Ruth's eyelashes fluttered behind the lenses of her glasses. "Oh, Scott," she cooed in that unnaturally sweet voice. "You're so right. I never thought of that."
Yuck.
"Maybe," Dave said, "there's another way in. You know, a wider side entrance. Most caves have more than one."
"Shane," I called into the cave. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I didn't give Lionel a strike. I swear he's got one now, okay?"
No response. I tried again.
"Shane, everybody is really worried about you," I called. "Even Lionel missed you. Even the girls from Frangipani Cottage miss you. In fact, they miss you the most. They're holding a candlelight vigil for you right now. If you come out, we can panty-raid them while they're praying for you. Seriously. I'll even donate a pair of my own panties to the cause."
Nothing. I straightened up.
"I'm going to have to go in there after him," I said softly.
"I'll go with you," Dave volunteered. Which was pretty gallant of him, if you think about it. But I suppose he was only doing it because he felt guilty over letting Shane slip away from him in the first place.
My gaze flicked over him. "You'll never fit."
Which was true. The only person small enough, of the four of us, to fit through that hole was me, and they all knew it.
"Besides," I said. "This is between me and Shane. I better go on my own. You guys stay here and make sure he doesn't sneak out any of those side entrances you were talking about."
Nobody needed to tell Ruth twice to stay put. She plunked down onto a nearby boulder and immediately began rubbing her chigger-ravaged ankles. Scott and Dave offered me a couple of caving tips from their days as Cub Scouts—if you shine your flashlight into a hole, and can't see the bottom of it, that's a hole you should avoid.
Armed with this piece of information, I dropped down to my knees and began to crawl. It was no easy task, crawling on all fours and trying to see where I was going at the same time. Still, I managed not to fall down any bottomless holes. At least, not right away. Instead, I found myself inching along a narrow—but dry, at least—tunnel. There were, much to my gratification, no bats and nothing slimy. Just a lot of dried leaves, and the occasional scrunched Dorito.
One thing you had to hand to Shane: if it was attention he was after, he sure knew how to get it. His camp counselor was crawling through a hole in the ground after him, following his trail of Snicker bar wrappers and cookie crumbs. What more could a kid ask?
Still, the deeper I went, the more I thought he might be taking things a little far. I called out to Shane a few times, but the only response I heard was more scraping of jeans against rock. For a chubby kid, Shane sure could crawl fast.
There was no way to tell how deep we'd gone—a quarter of a mile? half?—into the earth before I noticed the cave was starting to widen a bit. Now I glimpsed stalactites, and what I knew from sixth grade bio were stalagmites—stalactites point down from the ceiling, while stalagmites shot up from the ground (stalactite, ceiling; stalagmite, ground. That's how Mr. Hudson explained it, anyway). Both, I remembered, were formed by the precipitation of calcite, whatever that was. Which meant, of course, that the cave wasn't as snug and dry as it seemed.
Not that I minded. That meant there'd be less chance of encountering any woodland creatures who might otherwise have chosen to make their home here, which suited me fine.
Soon the cave started widening. Eventually, it was big enough for me actually to stand up. As the way widened, I found myself in a cavern about the size of my room back home.
Only, unlike my room back home, it was filled with creepy shadows, and a floor that seemed to slope up toward the ceiling at the sides. Pointy stalactites loomed everywhere, and even when you shined your flashlight on them, you couldn't tell if they were hiding some bats, or if the stuff growing at their base was just a fungus or what.
I learned something that night. I really don't like caves too much. And I don't think I'll be telling the story of Paul Huck again to young and impressionable children when there happens to be a cave nearby.
Fortunately, Shane seemed as creeped out by the shadowy room as I was, since, even though there were several other tunnels opening out from it, he hadn't budged. The beam from my flashlight soon crossed his, and I studied him as he sat in his Wranglers and his blue- and red-striped shirt, glaring at me.
"You're a damned liar," was the first thing he said tome.
"Oh, yeah?" There was an eerie echo in the cavern. Somewhere water was dripping, a steady plink, plink, plink. It appeared to be coming from one of the wider tunnels off the chamber we were in. "That's a nice thing to say to somebody who just crawled into the bowels of the earth to find you."
"How'd you know where to look?" Shane demanded. "Huh? How'd you know I'd be in the cave?"
"Easy," I said, sauntering over to him. "Everyone knows you took that Paul Huck story way too seriously."
"Bullshit!" Shane's voice bounced off the walls of the cave, his bullshit repeating itself over and over until it finally faded away.
I blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
"You used your powers to find me," Shane hollered. "Your psychic powers! You still have them. Admit it!"
I stopped coming toward him. Instead, I shined my flashlight on his face, picking up cookie crumbs and a Dorito-orange mouth.
"Shane," I said. "Is that what this was about? Getting me to prove I still have ESP?"
"Of course." Shane wiggled his butt against the hard cave floor, his lip curled disgustedly. "Why else? I knew you were lying about it. I knew the minute I saw that kid's picture in your hand, that first night. You're a liar, Jess. You know that? You can give me all the strikes you want, but the truth is, you're no better than me. Worse, maybe. Because you're a liar."
I narrowed my eyes at him. The kid was a piece of work.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "And you're one to talk. Do you have any idea how many people are out there looking for you? They all think you drowned in the lake."
"Too bad they didn't ask you, huh, Jess?" Shane's eyes were very bright in my flashlight's beam. "You could have set them straight, huh?"
"Your mom," I went on. "Your dad. They're probably worried sick."
"Serve them right," Shane said in a sullen tone. "Making me come to this stinking camp in the first place."
I crossed the rest of the distance between us, then sank down beside Shane, leaning my back against the hard stone wall.
"You know what, Shane?" I said. "I think you're a liar, too."
Shane made an offended sound. Before he could say anything else, I went on, not looking at him, but at the weird shadows across the way.
"You know what I think?" I said. "I think you like playing the flute. I don't think you'd be able to play that well if you didn't like it. You may have perfect pitch and all of that, but playing like that, that takes practice."
Shane started to say something, but I just kept on going.
"And if you really hated it that much, you wouldn't practice. So that makes you as big a liar as I am."
Shane protested, quite colorfully, that this was untrue. His use of four-letter words was really very creative.
"You want to know why I tell people I can't do the psychic thing anymore, Shane?" I asked him, when I got tired of listening to him sputter invectives. "Because I didn't like my life too much back when they all thought I could still do it. You know? It was too … complicated. All I wanted was to be a normal girl again. So that's why I started lying."
"I'm not a liar," Shane insisted.
"Okay," I said. "Let's say you aren't. My question to you would be, why aren't you?"
He just stared at me. "W-what?"
"Why aren't you lying? If you hate coming here to Lake Wawasee so much, why don't you just tell everyone you can't play anymore, same way I told everyone I can't find people anymore?"