“Radium was used in paint in the early twentieth century,” I said, a little excited that my art education at Harvard was already coming in handy. “We probably shouldn’t handle it too much, in case that’s what it is.”
“What does it say?” Jazmine asked. “I know you nerds still remember how to read it.”
“It says ‘below,’” Seb told her as Lulu’s laughter emerged from the tunnel. “Hold on. Look.”
I got closer to see what Seb was inspecting. The code was written around the edges of a flat, round rock that looked a little bit like a manhole cover. Seb began digging his fingers around it, brushing dirt away.
“Help me lift it,” he said before Lulu and Benny’s lantern light filled the small cavern and Punkin rushed in, barking once to announce her presence.
“What’s going on up here?” Benny asked as he brushed dirt off the front of his shirt.
“Dude! We found a code. Get over here!” I told him.
Jazmine and I both kneeled on the floor and dug our own fingers under the edge of the round rock. A moment later, Benny crouched along with us. The four of us lifted, and the rock moved.Justslightly.
“Lift!” Seb shouted, and we all complied.
The rock was heavy, but once it came away from the floor, we were able to shift it to one side. Dust billowed.
Seb coughed and waved it away. “Light—shine it here.”
Benny stepped over the stream, and his lantern shone brighter than Jaz’s flashlight. We all looked down into a black hole in the floor.
“What is it?” Lulu asked, craning her neck to see.
“Let me get a better look. Give me your headlamp, would ya?” he said to Jazmine. “My flashlight bit the dust.”
Seb lay on the floor, belly down, and stuck his head into the hole along with Jazmine’s headlamp. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “Oh. Seriously? Wags, there’s another cavern down below this one. It’s flooded.”
“Flooded?” I tapped Seb, quietly requesting the headlamp as I lay on the floor next to him. “Let me see.”
I slipped the band of the headlamp over my forehead and dared to stick my head inside the hole. At first, I couldn’t really see anything. Then my eyes adjusted and I saw what Seb had described—a small cavern about the same size as this one, but halfway down was a waterline.
Definitely was flooded down there. Disappointment rose, but I pushed it away and quickly ran through possibilities.
“We’re elevated in this secondary cave,” I said, peering down into the hole, “so I’m betting down there it’s probably level with the main cavern. If it is, then it can’t be that deep. A few feet?”
Seb pulled me back from the hole. “And if it’s not? How the hell would we get back up?”
“Maybe with that?” Benny said.
When I pushed back from the hole, I spotted what he was pointing toward: something poked out from beneath a nearby rock. Seb tugged on it, and a length of thick, braided rope emerged, tied with several fat knots.
Seb whistled. “Wild, absolutely wild.”
The rope was anchored to a nearby stalagmite and looked reasonably stable, especially when Seb tossed it into the hole, and we could all see that the frayed bottom of the last knot skimmed the waterline. Theoretically, if someone dropped down into the hole, even if the water was deep, they could reach the rope and climb back up.
Everyone started to talk at once. Punkin barked.
Jazmine shouted over the din. “Everyone, hold up! Let’s think about this for a minute. We don’t know what’s in the water down there, and we aren’t kids anymore. It could be seriously fuckingdangerous, all right? God knows I can’t go down there with my sprained arm. And what if whatever’s down there has already been found?”
As much as I hated to think about it, she might be right. We all sat around the hole, taking peeks inside, considering the logistics of dropping into it. None of this was sensible. Jazmine was right: we weren’t kids anymore. But somewhere in the depths of my being, where all my pain and grief and loneliness hid, I realized suddenly that Ineededthis.
Needed to feel the rush of danger. To reconnect with my past. To feel...
Alive.
“I’m going down,” I told everyone. As soon as the words were out, excitement and fear spread through me. I’d already said it aloud, though. No backing down now.
