The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [42]
We had reached a huge cavern, from what I could tell by the tired flashlight. The light didn’t reach any walls. I couldn’t hear my pebble anymore, either, so gave it up for lost as Barbie came around the corner oohing and ahhing in the dark like it was the grand finale on the Fourth of July. “You have to see this! Seb, these glasses are magical. This place is magical!”
Maybe she was right. Because something in that cavern was giving me a funny feeling. My ears rang. My nose filled with that strong perfume smell. I trembled all over. I felt so hot and sweaty that I tore off my two hoodies. My hands shook as I held the glasses to my face, nervous about what I’d see when I got them on.
I didn’t make a sound, though, because no air could pass by the lump in my throat. Beautiful! It wasn’t just curlicue strings of light anymore. All the rock here seemed to be alive, swirling deep down with patterns just like the ones in Odum’s paintings. The whole cavern was drenched with moving colors. They were bright and they were everywhere, even the floor and the ceiling. It made me think of a fairy tale dragon’s lair filled with jewels.
For the first time since we’d entered the tunnel, Celery seemed happy to stay still. Everything felt right in the world. Solid. Permanent. I could have stayed in that moment forever.
“We like it here, don’t we, Celery?” I petted her head. “Whoa!”
This was the first time I’d looked at her through the glasses. She was one fancy bird! Her plumage looked alive with colors. Then my stomach started to tickle, as if Celery was moving her feathers. Wait—she was! She was actually moving! And all of a sudden, so was my stomach, on the inside.
“Ow!” I bent over doubled with the pain. Celery fell to the ground, but she didn’t hit like a rock. Her feathers fluttered and—holy bat cave! I couldn’t believe it!—colors swirled up out of them and curlicued their way into the floor.
“Do you see that, Barbie?”
“See what? Your chick having a fit?”
I handed over the glasses and let Barbie watch while I held my stomach. Meanwhile, Celery’s feathers twitched and plumped. Her feet did a little dance. She squawked and tried to fly.
I was filled with a wondrous dizzy feeling from head to toe. Especially in my stomach. And my back. Which was starting to itch like crazy. I pulled off my last shirt, the one I’d been wearing when Celery got attached to me. Barbie started talking a mile a minute about the colors coming out of me, but I didn’t hear much because my head was filled with another noise of my own making. There’s no graceful way to say it. I lost my dough.
“Congratulations, Sebby,” Barbie said after it was done.
“Thanks,” I said, holding my stomach, scrunching my shoulder blades. The pain was gone! “Wow, I feel normal again.”
“Normal? You? Never,” Barbie said.
“I’m starving to death!”
“You’re definitely yourself. Hey, what’s that?”
A howling kind of noise came from the far end of the cavern, where we hadn’t gone yet. Barbie turned the flashlight that way. It was Stupid, sitting in the darkness trying to bark like a dog. Like he wanted to show us something.
Quickly me and Barbie walked over there. Through the glasses, it looked like Stupid was in front of a black hole surrounded by swirling colors. At first I thought it was the entrance to one of those dark tunnels without any curlicue veins, but as we got closer it became clear that the black hole was made of rocks. A pile of fieldstones had been stacked to fill the tunnel opening, just like back at the henhouse.
We also saw the shape of a small white rectangle coming into focus. It turned out to be an envelope propped on a rock. And it had writing on it.
SEBBY & BARBIE
We both recognized the handwriting. Our names were written in the block letters Jed always used. He had the neatest handwriting of any guy I’d ever met. It looked like the lettering in cartoon dialogue, or in the house designs Ma would cut out of the Sunday newspaper and hang on the refrigerator to show Pa what she wanted him to