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“Get back to work, Jack,” Caine said

The McClub was closed down There was a sign on the door that said, “Sorry, We Are Closed Will Reopen Tomorrow”

Duck didn’t knohy he had been drawn there Of course it was closed—it was after ing around Pretty much anyone

In the three days—well, technically four, since it was toh the bottoet worse First off, he had lost his private oasis of calm The pool was obviously unfixable He had spent so for another pool, but no other spot had been nearly as great as the one he had lost

In the second place, no one believed hio and check out the pool to see if the hole was really there And of course Zil and his punk friends didn’t exactly step up to validate Duck’s story

When he’d tell people about this weird, un-asked-for power, they’d demand he deetting ry person

More iround And Duck had not enjoyed that the first time around It had been sheer luck that he had passed out before he fell right on past the cave He could have kept falling until he reached the e in his head, anyway Falling through the ground, down through the crust and the mantle and the whatever other layers there were that he had probably learned about in school but couldn’t recall now, all the way down to the big melted metal and rock core

In his mind’s eye that would look like the scene at the end of The Lord of the Rings He would be like Gollu for a few seconds in all that lava, then incinerated

But that ie was almost a relief compared to the other possibility: that he would simply be buried alive That he would fall a hundred feet into the ground and have no way of extricating himself He would slowly suffocate as the dirt walls of the hole filled in, clods falling onto his upturned face, dirt filling his eyes, his mouth, his nose…

He grabbed the handle of the McClub door to steady hihthts more and more often

It didn’t help that no one else took the probleht the whole thing was funny The part about falling through the bottom of the pool The part about the cave The radioactive side cave The blue bats The e The way he’d had to clirin happily lest anger cause hi had been the easiest part He’d felt light with relief

He had told the story and kids roared with laughter The first day or so he’d played along He enjoyeda funny storyteller to being an object of ridicule

“Your power is the power to gain so round?” That had been Hunter, who thought himself a real comedian “So, you’re basically Fat- man?”

After that it was open season: Fath Boy, the Spelunker, the Sinker, the Miner, and the one he heard most often, the Human Drill

Kids didn’t get it: It wasn’t funny Not really Not if you thought about it Not if you spent the night tossing and turning, barely able to sleep because you worried that youdeath