"What happened to you, then?" Will asked as Chester finally reached him. Will couldn't understand how anything could have held up his friend, how anything could possibly be more important than this.
This was a milestone in Will's life, the first time he'd ever allowed somebody from school — or anywhere else, for that matter — to see one of his projects. He wasn't sure yet whether he'd done the right thing; he still didn't know Chester that well.
"Sorry, got a flat," Chester puffed apologetically. "Had to drop the bike back home and run over here — bit hot in this weather."
Will glanced up uneasily at the sun and frowned. It was no friend to him: His lack of pigmentation meant that even its meager power on an overcast day could burn his skin.
"All right, let's get straight to it. Lost too much time already," Will said curtly. He pushed off on his bicycle with barely a glance at Chester, who began to run after him. "Come on, this way," he urged as the other boy failed to match his speed.
"Hey, I thought we were already there!" Chester called after him, still trying to catch his breath.
Chester Rawls — almost as wide as he was tall, and strong as an ox, known as Cuboid or Chester Drawers at school — was the same age as Will, but evidently had either benefited from better nutrition or had inherited his weightlifter's physique. One of the less offensive pieces of grafitti in the school bathrooms proclaimed that his father was an armoire and his mother a bowfront desk.
Although the growing friendship between Will and Chester seemed unlikely, the very thing that had helped to bring them together had also been the same thing that singled them out at schooclass="underline" their skin. For Chester, it was severe bouts of eczema, which resulted in flaky and itchy patches of raw skin. This was due, he was told unhelpfully, to either an unidentifiable allergy or nervous tension. Whatever the cause, he had endured the teasing and gives from his fellow pupils, the worst ones being "'orrible scaly creature" and "snake features," until he could take no more and had fought back, using his physical advantage to quash the taunters with great effect.
Likewise, Will's milky pallor separated him from the norm, and for a while he had borne the brunt of chants of «Chalky» and "Frosty the Snowman." More impetuous than Chester, he had lost his temper one winter's evening when his tormentors had ambushed him on the way to a dig. Unfortunately for them, Will had used his shovel to great effect, and a bloody and one-sided battle had ensued in which teeth were lost and a nose was badly broken.
Understandably both Will and Chester were left alone for a while after that and treated with the sort of grudging respect given to mad dogs. However, both boys remained distrustful of their classmates, believing that if they let their guards down, the persecution would more than likely start all over again. So, other than Chester 's inclusion on a number of school teams because of his physical prowess, both remained outsiders, loners at the edge of the playground. Secure in their shared isolation, they talked to no one and no one talked to them.
It had been many years before they'd even spoken to each other, although there'd long been a sneaking admiration between the two for the way they'd both stood their ground against the school bullies. Without really realizing it they gravitated toward each other, spending more and more of their time together during school hours. Will had been alone and friendless for so long, he had to admit that it felt good to have a companion, but he knew that if the friendship was going to go anywhere he'd sooner or later have to reveal to Chester his grand passion — his excavations. And now that time had come.
Will rode between the alternating grassy mounds, craters, and heaps of trash, careering to a halt as he reached the far side. He dismounted and hid his bicycle in a small dugout beneath the shell of an abandoned car, its make unrecognizable as a result of the rust and salvaging it had endured.
"Here we are," he announced as Chester caught up.
"Is this where we're going to dig?" Chester panted, looking around at the ground at their feet.
"Nope. Back up a bit," Will said. Chester took a couple of paces away from Will, regarding him with bemusement.
"Are we going to start a new one?"
Will didn't answer but instead knelt down and appeared to be feeling for something in a thicket of grass. He found what he was looking for — a knotted length of rope — and stood up, took up the slack, then pulled hard. To Chester 's surprise, a line cracked open in the earth, and a thick panel of plywood rose up, soil tumbling from it to reveal the dark entrance beneath.
"Why do you need to hide it?" he asked Will.
"Can't have those scumbags messing around with my excavation, can I?" Will said possessively.
"We're not going in there, are we?" Chester said, stepping closer to peer into the void.
But Will had already begun to lower himself into the opening, which, after a drop of about six feet, continued to sink deeper, at an angle.
"I've got a spare one of these for you," Will said from inside the opening as he donned a yellow hard hat and switched on the miner's light mounted on its front. It shone up at Chester, who was hovering indecisively above him.
"Well, are you coming or not?" Will said testily. "Take it from me, it's completely safe."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Of course," Will said, making a show of slapping a support to his side and smiling confidently to give his friend some encouragement. He continued to smile fixedly as, in the shadows behind him and out of Chester 's sight, a small shower of soil fell against his back. "Safe as houses. Honest."
"Well…"
Once inside, Chester was almost too surprised to speak. A tunnel, several feet wide and the same in height, ran at a slight incline into the darkness, the sides shored up with old timber props at frequent intervals. It looked, Chester thought, exactly like the mines in those old cowboy films they showed on TV on Sunday afternoons.
"This is cool! You didn't do all this by yourself, Will, you can't have!"
Will grinned smugly. "Certainly did. I've been at it since last year — and you haven't seen the half of it yet. Step this way."
He replaced the plywood, sealing the tunnel mouth. Chester watched with mixed emotions as the last chink of blue sky disappeared. They set off along the passage, past stores of planks and shoring timbers stacked untidily against the sides.
"Wow!" Chester said under his breath.
Quite unexpectedly the passage widened out into an area the size of a reasonably large room, two tunnels branching off each end of it. In the middle was a small mountain of buckets, a trestle table, and two old armchairs. The timber planking of the roof was supported by rows of Stillson props, adjustable iron columns scabbed with rust.
"Home again, home again," Will said.
"This is just… wild," Chester said in disbelief, then frowned. "But is it really all right for us to be down here?"
"Of course it is. My dad showed me how to batten and prop — this isn't my first time, you know…" Will hesitated, catching himself just in time before he said anything about the train station he'd unearthed with his father. Chester regarded him suspiciously as he coughed loudly to mask the lull in the conversation. Will had been sworn to secrecy by his father, and he couldn't break that confidence, not even to Chester. He sniffed loudly, then went on. "And it's perfectly sound. It's better not to tunnel under buildings — that takes stronger tunnel props and a lot more planning. Also, it's not a good idea where there's water or underground streams — they can cause the whole thing to cave in."