He beamed, either at his own cleverness or the V &D’s.

“You think the V and D meets in a dorm room?” I asked sarcastically.

Chance shook his head, unfazed.

“No,” he said, smiling at me. “I think they meet below it.”

19

Chance and I made a pact. First, tell no one. Second, meet tomorrow night, under cover of darkness, to see where our trail might lead.

The thrill of discovery got me home and into bed, and then reality broke through. I tried to press away thoughts of hospital rooms and half-limp balloons. But her face kept coming back to me. Her strained, scratchy voice:

GET OUT.

I had terrible dreams. I saw a room filled with a thousand baby angels, plump and dreamy, the kind Raphael imagined. They had slow, doll-like movements. There were shafts of light from tall windows. The angels were eating. Their chubby little hands brought spoons up and down, up and down to their mouths. When I entered, all thousand of them looked up at once and started screaming.

I woke the next morning, sweating, raw. I felt alone and lost, sick in my stomach. I reached for the phone in the darkness and dialed.

“Twice in one week? What is this, Christmas?”

“Hey Dad. Is Mom there?”

“She ran out. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just… wanted to ask her a question.”

“Why don’t you ask me?”

There was a long pause.

“Try me,” he said.

Ever since my dad’s heart attack, I was afraid to tell him that anything was less than perfect, as if whatever I said might trigger the next big one. But I needed someone. I needed help.

“C’mon, give an old man a chance,” he said. “Let me be a dad for once.”

I sighed. I wasn’t even sure what I’d wanted to say.

“I think I did something really bad.”

A pause, then:

“Did you break the law?”

“No.”

I heard him breathe out on the other end.

“Did you cheat in school?”

“No.”

“You hurt somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Because you didn’t like them?”

“No.”

“Because it helped you.”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me.” I braced myself for a lecture on big shots and little guys: toughen up, grab what’s yours, take no prisoners. Instead, he said: “If you did something bad, you make it right. You hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Then you decide who you want to be, and you be it.”

The line was quiet for a second.

“Okay?”

“Okay. I will.”

“Make me proud of you,” he said.

The call left me dizzy; startled, like I’d been slapped across the face.

For the first time in years, I’d heard the teacher again-the one everyone in town called on when they didn’t know what to do.

Chance wore black from head to toe, as planned. He leaned against a tree away from the light; I could make out only the vague shadow of his form, the white eyes and pale strip of skin under the ski mask. As I got closer, his uniform came into view: cargo pants, hiking boots, backpack, hooded pullover; he looked like a real guerrilla journalist, with none of the idiot flair of my black sweatshirt and dress pants. But with two hundred dollars in my bank account and no career in sight, I wasn’t about to spend my ramen money on a new ghost-hunting wardrobe. He handed me a ski mask.

“Thanks.”

He rubbed black grease on his face, then pulled his mask back down. I took the tin and did the same. He looked at my feet.

“Dress shoes?”

I shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said. He checked his camera, then slipped it into a black pouch on his waist. “Anything visible?” He turned in a circle.

I said no and did the same.

“So. We’ve got a map, thanks to you,” Chance said. “What we need now is an entry point. Thanks to me.”

“An entry point to what?”

Chance had been cagey about how exactly our map translated into action. I think he enjoyed this little bit of power. It wouldn’t be as simple as walking into the Steel Man, that much I knew. Chance was convinced the dorm was a placeholder, not our actual destination.

“Every university has a story about steam tunnels that run underground and connect all the buildings,” he told me. “It just so happens that this university, being very old, actually has them. Come on.”

We walked along the wall in the shadow of a large administrative building. We were in the industrial part of the campus, a world away from student life. It was after midnight and eerily silent.

“The only official mention of them involves a bit of campus lore. When George Wallace came to speak in favor of segregation, the students were ready to murder him. Police had to smuggle him out through the tunnels. It got written up in the paper, fifty years ago.”

We came into view of a giant, thrumming building bathed in yellow light, with two vents on the roof, each nearly twenty feet wide. It gave off a clean, electric smell, but the vents released colossal, almost volcanic plumes of white smoke that pulsed and swirled up into the clouded sky. It looked like a factory whose chief product was gloom.

“I had a resident poetry tutor in my house, freshman year, this real old guy. He swore the FBI chased an Austrian spy into the library back in World War Two. They searched for hours. Finally they figured he must’ve found a way into the steam tunnels. Or so the old guy said. I think he just wanted someone to eat with.”

“Is that smoke?” I asked, looking at the white plumes.

“Water vapor. This is the hydroelectric plant. There’s the physical plant. And that,” he said, pointing to a run-down side building with weathered blinds, “is the plant manager’s office.” He paused and looked at me. “In about five minutes, you’ll be guilty of trespassing, breaking and entering, and my favorite, ‘conduct unbecoming to a student.’ All grounds for expulsion. Last chance.”

I smiled. “ ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’”

“Preaching to the choir, my friend,” Chance said, and we started toward the back of the building. He took a pair of cutters from his pack and went to work on the hanging lock. Then we were past the chain-link fence and into the gravel and grass of the plant yard. There were numerous metal boxes in the grass, all padlocked as well.

It was so quiet. Every step we took crunched.

I started to question the wisdom of the endeavor. Was it too late? Could I turn around now and run out the gate, throw the ski mask in a ditch, wipe the makeup off, and blend back into the Saturday night flow of the main quad?

Chance pulled on my sleeve.

“Keep moving. We’re too exposed out here.”

We snuck toward the door.

Chance attacked the lock with a set of picks from a leather pouch. If only my mom could see me now. What nice friends you’ve made!

There was a window a few feet away.

“Screw it. I was never good at this.”

Chance pocketed the tools and picked up a rock.

“Chance, no,” I whispered, but it was too late. He smashed the window. A jingling crash echoed through the empty yard, breaking the silence. I looked around, didn’t see anyone. He used the rock to clear away the sharp edges, then looked back at me, poised to climb inside.

“We have to go fast now,” he said. “Once we’re in the tunnels, it’s vast. We’ll be fine.”

I followed him into the window. We came into an office, then into a cinder-block hallway painted white. Chance was moving fast in no particular direction, glancing in doorways. He started cursing.

“Help me out, goddamn it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something going down. I don’t know. A manhole. A stairway.”

I found a room with a concrete floor and bare bulb. There was a hatch on the ground; it looked like a misplaced attic door.

“Here,” I called.

I tried to pull it open, but it was too heavy.