“Doesn’t mean we’re related.” Matthew shifted from foot to foot.
I stopped digging and looked at him. “What are the odds that two different families by the name of Dufort would end up in a town like Nowhere?”
Matthew shrugged. “I’m not a philosopher so I have no idea.” I wasn’t sure Matthew knew what a philosopher was.
Jessie continued glaring at Matthew. “Why don’t you just admit that you’re related to that jerk?”
Matthew glared back at Jessie. “What do you care?”
Jessie threw his screwdriver down, and it bounced on the hard dirt ground. “Because he killed my great-grandfather and stole his gold.” Jessie stepped forward and shoved Matthew.
Matthew pushed Jessie back. “Get off me, man. Last I heard, your great-grandpa is the one who stole the gold and shot him.”
They continued bickering and pushing each other. I looked at Rossi. She had stopped chipping at the wall and was watching them through her helmet opening. She removed it and tilted her head to the side a little bit. “What’s this all about?”
They stopped arguing and looked at her. “What? You don’t know the story?” Jessie asked her.
Rossi shook her head.
“I thought everyone in Nowhere knew the history of Dead Frenchman Mine,” Matthew said.
“She hasn’t lived here very long,” I said. “She probably hasn’t heard about it.”
“Let me fill you in, Rossi,” Jessie snarled, shooting evil looks at Matthew. “That guy’s”—Jessie pointed dramatically at Matthew—“great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were partners. They mined a whole bag of gold out of this place. They were supposed to split it fifty-fifty, but his great-grandfather was a lying, cheating, backstabbing, murdering piece of garbage who stole the gold and shot his partner.”
“That’s a lie!” Matthew shouted. “Your great-grandfather is the one who stole the gold and shot him. My dad told me the whole story.”
Jessie smirked. “You mean before he ditched your sorry butt?”
That did it—Matthew lunged at Jessie, and then the two of them were rolling around in the dirt together.
I stood there, no clue what to do, kind of wishing they’d stop, but also enjoying watching Jessie push Matthew’s face into the dirt. The flashlight flew out of Matthew’s hand and rolled toward me. I picked it up and pointed it at them to get a better view.
“Stop it!” Rossi screamed. “Are you two really going to fight in a mine that could cave in on you at any moment?”
They seemed to come to their senses and pushed off of one another. They stood up, breathing heavily, keeping their eyes on each other in case the other tried to pull something.
“This has nothing to do with you now,” Rossi said. “It was a long time ago. Maybe you’re not even related to those men.”
“It has everything to do with me,” Jessie snapped. “I know that guy was my great-grandfather. Everyone in my family knows it. And maybe if some lowlife hadn’t killed him and stolen everything he had, then my great-grandma wouldn’t have been left high and dry with a baby to care for. Maybe we wouldn’t still be here, poor as dogs, not even enough money to get a new dirt bike, living on scraps. Literally.” Jessie picked his screwdriver back up and slammed it into the wall.
“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” I said to Matthew and turned back to the wall.
“What did I do?” Matthew said. “He started it.”
I continued chipping away at the wall with my hammer and chisel. Those guys could fight all night long if they wanted, but I was going to focus on the work at hand.
I pounded on the chisel, which barely went in a millimeter with each hit, trying to find the spots in the wall that weren’t filled with rock. I guess I had gotten over my fear of the mine caving in already because I was hitting it as hard as I could. The mine echoed with the sounds of our pounding away, when suddenly my chisel went all the way into the wall.
I stood back, not sure what to make of it. “What . . .”
Rossi stopped and stared at my chisel. “How’d you do that?”
“With one hit.”
“Stop showing off, Gus,” Jessie said. I ignored him and grabbed the screwdriver out of his hand. “Hey,” he protested.
I held the screwdriver up to the wall next to the chisel and pounded it with my hammer while the others watched. After a few whacks, it, too, went all the way into the wall. “It’s like . . . there’s nothing back there,” I said.
“That’s freaky,” said Jessie. “Maybe we should dig somewhere else.”
“Maybe it’s a hidden corridor,” I said.
Rossi reached up a slender finger and touched the screwdriver. “Nothing,” she whispered. “Do you think. . . ”
“Think what?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Do you think the mountain really is hollow?”
Jessie laughed behind me.
Her brown eyes were barely visible in the lantern light. “Why would they call it that?” she said.
I looked at the chisel embedded in the wall. “I always thought it was because of all the mines.”
Rossi gripped the handle of the screwdriver and pulled it out in one quick motion. A whistling sound came from the small hole. She stuck the screwdriver back in and made twisting motions, causing the whistling to grow louder as the hole enlarged. “Hand me your flashlight.” I gave it to her. She held it up to the hole and peered through. Air streamed out, blowing Rossi’s loose strands of hair back from her face.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that, Rossi,” I said. “What if it’s all filled with methane gas?” She ignored me as she stared into the hole. “What do you see?” I whispered, suddenly terrified, like we were on the brink of opening some portal to who-knows-where, but knowing Nowhere, it would be somewhere extremely not good.
Rossi swallowed. “Nothing.”
I heard a splitting sound, and my heart jumped in my chest. All four of us looked up at the rotten plank responsible for keeping the mountain from coming down on us. You’re not doing your job! I wanted to scream at it.
Instead, I managed to get the word run out, but apparently not loud enough because the others still stood there, frozen.
“Run!” I managed to shout this time.
I turned and ran in the direction we had come in, following the others. We barely made it ten feet when the mine started crumbling right over our heads.
So what does one do when a mine starts to cave in on them? Well, if you’re thirteen years old, apparently you crouch in a corner, cover your head, and cry. Not necessarily in that order.
We huddled together as the mountain rumbled and collapsed. I watched helplessly as a piece of beam came down on Rossi. Fortunately, she had managed to get her helmet on again—I guess it had been a good idea to bring it after all.
When the rumbling finally quieted, I coughed the dust out of my lungs. It was hard to breathe in the thick air, but I managed to choke out, “Are you okay?”
“Okay,” Jessie croaked next to me.
“Okay,” Matthew said.
Rossi pointed the little flashlight at her face. “Okay,” she said from under her helmet.
I took the flashlight from her and shined it around us—we were surrounded by rubble. I was reminded of Louis, the kid with the pet centipede and salivation disorder. Louis’s trailer was so filled with junk, you had to walk through tunnels to get from room to room. I always felt suffocated when I was in his trailer because no matter where I stood, I was closed in by stuff. The mine was like that right now, only there were no tunnels, just walls.
claustrophobia: extreme fear of confined places
I looked above me and saw what had saved our lives—a giant boulder jutted out overhead and had prevented the mine from caving in right over us.
The air was thick with dust—almost too thick to breathe—and we all coughed and gasped.
Jessie sniffled beside me. “What are we going to do? No one even knows we’re here.”
I shined the light on him and Matthew and saw they were holding each other in what could almost be considered a romantic embrace.
Matthew pushed Jessie off of him in disgust. “We’re trapped,” Matthew said. “We’re trapped and we’re going to die. We’re going to die horrible agonizing deaths. We’ll suffocate. Or we’ll starve to death.”
“No.” Jessie sneezed. “We’ll die of thirst before we starve to death.”
“Stop it,” I told them.
Rossi looked at the rubble surrounding us, breathing heavily. “I think we can crawl over it.”
The thought of trying to squeeze between the rubble and the new ceiling of the mine wasn’t appealing. But neither was sitting here, waiting to die.
“Remember that wall?” Rossi said. “The one your chisel went through?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s another corridor. Maybe we can get back there—it’s only about ten feet away. Maybe we can break through the wall.”
“And maybe we’ll die in the rubble,” said Matthew.
“Maybe,” said Rossi.
“Or maybe it’s filled with menthol,” said Jessie.
“Methane,” I said.
Jessie threw up his arms. “Oh, like that’s any better.”
“Maybe to all those things,” said Rossi. “But sitting here doing nothing is not an option.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Jessie. “You have a helmet.”
Rossi lifted the helmet off her head and took a deep breath of dirty air. “Here.” She handed it to Jessie. “You can wear it.”
Jessie’s eyes were huge as he quickly pushed the helmet over his frazzled hair, which was more gray than dark brown right now.
Matthew shook his head. “Wimp.”
“I’ll go first,” I said.
Jessie nodded, the helmet flopping forward. “Great idea.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m the smallest. If I can’t fit, then none of you can, either.”
Rossi stared at me. She was breathing hard and her forehead was covered in sweat. “I lost my backpack. Our water was in it.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I have a jar of water.” One jar of water for four people.
I realized immediately I wasn’t going to be able to hold my flashlight and scale the rubble—a mix of rocks and earth and rotten planks—at the same time. I stuck it in my mouth and started to climb the unstable pile.
My hands slipped and I tumbled back down, along with a bunch of rocks that banged up my legs. “Okay,” I muttered. “Again.”
I grabbed at a different place in the debris and once more attempted to climb the rubble. It was a one step forward, one step backward sort of process as I fell back down. “I don’t know if I can get up there.”
“I’ll help you,” Rossi said. She moved the lantern closer to the pile.
“Good thing I grabbed the lantern,” said Jessie, clearly proud of his bravery.
“You were already holding it when the mine caved in,” Matthew said. “There was no grabbing involved.”
I groaned. Scaling the rubble was starting to seem like fun compared to sitting with these two. Rossi held out two hands linked together, and I stepped into them. Then she hoisted me up. I grabbed onto the rocks and planks with all my might, the sharp edges tearing at my thin T-shirt and the skin beneath. When I started to slide back down again, Rossi pushed at my butt to keep me up.
Seriously, here I was in a collapsed mine, trying to scale a mountain of rubble, hoping to break through a wall to who-knows-where, likely to die at any moment, and all I could think was Rossi Scott is touching my butt.
After what felt like an eternity, I made it to where the rubble wasn’t so loose and steep and was able to pull myself on top of the pile. I lay there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. The ceiling was barely above my head. I was sandwiched. I felt the panic rising in my chest and did my best to squash it back down.
I aimed the flashlight ahead of me—I could probably squeeze forward over the pile, but I couldn’t make out the far wall. All I saw in that direction was blackness. Nothing. I turned my head to call to Rossi, “I think we can make it.”
I inched forward over the painful rubble. The sharp rocks dug into every part of me. I was glad I had worn the AT LEAST IT’S A DRY HEAT T-shirt instead of one of my good ones from Dollar General in Casa Grande. I didn’t often go to Casa Grande, and a new pack of T-shirts was a luxury in my life.
I heard a lot of grunting behind me as the rest of them tried to push one another up the rubble. All three of them were larger and stronger than I was, so it didn’t take nearly as long.
I could barely breathe as rocks pushed into my diaphragm. The air was so thick with dust, I was amazed I hadn’t suffocated already. I came to a section that was too tight to squeeze through, so I worked on moving rocks and earth away while I waited for the others. “It’s really tight right here.”
Matthew crawled up beside me and helped to clear more inches. That’s all we were squeezing through—inches of space. “My life doesn’t seem so bad right now,” Matthew said as he moved a jagged rock to the side. “I don’t want it to be over already.”
I took a deep breath of gravy-thick air and swallowed the dirt in my throat. “It won’t be.”
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 ma
ny 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.”
24 Hours in Nowhere Page 5
