Second Thoughts

Penny was the one who first noticed the water dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls surrounding us.

The cave had been dry when we first went in. Now all of a sudden it was wet. Or this part of it was wet, anyway.

“Hey, do you think this means we are under the river?” Penny asked.

I frowned. We hadn’t really been inside the tunnel all that long. I knew, from all my years of Girl Scout hiking, that it always seemed like you had gone miles and miles and miles and then the trail markers would tell you that you had only gone like a quarter mile or something.

I didn’t think we had really gone all that far yet.

In fact, I hadn’t really thought about how long it might take us to work our way just from the cave entrance to the river, let alone all the way under the river. And I realized that we only had one flashlight and no extra batteries. Ben’s flashlight was an old Halloween one with an orange plastic pumpkin covering the bulb, and it had died about five minutes after we had entered the cave.

“Ewwwww!” Penny shrieked and jumped back.

“What?”

“Spiders!” She pointed. Sure enough the wall in front of us was teeming with all sorts of ugly black and brown spiders.

“They’re just spiders,” Ben said, but his voice sounded kind of strange and hesitant.

“Don’t even tell me you weenies are afraid of silly old spiders,” I said. I wasn’t afraid of them, but I didn’t particularly like them. I mean, I had no desire to wade through a wall of them or anything.

“Oh, gross!” Penny wailed.

“Now what?” I whirled around.

“It’s all muddy in here from the water. Look at my hands! Look at my jeans! Look at my shoes!”

“Oh, for crissakes!” Ben grunted. “We are cave explorers. What did you expect?”

“Ohhhhh,” Penny started to sob. “Mom is gonna kill us!”

“Oh, she won’t even have to know,” I said. “We can wash all our clothes as soon as we get back, and she won’t have to know.”

“But I don’t know how to wash clothes,” Penny whined.

“Well, I do, so don’t worry about it. I’ll even wash yours, Ben,” I said.

“Uh-oh.” Ben stopped in front of me.

“What?”

“Look!” He moved to the side and pointed ahead of him.

Shining my light into the darkness I suddenly saw what he saw: the tunnel in front of us suddenly split into a very distinct V shape.

“Ohhhhh,” Penny whimpered. “How are we supposed to know which way to go?”

How, indeed?

I considered this dilemma and the fact that we were down to only one flashlight and Penny was getting tired and whiny (and muddy) and we really had not come prepared for serious spelunking.

I was starting to think that maybe we needed to regroup.

Maybe this could be our initial reconnoiter. And we could then plan a real, serious expedition for another day. We definitely needed more flashlights. And heavy duty ones! And extra batteries. And some rope. Or a ball of string or something. And a watch that glowed in the dark. And some water and snacks. And maybe a first aid kit. And a compass. (Did compasses even work underground?)

“You know what, guys?” I tried to sound official, like I really knew what I was doing.

“What?”

“I think we have made an amazing first go in the tunnel. But this whole V thing means we need to do some more serious preparation. I mean, we don’t want to get lost or anything.”

“Get l-l-lost!” Penny stammered. “I thought we were just going to go under the river. Do you mean, we could really get lost in here?!?”

“Wellll, no,” I lied. “Of course not. All we have to do is backtrack and find our way out. But I don’t think we should go any further today with – uhhh -- just one flashlight.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I think we each should have a flashlight. Er, I mean, a flashlight that works.”

“I wanna go hooooooome!” Penny wailed.

“All right, bratty! That’s what we are going to do. I just said that. So take a chill pill, will ya?”

We turned around and started working our way back out of the tunnel. It was far more twisty and turny than I remembered it. And a lot colder. But maybe that was because my clothes were now so wet and muddy. Penny kept sobbing under her breath, and Ben finally grabbed her hand.

“It’s OK, Penny. Just hold on to me.”

Right. Like Ben was going to be able to do anything. But it did seem to calm Penny down a bit. Maybe next time we wouldn’t bring Penny. She was too little to go on a real adventure.

I wished Nick had been allowed to come.

All of a sudden my flashlight started to waver and then dim. I shook it and banged it on my free hand. It got brighter for a moment, and then it started wavering again.

And then, boom, just like that, it went out.

And Penny let out one of the most blood curling screams I have ever heard.