Chapter 1: The Crystal Cave | Here There Be Monsters

I raced across the Arizona desert as if my life depended on it. It probably did. I wove around thorny bushes and towering, saguaro cactus. Just ahead of me was the safety of a rocky hill. My pounding feet churned up little, red dust clouds as I put on a burst of speed. I leaped onto the bedrock and landed with a solid thunk. That's when the ground gave out from underneath me.

There was a terrifying moment of vertigo as I plummeted into darkness. The slabs of rock underneath me crashed to the floor of a cavern and shattered. An instant later, my body slammed into the rubble, the fall cushioned only by my backpack.

Stars exploded inside my skull and blotted out everything. Blind with pain and choking on dust, I rolled onto all fours. I struggled to stand, but my legs refused to stay under me. I crumpled against the cave wall, kneeling with my hands and face pressed against the cool stone. I waited to catch my breath. Eventually the pain subsided, and my ears stopped ringing. Then, braced for the worst, I looked up. Yep, Joe was glaring down.

"Okay, okay, I know it sounded...uh... bad when-"

Words failed, so I waved one hand in a vaguely conciliatory fashion while the other clung to the wall. "-when everyone started saying I kissed Connie and asked her homecoming, but there were extenuating-"

He sputtered with incoherent rage. "Dying of thirst is gonna be brutal."

Joe's face vanished.

"Well, that could have gone better," I announced to the empty cave.

Twenty feet overhead, sunlight streamed through the newly-made hole and lit a path through the billowing, red dust that filled the air. A thin stream of sand trickled down from the ceiling to collect in a pile on the floor. Eventually, I noticed a jumping cholla, a nasty ball of cactus spines, pinned to my shoe. I'd been in Arizona for four months now, and my mom had insisted that eventually the place would grow on me. As I used a rock to scrape off the cholla, I felt confident that this was not what she had meant.

Unsure what to do next, I yelled at the hole in the ceiling. "Is anyone out there? Come on! Help!"

Unfortunately, I'd left the rest of the Future Archeologists Club at the dig to go back for my camera. That's when I'd run into Joseph Nez.

Joe is a linebacker on the football team. I'm president of the Archeology club. He's a junior at Rincon high school. I'm a sophomore in University high school. He's a Navajo Indian. I'm German-Italian. Our schools share the same campus, but we live in different worlds; worlds that would have never crossed if it hadn't been for Connie.

Now, I was trapped in a cave and no one knew where I was except for a jock who wanted me dead. If he really did leave, how was I ever going to get out?

I jumped at the cave wall. No thought, no plan, I just jumped. I clawed at the rock and held on. Overwhelming need and total determination were enough to climb straight out of the cave. Then the moment passed and I fell to the floor, ripping a fingernail half off.

Sucking my finger to stop the flow of blood, I stared at the hole in the ceiling. I was not getting out that way. Shaking off my backpack, the one I always took on digs, I unzipped it and pulled out the first item destined to save my life; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, translated into Ancient Greek by Andrew Wilson. Okay maybe not.

After that came Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, translated into Latin by Peter Needham. Both were gifts from my dad. That was my dad, always looking out for me. After all, how can you call yourself a learned man until you've got a couple of dead languages under your belt?

After the books came two tennis balls, two water bottles, four granola bars, a notebook, a mechanical pencil and a spray canister of sunblock SPF45. Sunblock?! Trapped in a cave and yes sir 'e, I have plenty of sunblock. Clearly I was going to be spared from the ravages of skin cancer. The last item was my digital camera, which had miraculously survived the fall.

Feeling less than cheerful, I started to search the cave. After a dozen steps, a natural shelf came into view. Arranged on the shelf were a set of the dim shapes. I stopped and stared at them, willing my eyes to see in the dark. Then it occurred to me, that while I didn't have a flashlight, I did have the camera. I pulled it out and took a picture.

Featured prominently on the shelf was the skull of some enormous animal, maybe a cave bear, and around it were woven baskets and clay pots. On the walls above it were cave drawings: handprints, people, animals, and starbursts.

Archeological sites had dominated my life and now I was about to die in one.

I found two passages that had been bricked up. I'd spent the last six years of my life in Egypt, helping my parents excavate an 18th dynasty Mastaba. I knew that each archeological site was an irreplaceable archive. However, if I was going to survive, I was going to have to damage one.

"They'll forgive me someday," I announced. Then I began bashing away.

I wiggled through and dropped to the floor. Around a bend, the tunnel opened up at the bottom of a chamber lined with crystals. My feet stood on red limestone, but from the knees up, I was inside a world of crystal. Every surface was covered with milky quartz, and reflecting in each was an unearthly array of colors. As I moved my head tiny, black spots danced in front of my eyes and my mouth was filled with the taste of lemons.

Joe's voice came echoing down the tunnel. "I'm coming!"

The room was part geology, part funhouse, and part plasma ball. Smiling like a goon, I spun around taking it all in. I heard Joe clambering over the brick wall. Reluctantly, I looked away from the gas and saw a dark hole leading out.

"Alex, what are you doing?" Joe was still grinning like a fool. "I'm trying to avoid getting crushed like a grape."

"No, you're about to fall to your death." Joe crawled down the slope towards me and extended his callused hand. "Get back up here."

Utter dread pierced through my light-headed mirth. I lunged for Joe's hand. The sudden movement startled Joe and cost him his grip. He slid down the slope without slowing, careened into me, and both of us slipped over the edge.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and plunged into blackness.

The water exploded all around me. Icy needles stabbed into my skin. I broke the surface and gulped air in. Things brushed up against me in the water. Terror seized my chest... when I heard something.

"Hang on! Hang on!" Joe repeated the two words over and over.

There was a click. Light lanced through the darkness. I started the breaststroke, swimming towards the source.

"You okay?"

"I'm alive," I answered.

We hauled ourselves onto the narrow limestone beach. Whip scorpions, spiders, and millipedes scurried away. Joe leaped to his feet and began stomping on anything that moved, each boot stomp punctuated by some guttural noise.

"Am I next?"

Joe stopped, looked at me and the glistening smears he'd created on the beach, and laughed. "No, I was coming back to help you."

"So, you told Meyers? The rest of the club is out there. Aren't they?"

Joe was suddenly furious. "No, they're not! Why would they be? I mean, how hard should it have been to save your scrawny butt?"

"So, no one knows we're down here?"

Joe sat down next to me. "There's my truck at the parking lot and I tied a rope at the entrance. They'll find us."

Our voices faded to nothing. For a while, the only sound was dripping water. Joe was a shape in the darkness, defined more by his t-shirt than anything else.

"Did you really break Dylan's arm last year?" I heard myself ask.

"Hey, Wile E. Coyote, do you have a death wish?" Joe asked.

That was how the conversation ended, Joe's question echoing off the cave walls and fading to silence. We sat there on the beach, while Joe played the beam of light across the red rock walls and I just shivered.