I landed with a heavy thump. Back to reality. I climbed the ladder, heavy in heart and body, and banged my head on the grating.

I didn’t see the seriousness of the situation right away. What the heck, I thought. And lifted my hand. Of course the grating didn’t move. I pushed again, using all my strength. Nothing. The grating fit tight on the drain, as it was supposed to. I remembered how hard it had been to lever it off with the hockey stick. Okay, this was serious now. I clung to the ladder and raised my voice.

“Hey!”

It was getting harder to make out the blackness of the bars against the purple twilight sky. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. I wasn’t scared. I was—something else. I pushed upward as hard as I could. Banged my hands on the bars.

“HELP!!” I shouted. And again, “HEY, HELP!”

My voice echoing.

“What is it? Who’s there?”

I heard footsteps, and a girl called out. “Mouse? That you?”

Lisa’s face at the grating.

“Get me out of here,” I said. “Get a hockey stick or something like that. Long and thin and strong. Do you have a hockey stick?”

She laughed. “Listen to you,” she said.

I waited. Was she going to get a stick? No. Stupid girl. She was trying to lift it straight up. I could make out her fingers on the underside of the bars. Her breath was coming in gasps.

The grate shifted slightly. Huh.

“Hang on!” I climbed up another rung, ducking my head so that my shoulders and back were against the underside of the grating.

“Now!” I said, lifting with my legs.

The thing began to move. I pressed harder. We got the grate up high enough to slide it to one side. Lisa let go and stood up, gasping.

—

“Thanks,” I said. We were walking home together. She was chewing gum. I felt better, the weight off my chest.

“I’m going to stop calling you Mouse,” she said. “You got all bossy there. I think you must like me or something.”

I took a careful breath.

“How did you get down the hole, anyway? I didn’t even know there was a sewer there. I was walking through the park, and I heard a voice rising out of the ground. Like a spirit, you know? Only it was you, Mouse.”

The workman I’d seen here yesterday, with the hard hat. He must have checked this part of the vacant lot, found the open drain and put the lid on.

“I fell in,” I said. “It was an open hole.”

“But you’re okay now?”

“Yeah.”

We came to her place.

“You going to cross the street, Fred?”

My hands were clenched in my pockets. Something inside me going BOOM.

“You going to beat me up if I don’t?” I said.

She shook her head.

“I don’t know why I said that, back when I first moved here, about not walking on my sidewalk. Pretty dumb, huh? You can walk here anytime, Fred. You can even come inside. You want to?”

“I, uh, should be going home.”

“Sure.”

She spat out her gum and turned up the front walk to her house.