“Not much longer now,” Lennon tells me after I slide and nearly fall.
I don’t think I can make it. I really don’t. The sun is low in the sky, and we’ve easily been hiking for hours. I’m one slippery pebble away from casting aside my pride and begging him to stop again, when we crest a hill and find a small trail breaking away from the main one. I look up, breathing heavy, and am surprised to see a massive granite mountain across a field. One second it was in the distance, and now it’s right here.
“This is it,” Lennon says excitedly, pointing toward the smaller path. “One of the cave entrances should be at the end of this trail.”
“Oh sweet God, I thought we’d never get here,” I say, finding a renewed burst of energy to head down the new path. It doesn’t hurt that it’s level ground. “I can’t feel my feet. Should I be worried?”
“No. You should enjoy the numbness,” Lennon says. “Later, when they hurt so badly and you’re begging me to cut them off, then you’ll look back on these moments with nostalgia. Oh, look. Do you see it?”
I do. It’s a black mouth leading inside the gray mountain. And as we cross the field and approach it, I’m startled by how big it is. The path just ends. No warning. No posted sign.
“I thought you said this cavern has been explored,” I say. “Shouldn’t there be a park sign announcing it, or something?”
“That’s only on the commercialized caves. A few around here have lights strung through them for tourists. This one gets a lot of cavers.”
“Cavers.”
“People who explore caves.”
“I thought that was a spelunker.”
“Spelunkers are the idiots who get lost in caves and have to be rescued by the cavers.” Lennon slides a glance down at my face. “Brett would make a great spelunker.”
I roll my eyes, but secretly I’m thinking he’s probably right.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask as we pause in front of the cavern’s entrance to unhook our packs and retrieve our headlamps. I decided to snag the one Reagan left behind, since Lennon pointed out that it cost several hundred dollars more than my basic model and would be a shame to waste.
“It’s only about two miles from here to the exit on the other side,” he tells me as he straps on his headlamp. “It’s completely safe, so don’t worry. Thousands of people have been here before us.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling cool air emanating from the darkness inside. It’s like natural air-conditioning. Feels nice. “What’s the catch? Is there a cave troll we have to conquer?”
“This isn’t Moria, Zorie. We aren’t crossing the Misty Mountains.”
“Evil armies of miner dwarves?”
“You mean orcs. The dwarves weren’t evil. Did we not do an annual Christmas viewing of The Lord of the Rings trilogy during Sunday dinners every December?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“You loved them.”
I did. “Okay, Gandalf. What’s the catch about this cave?”
“No Balrog to fight. No catch. That I know of. I mean, I’ve never been inside this cave.”
“But you’ve been in others, right?”
“Just the Melita Hills Caverns and Zip Lines,” he says, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“On that school field trip?”
“When Barry Smith vomited on the bus after the zip lines.”
“Those are the only caves I’ve been inside too,” I say, alarmed. And it was basically just an excuse for them to build a gift shop and charge everyone a million dollars for Cokes. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“We’ll be fine,” he assures me. “The book says the tricky part is that the tunnels are all connected. It’s one big maze. There are supposed to be a pair of ropes that lead up to a higher level of tunnels, and that’s what we’re looking for.”
“We’re climbing ropes?” This is gym-class horror all over again.
“No.”
“Oh, thank God,” I mumble.
“The ropes are just our visual landmark. There are several exits, and the one we need to find is near the ropes. It will take us out to the northern side, where there’s a big trail that leads to that valley I told you about.” He slips on his hoodie. “You might want to put a jacket on. It’s going to be chilly inside. And it should take us about an hour to make our way through. Then there’s an easy path down into the valley on the other side, where we can make camp by a creek and have dinner.”
An hour. I can do that. Better than climbing up that rocky path behind us. And at least it’s out of the sun. I should have brought a hat like my mom suggested. I think the part in my hair is sunburned. Pretty sure my cheeks are too. But who’s got a vitamin D deficiency now, huh?
I flick on Reagan’s headlamp as we step into the mouth of the cave. The entrance is a big, round room. Scattered rocks lay in heaps, as well as a couple of empty water bottles and what looks to be a pile of toilet paper. So much for “leave no trace.”
A fat tunnel at the back of the room leads farther into the mountain, and that’s where we head. Once we are inside, sunlight wanes at our backs, and our headlamps become our new sun. It’s much chillier here, and the air smells damp and musty—like rock, I suppose. I never thought about rock having a strong scent. It’s not an unpleasant one, though, and the cool air feels good in my lungs. Clean. Uncomplicated. Much like our path. The tunnel is wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side, and the ceiling is several feet over our heads. Veins of color thread through the rock walls—marble, Lennon guesses—and though the floor is rock, it’s better
