Jr. My Best Friend Craig

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-6847-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 182 Seiten

This is a story of peer pressure and fear, physical strength and cowardice, teenage dreams and nightmares, and ridiculous plans and outcomes. With his outsized, alpha personality, my best friend Craig leads a ragtag gang of 13-year-old boys around by our noses. At his insistence, we run across a railroad trestle just yards ahead of a screaming train. At his dare, we lay down on an airport tarmac just feet beneath a landing plane. Why does Craig make us do such crazy things? And why in the world do we ever follow him? The answer is complicated especially when some really bad boys appear and Craig discovers that he can't push us any further.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jr.,

Leseproben

Chapter 3 The next couple of weeks were kind of a blur. The four of us would meet at the playground about ten, play baseball, go home for lunch, and then head back to the playground in the afternoon. Craig, all five feet six and 120 pounds of him, was always the leader; he decided what we should do and when we should do it. He was, after all, a whole head taller than Danny, Mike, and me. And he had those piercing blue eyes that instantly dismissed you if you had any alternative thoughts. Not that I had any of those. I could think OK about school things, but when it came to social situations—well, I was just happy to let others do the planning. Playing baseball, Ping-Pong, or even walking through the woods throwing rocks at squirrels were all fine with me. One summer morning about a month after we met, Craig decided that we really needed to do something different. “Something entirely new,” is the way he put it. “Something we’ve never done before.” Craig was a confident, cocky son of a gun, and when he got an idea like this there was no holding him back. The more outlandish the plan, the more he grinned and pushed. Encouraging or compelling us to do new and bizarre things was somehow his way of demonstrating his power over us. Now the park by our playground had a large open sewer pipe. The concrete pipe had no fencing or cover, and it ran horizontally under the ground for many city blocks. It was just large enough for a person to crawl into. It was also dark and smelly and had probably attracted generations of curious teenage boys. “Do you guys see that pipe?” snickered Craig one day as we headed home from the playground. “That pipe is filled with rats, and it runs under the streets all the way to China.” “Aw, bullshit,” replied Danny, the second-most self-possessed member of our group. “I’m sure that there aren’t any rats or anything in there.” Danny was short and squat. He also had an engaging grin that would begin around the corners of his mouth before lighting up the rest of his whole face. Danny had two older brothers and so was not as easily duped as the rest of us. Anxious to assert his authority in a more indirect way, he would often mutter and complain behind Craig’s back. And sometimes he would even try to push back on our leader’s more outlandish schemes. Whenever Craig suggested something really out of this world, Danny would be the first to object. But after a couple of minutes he would usually smile, shrug his shoulders, and mutter, “Aw, what the hell.” And then he’d rush off with the rest of us to carry out Craig’s latest stunt. “Yeah, well, do you want to bet on it?” pressed Craig, always determined to prove his alpha role. “I’ll bet you ten dollars that if we climb into that pipe and walk half a mile, we’ll see some rats.” “What’ll you do if we see rats? I bet they bite.” “Well, I have my penknife with me. And I bet if we see any rats, you’ll run and I’ll have to deal with them,” replied Craig a bit triumphantly. Craig was always quick thinking on his feet and more than capable of making things up on the fly. “OK, you’re on,” replied Danny. “I’ll bet you ten dollars that there aren’t any rats in that pipe. And if there are, you’ll be the first to run.” And so, the four of us headed off for the pipe. A small trickle of water was flowing out of the pipe, so when we started into it, we had to straddle the water with our legs and keep our heads and butts down. Craig the leader went first, with his penknife open and clenched firmly in his right hand. Danny went next, and then Mike and I brought up the rear. “What happens if it starts to rain?” I yelled as we crept our way into the dark concrete pipe. “Will we get trapped?” “Oh hell, don’t be a fraidy-cat,” replied Craig. “It’s not going to rain. Didn’t you see the sun out when we started?” “The sun wasn’t out when we left,” muttered Danny, quietly under his breath. “It was actually kind of cloudy.” The pipe ran between manhole covers in the surrounding street. Each manhole cover had rain gutters that provided the only source of light in the dark hole. The manhole covers were set every fifty yards or so, and at every cover the pipe opened up into a small square underground cell. I was sure that all the rats and vermin in the pipe lived in those underground cells. “Did you hear that? Did you hear that?” cried Craig as we approached the square cell under the first manhole cover. “All those little scurrying noises—they sounded just like rats running away.” Sure enough, when we reached the first underground cell, we saw clumps of twigs and trash and small branches that looked like nests for something. The piles sat in the four corners of the cell and looked like they’d been carefully arranged by some nasty critter. “I’m going to wreck these nests so they won’t come back!” Craig yelled as he kicked away at the piles of debris. “Yeah, let’s get rid of these horrible things,” Danny shouted in support. After destroying the nests, we continued working our way through the increasingly dark and foul-smelling pipe. The further we went, the wider we had to straddle with our feet because the small trickle of water in the pipe had turned into a steady stream. This slowed down our progress because we also had to keep our heads down to avoid hitting the low-hanging concrete ceiling. After about ten minutes of sloshing along we began seeing light from the next underground cell. But just as we entered the cell, we heard the crack of thunder outside. “Hell! Did you hear that?” Danny yelled, with a sudden note of apprehension in his voice. “It’s going to rain. We need to get out of here.” “I’m telling you,” Craig shouted back, “it’s not going to rain. Just follow me.” Now none of us liked this idea, especially after Danny hoisted himself up out of the gutter and confirmed that, indeed, it was beginning to rain. And we started hearing the steady sound of raindrops hitting the pavement above us. “We need to get out of here, now, before we get trapped!” Danny cried, as he slipped back down into the pipe. He now seemed really worried and anxious to end this little expedition. “What are you, a bunch of wussies?” Craig yelled, clearly exasperated with his main critic, Danny. “I’m telling you, it’s not going to rain very much. So, we’ll all be fine. Just follow me.” I looked at Danny, he looked at me, and Mike looked at his feet. All three of us felt more than a little concerned. If it rained hard, and the pipe filled up, how were we ever going to get out of this alive? But none of us wanted to be the first to break up this first great adventure. And since Craig was so insistent, and sure of himself, well, we just bit the bullet and followed on. As we headed off into the blackness towards the next underground cell, the stream of fetid water beneath our feet grew bigger and bigger. Pretty soon it was so wide that we could no longer straddle it with our feet. So, our socks and shoes got all wet and soaked. And then debris—cans and bottles and newspapers—started coming down with the water, smacking against our feet. And then twigs and branches and all kinds of other stuff came down the pipe. It was a dirty and ugly and horrible crawl through hell—and we couldn’t even see where we were going! I was following Danny, and Danny was following Craig, and hopefully, Craig was headed to the next possible exit. But we couldn’t see anything except a tiny speck of light way, way ahead of us. Somewhere along this final crawl to daylight I began worrying about dying. What would happen if the water in the pipe got so deep that there was no place to breathe? What would we do then? Would our bodies just float out? The water and debris were almost up to our chests by the time we reached the light of the third underground cell. And we were all soaked to the skin and downright miserable. “Quick, pull yourselves out of the pipe,” yelled Craig, just as soon as we reached the cell. “Climb on out through the gutter, and don’t let anyone see you.” I guess that our leader was worried about getting caught by the police. One by one, we did just like our leader instructed. It was raining hard by the time the last of us, Mike, emerged all wet and bedraggled from the rain gutter. “Shit, that wasn’t any fun at all,” Danny exclaimed, after we had all picked ourselves up and run away from the gutter. “In fact, it was a total disaster.” “Aw hell,...