“Sounds like it.”

  “So will you sign the release?”

  Harry had helped us get our house, so I really couldn’t say no.

  “No,” I said.

  I guess I could say no.

  “Seriously? That’s bigotry, Jack. You’re preventing an LGBTQ+ actor of color from getting a job.”

  “Do you know how much ridicule I endured from the original show, McGlade?”

  “Nope. Because I lack empathy. It’s one of my little flaws that makes me so adorable.”

  “Adorable. Like a rabid, hog-nosed bat.”

  “Are you hog-nosed bat shaming? That can get you cancelled, Jack.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Will you sign?”

  “I need to discuss it with my husband first.”

  “Speaking of Phin, I also need a release from him. His character is a seventy-six year old deaf Islamic woman on the autism spectrum. With cerebral palsy. And buttlips. Heh heh. Lips that look like a butt.”

  “That sounds exactly like the man I married. I’ll talk to him. Can you get going on the stuff I need?”

  “What’s the neighbor’s name?”

  “Larry Wintergarten. I also need you to look for a local bogeyman. He’s called the Peeper.”

  “Coincidentally, that’s what I call my penis.”

  Often with McGlade it’s best to ignore the last thing he said and trudge on with the dialog. “He peeks in windows. Sometimes breaks in and steals family pictures.”

  “Creepy. I’ll get right on it. It’ll be nice to spend some quality time with the Peeper.”

  “And here we go…”

  “The Peeper is something I can really wrap my hands around.”

  “I’ll let you have one more, then I have to get back to decorating.”

  “I will go after the Peeper with all of my might. Then I’ll choke the Peeper until he spits up.”

  “And we’re done. Talk you you later, McGlade.”

  “Give your buttlips husband a big, wet, sloppy kiss with tongue from me.”

  “Of course.”

  McGlade hung up, and I finished the cabinet and switched brushes to red. Sam skipped in, Duffy tagging along on her heels.

  “Daddy wants to know what’s for lunch.”

  “I’ll make tacos. How’s he doing with the swing set?”

  “He said a bad word.”

  This ought to be good. “Which one?”

  “He said it’s a giant, stupid piece of shit.”

  “Sam,” I chided. “You know I don’t like the word stupid.”

  She giggled. We didn’t scold Sam when she used bad words. It was probably a recipe for a disastrous parent/teacher conference in the near future, but we decided to not be hypocritical. There are age restrictions for drinking booze, smoking cigarettes, buying weed, having sex, getting married, driving, getting a job, and joining the military, and those all made sense. But there were none for cursing. People say rude things. It’s part of life.

  “He also said the people that made it are stupid buttlips.”

  Was buttlips new slang? I needed to get the tea on that.

  “Is he almost done?”

  “Nope.”

  “Want to help me make lunch?”

  “Nope.”

  “Want a punch in the nose?”

  She giggled again. “Nope. Can I play Gunface Death Warrior 3 on GameMaster 2?”

  “Nope.”

  Sam put her hands on her little hips. “You know I can get the game on my phone.”

  “You know I can take your phone away.”

  “You told me I need it for emergencies.”

  “And I can lock it so you can’t play any games but can still use it for emergencies. Why don’t you want tacos?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I touched her forehead. Cool. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Sam nodded.

  “I think we need to make tacos. Go get the spices.”

  I spent thirty seconds washing the paint off my hands while Sam grabbed the step stool to reach into a tall cabinet.

  “Which ones?”

  “Chili, garlic, onion, paprika, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper.”

  Sam got them all without me telling her twice. Smart kid.

  I set the oven for 350°F and put in some premade taco shells to heat up, then put a cast iron pan on the stovetop and switched the burner to high. Sam and I put on latex gloves—why the heck didn’t I use those before painting?—and we hand-mixed the spices with equal parts ground beef and ground chorizo.

  “Red pepper flakes?” I spied a bottle I hadn’t asked for.

  “Dad likes them spicy.”

  “I thought you hate spicy.”

  Sam shrugged. We added some flakes, then put everything into a cast iron pan. We were slicing lettuce and tomatoes and onions when Phin came in, covered with dirt and looking dazed.

  “You okay, babe?” I asked.

  “Our property tried to kill me.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. “Something happen?”

  “You need to come out and see it. Sam, stay in the house.”

  Telling Sam to stay inside made my insides clench, and I shifted into a heightened state of threat-awareness as I followed my husband outside and saw—

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  “Opened up while I was digging. Our unusually spry neighbor thinks it’s a sinkhole. He jumped over the fence and helped me get out.”

  For the moment I put aside the fact that Larry, who had to be in his mid-seventies, could jump a fence, and instead focused on the surreal hole in our backyard.

  “You fell in there, Dad?” Sam and Duffy stood at the patio door.

  “I did. I’m fine. What are we supposed to do?”

  “I’ll call our insurance agent,” I said, having no idea if our homeowner’s policy covered something like this.

  “Can the hole get bigger?” Sam asked.

  “We don’t know, pumpkin.” I brushed off Sam’s obvious concern and faced Phin with concerns of my own. Sinkholes weren’t part of my wheelhouse of expertise. “Can it get bigger?”

  “We can contact the zoning department in town. They must have some sort of geologist to do land surveys.”

  “We could also call the police.” My wheelhouse of expertise did include GPR, sometimes used by law enforcement to find buried bodies.

  “Is it even safe to stay in the house?” Phin asked.

  A good point. “Where would we go?”

  As far as I knew, local hotels and motels were closed due to COVID. My mother still wasn’t allowed to have visitors, and even if we could stay there, Sam hadn’t been vaxxed yet. I didn’t want her around people.

  “Start with our insurance agent,” Phin said. “Maybe they’ll be able to send an inspector to check the property. Or know who to call. I’m going to search the basement, see if there is any structural damage.”

  “Can I come with you, Dad?”

  “Stay with Mom, munchkin, until I’m sure it’s safe.”

  Phin headed downstairs. I headed for the phone.

  The unparalleled joys of home ownership.

  SAMANTHA ADAMS TROUTT-DANIELS

  Mom and Dad didn’t know what to do. That was strange. They always knew what to do. They knew what to do before things even happened. They called it SPAP.

  Smart People Are Prepared.

  The first thing we did when we moved in was check the batteries on all the fire alarms and put a fire extinguisher in every room. I helped Dad find the wall studs with a magnet so we could hang the extinguishers. Dad said he was teaching me how to use a cordless drill, but I also knew he was helping me remember where the extinguishers were in case there was a fire.

  Sometimes we’d play games that I knew weren’t games. They were more like SPAP training. What to do if I got lost. Or if the lights went out. Or if I was being bullied. Or if a stranger was following me.

  Those things are scary. But they are less scary if you know what to do.

  Grandma said I’m a lot like Mom. She said I’m smart, and strong, and curious. She said smart and strong are good traits to have, but being curious is better than both.

  Being curious, Grandma said, meant you don’t just accept things. It meant you keep searching until you got answers that made sense.

  Grandma was a cop, like Mom. I don’t want to be a cop. When Grandma and Mom talk about it, they don’t seem happy.

  I’m not sure what my dad’s job was. He once told me he used to be a problem solver. Like if a husband was hurting his wife, he’d make the man stop. He didn’t say how, but I think it had to do with kicking the man’s ass.

  Like Mom, Dad doesn’t smile when he talks about the past, so I don’t want to be a problem solver.

  When I grow up, I want to be a private investigator. Like Uncle Harry.

  Uncle Harry is always smiling and laughing when he talks about being a private eye. He helps people, like Mom and Dad do, but without the emotional baggage.

  Grandma says Mom and Dad have a lot of emotional baggage. I asked Mom what that meant, and she told me that things in her past bothered her, and sometimes she carried them around.

  I understand that. Sometimes I dwell on things, too.

  Like my slight headache. And stomach pain.

  I’ve had both for the last two days.

  At first, I thought it was COVID. When I Googled it, I saw I had some symptoms, but not many, and nothing serious. So I haven’t told my parents. I didn’t want them to worry until I knew for sure, because both of them already worried a lot about a lot of things.

  I’m keeping it a secret until I get more evidence. Both Mom and Dad have secrets, so I know secrets are okay.

  But sometimes I can’t stop thinking about things. Like my health.

  Emotional baggage.

  Mom began making calls. I considered eavesdropping to learn more about the situation, but that would be a waste of time because I’d only hear half the conversation. Smarter to wait and get all the facts when Mom told Dad what she learned.

  I also thought about sneaking into the basement and spying on Dad; I’m pretty good at not being seen. But I didn’t like the basement. It had spiders. A lot of spiders. I knew most spiders were harmless, but in Destiny we had western widows. Latrodectus hesperus. Their venom acts like a neurotoxin, and can cause necrosis. That’s dead tissue, which needs to be cut away before it rots.

  Also, western widows are cannibals. Yuck.

  I have eidetic memory. That means I remember a lot. It’s why I know that Earth’s average distance from the sun is 93 million miles, that earwax is a form of sweat, that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, and that the word sesquipedalian means long words, which is funny because it’s a long word.

  I have a better vocabulary than kids my age. And most adults. Sometimes I make people uncomfortable because I’m precocious and often pedantic, and some grown-ups don’t even know what those words mean, so mostly I try to act normal.

  As I said, I’m good at hiding.

  I’m also good at figuring stuff out.

  While my mom called people to get answers, and Dad searched the concrete walls in the basement for cracks, I got on my laptop and studied sinkholes.

  Most sinkholes were caused by underground water, which eroded limestone. It worked like a mudslide, but beneath the surface.

  Other sinkholes were caused when underground chambers, like sewers or mines, collapsed.

  Destiny, Colorado had sinkholes caused by erosion. It also had a history of coal mining. But the nearest mine, now closed, was over a hundred kilometers away, And the one sinkhole in town that made the news was over twenty meters deep, and happened in 1939.

  The sinkhole in our backyard didn’t look like either. So I decided to run an experiment. But first I watched a few videos about mountain climbing, and I learned about hitches.

  Mom was still talking on the phone in the kitchen, and she wasn’t paying attention to the cooking tacos. I checked them, and turned the stovetop and the oven off because they were starting to burn. Then I went to the garage and found some leather gardening gloves, ten meters of nylon rope, and my Polyweb tool belt, which I got when Dad got his so I could help with home improvements.

  I snuck past Mom in the kitchen, and slipped out the patio door and closed it behind me so she didn’t hear, and crept into the backyard. Then I put on the tool belt and tied one end of the rope to the trunk of a bristlecone pine tree, using bowline knots. I walked to the sinkhole slowly, testing the ground with each step.

  The closer I got, the scarier it got. I’d read some of the stories of people getting swallowed up by sinkholes, and I didn’t want to be one of them.

  Aspirating dirt sounded awful.

  When I finally got to the edge, I peered down.

  Some of the lawn had torn away, and I saw a lot of dirt, gravel, and rocks, which is what I’d been hoping for. I sat on the rim of the hole and stared down.

  Up close, it looked a lot deeper. Maybe three times my height. I pulled the rope through the steel hammer loop on my belt and attempted to tie my first Munter hitch. According to the mountain climbing video I watched, a Munter hitch can be used to rappel, and when it is flipped over it can be used to climb. It took three tries to get it to tie like the image in my head. Then I put on the garden gloves then pulled the rope toward me so it was taut against the pine tree.

  Curiosity overriding my fear, I flipped onto my belly, my legs hanging over the edge, and eased myself down the rope, squeezing the other end to brake just like the video showed, using my feet to walk along the side of the hole—

  —and I slipped.

  I only fell a few feet before the hitch caught, but it scared me enough that I screamed. The momentum made me bang my shoulder, so hard that stars appeared in my vision.

  Photopsia. Seeing phosphenes, my retinas stimulated by the abrupt stop rather than photons.

  Then the pain hit. My arm. My side. My head.

  A year ago, I would have started to cry. But I’m a lot more mature now so all I did was say a bad word.

  I said, “Shitballs.”

  Maturity has very little to do with how developed a person’s mind is.

  Then I did what my mom and dad did when they got injured; I assessed the damage to see how bad it was.

  The pain was only a three out of ten. No bleeding. Full range of movement. Nothing seemed broken or dislocated.

  I figured I’d have a bruise, but otherwise I was functional. Then I planted my feet on the hole wall and gripped the rope. It took a few seconds to manipulate the hitch for the rope to become slack again, and I continued my descent.

  Slower this time.

  It took eleven steps to reach bottom. I probed it with my toes, checking to see if the ground shifted. When it seemed okay, I let out more rope, putting my full weight on the dirt.

  Most of the gravel was in the center, and I walked carefully to it, shifting my weight evenly, keeping my feet wide apart. When I reached the middle I squatted, picking up a dozen whitish stones and putting them into my tool belt pouch.

  “You shouldn’t be playing in there.”

  The voice surprised me so much I almost yelped. I looked around, and saw it came from Mr. Wintergarten, leering over the fence.

  “I’m not playing,” I told him. “I’m getting geological samples.”

  “I heard you scream.”

  He must have had his patio door open. That’s the reason I closed our patio door, so Mom wouldn’t hear. “I’m fine. I just slipped.”

  “Do your parents know you’re out here?”

  The trick to not answering a question was to shift the focus. “I’m coming out right now.”

  The edge of the hole seemed pretty high. I could have used help. But there was something about Mr. Wintergarten that I didn’t like. I didn’t know what, exactly. His chocolate chip cookies were amaze-balls. But whenever we talked, he seemed a little too… intense. Even when he was being polite, or telling stories.

  Like he was trying too hard to act normal.

  Feeling his eyes on me, I flipped up the Munter hitch and practiced pulling the rope through it. Seemed to work fine. I walked to the edge of the hole, cinching it tight, and then tried to pull myself up.

  Unlike the fat rope in school gym class that we shimmied up to ring the bell hanging from the ceiling, this rope was too thin to grip with my thighs and ankles. When I tried to wrap it around my hand, the nylon pinched my fingers too tight.

  “Do you need help?”

  I was more embarrassed and frustrated than scared. I had this all planned out in my head. An adult was watching. I felt like a silly kid who had a dumb idea and got in trouble.

  If Mom and Dad came outside, they’d be angry. I’d be angry, too. I don’t like disappointing people. Especially myself.

  The side of the hole wasn’t too steep. I already had an ersatz climbing rig on, so I might as well give climbing a try.

  I found a toe-hold on a rock jutting out of the dirt, and stuck my hand in a rough crevice over my head, then let the wall take my weight.

  The wall held without collapsing. So did I.

  So far so good.

  I reached up, finding another divot to grab, pressing my body tight against the side, trying keeping my back straight as gravity fought against me. My stomach began to hurt, worse than before, and I also found it hard to breathe.

  COVID-19? Or just plain old fear?

  It didn’t matter. Either way, I needed to get out. Tight spaces scared me, and it felt like the hole was closing in and trying to eat me up. And the feeling wasn’t just me being scared of nothing. Sinkholes could get bigger. Some of them weren’t stable.

  Maybe this was a dumb idea.

  Then I reached a point where my shoes didn’t have any other places to grip.

  What now?

  I tried to steady my breathing, tried to calm down, tried to think.

  All I could think about was my tombstone. Here lies Samantha Adams Troutt-Daniels. Died in a sinkhole, because she was a Dumb Kid.

  Then I began to slide.

  Was the wall collapsing? Was the sinkhole growing?

  My parents didn’t talk a lot about their pasts. I knew Mom was a hero, and I looked her up online and read about how many times she survived life-or-death situations and saved the day. Dad didn’t show up in Google, but Uncle Harry told me about a few of the scary situations he got out of. Scary situations that were much scarier than climbing out of a hole.