Without bothering to tell anyone where we were going, we all left in the Jetta after a small argument. Jack wanted to take the Delorean, but that would mean taking two cars since it only sat two people. Peter told him to shut up and get in the Jetta, and to my surprise, he did.
I sat in the back with Jack while Leif gave Peter confusing directions to the entrance of the tunnel. Leif didn’t drive, so he knew where things were by foot - cut through lawns and back alleys. Eventually, Peter figured out that Leif was directing him to an area underneath a bridge.
We parked next to the river and had to scale the icy slope to get below the bridge.
Leif led us to a narrow hole in the cement wall of the underpass. He went in first, sliding through with ease, but Peter and Jack stood outside, staring at the hole.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” Jack asked, his words barely audible over the sound of the river rushing past us and the cars rushing on the bridge above us.
“I don’t know. It’s a weird trap, if it is,” Peter said, staring thoughtfully at the hole.
“Oh you guys are idiots,” I scoffed. I pushed past them and crawled in through the hole. A chunk of concrete scraped against my back, but I just kept going.
“Alice!” Jack called after me, surprised I’d just gone in, but I didn’t stop.
The tunnel had no light, other than the bit that came in from the hole. I could see, but not as well as I’d like. The walls were brick lined with several rows of thick, black wires.
The floor was dirty concrete, and when I stepped inside, I saw vermin scatter, but I couldn’t be sure if it was insects or rats.
“Well, this is sexy,” Jack said once he’d climbed inside. “I can totally see Peter living it up here.”
“This is just the entryway. I’ve got much more to show you.” Leif turned and walked forward.
Peter had barely made it inside, but I followed Leif. Jack stayed right behind me, muttering things about rats and the smell, as we let Leif lead us through the twists and turns of the tunnel.
The brick walls eventually gave way to sandstone halls with arched ceilings. I ran my fingers along the walls, surprised to find that they’d been carved right from the earth. We climbed up a makeshift set of stairs carved into the stone, and we made it to an area that seemed much more habitable.
The floors were smooth concrete, with a small stream running down the center.
From the smell of it, I’d guess it was a sewage line. The ceilings were rounded brick, but the halls were much wider than the narrow ones we’d walked through to get here. Dim yellow lights were spaced out along the ceiling, the only lights we’d encountered since we got here.
“I feel like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” I said, stepping over the sewage stream to follow Leif down the tunnel.
“Cowabunga,” Jack said, and I smiled at him. He stepped after me and took my hand in his.
“And here we are.” Leif gestured to an entrance off the side of the tunnel.
Jack squeezed my hand as we walked through the entrance. I think part of him still expected this to be some kind of trap, although I’m not sure why. Leif had been nothing but kind to us, and just because he couldn’t explain it, it didn’t mean Leif was bad.
The ceilings were shockingly high, at least twenty feet above us. Three of the walls were the same brick as the tunnel, lined with a few dim lights and a couple electrical boxes. The cement floor ended in a cliff, but I could see the smooth concrete wall thirty feet across from it.
I walked to the edge and stared up and down, but the wall across from it seemed to have no beginning and no end. A few pipes jutted out from it, letting water flow from it, pouring like never ending waterfalls into the bottom. The water smelled fresh and chlorinated, so I guessed it was clean water here, not the sewage from the tunnel.
“Wow. That’s an impressive drop,” Jack whistled, looking over the edge with me. He leaned farther forward than even I did, and his foot slipped on the moss that grew over the edge. I yanked him back from certain death, and he smiled sheepishly at me. “Sorry.”
“I’m not sure how Mae would feel about that,” Peter said, nodding towards the cliff.
He turned and admired the cavern. “But the rest of this is good.”
In one corner, a few blankets were piled up, next to a stack of books and a few items of clothing. Peter stepped closer to inspect it, but before he even got to it, he realized what it was. He looked back at Leif.
“You stay here?” Peter asked him.
“Yes.” Leif shrugged. “It’s quiet and dry here. Nobody bothers me.”
“So, you’re inviting us into your home?” Peter asked.
“You can say that, I guess.” Leif turned away from Peter’s apologetic expression and his bare feet padded on the concrete as he went over to the edge of the cliff. “It’s a nice place to hide out.”
“It is nice,” Peter agreed. “But there are no showers or bathrooms.”
“The sewer is in the tunnel,” Leif nodded to the door. “The river is right outside for a quick wash up, but it’s not that hard to leave if you need to do laundry or shower.”
“But there aren’t any people around,” I said. “It’d be impossible for Daisy to get into trouble here.”
“I don’t know.” Peter chewed the inside of his cheek mulling it over. “But we can’t stay at home. Ezra won’t let us even if it wasn’t dangerous. This would work better than your place until we find a house that suits our needs.”
“You think you can sell Mae on this?” Jack asked.
“I don’t have much of a choice. I need time to find somewhere even more out of the way and uninhabited than where we lived before,” Peter said. “That’ll take some time.
This will keep Daisy under wraps until then.”
Peter and Jack started talking about what they could do to it make it more homey down here. Peter was good with home improvements, and Jack liked to pretend he was, so he joined in the discussion with unfounded enthusiasm.
I walked around, admiring the surprising detail in the architecture of the cavern. It was strange to think that a hundred years ago, people put more detail in building their sewers than they do in building most homes anymore.
Leif’s pile of belongings looked sad in the corner. It consisted almost entirely of things we had given him. The comforters he had spread out were actually a Christmas gift from Milo to him. I’d thought they were a horrible gift since we didn’t know if Leif even had anywhere to live, but Milo said that was all the more reason he’d need blankets.
The books had most likely come from Milo or Ezra. A thick copy of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky was stacked on top of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. A few other Russian books were in the stack, and that made the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird sitting next to it stand out.
Before I’d even picked it up, I knew it was the same copy that I’d just finished reading. I flipped through the dog eared pages, and a makeshift bookmark slipped out.
I snatched it before it fell to the ground, and my breath caught in my throat.
Leif had been using a picture of Milo and me as his bookmark. It’d been taken on New Years of this past year, and we both had on too much silver glitter. Milo had stuck it on the fridge because he loved the way his cheekbones looked in it, but it had gone missing a few days ago. I’d assumed it had fallen off and slipped under the fridge or the stove, but here it was. Leif had taken it.
“What do you think?” Leif asked from behind me, and I shoved the picture back in the book, afraid that Jack might see it. I had no idea what Leif would want the picture, and I tended to think his motives were more innocent than Jack did.
“Um, of what?” I turned to face him, forcing a smile so I didn’t look as flummoxed by his picture thieving as I really felt.
“The cave.” Leif smiled faded from bemused to concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I smiled wider. “Yeah. I was just, um, admiring your books.” I pointed to his pile of Russian literature with the copy of Mockingbird.
“I’m going through a Russian phase,” Leif said, then gestured to the book in my hand. “I decided to take a break with some lighter reading after I saw you reading it.”