I slid down the rubble, landing on the hard ground with a jolt. My clothes were torn everywhere and covered in blood from the many scrapes and scratches. I watched the others as they skidded down—they were as ragged as I was.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked them as they stood and faced the opening in the wall.

Jessie removed the helmet. “I think so. My whole body is burning. And every inch of me is sore. My head is throbbing. And my lungs feel like they’re filled with cement. I think I might actually die. But I’m okay.”

Jessie hadn’t yet been hardened by life like the rest of us. He was too soft.

I turned to Rossi. “Okay?”

She nodded slowly. She didn’t speak as she grabbed the helmet and lantern from Jessie, stepped forward, and climbed through the opening in the wall, which had collapsed along with the mine.

I looked at the two guys and shrugged. “I guess we’re going.”

“No time to waste, huh, Rossi?” Jessie called. “Like, no time to make sure there’s not menthol, or some kind of, I don’t know, buried monster waiting on the other side. I once saw this movie, and they uncovered a dragon in this mine, and . . .”

I ignored Jessie as he rambled on. I opened my backpack and quickly checked my supplies—the Twinkies were a little flattened, but the pickle jar was still intact. I pulled out my pocket watch and flipped it open. It hadn’t been damaged, other than the backing still being a bit loose, and I saw it was just after midnight. I put the watch back in my pocket, shined the flashlight ahead of me, and stepped through the dark opening after Rossi.

“Would you please shut up?” Matthew yelled at Jessie as he nervously droned on about monsters and dragons and deadly ancient microbes. I was pretty sure none of those were in this hole. Pretty sure.

“You guys should stick close together,” I told them. “You know, since you don’t have a light.” They grumbled as they followed me. We seemed to be in some kind of large tunnel.

“There’s a larger opening this way,” Rossi called back to us.

I watched my steps carefully as I followed her. The ground was nothing but rocks, making it difficult to walk without my ankles twisting. I stopped for a moment and aimed the flashlight at the rocky walls—this didn’t seem like part of the mine. It didn’t appear man-made at all. I looked ahead and didn’t see Rossi anymore. “Rossi?” My voice echoed off the rock walls.

“I’m in here.” She sounded far away.

We followed her voice, stumbling over the rocky ground, until we found ourselves in a gigantic room. Rossi turned the lantern up as high as it would go.

“What is this place?” Matthew said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I gazed around at the many spires and spikes jutting up from the floor, the ceiling that was melting down over us. “A cave,” I whispered.

“This place is creepy.” Jessie pointed to the tip of a spire. “What are these things?”

“Stalagmites,” I said. “Or stalagtites. I can’t remember.”

“Stalagmites grow up from the ground.” Rossi held the lantern up. “Stalactites grow down from the ceiling.” We all looked at her. The sudden silence between us caused a buzzing in my ears. I didn’t know silence like that existed. “What?” she finally said, and the terrible buzzing stopped. “I read it in a magazine once.”

Matthew eyed her suspiciously. “What magazine? National Nerdographic?”

I squatted down so I could more closely inspect one of the stalagmites. “You know what this place reminds me of? That ride in Disneyland—Thunder Mountain. It drives through a cave like this. Of course that cave is all fake.”

Everyone was staring at me now. “You’ve been to Disneyland?” Matthew asked like I told them I had gone to Mars. “What’s it like?”

“Uh.” I didn’t like to talk about it. I didn’t even like to think about it. Why had I brought it up in the first place? “It was okay.”

Jessie glanced at me. He knew why I didn’t want to talk about it. And I knew he wouldn’t betray my secrets, no matter what had gone on between us over the last year.

“When did you go?” Matthew said.

“I was, uh, six. Before I moved here.” Actually, it was the same day. I tried to change the subject. “At least it’s not too hot in here. It’s cooler than outside.”

“A lot cooler,” Matthew said as we walked slowly through the cave over the crumbled rock floor, being careful not to trip and fall on a stalagmite.

impale: pierce or transfix with a sharp instrument

I resisted the urge to kick one of the stupid stalagmites. “I guess we won’t be finding any gold now,” I grumbled.

“That was a long shot anyway, Gus,” Jessie said. “I’d be pretty happy if we just, like, don’t die at this point.”

“But what about Rossi’s bike?” I said.

“I agree with Jessie,” Rossi said. “We should just focus on getting out of here. If there even is a way out of here.”

I took in a deep breath. “What if there’s not?”

They all stopped and looked at me, six huge eyes. “Let’s just assume that there is,” Rossi finally said. “There has to be,” she said a bit more firmly.

“When we get out we’ll have to go back to the mine and search more,” I said.

“Are you crazy?” Jessie said. “I wouldn’t go back in that mine for a million dollars.”

“Me neither,” Matthew agreed.

I looked at Rossi. “We can figure out another way, Gus,” she said. “No one’s going back in that mine. Including you.”

I moped as we walked in silence for a while, maneuvering around boulders and cracks in the ground and stalagmites until Jessie covered his nose and said, “Geez, what is that?”

I sniffed the air. Something was starting to smell.

“What is that?” Jessie said again. “It smells like our kitty litter box if we didn’t change it for a year. And it was covered in rotten potatoes. And burnt hair. And barf.”

“It’s pretty bad,” Matthew said.

I looked down and saw that I was standing in some kind of weird dirt—clumps of dark brown rice that disintegrated into powder like used charcoal as I stepped on it.

“Gross.” Jessie lifted his shoe and shook it, the dirt turning into a small dust cloud around his foot.

We moved on, but the mounds of strange dirt continued to get bigger until our shoes were completely submerged. “What is this stuff?” Matthew said. “I think it’s what smells.”

I bent down and inspected it—the pieces were oval-shaped. We’d had plenty of mice in our trailer, and this looked similar to the nice presents they left behind in my underwear drawer. “It’s some kind of poop, I think.” My grandma probably would have been interested in it.

Rossi slowly raised the lantern above her and tilted her head back. “It is.”

We all looked up. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of bats hanging from the ceiling above us.

The lantern shook in Rossi’s hand. “It’s bat guano.”

“What’s guano?” Matthew asked.

“Why you guano know?” I laughed nervously at my own bad joke. No one laughed with me. “It’s poop.”

Jessie let out a pitiful whimper. “This isn’t happening.”

“No, no. It’s good,” I said. “They have to go in and out, right? To eat, I mean. There must be a way out of the cave.”

Rossi looked at me. “Right.”

“We’ll keep going. I’m sure they won’t notice us,” I said.

“Right,” Rossi said again.

“Are they vampire bats?” Matthew asked. “Or are they, like, the fruity kind?”

“They’re vampire bats, for sure,” I said. “Don’t wake them up or they’ll suck you dry.”

“Shut up, Gus,” Matthew and Jessie both said.

“I’m kidding. They probably just eat bugs. Or fruities.”

“Do they have rabies?” Matthew asked.

“How should I know?” I said. “I’m not a philosopher.”

Jessie snorted. “Good one.”

“Are you guys making fun of me?” said Matthew.

“You just give us so much to work with,” said Jessie.

And then, to my horror, Matthew picked up a handful of the bat poop and threw it at Jessie. It hit him in the chest and exploded, forming a poufy poop cloud that sparkled in the light of my flashlight. Some of it drifted to me and landed on my arm. I aimed the flashlight at it—it was filled with insect wings. I guess the bats weren’t the fruity kind after all.

“Don’t!” I ordered them, wiping the wings off my arms. But there was no way Jessie wasn’t going to retaliate.

I saw that Rossi was already heading back the way we had come in, trudging through the bat poop as quickly as she dared. She obviously knew what was coming.

shenanigans: silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief

Jessie threw a handful of bat poop right in Matthew’s face, creating another glittering poop cloud. It was kind of beautiful in a revolting sort of way. Matthew coughed, and I hoped the poop dust wouldn’t make them sick. Then again, Nowhere’s kids’ lungs were accustomed to all kinds of contaminants—seasoned by a lifetime of harsh desert dust and indoor smoking.

A bat swooped over my head. “Stop disturbing the bats!” I commanded. But they were in a full-blown poop fight now—coughing and sneezing inside a giant glistening poopy dust cloud.

More and more bats were waking up from the ceiling and flying around the cave. I walked as quickly as I could in Rossi’s direction, careful not to trip into the repulsive piles.

I turned around just in time to see Matthew take a large handful of poop and smear it right on top of Jessie’s head, rubbing it in with great enthusiasm. Jessie tackled him to the ground. For the second time that night. Then they were rolling around in the poop together.

I turned away from their ridiculous fight. And then I watched as a bat swooped down and landed in Rossi’s hair.

Rossi was pretty cool. She was one of the best racers in Nowhere. She seemed strong and tough. But right now, as the bat fluttered its wings, further entangling itself in her long dark hair, she was just a thirteen-year-old girl with a bat in her hair.

She dropped the lantern and helmet right into a large pile of bat guano and let out the loudest, highest-pitched scream I’d ever heard. I ran to her, kicking up a poop dust devil as I went. “Calm down,” I said, but she was completely panicked, screaming and turning in circles, slapping at her head. “Calm down!”

She finally stopped, her chest heaving, her eyes slammed shut. “Get it out, get it out, get it out.”

I didn’t want to touch the bat, but I had no choice. I carefully untangled her hair from around it while it flapped wildly. I resisted the instinct to pull my hand away every time its wings grazed my fingers. “It’s always best to remove it quickly when you don’t expect it,” I said, but she didn’t smile. She didn’t seem to hear me at all. I finally got enough hair loose, and the bat flew away.

Rossi’s chest was still heaving as she smoothed her frazzled hair with one trembling hand and picked up her helmet with the other. “Thank you, Gus.” I could tell she was trying to be casual as she brushed the poop off her helmet. “That was quite brave of you.”

“You’re welcome.” I didn’t tell her she had bat poop on her shoulder. I picked up the lantern, brushed the poop off it as well as I could, and handed it to her.

The bats were flying all around us. “Are you finished now?” I asked Jessie and Matthew. Both of them were covered head to toe in the poop. At least it wasn’t sludgy, so they mostly looked like they had been diving in powder.

They nodded. I pointed my flashlight in the direction we had come from. “Maybe we should try the other way.”

“Why?” Matthew asked.

“Because that’s the direction the bats are flying.” Rossi’s voice was raspier than usual—probably from the dust and screaming. “There must be a way out down there.”

The other way was an obstacle course of large boulders and narrow, rocky tunnels. At one point, the ceiling got so low (or the floor got so high), we had to crawl through on our hands and knees, bellies low to the ground.

I crouched down and took deep breaths of cool cave air while I crawled through the tight space. If anyone had ever asked me what rock smelled like, I probably would have said nothing. But now I knew that rock had a smell—and it was the smell of this cave.

Rossi was mumbling something. I strained to listen. “Three minutes, three days, three weeks,” she was saying, her voice trembling. “Three minutes, three days, three weeks.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked her.

“The rule of three,” she said, breathing heavily. “You can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food.”

“Why are you thinking about that?” Jessie cried. “Knock it off!”

“We have air.” I breathed in. “We have water.” Yeah, one glass jar of pickle water. “And we have food, too.” Or at least stuff that barely qualified as food. “And besides, that rule sounds pretty flexible. I mean, if we were outside in the middle of the day, we couldn’t go even three hours without water, so I’m sure we can go longer than three days in here in the cool dark.”

“How long can you survive without light?” Matthew asked.

“That’s a stupid question,” Jessie said. “We’re not plants. It’s not like we need to photo . . . graphisize or whatever.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Matthew snapped. “How long will these batteries last?”

I stopped crawling. If we lost the light, nothing else would matter. “Maybe we should only use one light at a time to conserve batteries,” I said. I didn’t wait for them to respond as I flipped off the flashlight. The intense quiet caused that horrible buzzing in my ears again. We moved on, the lantern our only light now.

“I hope no one here is closet-tropic,” Matthew said.

I stopped and turned my head to Matthew. “Closet-tropic?”

Jessie laughed. “Oh man. He means cluster-phobic. What a moron.”

“Shut up, Jessie,” Matthew said. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“The word is claustrophobic,” Rossi said. “And, please, let’s not discuss it.”

“Why, Rossi?” I asked. “You’re not closet-tropic are you?”

“No . . . I . . . just don’t . . . like . . . small spaces.”

“I believe that makes you closet-tropic,” I said.

“Making jokes . . . doesn’t help,” she breathed.

“And it’s not funny, either,” Matthew said. “Who cares what the word is anyway? You guys are a bunch of book nerds.”

“I’m no book nerd,” Jessie said. “Gus on the other hand . . .”

I gave Jessie a warning look and mouthed, “Don’t.”

“What about Gus?” Matthew asked.

“Nothing,” Jessie said. “Mind your own business, Matthew.”

“You’re the one who brought it up, Jesus.” Matthew took extra care to loudly and slowly pronounce Jessie’s real name gee-zus, like the guy from the Bible, when it’s really pronounced hay-soos, like a bale of hay and Dr. Seuss.

“That’s not how you say my name, Matthew. It’s pronounced hay-soos.”

Matthew grunted as he pushed himself through a particularly narrow space. “Whatever.”

“I wish you guys would just shut up and crawl.” I hadn’t meant it to sound so mean. Okay, yes, I did. Those two were getting on my nerves.

“Don’t tell us what to do, Fer-gus.” Jessie drew out the Fer part of my name like Ferrrrrrrrr.

“Oh man,” Matthew said. “Fergus? That’s such a dweeb name.”

Rossi stopped and looked at me. “Fergus? It’s Irish, right?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Rossi wiped sweat from her forehead and took a deep breath. She started moving forward again. “Well, it sounds Irish.”

“What do you know about what sounds Irish, you weirdo?” Matthew said. “It could be Chinese.”

“Or Viking,” Jessie added, then did his silly, heaving laugh that always cracked me up.

“Viking,” I said quietly to myself. Yeah, I liked that.

“I’m fairly certain it’s not Chinese,” Rossi said. “Or Viking.”

“Who asked you anyway, whatever-your-name-is?” Matthew said.

I stopped. “What do you mean?”

“Oh yeah,” Matthew said. “Like she just happens to have the same name as one of the greatest motorcycle riders of all time. Yeah, right.”

Sweat dripped down Rossi’s strained face. “Isn’t it your real name?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer me—just stared straight ahead and moved forward like a crab, pushing the helmet ahead of her as she went.

I turned to Matthew. “I really wish you would shut up.”

“Why are you getting mad at me? She’s the one you can’t trust.”

I gritted my teeth. “You’ve been listening to Bo too much.”

“Oh, really? Ask her where she got her gear from. Or how she keeps up her bike. Go ahead.”

“I don’t need to ask her anything.”

“You know it costs money to do that. It’s not like her dad is rich. She doesn’t work. There’s only one option left.”

I tried to ignore him as I periodically glanced at Rossi, but she was totally expressionless.

“She’s a thief,” Matthew said.

“Shut up.” I could feel the anger, the need to defend her, rising inside me like it had earlier that day. That hadn’t ended well, and I definitely didn’t need to get into a fistfight in such a cramped space. Then again, with my small size, that might actually work in my favor. “How do you get your motorcyle parts?”

“I do stuff for Bud at his shop, and he helps me work on my bike in return. And Bo told me that Rossi—”

I cut Matthew off. “When will you get it through your head that everything that guy says is a lie?”

“Whatever. But he’s not the only liar around.”

Rossi just quietly shook her head. The look on her face told me Matthew’s words weren’t even worth a response from her.

“What’s your point anyway?” I said. “Trying to get everyone mad?”

“No. Just that I’m the only one here who isn’t pretending to be something they’re not.”

“Yeah right,” Jessie and I both said at the same time.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Finally Rossi spoke. “You pretend to be a mean bully who likes Bo.”

“To protect yourself,” I added. “You know it’s true.”

Matthew didn’t seem to have a comeback to that.