"Why are you killing them? They didn't do anything to you," Adam said.
"I hate spiders. Gross me out. When I feel them crawling on my skin, it's just—ewww. I can't stand the things."
Adam had half the notion to take the broom off him and whack him upside his head with it.
Chris went along the walls, standing on his tip-toes, reaching as high as he could, bound to exterminate them all.
"They're more afraid of you than you are of them."
"Hey, what's this?" Chris said. In the far back corner of the basement, behind the furnace and three pieces of old plywood, a large rectangle was cut into the concrete wall. It was fairly evenly cut, about three feet wide and five feet high.
"What's what?" Adam said.
"I don't know if it's a crack, or—" Chris began. Adam looked at it but could barely make it out.
"I'll get the flashlight," Adam said. He did it quickly and shined the sharp beam of tungsten against the wall. Now both boys saw it. Curious, they moved the wood aside and examined the outline thoroughly. "Is it a door? Doorway, or something?"
Chris blew some of the dust away from the crack. "Holy shit. This is crazy," Chris remarked. "I actually think it's a secret passageway. In eighth grade history class, Mr. Parker told us that the slaves used to build tunnels under the ground to escape. He said they were everywhere all over—actually under—town."
"What if there's something in there?"
"Diffuse the light beam. I'm going to give it a push."
Adam directed the beam. Chris took two deep breaths, then, with all his might, pushed on the carved piece of wall. His face turned pale, then red, then purple. His arms trembled as he exerted one hundred and fifty pounds of teenage force. Slowly, the wall gave way and went inward like the wall on The Temple of Doom ... until Chris was no longer standing in Adam's basement.
"What is it? What is it? What's in there?"
"Holy shit,” Chris said. "Come in here!"
The tunnel was not very big in diameter but extended so far in three different directions that not even a spotlight could reach their ends. Water, gas and sewer pipes ran each way, hanging from the ceiling like old machinery. Chris and Adam could hear the water running, could smell the stench of shit flowing its way toward the river.
"Wow!" Adam said. "I got a secret tunnel in my fucking basement! I wonder how far it goes."
"Jesus, I bet you this tunnel leads to every sewer, pipe, and septic tank in town."
"I have lived here for sixteen years and I haven't found out about this till now?"
Chris said, "Mr. Parker was right. I bet you the slaves dug out these tunnels and when they did all the pipelines later, they just used their tunnels as a guideline. I mean, it would be easier than having to re-dig, and cheaper. That's what I would have done."
"I wonder if there are any bones in here."
"Probably not. I'm sure that when they put in the lines, they would have taken them out."
"Let's go anyway. This is awesome! I have to see where this goes to."
***
Adam jumped in the lead and they both forged ahead, going north through the darkest tunnel, which seemed to lead toward the end of town. The sound of water never ceased to flow. Both boys could hear car horns beeping and a train rumbling over the streets above. It was like a lost civilization to Adam, an adventure into ancient ruins that hadn't seen the light of day in decades.
"Ahhh!" Chris shrieked as two oversized rats scurried past him, eating a small bone. "Maybe we should go back," he said.
"No fucking way. The rats aren't going to eat your leg off. Don't worry."
"It's not just that. What if the batteries in your flashlight die? What if we get lost? Stuck?"
"Oh, come on, Chris."
Chris continued reluctantly behind. He was afraid of dark, confined spaces and had once seen his older cousin almost get killed by a collapsing house. This place gave him the creeps, simply enough.
"Hey, look!” Adam said, pointing up.
To Chris, Adam looked eerie when he stopped and tilted his head back. For, right overhead, hung a sewer grate. The glow of the streetlight devoured Adam's figure with slats of whitish-blue.
"Where do you think this is?” Adam wondered, shining the light up through the sewer.
Chris joined him and looked up. "I can't really tell."
The sewer grate above was six feet up from the top of their heads. The half of a moon and the part of a truck tire were the only visible objects they could see. The sound of traffic was predominate: wheels on wet pavement, horns honking, the rumbles of mean engines.
"This is so cool!" Adam said. "We're like—"
"Bums looking for shelter?" Chris just wanted to get the hell out of there.
"No, we can do anything we want to down here. We can sneak up on people, spy, observe … go places all around town without a soul knowing about it."
Chris shrugged his shoulders. "Can we head back now, please?"
Adam turned dead still. "I feel like I left something at home, or completely forgot about something we were going to do—?"
They looked at each other and said, "Pizza!"
***
By the time they got back, the pizza was lukewarm. Adam's mom, luckily, was at home to have paid for it. It was on the tip of Adam's tongue to tell her about the underground tunnel, but he felt he would have lost something if he did. So, instead, he kept it a secret.
“Pizza is, like, the best food in the world!" Adam said to Chris as he chewed through pepperoni, cheese and bread.
Chris nodded. "You think this is good? You haven't tried Romero's Pizza. It's even better." He ate a fourth piece—his last.
"Really? I'll have to try it then."
They were sitting on Adam's bed. An extra large pizza box, almost empty, sat in between them. Adam flipped through the channels, searching mindlessly for anything somewhat entertaining.
"Oh, turn it back," Chris said.
Adam did. The title for The Real World appeared on the television.
"Oh God, I can't believe you like this show," Adam grunted. "It's so dumb."
"No dumber than Full House."
Asshole!
"All the people on here are phony as hell. They're morons, they're cheap, they're sluts, and they’re drunks."
Right now, a muscular, golden-skinned man with spiked blond hair carried a big-breasted bimbo over his shoulder toward the pool. She screamed in fun and kicked her legs like two pistons.
"They're all drama queens—all of them," Adam said.
Chris said, taking his last bite: "That's why I like it. It's interesting to see just what they're going to do next."
Adam took the last slice of pizza out of the box and bit into it with full force. Crunch!
"Oh, no, no, no, no," the girl on television shrieked.
"You're going in!" the beach boy exclaimed. He slammed her into the pool. Water splashed; a few droplets even landed on the camera lens.
"I fucking hate those kind of people," Adam made known.
"Why?" Chris said, annoyed.
"They're losers. Plain and simple. They're the kind of people who get through life with an easy ticket. They're all identical to one another. They come from wealthy parents, and—Jesus, they get mad and cry like pussies over the stupidest things. They don't know shit about what a hard life is."
"True. I think you're just jealous."
"Jealous?" Adam said, heart sinking. "Of what? Jealous of being a complete idiot? Na, I'm not."
"Care if I get on the Internet?" Chris asked.
"Go ahead," Adam sighed. He quickly turned the channel. On A&E, there was video footage of teenagers scurrying out of a high school with their hands on top their heads. A wicked smile bloomed across Adam's lips. Warmth flooded through him. He upped the volume with the remote control.
"Next on Rampage Killers—" a news announcer said—"could violent video games, movies, or music be the cause behind the Columbine tragedy?"
&nb
sp; "My heroes..." Adam said.
Chris did not hear him. He was busy cracking his fingers and signing online.
"They're like Gods, man. So brave, so just. They've set the record straight."
"Who?" Chris clicked the mouse.
"Eric and Dylan. The Columbine High killers. You know it's true that they were teased and tormented so bad—one time I read a statement online that some jocks filled a jar with shit and piss and threw it in their faces."
"Who? You mean the ones who got shot did that?"
"Yeah. They blame all these shootings on TV, games, movies, music, and don't learn the real source of the problems—themselves."
"I know," Chris said, "they think people playing Doom and listening to AC/DC makes kids kill. It's pretty lame."
"Let me ask you this, Chris: did Hitler do what he did because of AC/DC? Or Doom? Or Natural Born Killers? Did people bomb Pearl Harbor 'cause they watched the movie Psycho?"
"Yeah, those things have been going on for a long time."
"Exactly. Way before movies or music. They blame entertainment because they don't want to take the blame."
"That's when they sue."
Adam continued, "They used to hang black people from trees just because of their skin color. Did music tell them to do it?"
"Nope."
"As far as I'm concerned, I think shooting up a high school is a good thing. The world's overpopulated as it is. People aren't good. Teenagers, except for the few, like me, are bad in nature. It's not because they're young and confused, it's because they're evil. They don't care about anyone different than they are. What would you do if day in and day out, every fucking day, somebody literally teases and torments you and gets away with it every time? What would you do if, during Vietnam, the Vietnamese caught you, kept you prisoner, and whipped you with bamboos day and night? If you escaped, you would get even, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you want them to be punished for doing something so horrible to you?"
Chris typed.
Adam said louder, "Huh?"
Chris turned. "What's that?"
"Never mind." Adam turned back to the TV and watched more footage of the Columbine High Massacre. Watching all the kids fleeing away made him sick, but the killers made Adam proud.
"I would."
***
Night passed, morning came. Neither of the boys fell asleep until 4:00 A.M. Dawn was arriving with a brand new day. Adam savored the time as best he could, for he knew every weekend ended and hell began. There was no stopping time, but if given that chance, he would have played out Saturday until the end of the world.
Chris left at around noon for a dentist’s appointment. Adam sat alone at home, deathly bored and with no will to do much of anything.
"Email, email, email," he said, signing onto AOL. His fingers hit the keys with the speed of a master piano player. Those years of typing stories were paying off.
On screen, there was a picture of coach Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers football team holding the Superbowl trophy. Adam knew enough football players at Blake who didn't treat him right, let alone adults who got paid millions for doing it.
"Football sucks," he said, clicking onto YAHOO MAIL.
1 Message.
"Great, one person cares about me, and it's probably some Asian prostitute." He laughed at himself and clicked on the email. It was from Roseybabe1234. Adam didn't remember her right away; then, he did.
The email read: "Hey, Adam, how are you? Just thought I'd send you an email. Nothing much happening here. I have to go to a family reunion at 3:00. Yippie—"
Adam grinned. He read further:
"—Gosh, I hate those. Half of them I don't know, anyways. LOL. At least there's good food. Well, I'll talk to you later."
Suddenly, an instant message popped up. It said: "Hey, new friend."
It was from Roseybabe1234.
Adam typed: "Hi, I was just reading your email."
"Cool."
"Family reunion, huh?"
"LOL. Yeah, it's a bummer. What are you doing?"
"Trying not to go crazy I'm so bored. But at least I'm not in school."
"Yeah," she wrote, "I really hate school. It's a bummer too."
Adam smiled. "What grade are you in?"
She wrote: "7, you?"
"9th. You're still in junior high. You're somewhat luckier."
"LOL. I dunno."
There was a whole moment of dead air through the Instant Message. To Adam's utter shock, she suddenly typed, "Do you have a girlfriend, or anything?"
The question caught him completely off guard. He could not remember one instance when a girl asked him this.
"Why?" he typed.
"Just wondering. You seem like a really nice guy. I know you're not a jerk, so I thought you would have had a nice girlfriend."
"No, I've never had one." He had mixed emotions about where this conversation was heading. "Why?"
Do I tell her I'm a loser? That girls hate me?
He let his fingers do the typing for him: "I am just very shy. I get real nervous around girls." Especially when I know they will hurt me.
"Oh. You'll find a nice one someday, I'm sure."
"I hope so."
"You will." She put up a winking smiley face.
"What about you?" he wrote.
"No. Guys around here are jerks. I've never really had a boyfriend. I'm shy too. Boys aren't interested in me."
"Don't say that. You'll find your prince someday, I swear to you."
She put up another smiley face. "You're sweet," she wrote. "You won't be alone for that long. Before you know it, girls will be knocking down your door. Just believe in yourself."
You're sweet... sweet... weet... eet....
Me? Adam McNicols? And I've been told all my life by all my peers that I was nothing special, a large mistake in the gene-pool.
What does sweet mean?
"Thanks," he typed, tearing up. His eyes were like unstable faucets. He could cry at will if he wanted to.
"You're sweet, too," he wrote. A tear streamed down his cheek. Adam thought he’d been sprinkled with fairy dust.
"Well, I gotta go and get ready for the reunion. Wish me luck!" She put up a smiley face with a tongue sticking out to the side.
"Good luck! See you later," he typed.
"Bye!" she said and went offline.
Adam stared at that smiley face like there was no tomorrow. Something about those happy, perfect online smiles made the coating of his heart melt, fizzle away. He hurt seeing those blazing yellow spherical faces shouting their happiness to him. Partly, he liked the pain he felt by staring at it, in a masochistic way. He dearly wished he could carry an expression that beautiful, even for as small as a moment.
He also wondered what that yellow smiley would look like if he shot it with a gun—its happy brains blown out the back of its happy little head … and what the eyes would look like either Xed out or rolled back. Would it still be smiling?
***
Adam lost his way twice and had almost panicked once in under thirty minutes. There were no road maps to carry in the sewers unless you were a sanitation worker. Every turnoff looked the same, even though there were more than plenty spaces above ground where the moonlight shined in.
It was Saturday night, and the young adventurer was creeping through the underground tunnels like just another old rat. The tunnel was so vast, so quiet, so peaceful. Adam reflected as he turned right under a sewer grate that this place was a lot like him. It was lifeless and dark, with no real destination. It was just there, abandoned wreck, lost and alone, never allowed to see more than a few specs of light during the day.
But he kept going. While pausing briefly under the sewer grate, Adam heard and even felt sprinkles of rain fall against his high forehead. He watched as the clouds way in the distance parted just enough to reveal an orange full moon.
This was his lair.
He continued searching his new world, finding connections to almost every
area of town. He knew he could go almost anywhere in a fifteen block radius without being seen or heard. All he had to do to exit was use a crowbar to open the grates or sewer covers. Simple. There was no end to it. And only he and Chris knew about it.
***
"Wow," he said, shining his flashlight down a very large, open pipe, through which sewer water was flowing out. Adam stepped into the round tunnel and watched the rippling current gleaming in the reflected moonlight. Sprawled out before him was the Ohio River, lit up graciously. Adam had made it to the main sewer line where human waste flushed right out into open waters. Surprisingly enough, there was little smell. The powerful light beam bounced off the pipe, rebounded, and struck Adam's face, making him look like the CHUD monster.
He approached the exit of the pipe and could feel the wind already brushing against him, could hear the sound of the water brushing up against dry land, could see some nearby tree branches swaying gently along the shore. Adam could not distinctly recall an experience so pleasing, and here he was, completely alone, draped in darkness and within a dirty old sewer.
***
"Adam?" his mom barked.
"Oh no," he said, thinking it was Monday already.
The door opened. Adam smothered his head with a pillow.
"Adam," his mother said, creaking into the room, "I'm going to go somewhere with Shari. Can you come downstairs with the dog? It looks like it's going to storm, and you know how she gets scared."
Thank God, no Monday yet.
“Adam?"
"Okay." He sat up, less lifelike than his great grandfather.
Ten minutes later, Adam was sitting back in the recliner in the living room, watching television. Adam's favorite cartoon—Family Guy—was playing all day on Cartoon Network. No other show made him laugh harder. A true staple of raunchy humor.
Muffy, his Airedale Terrier, was lying in a doggy bed beside the chair, chewing on a stuffed bunny.
He turned off the tube and looked over at her. "Come on, Muff. Come on, pup, hang out with me."
The dog stood and leaped onto Adam's lap. He petted her as she licked his face. "How you doing, buddy? Giving me doggy kisses!"
The dog stopped licking him, but Adam never stopped petting her. He simply gazed forward, as if in a trance. Sometimes he slipped into dwelling binges, and they sometimes lasted as long as two full hours. Though he struggled to figure it all out, he never accomplished a single thing. Often he felt worse afterward. He remembered things as far back as childhood, when his father physically beat him with a broomstick, or things semi-recent, such as the bullies in middle school who used to literally make him eat dirt. He could not decipher the facts from the lies. There were far too many negatives.
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