Cover Design by Michael Ferrence

FIRST 10 CHAPTERS FROM MY MIDDLE GRADE DEBUT- THE TUBES- A STORY OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY WHERE 3 FRIENDS FIND THE TUBES- THESE MYSTERIOUS, INTERCONNECTED, UNDERGROUND CAVES- AND ALONG THE WAY, FIND THEMSELVES, AND SO MUCH MORE.

THINK GOONIES MEETS LAST KIDS ON EARTH (BUT NO ZOMBIES, JUST LOTS OF ACTION AND COMEDY AND FRIENDSHIP AND STUFF.)

CHAPTER 1

When I was a kid, like 7, I created this alter-ego, Super Jerk, just to be funny and make my classmates laugh. My buddies, for sure, anyone at all really, but mainly the girls in my class. Actually, just one girl, mostly, Valerie Drasher. I thought that even though my bike was an embarrassment, this big brown, hand me down, banana seat weird looking thing with a horn and oversized handlebars, if I laughed at myself, and made a joke about it, nobody, well, Valerie, wouldn’t notice the bike, but she’d notice me.

I’m lucky. I was born healthy and happy. My parents loved me. I had good friends, for the most part, and the ones that didn’t end up being that great didn’t do any lasting harm. Although it was hard to forget about the summer between 6th and 7th grade when my best friends since 1st grade, Joe Woods, Matt Tomlin, and Steve Gallagher all just totally ghosted me. I didn’t call it ghosting at the time, it wasn’t a thing, but one day we were all friends, and the next day they wouldn’t talk to me anymore. Nothing bad happened. We didn’t have a fight or disagreement or falling out or anything. They wouldn’t call me back. Wouldn’t talk to me at school. Nothing. I tried for like a year, to figure out why, but they never said. Once I got older it was pretty clear why, and there was nothing I could have done about it.

They were jealous of my bike.

Nah. I didn’t get it then, but I think they were just being kids. I didn’t have a lot of money. I mean, I had none. My parents didn’t have much. We didn’t have a nice house. We rented one from one of my classmates’ dads. We were on welfare, got food stamps. Got free lunch. Went to the armory to get government cheese. I didn’t know that’s what they called it at the time, but it was a huge rectangular block of something like Velveeta. My dad and I used to walk over and get these big boxes of food once in a while. They also gave us peanut butter and canned ravioli, and crackers, I think. And we got WIC, which was more free food. And maybe some other stuff too. It was weird because I was always so excited when this stuff came in the mail or when we were out shopping because we could get lots of food, but I was also really embarrassed about it, and never wanted anyone to find out. But now you know. People gave us stuff because we needed their help.

That’s why I had the Super Jerk cycle, because someone gave it to my dad. It was the bike I learned to ride on.

I created this character, and I’d do all kinds of funny, full body comedy at school. Yank up my sweatpants real high, like pulling the waistband way up to my nipples or as far as it could go, all the way up over my head sometimes, probably had a huge wedgie too, and I’d jump over stuff and fall down. Like chairs. Run and jump over a chair and knock it over, hit the ground, roll, make lots of noises, or running into walls and doors was a big move too, always got me laughs.

When I was out riding the bike the go-to, and basically my only move was to ride it as fast as possible, jump off and slam it into a wall or fence or just let it go and see where it ended up.

I’m not sure if Valerie thought that was cool or not, or if acting that way camouflaged my poorness, or whatever, but it made me happy and seemed to make others happy, too.

Not sure if I said this and I don’t really want to go back and re-read because it’ll take me out of the groove I’m in, but I don’t think me acting this way was totally intentional, at the time. It was probably subconscious. I figured this out later in life.

Sometimes it takes time to figure things out, because as beautiful as life can be, it can also be really really tricky. It can be confusing. And something I realized recently, even though I first started thinking about it when I was a teenager, when I started going to punk rock and hardcore shows and listening to music that talked about this stuff in a really honest, exciting, powerful, memorable way, is that life can get so busy, there can be so many things happening at once, not just life stuff like family and friends and school and work or whatever, but other stuff, things happening in the world to others, wars, crime, climate change, sports, music, online stuff, social media, just so so much stuff, good and bad, that distracts us from being who we are, and from staying connected to the things that matter, to us, and there are so many people, intentionally and unintentionally, that say and do things to us, sometimes with the best of intentions like parents and siblings and teachers and friends, and sometimes with the worst of intentions, like parents and siblings and teachers and friends, and people we don’t even know but who have loud voices and lots of power, and tons of money, and people we don’t even know with no power and no voices and hardly any money, or no money, and there are books and books and books with information that’s good and bad, truthful and not, and podcasts and music and TV and movies, and news and games and everything else. It’s not all good and it’s not all bad, but there’s just so much of it, and if we let it, it erases who we are, and slowly shapes us into someone else. And then we’re lost for a bit.

That HAS happened to me. I’ve been lost before. And I’ll get to that.

But for now, I have to move the story along here.

Back to Super Jerk and the Super Jerk Cycle, and me and my friends. Not Joe, Matt, and Steve, but the kids I started hanging around with after those guys bailed on me. Oh, and in case I didn’t say it back then, I better say it now, I think they stopped talking to me because they were kids and they were embarrassed that I didn’t have what they had- a nice house and car and nice new clothes and all that stuff- and they didn’t want to associate with me, or let anyone think they didn’t have stuff either. So they cut ties.

And that definitely hurt.

I’m not sure if I cried. I don’t think I did. Maybe. But it hurt.

Thankfully life goes on. Time goes by. And you move on as well. You feel less lost.

Last thing I’ll say is that while I never actually got the girl in that case, like we didn’t get married or anything, Valerie and I were never dating, officially, we weren’t boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, we did dance together once in 4th grade… And I touched her butt. That was a thing back then. And before you say anything, I had full approval. I asked. I actually said, I’m seeing other kids do this, can I touch your butt?

So that was an undeniable success.

My new friends, guys I’m still friends with to this day who if I were the kind of guy who picked favorites and did best of lists, these 2 would top the list, at least from 6th grade up until our 20s when we grew apart a bit. I went away to college and met other good friends and moved away and got different jobs and met other new friends, and we’ve all started families, and our differences now sometimes seem greater than the things we have in common, but even with that, they’re still a huge part of my life, not the day-to-day anymore, but certainly in the things we’ve shared and the things they’ve given me (And not just buying me food when I was broke or giving me rides places. Real stuff like just being there for me, talking, togetherness, like always being together and growing up together, keeping me safe when they were bigger and stronger and kids wanted to beat me up because I was dating their step-sister, maybe for example, and also trust, and fun, and all that.)

Anyway, for real this time, the main part of the story.

Me and my friends, Jack and Sam, were on our bikes all the time every day. They didn’t have any money either, but somehow their mom was able to get them a few things I didn’t have, and definitely wanted: guitars and bikes.

I’ll get to the guitars later, but the bikes; they had 2 brand new freestyles. One blue, one green. I had the big brown thing. I didn’t call it the Super Jerk Cycle anymore by that point. I was as embarrassed then as I am now to admit I ever did call it that, what a ridiculous name, but I have to be honest if I’m telling a story, or else what good would it be? Who would believe it? How could anyone connect or commit to it if I weren’t honest? I was in 2nd grade when I created that character and I don’t know if it lasted until 3rd. I think it lasted a few weeks, maybe a bit longer.

But the bike remained and it sucked.

They were good at fixing stuff, because they were a few years older, and had an older brother, and they had hand me downs, too, and for some reason had 4 or 5 bikes already, so they tried a few times to fix up my bike. They painted it. It looked better but not great.

They tried changing out the banana seat to a regular seat, but it didn’t fit right so they switched it back.

They tried putting two matching tires. I forgot to mention that my bike had a larger back tire, adding to how corny it was.

That actually worked. Kind of. The tired fit and the bike was workable, but it messed up the brakes. I no longer had any. I had to stop by jamming my foot on the back tire or jumping off.

We went out in the woods one afternoon, following these 2 older girls from the neighborhood. I think their names were Jamie and Danielle or something. I can’t remember. Let’s just say that for now. The names aren’t important for the story to work. I think they were from Europe. That’s my memory of them. I’m not sure they spoke English. I know Europe is a big place. I get that. My memory is that they were from Europe and that their parents owned a little candy store called the European store and maybe their English wasn’t so great yet.

And I think maybe the one girls’ name was actually Jane, but either way, she was a girl in our neighborhood that we liked, because she was a girl in our neighborhood, so why not like her, why not like both of them, and do everything we could to impress them, which for Jack and Sam was walking around in the spring and summer with no shirts, because they were pretty ripped for 12 year olds, and I just tried talking to them and saying funny stuff, or what I thought was funny. I think they thought we were nice kids, maybe even cute, but what 14 year old is gonna date 12 year olds or a scrawny 10 year old? Not Janine and Amy, I’ll tell you that.

But we didn’t know that at the time. We thought we had a good shot, so we followed them around.

It wasn’t creepy following because we were just kids. And they must have known we were there. We followed them down Buttonwood to 12th Street, and turned right, then walked our bikes up the side of the hill to the train tracks. From there, we lost them.

And that’s where our adventure begins!

CHAPTER 2

This might seem like it’s coming out of nowhere, and in some ways, it is, but stick with me, and you’ll see where this is going.

Sometimes I wonder which is more powerful: Music. Or books and stories. I’ve gotten really pumped, or even almost cried listening to a good song. Maybe there was just something in my eye, I don’t know, but something was going on. Something about the combination of music and lyrics, sounds and words and ideas and feelings, I guess, that makes it so personal. So memorable. I can remember a time and place just because of the music that’s playing. Like, for example, when we were riding along the tracks that day, we were listening to- I’m not sure if I can say it without having to pay the band or something when this books becomes a hit, so let’s just say it rhymes with We’re Not Gonna Fake It by Flisted Blister- on a portable Walkman type thing that Sam had hanging from his handlebars. I didn’t even like those guys. Flisted Blister wasn’t my thing. I don’t even know one other song they ever wrote actually, but that song, at that time, was cool. I remember it. And at that time, at that moment, we connected with it. Well, I don’t know if Jack and Sam did, but I did. Because 2 minutes after we got to the top of that hill, as we inched closer to the girls, Timmy Pzinkowski and Brian Coleman came out of nowhere, knocked me off my bike, threw it down the hill into the woods, and chased after me before Jack and Sam even knew it. I was sprinting in the opposite direction, yelling for help, while Timmy and Brian closed in. They each got in a few punches, threatened me to stay away from Jane and Judy, and started dragging me along the rocks, when Jack and Sam caught up, jumped off their bikes, and turned those guys inside out. It happened so fast, and I was so happy to have those guys on my side, so proud of them, as they sent kids 2 years older than them running.

That’s when that song came on. It was like a movie, you know? The timing couldn’t have been better. I was little. I was afraid of those guys. But I started to realize I didn’t have to take it. That they were just people too, and that I could beat them, in my own way, somehow, one day, and that I shouldn’t be afraid. I didn’t get all of that in the moment. It took years, but it was the start of me growing up. Not being afraid, and realizing the importance of close friends who are there for you no matter what.

And that’s what Jack and Sam were to me.

That’s what I wanted to be for them, too.

We lost the girls, had no idea where they were now, but we got our bikes, and started racing down the tracks toward where they were headed.

We followed the tracks further than we ever had.

My bike was falling apart. With every bump, I felt like it was one step closer to the end. It rattled and creaked and shook violently as I pedaled, trying my best to keep up with the guys.

Now, before I get to the next part. I want to talk about books and stories, and how powerful they can be. I don’t remember crying from reading a book. For me, it can be a less immersive experience than music, it doesn’t always move me in the same way, but it can, and it teaches me stuff I’ve never forgotten. And not in the obvious ways it’s supposed to teach you.

About a year after Timmy and Brian clobbered me on the tracks, we had another encounter, this time in the hallway at school. It was about girls again. They thought I liked the girls they liked or something, and there we were. Just those 2 and I. They had me up against the wall. Brian had just kneed me in the stomach. Timmy was holding me up against the wall, yelling at me, threatening me again. Jack and Sam weren’t around to protect me, and these guys knew it. Timmy had a super high voice. Mine hadn’t totally changed yet, but it wasn’t high. His voice sounded like he’d sucked down helium and it never left. I told him that, and when he let go on my throat to wind up and punch my face through the wall, I grabbed a math book off the top of a stack of books on top of a table beside us, and hit him right in the mouth with it.

I know. Fighting isn’t OK. I’m not proud of this. It sounds like I am, but I’m not. I should have done some other act. I think. Or at least, I should tell you that so you don’t go and hit someone with a math book (unless you really have to, but seriously don’t, not a good idea. Times have changed and it wasn’t even a good idea back whenever this was.) I was proud of myself that I did something. And I was glad that it worked.

Timmy’s mouth was gushing, and by the time Brian realized what was up, I was far enough away, and we weren’t alone in the hallway anymore. Class had been dismissed and the halls were filled with kids. And some of those kids figured out what had happened, and even though I hadn’t had a growth spurt yet, and sometimes I was still scared of bigger kids, word spread that I was not to be messed with, because of what I did. Books are powerful, too, and not just what’s on the inside.

And speaking of the inside. Up ahead, Jack, Sam, and I noticed a clearing that led down a path to a ledge, or a cliff, or an overhang, or whatever, but the hill dropped off steeply and at the bottom was just huge rocks and entire wrecked cars and lots of tires and fallen trees and other stuff.

Without much discussion, we decided to climb down, but before we did, I had what I thought was a great idea.

You know how you can use a stick to find out how deep water is, if it’s not too deep? You just stick it in the river or puddle or whatever and get an idea of how deep. Or, if there’s a deep hole, you can drop a rock down, and listen for how long it takes to hit the bottom to see how deep that is? I thought it would be a good idea to ghost ride my bike off the cliff to get an idea for how high we were.

It made no sense, really. We could see that it was 40 or 50 feet, high enough to kill us if we fell, or at the very least break bones and mess us up, if we were lucky. But I think I just wanted to get rid of that bike. I never really liked it. I hate the color brown. Actually, I like it in nature, like on trees and mud and leaves sometimes, but not on clothes or bikes or cars or anything. And those guys just messed with me, probably because my bike was so crappy, and it never really got me the girls, Valerie wasn’t that into it, and I was just over it. Time to move on, I said.

So I backed up to the top of the hill, rode down, and when I was about 10 feet away from the edge, I jumped off and let it go.

That thing flew like you wouldn’t believe, over the cliff, angelic actually, one huge, flowing arc, wheels spinning, looked pretty awesome actually, for a second, I kind of regretted letting it go, but I did, it was too late, so whatever, and after the spectacular landing on top of an old, rusty, smashed up Trans-Am, the sound of the collision like heavy metal drum cymbals smashing times a thousand, the wheel blew off, the handlebars went through what was left of the windshield, the thing crunched up, and bent like a soda can, and then everything was quiet, for about 3 seconds, before we exploded in laughter and cheers. High-fives all around. So great.

They called me Ghost Rider, which was way cooler than Super Jerk. They couldn’t believe I did that. I said I couldn’t believe it either, but it felt like the right thing to do.

And then silence again, as we stared down into the abyss, into the hidden forest. Into…

Quick backstory: There was a rumor, or legend, of this place, called Devil’s Cave. It doesn’t sound all that spectacular or interesting if you’re a grown up, or even a late teenager maybe, but it was definitely interesting to us. I said there wouldn’t be any dying in this story, and there won’t be. But, there was one almost horrible crime in our neighborhood when we were kids. It was solved. But there was still some mystery surrounding it, and it had to do with Devil’s Cave.

And now it was time to climb down.

But first, more backstory: A kid was working at McDonald’s one day, closing up the late shift, when someone came in and started hitting him with the telephone. He knocked him out and ran away, and for a few days there was a manhunt. Some serious on-the-edge-of-your-seat stuff. Everyone in town was glued to the news, waiting to hear what happened. The kid who was attacked was OK. The perpetrator was a friend. (Some friend. Glad he wasn’t mine.) Oh, yeah, the kid who was attacked was Brian Coleman’s older brother Brad, and the assailant… Timmy whatever his last name was- it was his older brother. No joke. Apparently they weren’t on good terms. Timmy’s brother, Joey, was mad about, guess what… A girl. Yep. So he went after him for revenge. The girl, you guessed it, Jane’s older sister, Joan, or something, was dating both Joey and the other guy, it was some long, complicated story, but in the end, Joan dumped both of them for some other guy, and Joey blamed Brad and went after him. And he got him pretty good with the phone. Messed his head up pretty bad. He was hospitalized for a few days. Joey took off, and they tracked him and his 1980- something Trans-Am to the mouth of Devil’s Cave. And he was never seen or heard from again.

So down we went…

CHAPTER 3

We made it to the bottom of the cliff, no problem. Well, Sam and Jack did. I lost my footing halfway down, and slid the rest of the way, ended up with all these little black stones stuck in my hands. It wasn’t coal, but something like that, silt maybe. If that’s a thing. All but one came out, but I still have a pebble embedded in the side of the middle finger on my left hand. I can still see it if I look closely. It’s right there along a little sideways line toward the top.

Jack picked up a bottle and smashed it on the Trans-Am. I started throwing rocks at it, and Sam tried to get inside. The driver’s side door didn’t open, it was dented so much it couldn’t, but the passenger door did, and we all got in. We searched it, hoping to find some money for food, maybe get some KFC. We liked chicken littles. They were like 49 cents each so whenever we could get together enough money for at least 3 of them, we’d go. We didn’t find any money. The police must have searched and removed everything of value when they searched it. I wondered why they just left the car there, why they didn’t move it. But they didn’t, and that was a good thing for us, because just before we gave up hope of finding anything, Sam popped a cassette tape from the tape deck. Again I don’t want to get sued for using an artist without permission so the band was, let’s agree that it may or may not have sounded like the band Poison, which may or may not have been a band that I listened to all the time or not. Should I do another rhymes with thing here, to be sure? It wasn’t Poison, it was Boison. Does that work? Anyway. He switched his Walkman thing from FM to cassette or whatever, put in the tape, and turned up the volume.

At first nothing…

Then…

Eighties chugging guitar riff. Check.

Eighties drums kick in. Check.

Eighties screeching guitar thing with the pick sliding down the strings. Check.

And then the 80s vocals. Check.

That stuff just seems stuck, there, in the 80s, with nowhere to go.

But we thought it was awesome at the time.

We rocked air guitar and drums and danced inside the car, and there was definitely nothing stuck in time about our dance moves. They were timeless. They’ll be cool moves forever. Jack pretended to be driving, rolled down the window (halfway, it wouldn’t go any further), and pounded on the steering wheel. I was in the back, lying on my back, kicking my feet into the air, smashing the roof. Sam sat in the passenger seat, smiling, doing a funny dance where he raised his arms, pointed his fingers, and swerved his hips from side to side. Then Jack leaned the chair all the way back, bashed me on the head with it since I was laying there thrashing, and we all burst into laughter.

We rode that vibe, and whatever the next song was, out of the car, and toward the entrance to the cave.

I was nervous. Not because of what I actually thought would be in there, but because of what I was always told what was in there, all the stories I’d heard. And there were some wild ones: Devils, cults, kidnappers, runaways, ghosts, dangerous animals, wild beasts, homeless guys, drug addicts, convicts, drunks, all kinds of stuff, and none of it was true, there was never any proof, it was just people talking, and people believing, for no good reason.

But if we go in there, I said, there may actually be a true story to tell, something big might happen. We might discover something, or uncover something, or do something big, something no one has ever done before.

Sam said nothing was going to happen, and Jack said we may not come out alive so we’d never get to tell the story, and then Sam jumped on that idea and started going on about how maybe those things were true, maybe we didn’t need proof, maybe the proof disappeared because it went inside and never came out, and this and that and all kinds of wild ideas, and once he stopped talking, even though I knew he was kidding, (I think), and even laughed at him, I was more unsure than I had been, but I knew I was going in there no matter what because if I didn’t I might miss out on what was inside, even if it was nothing, and I’d have to walk all the way back, by myself, because my bike was in pieces on top of the Trans-Am, and I didn’t want to run into Timmy and Brian again, especially not alone, so there was no doubt I was going in there, so we went in without thinking about it anymore.

At first it wasn’t too dark. Light from the outside could still reach us, but the further we went, the darker it became, and what once was a wide path, about the width of my dining room, maybe 1 or 2 cars wide, became more narrow until we were squeezed in on a path where we could walk side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, but that was it, and then, eventually, after about 2 minutes, we could only walk single file, and I was in the middle because there was no chance I was walking at the end or the beginning, and soon it was almost pitch black, and we didn’t know what was ahead, or behind, above, or below, and the path got rockier, with more plants in the way, and I said we should go back.

“We’re not going back yet.” Sam said.

“Nothing even happened, yet.” Said Jack.

We can’t even see, I said. What are we doing?

“We’re looking for something.”

WE CAN’T EVEN SEE! HOW CAN WE FIND ANYTHING? THERE’S NO LIGHT!

Jack lit a match.

Where’d you get that?

He pulled a baseball card from his pocket (1986 Gary Carter), lit it, and for a few seconds it gave off enough light for us to see up ahead.

“We need to go get flashlights or something. There’s something up there. I know it.”

It sounds ridiculous now. How could he be so sure there was something up there that we needed to see? How could I feel the same way? There was almost no chance there was something up there. But we all agreed. We needed to go get flashlights, and come back, and we needed to do it today.

The thing about being young, that I miss now, is that now it seems like everything we do has to be done for some good reason, with a detailed plan of how to get there, and what happens once we get there. But when you’re a kid, or if you’re somehow smart enough to hold onto that part of you as you get older, you just do stuff because it’s fun, or it’s an adventure, or it seems cool. And that won’t always work as you get older, I think it mostly can. And that’s something we should all be aware of.

If I had a message for kids it would be something like this: Stay young! Don’t grow up too fast! You’ve got the right idea, the BEST ideas. Those ideas will help you as you get older. Those ideas will help a lot of people, not just you so have fun, and find yourself, and never let go.

OK. Now, back to the cave. We weren’t stopping. But we did need light. But, we thought, if we leave we have to go all the way back to our house for a light, and then come all the way back. We only have 2 bikes. It’s going to take a long time. We don’t have a lot of time. We knew us. We knew that with time came distractions, and with distractions came us never getting back to this cave because we were too busy with the next thing, which would most likely be making me a new bike out of all the bike parts those guys had at their place, because we talked about it just then, and I loved the idea. A cool bike! Finally! A freestyle! We could go to a store for a flashlight, but we have no money. Jack said he’d steal one, but we shot down that idea, fast. We don’t steal, dude. And we don’t need anyone going rogue and getting arrested, I said, we’ve got places to go. Jack had more matches. We decided to go back out, find stuff to burn, and bring it back into the cave with us. It’s the best we could do with the time we had.

CHAPTER 4

Somehow we couldn’t find anything. There were a few pieces of trash, but those burned out as quickly as they went up. We needed something that would stay lit for a while. A big dry branch or something.

“How about my shirt?” Jack said.

That’s actually not a bad idea. That would probably work, I said. Jack took his shirt off, Sam grabbed a big branch from the ground near the car, and we wrapped the shirt around the top of the branch like a torch.

We went back down into the cave, followed the path until it got too dark to see, and lit the shirt.

Let me rephrase that, we TRIED lighting the shirt. Do you have any idea how hard it is to light a sweaty t-shirt with just a match? Don’t try it. Trust me. We were idiots. This was the 80s. We had no clue back then. We knew nothing compared to what we know today. We’re lucky to be alive.

This is just a story. Who knows what’s true and what’s not? Some of it might be slightly altered truth for entertainment purposes, or maybe I misremembered some parts. Some of it, I’ll admit, is totally made up. That’s part of what makes a good story. The reader never knows where the line is between reality and make believe, you’re kept guessing, and I think that’s what makes it interesting.

Like, who even knows if I meant that last sentence or not? Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I think they call that unreliable narrator, but like I’ve been saying, I’m not trying to get overly wordy here, I’m not a show off (usually), I’m just telling what I think is a great story. Just because I know a few words with lots of syllables doesn’t mean I have to use them. Fiction or nonfiction, a good story is the best.

The shirt wouldn’t light. We couldn’t see. Jack had 2 matches left. We decided to go back out, one more time, light up some dry leaves or something that wouldn’t definitely go up, even if it didn’t last long, but that would make a big enough flame, and create enough heat to light the shirt, and then we’d have a torch. It wasn’t ideal, because the further we were from the deeper, dark parts of the cave, the less time we’d have to get as far into the cave as we wanted, but it was our only shot.

We found a huge pile of dead tree stuff, Jack used his second to last match to light just a few leaves, and then he placed that carefully beneath the other dry stuff. It worked! Flames shot up 10 feet into the sky. Sam and I celebrated by jumping around wagging our tongues like total clowns, but Jack stayed focused on the job, and stuck the torch into the flames.

We stopped dancing as he pulled it out, and it worked! The shirt was one huge flame.

Kind of scary actually.

It was totally wild, just burning away so close to us, inches away. I could feel the heating all around me. Jack was fearless, though.

“Come on.” He said. “Let’s go. Quick.”

We ran into the cave, and it stayed lit, but not for long. We didn’t even get to the part where we had to go single file before it was out.

He dropped the stick, and we decided to go ahead without light, but it didn’t work. We couldn’t see a thing. Blindness was a stronger force than curiosity, in this case. Sam and I stopped, we kept banging into rocks. It was dangerous.

This thing might go right off another cliff. I said. We don’t know what’s out there. Or what’s up ahead. This isn’t worth dying for.

Sam agreed.

But Jack was gone. He’d wandered off without us.

“Jack!” Sam yelled!

JACK!

…

JACK! JACK! WHERE ARE YOU?!

…

“JACK! BRO! COME BACK!”

He didn’t answer.

Nothing. We couldn’t even hear him shuffling around.

What are we going to do?

“We have to go get him.”

We can’t. I said. We can’t see. We have to go get help.

“JACK!”

…

JACK! IF YOU’RE THERE, SAY SOMETHING! IF YOU’RE MESSING AROUND IT’S NOT FUNNY! CUT IT OUT. LET’S GO!

…

“He wouldn’t joke with us like this.” Sam said. “He doesn’t do that. Something’s wrong.”

We ran out, tripping, and falling, and slamming into rocks with our shins, smashing our knees, scraping our hands as we lifted ourselves back up.

Where are we? I said, out of breath, my heart pounding. We should be out by now.

“We aren’t there yet. We have to keep going.”

There’s no light ahead. We’re not even close. We probably turned without knowing it.

“JACK! JACK! JACK!”

…

What do we do?

“It’s this way. It has to be. There’s only one way out.”

We don’t know that. I said. We might be lost.

“I’m going. We’re almost there.”

It’s only taken me about a minute to write these last few sentences, ever since we started yelling for Jack, and running out of Devil’s Cave, but the actual time, us actually running out the cave, had taken like 20 minutes.

We were lost.

We’re never getting out! I said.

“We have to keep going!” Sam said. “Don’t quit.” He pushed me. “You go first.”

I couldn’t see, but I knew my legs were bleeding. I could feel it running down my shins, sticking to my socks.

A huge thud behind me.

Sam fell and cried out.

You OK?

I spun around, and felt around for him with my foot, and then got down and crawled toward his voice.

“I’m here. I’m OK. I think.” He groaned. “It’s my head. I’m bleeding. I hit it on a rock.”

Oh no. Dude. This isn’t good. What are we gonna do?!

I started to freak out a bit. Up until now, I had a pretty good feeling about getting out of here, and finding Jack, and everything being fine, turning out alright. Just a crazy adventure. But now it felt like it actually might become something really bad. We were lost in a cave, injured, blind, and nobody knew where we were. We didn’t tell our parents. Back then we didn’t have to. Our neighborhood was safe, aside from the occasional kid hitting ex-friends with telephones and going missing, it was a safe, fun place. We didn’t have to tell our parents stuff like this. It was a normal day.

Until it wasn’t.

Now I’m not sure what kind of day it was. At the moment, it was a dark day. The darkest.

My hand swiped over Sam’s sneaker. Is that you, I said?

It’s weird. When I was younger. At bedtime. When my dad would turn out the lights, and lay down near me on my bed, it was so dark I couldn’t see. But my eyes would adjust and within a few seconds, maybe 20 or 30, I could see. Same with my dad, and he was like 40, so it wasn’t just a kid thing. We used to talk about it. I even taught my little bro about it when I started reading him stories like my dad did for me. But there, in the cave, our eyes never adjusted to the darkness. And I never thought about it much until now. I think I know why, too. I think it’s because there we were in absolute darkness. Not one bit of light, none. Not one particle of light. Our eyes had nothing to adjust to. In my bedroom, back then, there was some light coming in from outside, or the hallway, so there was something for my eyes to grab onto, something to help us adjust. In the cave, Devil’s Cave, there was no light. And at that moment, there was no hope.

I started crying.

What are we gonna do? We never should have come in here. So stupid. How are we gonna get out? We’re never getting out. We’re…

“We’re gonna get out!” He said. “Stop.” He stood up, and pulled me up. We looked right at each other, right into each other’s eyes. “Stop crying.” He grabbed my shoulders. “We’re gonna get out. We just have to follow the path. It’s a path. That means someone has walked here before and it will lead us out.”

I believed him.

It sounds pretty silly now. Some kid says something brave in a deep, dark, Devil’s Cave, and it makes everything better.

It didn’t make everything better. We still had to find a way out. But, it did make me feel better. And it gave me hope.

I wanted to say something to give him hope, too.

Jack is going to be alright. He’s gonna get out. We’re gonna find him.

I didn’t really believe that, but I wanted to, and I needed to say something, for both of us.

“Let’s go.” He said. “Just stay on the path. Follow it.”

We slowed down, stayed together, and followed the path. We didn’t get any more injuries that way. Things seemed less out of control. It felt like we were making progress.

But it didn’t happen fast.

We walked for a long time, maybe 30 minutes, just one step at a time, little by little, and soon the path started going up.

I don’t remember a hill coming in. I said.

“Just keep going.” He said. “Keep going. We have to follow the path.”

I realized then that he was scared too. He was telling himself that as much as he was telling me. We both needed to say something to give each other something to hold onto, something to give a reason to believe we could make it out alive.

We kept yelling Jack’s name and always no response.

It’s getting late. We’re not going to be able to find him if it gets dark. My parents are gonna get worried. They haven’t heard from me all day.

“Keep walking. Just go. It’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright.”

Put on some music. I said.

Sam fumbled around with the tape player. The tape fell out. We both got down and felt around for it on the ground.

He sorta yelled at me for suggesting music at a time like this, and called me butthead a few times, and then I found it. Grabbed a big handful of dirt along with the tape, and shoved it in my pocket.

The hill got steeper, and it seemed like the path widened, and there were way more rocks on it than before, but they weren’t as big, there were lots and lots and lots of smaller rocks, maybe the size of or fists, and they were packed close together like a boulder field, but not boulders, fist sized rocks. We stumbled along for a bit, without talking, no music, no more yelling, for Jack, and when we got to the top we knew it was the top, because we could see!

We ran toward the light, the opening of the cave growing and growing.

We made it!

“I told you we would!”

JACK! JACK! JACK! JACK! JACK! JUH…

“Where have you guys been?”

CHAPTER 5

What just happened?

Jack said he’d been out there for 5 minutes, waiting for us.

We said we’d been in there looking for him, then got lost, and had been trying to find our way out for the last hour or so.

“Impossible.” He said. “Stop messing with me.”

We went back and forth like this for a while, and never got anywhere with it. We all believed we were right, but that couldn’t be possible, could it?

How could the experience be so different for each of us when it really wasn’t all that different at all?

Jack said he walked out of the cave, not into it, once the flame went out. Said there was no point in going any further. Why would we even think that? He could’ve fallen off a cliff and died or something.

“That’s what we said!”

We went around and around about how Sam and I walked around and around, and got all banged up, and Sam, of course, told Jack I was crying, and I said I just had dirt in my eyes.

Whatever happened, happened, and now here we are. I said. Now what?

Jack said, “I have to show you guys something. This is pretty cool.”

He brought us over to the Trans-Am, said he somehow got into the trunk, and was searching for a flashlight in there. “…And I found something.”

He’d ripped up all of the fabric that lined the trunk.

Why? I said.

He said part of it was already torn and he wanted to investigate, but he found nothing underneath the fabric. He did, however, find something… “Huge.”

He showed us the spare tire.

What about it? I said.

“Look!”

“Yeah, dude. Look!” Sam said.

I didn’t know much about cars. My dad hardly had one that worked. When it did I was too embarrassed to ride in it. I never explored it. I wasn’t interested in cars, not junky ones at least. But Jack and Sam had a pretty nice car. Their mom bought a new sky blue Ford Taurus. No clue how she afforded it. She worked at a grocery store deli, and they said she had lots of bills, but somehow she got that car, and they were always checking it out, exploring it, checking under the hood. Their older brother had cars and worked on them all the time, and they’d help him with those. And their dad, who they didn’t live with since their parent’s split up, even before I met them, he had cars too, so they learned a lot about cars and how they worked and how to fix them.

They showed me the part of the tire where the air goes in, the little nub, they called it a valve stem. “Look.” Jack said.

I see it, but what am I looking at?

It was bent. Somebody messed with it. Either the cops when they inspected it, but probably not because if they noticed something with it they would have taken it as evidence or it would be ripped apart, OR Joey Pinkzowski did it.

“I have to take it apart but I need the right tools.” He said.

Why not just use the tool box, I said. The one in the back of the car.

They ran around and grabbed the toolbox from the floor in the back, and Jack went on and on about how dumb he was for not looking, and how he was going to go back home to get his but wanted to wait for us.

Didn’t you hear us calling you? I said.

…

When we were inside. We were yelling your name.

…

It’s not that deep in there, you had to have heard us. Right? Did you hear us?

“No.” I was all the way over here. I would have answered.

I wasn’t so sure. Jack and Sam were great friends. I trusted them. But the strangeness of this situation had me second guessing a bit. Something wasn’t adding up. The timing of it all. How could he have been out here for only 5 minutes and do this whole inspection and make this plan to go home in just 5 minutes when we felt like we were in there for an hour, yelling and screaming and he didn’t hear us? It’s not making sense.

I told them this. Sam agreed. Jack did too.

“Let’s figure it out later. It’s gonna get dark soon, and I want to get this tire open before it’s too late.”

It took him about 15 minutes to deflate the tire and then remove it from the rim.

Nothing. I said. There’s nothing there.

“No. But there’s something HERE.” Said Jack, pointing at the tube.

“Holy *%&$!” Said Sam.

He lifted the inner tube up high, and put it right in my face.

What? I said. I don’t get it.

It looked like a big, lumpy black anaconda, swallowing itself.

“Look. It’s not supposed to be this way. It’s supposed to be smooth, not all bumpy. There’s something inside!”

Jack carefully cut open the tube with a razor blade, and out fell… Boxes.

Lots of little jewelry boxes, all different colors, some leather, or something that looked like leather, and some velvet.

At least a hundred of them. Who knows, though, we didn’t count.

He poured them out, and Sam and I started popping them open, hoping to strike it rich with some fancy, super expensive gems or something.

But they were empty.

Every single one was empty.

Total disappointment.

Sam, Jack and I… Oh, and by the way, I haven’t mentioned it yet, my name is Mike. Michael actually, just like my dad, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather. Seriously, I was the 5th. And we were all called Mike, too. And Mikey. All the normal variations of Mike, but I also had a bunch of other nicknames. Duke, after John Wayne, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. No clue why I got nicknamed after him, aside from the fact that he was popular when I was little, and my dad’s uncle Paulie started calling me Duke. It’s not like I had something in common with him back then. I’m pretty sure he was a cowboy actor. I never looked it up, but sorta remember what he looked like. Nobody outside my family ever called me that, and everyone but my Uncle Paulie stopped calling me Duke after, like kindergarten. He never stopped, even when I grew up, and went away to college, and beyond that. Sometimes, back then, my mom and my aunts on my Dad’s side would call me Dukey.

It’s funny because nowadays, dookie means poop.

I’d also had the nicknames:

Mike’s Bike (from a 3rd grade teacher, so corny, I know but I didn’t make it up and it didn’t last long, and honestly I kind of liked it at the time).

Paulino (in high school, not sure how that happened exactly, I think because I had long hair for 2 years, it was all the way down past my shoulders, and then I cut it, sort of like George Clooney had his at the time when he was on ER, and my friends were kind of saying I was someone totally different or unrecognizable so I was Paulino for a few months).

Mikedown (in college, given to me by my friend Joe, because instead of sticking around and going to see a bunch of good bands with my friends one night in Bethlehem, the town where I was born by the way, even though it was all the way out in State College and I really wanted to stay at school and go with my other friends and this girl Macey who I really liked, I went to a live taping of WWE Smackdown with Sam and Jack for Jack’s birthday because they were still really into wrestling and I didn’t want to bail on them).

Lingo (also in college, given to me by my friend Adam- who was also born in Bethlehem- because I played drums and he was comparing me to the great Beatle Ringo Starr).

Many many different versions of Lingo, also given to me by Adam, over the course of the next decade or so: Fongo, Congo, Dingo, Dongo, Doingo

Now it’s just Mike.

And back then it was just Mike.

“Mike.” Sam said. “Come on. Stop staring at empty boxes. There’s nothing there.”

Hmm?

“They’re inside the cave.” Jack said. “The stones.”

How do you know? Did you see Mick Jagger?

They laughed, but not for as long as they should have based on a joke that good, and then quickly got back to the diamonds or rings or whatever we were looking for.

“They’re in there. They have to be.” Said Sam.

You guys get it, though, right? I said. Mick Jagger is in the Rolling Stones, and you said stones, so I said…

“Come on! Stop! We have to find them. Where else would they be?”

Um… Anywhere!? Everywhere!? Nowhere?!

“They’re inside the cave. We know it.” Said Sam. “Let’s go get filthy rich.”

CHAPTER 6

We went back in. We still didn’t have a light so I don’t know what we were thinking. I guess we weren’t. We were just going on instinct. We let our programming take over.

I think about that a lot. Even when I was really little, like 3, I remember thinking about life, and how it all… happened. How did we get here? What was the first thing? If someone made us, who made that someone? If there was nothing and then suddenly something, isn’t nothing something, and if it is, how did that something get here, and if it isn’t, how did that sudden something get here?

Like, if it was just pure blackness, just space or something, how did that get here? If it was a microscopic dot, how did that get here?

Did it come from another universe, somehow pop out and form this one, and then start growing, and if so, where did THAT universe come from? When did IT begin? We know our universe is almost 14 billion years old, but what if ours’ is just one of many and the earliest universe was trillions of years old? What does that tell us about our universe? And back to my original question, where the heck did the very first thing come from, no matter when it first became a thing? How did it get here? How did WE get here?

When I say we let our programming take over, it’s because I’ve learned that we’re programmed by our DNA, the stuff that makes us who we are, and I wonder if everything we do is just happening because of our programming or we make choices on our own, by thinking and deciding.

It’s kind of like we’re a smaller version of the universes. We’re a replica. We have minds and bodies and we can control them or be controlled by them, and we’re always learning and doing different things and changing, a lot like the universes change, only we’re tiny, and I’m always wondering if the little stuff we’re made of is the same as the little stuff that started the first universe, and I’m wondering how any of it happened.

Anyway, I have to tell you this: We eventually find flashlights under the driver’s seat that somehow still work, and we also find flares that stay lit, basically forever. But not yet. That’s another day.

For now, we’re basically blind.

In there, in the darkness, I let go of whatever doubts I had about finding anything, and just went all in searching.

The guys and I talked all about the universe stuff I just mentioned, and they have all kinds of ideas about it, different from my ideas, and some of the make sense to me and some don’t.

The idea I like the best, that might actually be the truth, came from Jack. He’s a good thinker.

He said that the first thing ever probably came from…

You know what, he knows the idea best. It came from his imagination. I’ll let him tell you.

“What if the first thing ever DID come from nowhere. Like there was nothing. Imagine that. It’s hard because we only know all the stuff we know, like our world, here. But imagine a long time ago there’s nothing. Think about that for a while.”

We walked, in the dark, imagining nothing. Being in complete darkness helped us picture what that was like. To us, in some ways, we were the closest we’d ever been to nothing.

“Now imagine the first thing just came to be because it really really just wanted to be something. Like how you love someone so much. Think of the person you love the most, and how you just love them so much, no matter what, and how you didn’t have to try to love them, or anything, you just love them.”

We didn’t talk about love, like ever, unless it was how much we loved one of the girls at school, or in the neighborhood, or Madonna, or whoever, but the way he was saying this stuff, about love, and how it was like the start of the very first universe because it just sort of happens out of nowhere, that made sense to me. It made it seem possible that that’s what actually happened.

“Think of the day your little brother was born, Mike.”

Sam and Jack were with me the day he was born, my little bro Max. I was never happier. We ran around yelling and screaming and dancing and wrestling and just being totally wild. My grandparents were with us while my parents were at the hospital. My grandmother told us the news when we came in from riding our bikes. And when I first held Max at the hospital, before I even knew him, I loved him. I whispered that to him so many times, gave him so many kisses, felt it in my whole body, and I didn’t even know him, yet. I loved him out of the blue.

I loved him out of nowhere, I said.

WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOOOOAA!

What is that?

All this screeching and whirling and hissing came right at us.

WHAT IS THAT?

“Bats!” Jack said.

“Run!” Said Sam.

Running in the dark when you have bats attacking you isn’t easy.

But, somehow, when you’re with friends, it’s fun.

We were flipping out, trying to get out as fast as we could, trying not to get bitten, trying not to get our eyes ripped out, trying not to fall, but we quickly ended up on the ground, in a pile, curled up near a boulder, each of us pulling the other’s out of the way to get closest to the rock, away from the bats, which, by the way, had already gone away. We were just so focused on escaping, we didn’t really notice yet.

Get. OUT. OF. MY WAY!

I crawled up and over Sam, and squeezed between Jack and the rock. Then I was yanked out by my leg, and I think Sam crawled over me, and squeezed in. Then Jack pulled us both away, and jumped up to the boulder. This went on for a while, far beyond when we realized the bats were gone. We were just messing around, laughing, throwing each other all over the place in the pitch black.

And that’s when I found it.

A box.

And this one wasn’t empty.

CHAPTER 7

Before I get to the box, I have to mention this first: You know how earlier I said that our eyes didn’t adjust like eyes usually do in the dark, because there was no light at all? Well, the longer we were in there, our eyes either started to adjust or we started to learn how to navigate without light, or we made a mental map of the place or something because getting around was a little less impossible, and it wasn’t quite as scary being in there. I’m sure it had to do with us being together, and all that, not being alone, or trapped, and having gotten used to it, but I’m pretty sure it was our eyes, our body’s ability to adapt to extreme circumstances. And we were gonna need it.

Now, the box. I opened it, and there was definitely a stone inside. It wasn’t just a regular rock either, we knew it. We couldn’t see it, but as we ran toward the light, back to the car, we explored it with our hands, first I did, then Jack, then Sam…

It has to be something special. Something rare. Feel this!

“It’s a diamond!” Said Jack. “It has to be! It feels different. It’s so smooth.”

“It’s definitely something. You feel the edges? How it’s like jagged, but soft? Smooth angles. Maybe a gem or a diamond or something. I can tell.” Sam said.

Oh, man. It has to be. This isn’t normal.

“I’m telling you, it’s a diamond. We’re gonna be rich.”

“Can we even keep it?”

Yeah we can keep it. We found it.

“But it was stolen.”

How do you know? Maybe not.

“It’s ours. Possession is 9 tents of the law.”

We burst out laughing at Sam for that one.

It’s nine-tenths, dude!

“Not nine tents.” Said Jack. “What does that even mean?”

“Whatever.” Sam laughed, running in front of me to the head of the line, sprinting toward the mouth of the cave, just a hundred feet or so away.

”It means we have it and it’s ours.”

And then we were out.

“It means, I have it, and it’s mine.” Jack said, smiling, holding the rock in his closed hand.

Yeah, right I said. It’s ours. Let’s see it.

He opened his hand and it was empty.

WHAT?!

Dude, where did it go?

“You lost it?” Sam Sam, running back toward the cave, scanning the ground for the lost gem. “You’re the worst!”

“I didn’t lose it. It’s right here.” Jack held up his right hand.

Open it!

“Give it to me!”

He opened his hand.

It was a perfectly cut, sparkling, flawless, piece of coal.

Total disappointment.

I mean, our morale was low.

We really thought this was something big, a diamond, and that we could sell it, and it would change our lives. Thousands of dollars, and maybe more where that came from. A life-changing discovery vanished. We were tricked by our own imaginations. I guess our dark vision wasn’t as strong as I thought.

I felt embarrassed, mostly, because how could I have been so stupid to think it would actually be a diamond or something, and how- in just a few minutes- could I pin so much hope on something so unlikely?

The guys said they weren’t embarrassed, but they were mad. More mad than they ever were before. They already had plans for what they’d do with the money. When they were running out of the cave, they imagined themselves buying a car, one each at least, and tons of clothes, and going out to eat, and new bikes for all of us, and giving some to their mom to help with the bills, and saving some, and going to college with the money, and buying lots of CDs, and…

This doesn’t have to be the end, I said. We can keep looking. There just wasn’t a diamond in THIS box. But there was a box in there which means he brought the boxes into the cave which means there is something in there, and if we find it, it can be ours, and we can do all those things, and more with the money we get from them. We can buy a house for our parents. We can buy motorcycles. We can take Jane and Joan out to eat. We can buy guitars and drums and stereos and stuff. We just have to keep looking. They have to be in there. We haven’t even seen what’s in there. We need to get lights and go back in.

It was getting dark, and we had to get going. I said I’d be home before it got dark.

“Let’s go in one more time, then we can go home.” Said Jack. “You can be home before it gets TOO dark.”

I don’t know. I don’t want to get in trouble. Then I won’t be able to come back tomorrow when we have lights.

“You’re not gonna get in trouble. It’s not gonna be dark for like another hour.”

We’re not going to be able to see. Let’s just go. We’ll come back tomorrow morning. We can go back in now but it’s not going to help, we can hardly see. I said.

“We can now.”

We looked at Sam, smiles all around. He was holding a couple flashlights and the flares.

“They were under the seat.” He said. “And they still work!”

Our celebration was so huge, it was like the total opposite of the feeling we had when we realized our diamond was coal. We were energized, and hopeful, and ready to go. For some reason Sam thought it would be a good idea to turn on the music again, this time the radio, and it was this love song, “Take My Breath Away”, and it just destroyed our whole vibe, and we really let him have it for that. Lots of noogies, dead leggers, headlocks, armlocks, sleeper holds, fake head butts, punches, and kicks, and for real pushing.

Once he’d had enough, we ran back into the cave, and turned on the flashlights.

AMAZING!

We could see!

They weren’t super bright, like, they didn’t light up the whole place from top to bottom or anything, but definitely gave off enough light where we could walk around without smacking into stuff, and without feeling like we were lost, and we could shine it in any direction whenever we got somewhere we were unsure of, and make sure there were no predators, or bats, or whatever.

“It would stink if there was a bear or wolf in here or something.” Said Jack.

You think?! I said. I think it would more than stink to get eaten by a bear before I even get to find diamonds and take lots of girls on dates to lots of fancy places.

“No amount of diamonds will get Jane to go on a date with you, dude. You’re like 5 years younger than her.”

I am not. And how would you know? If I had money, she’d go on a date with me. I guarantee it.

“Well, let’s find some diamonds, and find out.”

“It would STINK to step in bear poo.” Said Sam. “And here’s some right here. Watch out!” He swirled the light around in circles on the ground in front of us.

Ahhhh! Where?!

“Juuuuust kidding.”

Now that we could see where we were going, we quickly got to a part of the cave we hadn’t been, or at least I didn’t think we’d been. We had to climb down a small cliff, maybe about 10 feet high, to get down to that level, and when we did there were multiple paths we could take.

Four different tunnels, each of them going downhill, spread out like fingers through the cave.

Which one? I said.

“All of them.” They said.

We can’t do all of them now. I said. We don’t have time. Let’s choose one.

“That one.” Sam said, pointing to the one on our far right. “Let’s start with that one, explore the entire thing, take it as far as we can, and then go to the next one. We’ll do one at a time.”

“OK.”

Yeah. Good plan. Let’s go.

And off we went.

CHAPTER 8

The first one was just one, looooong path, one super long tube. We looked to the sides and even above us for another path, a tunnel upwards, or something, but there was nothing.

I think whoever made this never finished, because it just seems like there should be more. You know?

“What do you mean whoever made this?” Sam said. “It’s not manmade. This is a cave.

We went back and forth about whether it was manmade or natural and in the end we couldn’t agree. There was nothing they could say to change my mind, and nothing I could do to change theirs. But, in the end, I could at least see where they were coming from and why they believed what they believed.

It did look natural. And so far there was no evidence that it was a manmade tunnel. It definitely looked like it was just formed in the Earth, especially the main opening, that looked natural, for sure. And maybe that part was.

But to me, the way I saw it, the tunnel was too perfect. We looked for scrapes and claws or some machine marks but there weren’t any. Probably because it’s been so long, I said. Nature took care of them.

“Or people did.” Jack said. “I bet there were other people down here before us.”

There definitely were, dude. It’s probably been down here for hundreds of years. We’re not the first people to find this. No way. I said.

We went back and forth and this for a while, too, and in the end, agreed. There was no way we were the first people here, and we had our proof.

A plastic bag.

We looked inside. Candy wrappers. Tootsie rolls and Hershey’s kisses. Cellophane, from a pack of cigarettes.

Then we saw the cigarette butts.

Then we joked about butts for a while.

Then we reached then end.

“There better be something more in the other tunnels.” Said Jack.

There will be. There’s more than this. There has to be.

On our way back out we made another discovery. We weren’t attacked by bats earlier. They were birds. We found nests everywhere in the same section of the cave where we found the bats and crawled all over the ground hiding from them.

“Look at all the poop!” Said Sam. He scanned the rocks with the flashlight. Poop everywhere. So much poop.

“Dudes, we were rolling all over it! Gross!”

It was all over your mouth, probably, when we buried your face into the rock.

“Is it?” Sam shined the light on his face, and there was, actually, a small bit of whitish-gray poop smooshed on his chin.

Jack and I laughed and called him all kinds of poop names while he rubbed it off onto his shirt for a full minute.

Now it’s all over your shirt, Soda Poopinski! I said.

“Yeah, King Hippoo!” Said Jack.

Crap Dracula. I said, laughing.

“Hulk Poogan!”

It’s Motley Poo!

“Poopeye the Sailor!”

Poorannosaurus Rex!

“Shut up!” Said Sam. “Shut. UP! It’s all over you, too, idiots.” He put the light on me, then Jack.

Ewwww!

We both had a bunch of bird poop on us. I quickly pulled off my shirt, and then Jack used it to wipe all the poop off his body, but he definitely missed some because we kept finding little crumbs on him throughout the day, and we ran outta there.

By the time we got the the car, it was dark, and we’d moved on from the poop, and onto our plan for the night, and the next day.

We’d get home ASAP. I’d take turns riding on the back of their bikes since mine was demolished on top of the car.

I probably shouldn’t have done that. I said.

“Too late now.” Said Jack.

I’d tell my parents I was sorry I was late, and we’d call each other to come up with exact details of what we’d need to go back there the next day, who would bring what, what time we’d go, and what we’d tell our parents.

The ride home took forever. The guys were exhausted. I kept falling off the pegs because they weren’t actually pegs they were just bolts, and not big enough to hold me. So I had to walk/run most of the way. It took over an hour to get home. We said bye outside my place, and I went in.

My parents weren’t mad, but they had a lot of questions.

“Where were you?” Said my mom, recording the whole interaction on a camcorder she borrowed from a friend.

I was with Jack and Sam.

“What’d you guys do?”

We were at their house and then we went for a bike ride into the woods.

“Where’d you go?”

We were following Jane and Joan.

“Who are Jane and Joan?”

The European girls who live across from Jack and Sam.

“Why did you follow them?”

Something to do.

“Make that silly face you make.”

I made the face, curling my upper lip so that there was like a skin mustache sort of, and my jaw was kind of pushed out.

I laughed, but tried hiding it from the camera.

“What else did you do?”

We walked around.

“Why’d you walk? Where’s your bike?”

I…

We rode too. We got chased by some kids and we lost the girls.

“Who chased you?”

Some kids.

“Are you OK?”

Yeah. I’m OK.

At this point my dad walked in and asked if I wanted something to eat, grilled cheese or crackers and eggs or something.

Grilled cheese.

“What else did you do?”

We explored.

“What did you explore?”

We were on trails, and found this new spot that’s pretty cool. There was this wrecked car there, and we were checking that out and there was kind of a cave we were checking out.

“Was it dangerous?”

No.

“Did anyone get hurt?”

No.

“Are you telling the truth?”

Yes.

Then before she could ask a million more questions, I said I had to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t lying. And after that Max was there and he was asking me what we did, where I was, and I said I’d tell him later. And I did.

Then I said I had to call the guys.

My dad gave me my grilled cheese sandwich, and a pickle, and I ate that while I talked on the phone.

They put me on speaker.

We decided we’d need:

- Flashlights and batteries

- Food. Chips. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hoagies if we could get money for them. $2.99 each. We couldn’t.

- Drinks. I said we had cans of soda that I could bring, but we didn’t, somebody drank them all, so I asked the guys to bring something and they said they had HUGS and orange juice and Capri Sun, and I said that was good.

- A backpack to put everything in. Jack would bring his school bag.

- A tape recorder. (But none of us had one that worked.)

- Camcorder. I said I’d tried to get the one my mom was borrowing from her friend. My mom said no way. I tried to sneak it. She caught me, and said if I ever do that again I’m grounded for 2 weeks. I didn’t try it again.

- Pencils and paper. We wanted to make a map of the place.

- Stuff to dig. We couldn’t agree on what, or why exactly so we didn’t bring anything.

- A bike for me. The guys had already started piecing one together with spare parts from like 10 other bikes, as soon as they got home that night. They said it would be finished in the morning.

We said we’d meet early, 6 am, at their place.

CHAPTER 9

Earlier I said I tried to get the camcorder and my mom caught me and said I’d get grounded for 2 weeks if I did that again. And that’s the truth. But, it’s not the whole truth. For the purpose of writing a more entertaining story, I left out the fact that when I say I tried to take it, I mean I took it and she found out…

BUT WE STILL HAD IT FOR ONE DAY!

In the moment, when I was taking it, I really didn’t think about it like I was taking something that didn’t belong to me. I just thought I could use it for a bit, borrow it, like she did, and then bring it back, and no big deal.

I wasn’t trying to be sneaky or steal it or anything. I wasn’t stealing it. I was borrowing it. From my mom. Which is not even like borrowing at all. She did so much for me, gave me a lot, and I didn’t look at it like I was doing something wrong.

I realized how wrong I was about the doing something wrong part when I got home that night, but it didn’t really matter, because we got some great intel with that thing.

We had small bags of Combos, so I put those in my book bag first, and then on my way out, unplugged the camcorder, and dropped it in the bag, said bye, and left.

The day only got better from there. When I got to Sam and Jack’s house, they were out on the porch waiting for me, all packed up and ready to go. Their bikes were laying in the little patch of grass out front, but mine wasn’t there.

Hey. I said. I got the camcorder! I opened the bag and showed it to them.

“Awesome!” They said, and Sam took it out, and started checking it out, learning how to use it.

“We finished your bike.” Said Jack. “We kept it inside so we could do a big thing where we bring it out and we all flip.”

Holy %*&$#! Go get it!

Jack tried to get Sam’s attention, but he wouldn’t look away from the camcorder.

“Forget it.” He said, and he walked in, swung open the screen door, and brought out the bike.

It.

WAS.

THE FREAKING BEST!

An all black, custom freestyle bike, with pegs!

I was outta my mind with happiness. I sort of blacked out. All I remember is seeing it, yelling and screaming and high-fiving and then getting on it and riding around right away. I think I went around the block a few times, I don’t even know. I just remember once I came back they were still there, sitting on their bikes, ready.

I thanked them a million times, and they said no problem, that they had fun doing it, and were glad I had a cool bike.

It’s the best bike ever. I said.

While we drove they told me about how they did it, where all the parts came from, that it used to be yellow, but they knew I wouldn’t like that, and since they had black spray paint and I was always wearing black T-shirts, they thought that would look rad.

Sam even said he thought it matched the theme of the cave since it was pitch black in there, and he went on about that for a bit.

I knew they were gonna build me a great bike, but I had no idea how great it would be. I was so happy. I couldn’t believe I actually had a cool freestyle that was mine, and I didn’t have to ride that corny Super Jerk Cycle anymore, and I didn’t have to be without a bike for long either because I don’t think my parents would have been able to get me a new one for a while. So it was great. Just us, on our bikes, on the open road, free, ripping around town.

I don’t think I stopped smiling and joking and laughing the whole ride.

They were such good friends, and I wasn’t thinking about that too much, at the time, but they really were, and this is just one example of that. They didn’t have to do that for me. It wasn’t their job to make sure I had a bike. But they just wanted to, so I could hang out with them, and have something I liked, and that’s pretty freaking awesome.

We didn’t stop anywhere along the way. Got right to the place, in like 20 minutes, way way less than when I was walkrunning the night before.

We hid the bikes between some bushes at the top of the cliff, just in case, climbed down, and went right in.

Sam was going to be the video guy for the day. His job was to just get as much footage of the place as he could, so that we could map it, and have evidence of whatever we find, and use it to help us on future expeditions.

When I say get as much footage as he can, I mean not just shaky footage of us walking around in there, I mean that AND getting video of EVERYTHING. 360 degree views of the place. You never know what the camera might find that we miss in the moment.

We also thought we should change up the original plan, and instead of just exploring one tube each day, we wanted to get through as much of the place as we could in one day so that we had the most amount of footage we could have. We didn’t know that we would only have the camera for one day, but we thought there was a good chance this would be our first and only chance, and so just in case we should capture as much of the cave as we could.

So that’s what we did.

We started with the first tunnel, the one from the day before. We moved through that one quickly since it was one straight path out and back, and because we’d been there before. Jack and I held 2 flashlights each, lighting the way for Sam, who kept 2 hands on the camera at all times, trying not to wobble it too much, rotating the camera up, down, and around to get everything.

We narrated too, which was fun.

And here you see a black wall. I said. And here’s another. All of it made of rock.

“Billions of years ago, the first settlers carved these tunnels with just a sharpened stick.”

“If you look closely over here, you’ll see nothing. Over here, nothing. Over here, nothing. And over here… OH MY GOSH WHAT IS THAT?! RUN!”

We also did for real narrating, just sort of talking about what we saw, what we were thinking, our real ideas about what this place was, and is, and where it might lead us next, stuff like that. We even captured stuff that had nothing to do with the cave:

Girls. Music. Bikes. Mike Schmidt. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Tecmo Bowl, Mario Bros., Contra. Jane. Joan. Stacy. Allison. Amy. Liza. Maria. Kelly. Shannon. Brains. Lots of brain talk. How they work, mostly. How they work with and control other parts of our body. What it’s made of. Jack said one of his teacher’s told him that the brain doesn’t feel pain like the rest of our body. Like you can do surgery on it without numbing it. I think that’s true. But what’s it made of then? How is that possible? We talked about Michael Jordan and The Bulls, of course. How couldn’t we? He’s the best ever. Darryl Strawberry. Dwight Gooden. Barry Bonds. Bobby Bonilla. Andy Van Slyke. Dreams. Lots of talking about dreams. Like the one where my tongue is like taffy and I keep pulling on it and it just keeps coming and I just want to break it off but it won’t break, or the one where Jack is free falling above mountains, almost flying but never hitting the ground, and the one when Sam takes the longest pee, and how in our dreams we’re never scared, and how in dreams we always win fights, like in my dreams even though I couldn’t do it in real life I can beat the crap out of anyone who messes with me, and how cool that is, and they tell me I shouldn’t be afraid of anyone in real life either, and even though I didn’t get it right when they said it, I eventually did, and I stopped being afraid of kids, no matter how big they were and I found my own way to handle them without having to fight. I used my mind, jokes mostly, and found a way to get to those bully-type dudes and get them off my back. We talked about Mrs. Leyton. Ms. Hartz. Ms. Rosenblum. Ms. Lindy. My dad and how he played in a band since he was a kid. Their dad and how he did too. How it was possible that they were both in bands for 20 years but not famous or rich or even close. Chicken patties (rubbery but delicious, especially with sauce and cheese). Combos (while we ate them) and how it’s best to suck on them, get them all soggy, and suck out the cheese filling. Soda, and just how good it was no matter what kind it was, except for some of the generic ones. Michelle. Melissa. Pizza. Randall Cunningham. And then a bunch of stuff I can’t remember but there was a lot more, and some of it got weird. And gross.

All the other tubes had tunnels branching off of them, and tunnels branching off of those and tunnels branching off of those. Some even curved around and re-connected back to the one we’d been in earlier, in a spot we didn’t even recognize when we were in them first time, and some seemed like they’d do that, but then they dead-ended.

We were going sorta quickly, and I didn’t notice many small details, but one thing I did notice were that the tunnels were all kinds of shapes and sizes and height, some taller, wider, rounder, and some were very very narrow where we had to squeeze through one at a time, and because of that, and how dark it still was even with flashlights, it was super hard to keep track of where we were. It was confusing.

Basically, we were lost, but none of us mentioned that.

We should use a flare. I said.

“Yeah, we should.” Said Jack.

So once the tube we were in widened, and there was no chance we’d catch anything on fire, Jack lit a flare, and the entire place lit up.

It looked… Magical.

None of us said a word, for like, 2 minutes.

Remember when I talked about what it was like at the beginning of time, if there was a beginning of time? It was like that now. The light shining, casting a red glow on everything, creating this whole new world where before there was nothing. Like, just 1 second before it was empty nothingness. And now it was…

Alive.

Exploding.

Almost like stars forming, there were millions, maybe billions, or hundreds of trillions of tiny little particles floating around us, some rising, some falling, some hanging in mid-air. They were everywhere.

Were they there the whole time, or did they just appear when we lit the flare, and turned on the bright lights?

We wondered. We guessed. We thought we knew. But there’s no way we could know for sure. I heard someone say this once: We were experimenters in on the experiment and there was no way we could separate ourselves from it. So just by being part of it, we were interfering with it. Something like that.

Maybe you get it, maybe not. I’m just trying to say because we were there, seeing all of this, making it happen, we couldn’t know for sure if it was happening when we weren’t there. Maybe it’s more like the tree falling in the forest thing, except in that case we all know the answer is yes, it definitely 100% makes a sound even if we’re not there and in this case we just don’t know for sure if it was alive before we got there or if we brought it to life.

“Unless later when we review the tape we see something.”

Good idea.

We stayed there, smiling, in awe, for a minute or two more, and then Sam said we better get going. We’ve got more exploring to do.

The next main tube, the 3rd of 4, was the best one yet. It didn’t have as many branches, but it was way way way deeper. The entire path was wide, and led us down a steep hill, so steep we kind of had to either fight gravity to walk slowly and carefully or jog/run.

Jack and I ran and Sam did a fast walk/slide behind us, yelling at us to slow down so he could see, and saying the camera was bouncing too much. He took his job very seriously, and even though we were making fun of him a bunch because of it, we were actually glad he was, because we needed that footage, and maybe more importantly, if the camcorder fell, and broke, or even got a scratch, I was dead. My mom would kill me. And there will be no deaths in this story. It’s lighthearted (mostly). But definitely no deaths (That I know of at the moment.)

It went down for probably a mile. No turns, just down. Seriously. It was far. The flare was burning out, but still gave off enough light to see a lot better than with only the flashlights. We passed by a few tunnels without stopping to explore, one on each side, the first about a quarter of the way down, and the other about three-quarters of the way, said we’d get to those on the way up.

We when got to the bottom, another jaw-dropper.

The tube opened into a humongous cavern, with a black rock beach, and a giant lake, I guess you’d call it. A giant, dark blue lake just THERE.

Before I could even ask, Jack had handed me the flare, and stripped down to his underwear, and started swimming across.

I wanted to get in, too, but wasn’t a good swimmer. My earliest memory of being in the water was nearly drowning in the school pool. I fell off a mat while floating in the deep end. I wasn’t afraid of the water. I was just aware that I wasn’t really any good. I never had lessons. Never got good at in school. Never really swam that much. But I was good enough, I decided, so I gave the flare to Sam and went in, too.

CHAPTER 10

Sam stayed on the shore filming, yelling at us not to die out there, but saying that with the light shining on the place, it was amazing video, and he was getting it all.

I sidestroked out to the middle, and then treaded water. Those were my only 2 moves. Jack was free styling all over the lake.

I couldn’t believe it was happening again, because I’d just had this same feeling, and when I just had it, it was for the very first time in my life that I could remember, and now, just a few minutes later, it was happening again. I looked around, and the light, how it glowed, showed another new world being born, right there. The water sparkled, those particle stars twinkled all around, the waves pulsed, I guess you’d say, like a rhythm, and for a while I think I stopped treading water and just floated there without moving a muscle.

Where are we?! I said.

“What is this place?” Said Sam.

“This is freaking amazing!” Said Jack, now all the way on the other side of the lake, so far that his yell seemed more like a really energetic whisper.

“How deep is it?”

No clue, I said. I’m not going down there.

“Deep.” Said Jack. “I can’t touch the bottom.” He dove down and came up like 20 seconds later.

This was the most incredible place I had ever been.

Sam walked around the lake filming.

Anything over there? I said.

“I don’t know, really. But I’m getting it all. We’ll look more later.”

I’ll get out and look now. We’re here. Why wait til later? We might never come back.

“Oh, we’re coming back.” Said Sam.

Yeah. I said. I know.

I saw over to the other side, a few hundred yards, at least.

Ahhhhh! Something is in the water! I yelled, trying to swim faster but I couldn’t. Ahhhhh! What the?!

“What is it?” Sam said.

I don’t know!

Get me out!

“Swim!”

It touched me again! What is it?!

By this time Jack had heard me howling and swam over. I was still at least 50 feet from the shore.

“They’re fish, dude.” He said. “Calm down.”

It can’t be fish. How would they survive in here?

“Who knows? Fish can go dormant and sleep all winter. They can do the same thing in here, I bet. We probably woke them.”

I don’t know, I said. I’m getting out.

“Maybe it’s just plants then. I don’t feel anything.”

I’m getting out. Checking out what’s over there.

“There’s water. A little stream!” Said Sam. “Look!”

He pointed but all I could see was the water right in front of me, and the wall way past him.

“AAAAHHHH!” Jack said. “It got me!”

He went under. Blasted out. Went under. Yelled something. Flailed.

I froze.

“What’s going on?!” Said Sam.

I don’t know. He’s…

“AHHHH!” Jack flopped in and out of the water, almost floating ON TOP of the water at times, for seconds at a time, but always back under. “HEEEELLLP!”

By then I knew he was joking. He was overacting. Had he just gone under, maybe once or twice, I might have fallen for it. But he was out of control. There was no way there was a lake monster in there.

Right?

He didn’t come up for like a minute, and I started to worry.

Sam! Put down the camera and get in here! I said. He’s not coming up!

Nothing. Silence all around.

Sam!

SAM?!

He was nowhere around.

What’s going on?!

I went under as far as I could, which wasn’t far, maybe 3 feet under the water, feeling around blindly for him. I couldn’t even open my eyes under water. I came up for air, and went back under.

Nothing.

SAM!

JACK!

YO!

I went back under and Jack came up, and from the surface pulled me back up.

“HEY!”

“I got all of that!” Said Sam. “It was awesome!”

You guys are freaking….

“It was a joke!” Said Jack. “Let’s go see what’s over there.”

He swam with me the rest of the way, we got out, and walked over to the stream. It was small, but it came from under part of the rear wall, and led to the lake.

“What does this mean?” Said Sam. “Is this fresh water?”

Who knows what it means, I said. I’m not a zoologist.

“What the heck does that even mean?”

It means we have no idea what this place is, what the stream means, and what’s in there, but we knows it’s the best place ever, and we know…

The flare flickered a few times, and went out. We were in complete darkness again. And I mean COMPLETE.

Where are the flashlights?! I said.

“Oh, man. I…”

What?

“I left them on the other side of the lake.”

No you didn’t.

“I did.”

“No way, dude. Don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying. You gave me the flare, and I left the flashlights back there. I can’t hold everything.”

He was still recording.

Is there a light on that thing?

“How am I supposed to know?”

You read the manual!

“There was no manual! I checked it out when you came over, but there was no booklet.”

Well, where’s the light switch? Look!

He looked.

Then Jack looked.

Then I looked.

We couldn’t figure it out, not in the dark.

We have to walk back in the dark. I said. We gotta go now. This is creepy as %*$#.

“What are you afraid of?” We just swam across and he walked the whole thing. It’s fine.”

Yeah. It’s fine, but it’s still creepy. We’re in an underground water cave and nobody knows where we are. It’s OK to say it’s creepy. Now, let’s get the heck outta here.

We walked side-by-side-by side back the way we came. There weren’t many big rocks, and we used the edge of the water as our guide, so it wasn’t so bad.

“I’m gonna swim back over.” Said Sam. Take the camera.

I took it, and held it up on my right shoulder.

Be careful, dude. I said. There’s a monster in there.

Sam swam, and we walked back over, and even more quickly than before, our eyes adjusted to the darkness. In another 2 minutes or so we were back near the opening to the cavern, where we came in.

Where are the lights? I said.

Sam walked out of the water. “They were right over here.”

They’re gone. Someone else is here.