Free B005N8ZFUO EBOK by David Lubar

time, and as jumpy as a cat in a roomful of pit bulls, but he also interrupted the teachers a lot. They tended not to appreciate that.
    As for Friday nights and the big secret, I don’t know how long—if ever—it would have taken before they told me. But on Wednesday of the third week I was walking down the hall when I heard the unmistakable sound of Cheater yelping in pain. I spun back and saw Bloodbath had just tossed Cheater against the wall.
    “Watch where you’re going next time,” Bloodbath said. He grabbed Cheater with one hand and raised the other fist.
    Oh boy. I knew this routine. No matter what Cheater did or said, Bloodbath would pound him for a while. I scanned the halls for the one thing that might save Cheater. No luck. There wasn’t a teacher in sight. But Bloodbath didn’t know that.
    Trying not to think about how stupid it was to approach Bloodbath, I ran over and pointed back to the door of the nearest classroom. “Langhorn and Davis are coming out,” I said, trying to fill my voice with panic. It wasn’t hard.
    Bloodbath flashed a smile at me. Then he punched me on the shoulder—I guess that was his way of saying thanks—and slunk away in the opposite direction.
    “Thanks,” Cheater said.
    “Anytime.”
    I guess Cheater told Lucky what happened because at the end of the third week, on Friday evening, as soon as we’d gone upstairs after dinner, Torchie let me in on their secret. “Friday nights,” he said, looking nervously around our room as if the walls and ceiling were filled with hidden microphones, “we do something special.”
    “Oh really?” I asked, trying to sound surprised.
    He nodded. “Yeah. There’s no way anyone would know. That’s because we’re real careful. We never tell anybody. But we talked about it and everyone thinks you’re okay. What we do is we sneak off into town. Want to come?”
    “Absolutely.” My pulse sped at the possibility of getting outside of Edgeview. Even a few hours would be wonderful. We were allowed into the schoolyard, but that was as far as we could go. It almost seemed as if they were afraid to let us be seen in town. They never let us leave the school unless our folks came for us on the weekend. Mine hadn’t. I was getting ready to climb the walls. “Where do you go?”
    Torchie shrugged. “Usually the arcade, sometimes we just hang out.”
    “Sounds fine to me.” Maybe I could even get a slice of pizza or some other real food. The very thought was enough to make me drool.
    So that evening I learned the story of Lucky’s great escape route.

WAY OUT
    T orchie whispered the whole story to me in our room. “Lucky was fooling around behind the school last October. You know, bouncing a tennis ball against the back wall. So anyhow, one time the ball got past him. When he was looking for it, he noticed this round place in the ground. He’s always finding stuff. Anyhow, he decided to check it out. He got a stick and started poking around. Guess what he found?”
    I shrugged. “Not a clue.”
    “There was this manhole cover. He called me over and we got it up. Guess what we found?”
    I just shrugged again.
    “A pipe,” Torchie said. “This big old tunnel. I guess it was a drain or something. We followed it. I didn’t really want to go, but I wasn’t going to be a chicken if Lucky went. It doesn’t go far, but—get this—it comes out on the other side of the fence, down at the bottom of the hill.”
    He paused, I guess to let me fully appreciate the meaning of that. It was the perfect way out. Since the fence was ten feet high in back, nobody ever checked to see if kids were there. They locked the front gate in the evening when the guard left.
    “Which door do we use?” I asked.
    Torchie shook his head. “Too dangerous. We could get caught. Lucky’s room is in the back. So we go out his window.”
    “I thought Lucky had a room on this floor,” I said.
    Torchie nodded. “He does.”
    “But—”
    “We made a