The Bradford Street Archeological Society
Minutes for October 4, 2— meeting
Jenni B—–, acting president, presiding
Minutes taken by Jenni B—–, secretary

Members in attendance: Jenni B——

This may be the last meeting of the Society but someone has to write down what happened to us in case someone later wants to know. Or later on when we want to remember. And I'm all that's left. Typical.

Also typical is that I was the one who said this was all a bad idea in the first place, but oh no, no one would listen to me. Richie had been watching the History Channel and wanted to try to find some bits of "Old Mex" civilization. That's how he said it too: "Old Mex." And no matter how many times I told him that no, it was "Olmecs," and no, that was in Mexico and not in Tennessee, he insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about.

He didn't listen to me either when he announced that he was forming this society. I played along because I thought, well, if there was going to be a society it should be at least properly organized. And someone would need to keep them all out of trouble, especially if they were to be digging in strange places.

He pulled together all the kids in the neighborhood and made himself president. I told him there was no way I was going to be the group's secretary just because I was the only girl (although without me there wouldn't be any meeting minutes at all–boys–so ridiculous) but wound up taking the job anyway after Duncan as secretary spent two whole meetings drawing stick figures fighting in this notebook instead of actually taking notes. Again: typical.

The record for the meeting of April 13 of this year already shows this, but I would like to say again: the idea to dig at the abandoned house at 1711 was mine. But it made perfect sense at the time: no one had lived in the house for at least the twelve years I've been alive. And the backyard was surrounded by tall fences. The neighbors at 1709 were a retired couple who were always gone on cruises and 1713 has a single man living there who just works from home and never comes outside except to go the store. So it was a perfect place to keep a bunch of kids busy who wanted to dig and not bother anybody. Well. Dig was their idea. Not bother anybody was mine. It's hard being the oldest and having to look out for others. Thankless, too.

So 1711 was my idea. But I had counted on the back yard. While I was away at summer camp for two weeks Richie had gotten the membership to vote on moving the excavation. I state this here for the record because the meeting at which this was decided (June 21) has only Duncan's minutes as a record, which only shows what appears to be three Yetis (or very angry teddy bears) attacking a unicorn with sticks. I can only apologize for having been away from my duties at the time and can only echo what I clearly wrote in the margins as my annotation: "Boys." I think that says everything.

When I returned in early July, they had already had ten days with which to work at the new excavation in the crawlspace of the house at 1711. And when I went to the dig site, I was amazed to see that Richie might have been onto something: they had found two gold bracelets and an ornate earring, none of which looked like anything I had seen before. There were also some fragments of fabric that were dirty and old but were very colorful and polka dotted when new. I had to agree that we had stumbled onto some kind of civilization that had possibly lived here before but I let Richie and the others keep calling it "Old Mex" to humor them.

It was when we found the skulls that things started to go wrong. The fact that ten of them had been buried in a row along the western corner of the house obviously means some kind of ritual had happened at this site years before. We were interested in excavating the rest of the crawlspace to see if the rest of the ten bodies were there as well, but Leon had broken our vow of secrecy and taken one of the skulls home and used it to frighten his sister and then his parents had become involved.

I knew at some point we were going to have to tell the authorities about our findings since this would have been a huge archeological milestone for the Memphis area, but I admit that I did not expect the sort of reaction we received. Also, I did not expect the police to come in and bar us from the excavation site. And news trucks swarmed 1711, no doubt interviewing someone else who took full credit for our finds.

Now in the intervening months, the society has been fragmented. Leon's parents have decided not to let him play with the rest of us, Duncan hasn't been seen much of since he started visiting a new doctor and Richie's family has moved away. I managed to keep this notebook hidden from everyone else, since I knew there had to be a record of what happened for the sake of science and posterity.

And what's worse, my mother, whenever I mention getting proper archeology training, keeps throwing cold water on the idea and urging me towards accounting or teaching instead. Typical.