The Goonies (13 page)

My bedroom window—it seemed like ages ago. I wondered if I'd ever hear the freeway from it again. It already seemed like a
memory from childhood.

At one end of the cave were three tunnels, right next to each other. And at the other end a crumbling skeleton was propped
up, pointing at them. It was dressed in shredding, tattered pirate clothes.

We checked it out up close. It had a big chilly grin on its face and a dagger through one eye. Pretty damn freaky.

Mouth laughed nervously. “Hey, all this trickling water reminds me of somethin' I haven't done in a while—I'm gonna check
out the men's room.” He walked into the left-hand tunnel.

Brand followed while Stef and Andy went into the “ladies' room” in the right-hand tunnel.

I didn't have to go, so I just stood there, staring at the three entrances. I was absolutely certain one of them led to treasure,
another one to the jar full of toothpicks, and the third to…

I looked at the pirate skeleton with the knife in his eye. It made me shiver. Shiver me timbers. Is that what that meant,
that old pirate saying? I looked at where his hand was pointing. It seemed like more toward tunnel three. It had to be the
middle tunnel, though, didn't it? Wasn't this like history repeating itself or something? Like my dad had this chance to go
with his instincts, and he didn't do it and lost, and now here were the same three doors, right?

“Everything's behind the second door,” I whispered.

“Maybe,” said Data. “Maybe not.”

I heard Andy call out from the right-hand tunnel. “Brand!” Kind of quiet. “Brand, hurry.”

Brand wasn't back, though. “I'll go see what she wants,” I said, and set off up the passage.

It was dark and twisty, and I had to feel my way along the wall. I hoped she hadn't sprained her ankle or anything—that would
really slow us up. Then I realized I hadn't heard Stef at all, so I got even more nervous, like maybe she'd fallen down a
pit or something, or got crushed under a boulder, or something weird had carried her off, or…

I rounded the next corner, my hands on the wall in the total blackness, more and more afraid, when my palm came to rest on
something soft and warm. I'd never felt one before, but I knew immediately what it was. It was a breast.

In a second Andy pulled me close and whispered, “Oh, Brand,” and put her lips on mine and kissed me with her mouth wide-open.

She didn't pull away, either. She just kept on keepin' on, with the same long kiss. I opened my mouth. First time I'd ever
done that, too, except for the time I started to do it with Cheryl Hagedorn and we locked braces. But this wasn't anything
like that.

Andy stuck her tongue into my mouth and sort of licked around in there. It was pretty weird, but I liked it. I mean, I don't
think I'd ever had anything in my mouth that felt anything like her tongue. Even
my
tongue didn't feel like that.

Then I realized everything was going on in
my
mouth, so I stuck my tongue into
her
mouth and sort of slid it around her tongue, and she started making these little whimpery kinds of noises. My hand was still
on her breast, and I pressed down a little harder, but I didn't move it around much. I was afraid she might get mad and
make me stop, or tell Brand, and then he'd make me sorry. She didn't seem to mind me just pressin'. down, though. So I did
it with my other hand on her other breast, too.

And for just a few seconds there, I forgot about One-Eyed Willy.

Finally we broke, and she just leaned back against the wall, kind of out of breath, but it sounded like she was smilin'.

Suddenly Stef came up from the other direction and stopped short when she saw me—my eyes were used to the dark now, so I could
see her, and I guess she could see me. Andy could've seen, too, but she still had her eyes closed. Stef looked surprised,
but I guess she figured out what was what pretty quick, because she gave me a wink. Sometimes Stef was like one of the guys.

I winked back at her, and I hoped that meant, this was our secret. Than I backed out real slow, back toward the main cavern.
Just as I got out of sight from the girls, I heard Stef whisper to Andy.

“Okay, you kissed—now tell.”

“Well,” said Andy, “he's not what he appears. He's… scholarly. And sensitive. And very, very sweet. But there
is
something weird.”

“What's that?”

I stopped so I could hear better.

“I think he wears braces,” she said.

I passed my tongue over the wires on my front teeth. For a minute, with Andy, I'd forgotten that my teeth weren't perfect.

“Next time,” I heard Stef say, “you gotta kiss him with your eyes open. It's a whole different experience.”

“Well, if anyone knows, you should,” said Andy. “I wasn't interested in watching, though—I just thought that
if this was going to be my last day on earth, I wanted to make Brand my last meal.”

“Yeah, well I don't intend for this to be
my
last day, so someday I'll tell you a secret about this.”

“Meaning what?” said Andy.

“Meaning apples are tastier when they're not quite ripe.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Let's get back.”

I heard them start toward me, so I hurried back to the cavern.

All the guys were there again, huddled around the pirate skeleton, and a few second later Stef and Andy joined us. Data had
the lantern working again. Mouth was looking along the skeleton's arm toward the tunnels.

“So are we gonna get outta here or what?” said Brand. Andy eased over to him and put her arm around his waist. He put his
arm around her shoulder. It made me feel funny—kind of bad and kind of good, like jealous of Brand but full of my secret,
too. Stef didn't look at me, and I didn't look at her.

Mouth said, “Well, this arm's pointin' to Door Number Three, so let's take it and blow this joint.” He walked to the right-hand
tunnel. The others followed.

I just stood there for a second, staring at this mummified buccaneer… and all at once I had an idea. It was like a melody
inside my head again. It just started playin' real pretty, just like one of those songs no one could hear but me. Reminded
me of Chunk dancing to the tune of that silent jukebox up in the Lighthouse Lounge… when was that? Only earlier today? Seemed
like a year ago.

I wondered where Chunk was now. Did he get the cops? Was he trapped somewhere? Was he…

Anyway, I had this idea.

“Hey, guys! Wait!” I shouted.

They all stopped and looked at me.

“So this guy has a knife in his eye, right? So it's like he only had one eye, just like One-Eyed Willy. Right?” They all agreed.
I went on. “So, if you only got one eye, you sort of see things in a different way.…”

I looked along the pirate's arm, first closing one eye, then the other. It made the arm point to two different tunnels. When
I closed the eye that the dagger was sticking in on the skeleton, his arm seemed to point to the middle tunnel.

Everyone gathered around me and did the same thing.

“It's the middle tunnel,” said Brand. “Door Number Two.”

Mouth had to agree. So without any more discussion we all headed into the middle entrance, Brand in the lead with the lantern.

After a few steps I remembered Chunk, though. What if he
hadn't
found the cops but had come down here after us instead? Or what if he
had
found the cops and they were
all
looking for us? We had to let them know where we were going. We had to leave them a sign.

“Hang on a minute, guys,” I said, and ran back into the main cavern.

I wanted to leave a trail for him that
he
could follow but no one else could, if there was someone else after us that we didn't want around.

So I rummaged in my pockets and came up with a pocketknife, a rubber band, a PEZ dispenser, three base-ball cards, some old
Kleenex, a Twinkies wrapper, a ticket stub from the movies last Saturday, and half a red licorice.

Then I scratched a one in the dirt in front of the left tunnel, a two in front of the middle one, and a three in front of
the right. And then I dropped the Twinkies
wrapper near the pirate. I figured Chunk would know there were two Twinkies to a package, and go to Tunnel Number Two. Anyway,
that's what I figured.

I stood up to go back into the tunnel and nearly jumped out of my skin. There were two big, round holes in the rock, high
up, one either side of the middle tunnel. I hadn't noticed them before, but with the light on inside the passageway now, it
shone back at me through these holes and through the entrance—and with the other two side tunnels kind of like hollowed-out
cheeks, the whole wall looked like a giant skull, with two eye sockets above, and the middle tunnel a huge nose hole.

And now every friend I had in the world was inside that skull.

I ran through the nose hole to join them.

Chunk's Story

Thinking of Chunk reminds me that he was having quite an adventure of his own during all this, even though I didn't find that
out until later. But now's as good a time as any to tell you about it, I guess. So I'll tell you. Just the way he told me.
He said:

“The last time I see you guys we're in the counterfeiting room in the basement of the lighthouse and the Fratellis are comin'
back and there's this frozen dead guy on the floor and I thought it was all over for us and I wasn't that scared, since I
had to fight off that wolf up near Vancouver.

“And then you stuff
me
into the freezer with the stiff and close the door. I can't believe you guys! I mean, I try to yell, but my vocal cords get
frozen up and I can't make a sound. And this damn corpse keeps slidin' down onto me so I'm starin' in his face, which, if
you remember, has three eyes on account of the bullet hole between the normal ones.

“Then the freezer door opens and I'm about to cuss you
out, except I notice it's Jake at the door. So I keep real still until I hear 'em leave, and then I'm outta there.

“So I hear you callin' from inside the fireplace, right, the fireplace, geez. So I tell you to lemme in. So what do you tell
me? Take a hike. Well, thanks a whole lot, I'm a sittin' duck out there, and my best friends won't pull me out with a rope
when they see me goin' down for the third time. Great friends.

“Then I heard the Fratelli gang again, but since I'm a resourceful kinda guy, I leap for the window in a single bound, slink
through like a ferret… and I'm free. I don't know why you guys didn't think of it.

“Anyway, I'm outside now, and it's night, and it's cold, and I'm scared out of my mind, so I just start running. Reminds me
of the time I was one of the pacers in the Portland Marathon. O' course, that was before I had my, you know, my weight problem,
and then I was never timed officially, but I used to be a pretty good hoofer, especially cross-country. So I try to keep that
in mind as I tear ass outta the lighthouse. I run through the graveyard, which is no picnic, I run through the woods, I run
up the hill, I get all the way to the damn road before I remember we had bikes down there and I coulda been riding. But I'm
too scared to go back now, so I just keep running.

“Must've run ten minutes before a car finally shows. So I stand right in front of the headlights and wave my arms to flag
it down, until it finally stops right in front of me, and this guy gets out, only I can't see him too good on account of the
headlights are on bright and right in my eyes. So the guy says, ‘Is there something wrong?’ So I say, ‘Look, mister, I need
a ride. My friends and I just had a run-in with these really gross people, you might've heard of 'em, the Fratelli Gang: Anyway,
we
found their hideout, so if you could gimme a ride to the police station…’

“Meanwhile I'm walkin' up to the car while I'm talkin', and as soon as I get past those blinding headlights, I see the car
is the same damn car with all the bullet holes in it from back at the lighthouse. Talk about feeling stupid. Geez.

“So I look up, and sure enough, it's Jake Fratelli standing there, with Francis right behind him. I turn to run, and I'm fast,
but they're faster, so before I know it, they've grabbed me and they're stuffing me into the trunk of the car, and I'm yowling,
but there's nobody else around.

“Except right next to me in the trunk is that same damn FBI corpse. But naturally he wasn't listening.

“So we go for a short, painful, bouncy ride back to the hideout, and they take me down to the basement again, right into the
counterfeiting room. Where Mama's waiting. Right about now I'm wishin' I knew a prayer, but I don't, so I just sorta smile
as good as I can and hope maybe they'll just kidnap me and adopt me as their outlaw son and I can turn myself in during our
first holdup. But they don't wanna adopt me. They just wanna torture me.

“So they tie me into this hard chair with an old extension cord, and Jake holds a gun to my head. Geez, my mom won't even
allow a gun in our
house
. Made it tough the night I had to disarm those two cat burglars when my parents were at the ballet last New Year's Eve. These
guys climbed in the upstairs bathroom window, but I heard 'em from the den, and I knew they'd have to pass the linen closet
on the way to Mom's jewelry, so I hid there, and when they passed, I threw one of those huge wraparound towels over their
heads and knocked 'em cold with the Spic-N-Span bucket.

“But, anyway, there's no way I'm gonna get the Fratellis' guns now, 'cause they got me tied up in a flash, and I'm thinkin',
this is not going well.

“Then the old lady puts a blender on the table in front of me and plugs it in and turns it to ‘Liquefy’ and jams an eggplant
into it, and we all watch the eggplant turn to mush. And I hear Mama saying, ‘First we'll start with your pudgy little fingers,
then your round little hands, then your fleshy arms…’ Geez, I want to puke just thinkin' about it.

“Then she turns off the blender and says, ‘Now you gonna tell me where your little friends are?’