The Dig Read Online Free Page B

like some kind of an animal, minus the self-preservation instincts that would have stopped me from being here in the first place.

    I swallow. I murmur: ―Help.‖

Chapter 5
    Calm down. You‘ve been training your whole life for a moment like this, I tell myself. I mean, sure, I‘m on all fours in a dark labyrinth with more twists and turns than my frizzy hair on a hot summer day. But this maze is no different from the mazes on restaurant placemats that I tried to master with crayons when I was a kid. A lot of kids just started with the crayon pressed to the paper before they‘d studied the map. But I wasn‘t like that. I would analyze the map to the best of my ability. I would use my finger to trace out one path, and then, finding that it led to a dead end, I would start again.

    I close my eyes. Pretend you‘re a crayon. Be still. I take a deep breath.

    But my nostrils clog with dust and I cough. An echo! Yes! There is definitely an open space nearby. I just have to keep making noise and follow my sense of sound. Must. Make. Noise. But what does one talk to oneself about in a dark tunnel? Well, this one decides to sing.

    Off-key. And loud.

    I don‘t even really like Rihanna‘s ―Umbrella,‖ but CeeCee has this nervous habit of chanting those infectious (in the bad way, like they infect you) lyrics whenever she‘s about to see a guy she likes or take an English test. Singing a pop song makes me feel like nothing has changed, like I‘m back in the dorm begging CeeCee to stop singing or to sing a different song, like I can survive anything. I sense a shift in light and I pause. I take another deep breath and belt out the next lyrics.

    Yes! The warbled lyrics are bouncing back at me. I reach forward and feel for the wall and there it is, to the right, the opening. I crawl through it in a rush of relief, shuffling toward freedom, my white cotton pants catching on every tiny pebble in my way. I am alive. I will live.

    When I emerge from the narrow tunnel, I find myself standing in a large empty room with ceilings at least twenty feet high. If there‘s one thing I‘ve learned from going on digs and constantly breaking the rules, it‘s that you can always tell when you‘re the first person on site.
    When people come in, they move the air around; they leave footprints and floodlights. Not here.
    Nobody has been in this room yet.

    Wondering what used to go on in this room, I run my hands along the walls. It is usually the first thing I do in any new place. The clues are often hidden beneath layers of dust. Sometimes there are drawings or epithets or carvings. Sometimes my finger dips into a groove and then I start dusting and eventually break through the cakey buildup to uncover a drawer. And sometimes, when pried open, the drawer turns out to be a casket with a sarcophagus inside. I always cry a little when we find tombs.

    Once, Uncle Alex found a tiny slingshot-type toy and placed it in my gloved hands. ―This belonged to the little boy in here,‖ he said.

    But after twenty minutes of rubbing the wall surrounding the tunnel, I have found nothing, which is puzzling. Something had to have happened in this room. Nobody builds a temple and includes a giant room for nothing, do they? The guidance counselors at Greeley say that every single one of us is special, even if we haven‘t figured out why yet. Most kids roll their eyes at this statement, and I‘ve never told anyone that hearing this always makes me feel good. I like the idea that there is neither a useless nor a dull room, and I sit down to give the room a chance to show itself, the way the counselors do with kids.

    And…there it is. The room is special. The wall directly across from the tunnel entrance does not reach all the way up to the crusty ceiling. It stops about a foot short. There must be another, hidden room behind it.

    I hunt around for an entrance, but it quickly becomes clear that the only way to access the hidden room is to get over