Free Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman Page B

been replaced by a live report of a kid somewhere in Kansas who fell into an old abandoned well. There are interviews with the kid’s tearful parents, firefighters, rescue workers, and experts on wells—because there are experts on everything these days. They keep cutting to an aerial helicopter view as if they’re watching a car chase, but the kid in the well isn’t going anywhere.
    Through all of this I pace, drawn to the drama, unable to keep still.
    “Caden, if you want to watch, sit down,” my mother says, patting the seat on the sofa beside her.
    “I’ve been sitting in school all day,” I tell her. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”
    I go upstairs to get out of her hair, and lie on my bed for a whole ten seconds before getting up to go to the bathroom, even though I don’t really have to go, then back downstairs to get a drink even though I’m not thirsty, then back upstairs.
    “Stop it, Caden!” Mackenzie says when I pass her room for like the tenth time. “You’re freaking me out.”
    Mackenzie is currently addicted to a video game that she won’t stop playing until she beats it, forty or fifty game-hours from now. I’ve already beaten it, although I doubt I’d have the patience to play it now.
    “Can you help me?” she asks. I look at the screen. There’s a large treasure chest in a caged room that appears to have no way in or out. The chest is sparkling gold and red. That’s how you know it’s not just any treasure chest. Sometimes you bust your ass to get to one, only to find there’s nothing inside but a stinking rupee. But the red and gold chests—they hold the real treasures.
    “The boss key is in there,” Mackenzie says. “It took me an hour to find the key to unlock that chest, and now I can’t get to it.” Funny that you need a key to unlock a chest that just gives you a bigger, better key.
    She continues to run around the outside of the caged room, as if maybe the iron bars won’t be there the next time around.
    “Look up,” I tell her.
    She does and sees the secret passageway right above her avatar’s head. So easy when you know the answer.
    “But how do I get up there?” she asks.
    “Just reverse gravity.”
    “How do you do that?”
    “Didn’t you find the lever?”
    She growls in frustration. “Show me!”
    But I’m done, because my walking fever has reached a criticalmass. “I can’t do everything for you, Mackenzie. It’s like math; I can help you, but I can’t give you the answer.”
    She throws me her best glare. “Video games are not like math, and don’t convince me they are, or I’ll hate you!” Resigned, she searches for the antigravity lever, and I head out. Not just out of her room, but out of the house. Even though it’s almost dark—even though it’s just a few minutes to dinner, I have to walk. So while Mackenzie runs herself ragged in game temples, I wander through my neighborhood making random turns, maybe in search of my own boss key.

45. Ten Graves Deep
    How unlucky does a kid have to be to fall into an abandoned well? You hear these stories all the time. Some kid’s playing out in a field somewhere with his dog, and down he goes—fifty feet or more, vanishing into nowhere.
    If the kid is lucky, and the dog isn’t too stupid, people find out in time, and they get someone with no collarbones to go down the well and fish the kid out. Then the no-collarbones guy gets to spend the rest of his life feeling there was a reason he was born with no discernible shoulders, and the rescued kid gets to pass his genetic material on to future generations.
    If the kid isn’t lucky, then he dies down there, and the tale ends sadly.
    What must it be like to suddenly be swallowed by the earth, finding oneself nearly ten graves deep? What thoughts go through a person’s mind? “Man, this sucks” doesn’t quite cover it.
    There are times I feel like I’m the kid screaming at the bottom of the well, and my dog runs off to pee on trees