor was in the desert. And the protoceratops.”
“What’s a protoceratops?”
“Uh, it’s kind of like a triceratops but… proto,” he answers lamely. Jade giggles again.
“Okay! So we’re looking for velociraptor and triceratops bones?”
“Protoceratops bones, Jade. They’re different dinosaurs.”
“But the bones look the same, right?”
“...Uh. I guess so, probably.”
Jade nods and squints around the park a little bit, pushing her glasses up her nose to get a better look. When she spots a long, thin stick, she perks up, running over to it and picking it up. “Look, Dave! I found one! It’s a… uh… tail bone!”
“Tails have lots of little bones, Jade. You saw them at the museum.”
“Oh, yeah. Well then it’s a leg bone!”
Dave narrows his eyes skeptically at her for a moment, and then he nods. “Okay. I guess it could be a leg bone.” He looks around the ground, and then takes a few steps to bend over and pick up a small rock. “And this is a tail bone.”
Jade gasps, staring at the rock like it’s the most incredible thing she’s ever seen. “Wow! That’s really cool, Dave! Maybe you could find a tooth, too!”
Dave’s cheeks flush. “Maybe. They’re kind of little, though. Velociraptors were really, really small.”
“How small?”
“Uh, kind of Bec-sized.”
“Hey! Bec isn’t small! He’s a big dog!”
“Yeah, but he would be a really little dinosaur.”
Jade purses her lips for a moment, but she decides this logic holds up. “Well maybe we just have to look really really close!”
She plops down to sit on the ground cross-legged and starts digging through the dirt with her fingers. It’s dry, since they haven’t had rain in a couple of weeks, and it doesn’t take long before her clothes are covered in dust. She digs for a little while, until she feels like she’s been looking for a reasonable amount of time, and then she holds up a nearby rock, nearly the size of her hand. “Dave, look at this one! I think this is a T-rex tooth!”
Dave’s tiny brow furrows. “T-rexes didn’t live in the desert, Jade.”
Jade’s own brow furrows. “Well obviously this one did!”
“No it didn’t! That’s not a T-rex tooth!”
“It is so!”
They glare at each other, faces scrunched up stubbornly, until Jade feels big hands wrapping around her chest and scooping her up off the ground. She squeals and kicks her legs, giggling as Grandpa says, “Look at you, sprog! You’re all covered in dirt! I think we’re going to have to go home and get you into some new clothes.”
“Nooo!” Jade pouts as Grandpa settles her against his hip.
“Yep! Say goodbye to your friend, pumpkin.”
Jade looks down at Dave, who’s frowning up at her. “Bye, Dave,” she mumbles grumpily.
“Bye, Jade. We can play paleontologists again tomorrow.”
She beams down at him at that. “Okay! We can look in the jungle for T-rex bones!”
Dave opens his mouth as if to say something and then just closes it and nods.
As Grandpa carries her back to the car, Jade sinks her head down against Grandpa’s shoulder. “What kind of dinosaurs did they have in New Zealand, Grandpa?”
He pauses for a moment to think about it, nudging the door to the back seat open with his knee while he does. “I’m not sure! How about the next time we go on a library adventure we look for a book about it?”
Jade smiles sleepily and nods. Despite the fact that she’s nearly six years old, she still hasn’t outgrown her forward-facing carseat, and her head sinks back against the headrest as Grandpa straps her in. “Can we go on a nap adventure when we get home?” she mumbles.
Grandpa reaches out to ruffle her hair and she giggles. “We can always go on a nap adventure, pumpkin.”
She hums, her eyes drifting closed. She falls asleep almost immediately after the car starts moving, dreaming about being paleontologists with Dave and finding a brand new kind of dinosaur—the desert T-rex.