Excerpt:

“It’s wild, isn’t it? Only three blocks away!” Emily’s mom chattered into the telephone. “I know. It could have been anywhere on this stretch of the hill. Swallowed up two cars! How did the City not see a disaster like this coming?”

Emily absorbed her mother’s side of the conversation while gulping down breakfast and studying the aerial images on the morning news. Sometime just before dawn, the street had collapsed right around the corner and left a gaping hole large enough to swallow her house. The news anchor talked about all kinds of reasons the sinkhole could have occurred where it did – old train tunnels under Church Hill losing their stability, too much rain recently creating pockets of water underground, even something about secret Confederate bunkers and munitions storage that could have been lost and forgotten. Emily didn’t really care; this was the most exciting thing to happen in her neighborhood the entire time she lived there.

She cleaned up her breakfast dishes and gave her mom a wave before darting out the back door. She ran four houses down through the alley and ducked through an old wooden gate. Sarah met her at the back door.

“Did you hear what our mom’s were talking about?” Sarah asked with wide eyes.

“Yeah, let’s go see it!” Emily answered.

“Hang on, I want to go get my camera. She said that two cars got sucked down into the road when it cracked. That has to go in the scrapbook.” Sarah disappeared back into the house for only a moment and returned to burst out of the old screen door.

The two girls ran out of the alley to the old brick sidewalk on 28th Street. It was pretty obvious by watching which direction everyone was walking their dogs this morning where to find the latest arrival to the neighborhood. They followed the slow trickle of people east, to 31st Street, speculating the entire time about what they might find when they got there.

Emily and Sarah had been best friends for four years, which was a pretty long time when you’re only eleven and thirteen years old. Sarah’s family had inherited their house on Franklin Street from her great-grandparents and had lived there since long before she was born. Emily and her parents moved to Grace Street when she was only three. Both girls where homeschooled and kept mainly to themselves during the day. They didn’t even realize they had so much in common with someone so close until their mothers ran into each other at a local meeting for homeschooling parents. The rest, as far as Emily and Sarah were concerned, was destiny.

The crowd near the sinkhole was thick. City public utility workers and Richmond Police and Fire had already been there for several hours and had roped off the area with ugly yellow plastic tape to keep spectators at a safe distance. Unfortunately, that “safe” distance also meant you couldn’t see a thing. The girls snaked through the onlookers and made their way to the tape at the front, but no matter how much they craned their necks in an attempt to get a better look, all they could see were fire trucks sitting near lots of asphalt triangles pointing in unnatural directions. Sarah twisted her curly brown hair for a moment and then said, “I have an idea! Let’s go to Vivian’s house and see if we can go up on her balcony.”

It was much more work to get out of the crowd than it was to get in. They exchanged dozens of ’excuse me’s before finally making their way back to the sidewalk. Vivian lived only four houses down, but it took almost five minutes to walk there through all of the chatting neighbors. She spotted Emily and Sarah as they approached and waved them up to her porch with much enthusiasm.

“Isn’t it cool?” Vivian squealed. “Our whole house shook last night! My dad thought someone blew up a car and came running outside just in time to see Mr. Hinson’s truck going under the road. I guess we’re lucky it happened down at the traffic circle instead of on the narrow part of the street here – one of the houses could have fallen in instead of just cars!” She was so enthusiastic about the whole disaster that she made it seem like some kind of celebrity had moved in next door. Emily and Sarah exchanged what-the-heck glances as Emily worked up the nerve to ask Vivian about the third floor balcony.

“We tried to get close, but couldn’t see a thing because of the fire trucks. Do you think we could all go up to your top balcony and try and get some pictures for the neighborhood scrapbook?” she asked.

Vivian suddenly had a look of surprise like she had just won a bingo jackpot. “I completely forgot about that! It’s a great idea, come on.” The three ducked past Vivian’s parents and some neighbors talking and laughing near the front door and headed for the stairs. This house was much older and grander than Emily or Sarah’s, and as a result had a lot more steps. Breathless and with hearts pounding, they reached the balcony doors.

Emily found it strange that such a tiny flat area between the windows on the slanted roof could be called a “balcony”. The height and the ancient, tiny iron railing made her hesitate before stepping out. When she did, she was sure to keep her back pressed firmly against the French doors, as far from the edge as she could manage and still be outside. Sarah was right, this view was much better than the one they’d failed to get down on the street level.

The girls exchanged hushed exclamations when they got their first glimpse of the destruction. A gaping, rugged hole the width of three lanes of traffic and just as long exposed a variety of decrepit pipes, old granite cobblestones, layers of red clay soil, and tons of what looked like snapped boards and planks. In the middle of this strange time capsule beneath the city street was Mr. Hinson’s red Ford Explorer, its driver-side door pointing at the cloudless autumn sky. A few yards away was another car that looked an awful lot like the old clunker that belonged to Jason, the college student that rented the basement apartment at the corner next to Mr. Hinson. It was hard to tell, though, because the car was completely upside down.

“Whoa… How could that even happen?” Emily asked.

“I have no idea,” Sarah replied. “Maybe it was just bad luck.”

“My dad says it was karma. You know, like they did something bad and this is what they get for it,” Vivian said.

“Well, your dad just doesn’t like Mr. Hinson because he works for the City Tax Assessor and wouldn’t get the taxes on your house lowered,” Sarah laughed. “What exactly does he think Jason did to deserve his car ending up like a dead bug in that hole?”

Vivian didn’t answer, she just wrinkled up her nose and tilted her head in defeat. Sarah raised her eyebrows as a sign of triumph and then began snapping photos of the wreckage. City workers in coveralls and hardhats peeked out over the broken asphalt from inside the hole every now and then and shouted status reports to other city workers in clean, button-up shirts and slacks who were holding clipboards and looking concerned. Firefighters sat on the bumpers of their huge trucks and laughed and talked with each other and the police who had come to help manage the crowd. The pounding sound of a news helicopter began beating overhead just as two news vans topped with a variety of weird antennae and satellite dishes pulled up and parked beside the fire trucks.

The girls watched as news anchors and camera operators hopped out of the vans and pulled out huge loops of cables and computer gear in preparation for a live broadcast. A female anchor from Channel 6 was applying lipstick in the side mirror of her team’s vehicle while the male anchor from Channel 12 appeared to have some kind of temper tantrum about his tie. After exchanging a few words with the police on the scene, both crews scrambled to their posts and extended the enormous antennae on the tops of the vans.

“Quick! Let’s get down there and see if we can squeeze into the background. We could be on TV!” Vivian said. Before anyone had time to respond, she ran back into the house and started downstairs. Emily and Sarah followed, but didn’t catch up to Vivian until she was slowed down by the crowd on the front sidewalk. They followed Vivian’s bright red hair like a beacon in a storm as she pushed her way though to the caution tape at the front of the group. She had managed to squirm her way to a spot only ten feet away from the back of the Channel 12 news anchor who had a camera pointed right on him.

Vivian waved excitedly while Emily and Sarah stood like deer in the headlights, both wondering how they agreed to go along with this plan. Vivian elbowed Emily in the ribs and said through clenched teeth and smiling lips, “Are you two going to make the most of this or what?” Emily let the corners of her mouth curl up, but not without much effort. Sarah smiled nervously and gave a hesitant wave to the camera.

Emily strained to hear what the news anchor was saying, but it was nearly impossible with him facing the opposite direction. She thought she heard the words “hazmat” and “FEMA”, both of which she knew meant serious business. Serious and bad business.

(CHAPTER 2)

The three girls stayed at the front lines of the crowd long after the news crews had packed up and moved their vans to a side street. Emily assumed they must be hanging around until Noon to give another live update. The neighbors that had been pressed in tightly around them two hours ago had given up their posts to get kids off to school and themselves off to work. Only a dozen or so remained, including Emily, Sarah, and Vivian.

“Vivi! Come on, we need to get you to school!” her mother called. “I’ve already called and told them you’d be late thanks to these, uh, circumstances.”

“Sarah, please tell me you’ll take pictures if anything exciting happens while I’m gone,” Vivian whined. “You two are so lucky you get to stay around.”

“Well, we can’t stay all day – we have lessons at home. I’ll get whatever I can with my camera, though,” Sarah said.

“Cool! I’ll call you tonight,” Vivian said over her shoulder as she crossed the street at a diagonal and headed back to her front porch.

“Is this the toll for using her balcony?” Emily whispered to Sarah with a snicker. Sarah was about to reply when her words were cut off with the sudden roar and rumble of the fire truck engine just a few yards away. Both girls backed away and waved exhaust fumes from their faces while the two trucks slowly crept away from the pit and started their return trips to the station. Several police vehicles were soon to follow, leaving only one patrol car and two officers to manage the scene.

“I guess there’s nothing left but a mess,” Sarah said.

“Maybe. I don’t know, I have a weird feeling about this,” Emily said while looking off in the distance at nothing in particular.

“Ugh! Not that again! You get a weird feeling about everything. Come on, we should get back home before our moms decide to send a search party.”

They walked west down sidewalks turned into funhouse floors by hundred-year-old tree roots making themselves comfortable. Each was lost in her own imagination, coming up with all sorts of mystical reasons the street decided to quit, and neither spoke until they reached the alley their houses shared.

“Hey, call me when you’re done and we’ll go back down there and see what we can find out from any workers that are still around,” Sarah said with a wave as Emily entered her back gate. Emily simply nodded in response, her mind heavy with possibilities.

She settled down in the dining room, her mother’s schooling spot of choice this year, and went through her math practice in a fog. Her mom joined her and went through the day’s history, science, and vocabulary lessons. After about two hours, she said, “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not really paying attention today?”

“What? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about that sinkhole. We got a good look at it from the balcony on Vivian’s house, and it was a lot worse than it looked on the news. Do you think it really just fell in because of too much rain?” Emily said.

“I don’t know. I guess it seems like a possible explanation. I don’t think the City would need to make up a reason like that,” her mom answered.

“You’re right. I just got a weird feeling about it is all.”

“Well, you know you’re feelings about things have been pretty accurate in the past, maybe you should trust your instincts about this, too,” said Mom.

Emily didn’t respond, instead she let her mother’s words sink in and decided to investigate the situation a little more. Sarah was already geared up to start interviewing City workers after lessons today, so the wheels of the plan were already in motion.

She made an effort to focus on the rest of her schoolwork and finished up around one o’clock. After eating a cheese sandwich her mom made her and stuffing a pack of crackers in the pocket of her hoodie, Emily called Sarah. The two agreed to meet at the sidewalk by the alley in ten minutes with an assortment of supplies and a backpack. They were on a mission.

Emily grabbed a bag and crammed in her dad’s tape recorder, a notebook and pen, the mini digital camera she’d gotten in her Christmas stocking last year, some extra batteries, and a bottle of water. She was strangely reminded of a Nancy Drew novel she’d read and let out a little giggle in anticipation of what she and Sarah were about to do. Her thoughts went back to detective stories for a moment and she decided to dig out her plastic magnifying glass and a flashlight just for good measure. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,” she said to herself. That was her dad’s favorite saying and he couldn’t let a week go by without reminding at least one family member of it.

She said quick goodbyes to her mother as she raced out the back door and towards the meeting point. Sarah was already there, and Emily could tell from her restlessness that she’d been there for a few minutes. “Quick! My dad just came home for lunch and said there was only one City truck down there by the hole when he drove past,” Sarah said. The girls jogged most of the way through the old row houses and slowed to a casual stroll as they rounded the corner nearest the sinkhole as not to look desperate. Emily half expected Sarah to put her hands in her pockets and start whistling like she hadn’t even noticed the gaping wound in the road, her act was so stiff and artificial.

Just as the scene came into full view, they saw two men in hardhats climb into a white truck with a stylized image of the James River, the City’s logo, on the side. They sat there for a moment, sparking both girls’ curiosity, then started the truck and headed west down Franklin Street. “I bet they’re going to The Market for lunch,” Emily said.

“Now’s our chance, let’s go over where there’s no yellow tape and get a closer look! If we get busted, we can just say we came up from the hillside and didn’t notice we were in an off-limits area,” Sarah said. She grabbed Emily by the elbow and pulled her across the street with long strides. They rounded the traffic circle, a loop of road around a tiny island of grass that was there only so people could enjoy the hillside view of the city’s historic Shockoe Bottom. Now the grass island was nowhere to be seen, and the roadway looked like it had been hit by a meteorite. Sarah stopped near a giant oak tree that sat only about five feet from the broken asphalt. Its roots splayed in all directions and jutted over the darkness of the hole. The sight reminded Emily of her little brother’s hair first thing in the morning, only much more surreal.

Sarah dug into her backpack and pulled out the camera she had used earlier that morning. She crept closer to the edge of the hole, wrapped the camera’s neck strap around her wrist, and stretched her arms out in front of her to get a better shot. Sarah snapped five or six pictures and moved to the other side of the tree’s trunk to get a different angle. Emily could tell that she was focusing more on getting a good photo than she was on her own safety. “Uh, be careful… The asphalt over there doesn’t have much soil under it,” Emily warned.

Before Sarah could even answer, the piece of road on which she was standing took a sickening dip towards the hole. Huge clumps of mud fell off of the oak’s roots as a result of the jostling and made no sound of hitting the bottom. Sarah leapt back onto the sidewalk and panted. “Holy crap,” she gasped. “I couldn’t even see the bottom from there. The other side has some clay and rock sticking out like a shelf, but over here it’s just straight down.”

Emily turned and picked up a few fat acorns off the ground. She leaned towards the sinkhole, careful to keep her feet on the sidewalk, and tossed one in. Nothing. She tilted her head at an angle and aimed her ear to catch the sound as she tossed in another. After several seconds, she thought she heard a light tap. Emily repeated the last toss, ear at the ready. One, two, three, four, pop! The acorns were either hitting rock at the base of the hole or were bouncing off of something on their way down and she never even heard it hit bottom. She hoped it was the former. “Oooh…”

“I know! This is some seriously weird stuff! Did you notice something missing?” Sarah said. Emily thought about it for a bit, but was so bothered by the whole bizarre event that she couldn’t place what was out of place. Her puzzled expression served as her answer. Sarah filled in the blank for her, “The smell. There’s nothing – no gas, no sewage, no nothing. With all of those pipes and stuff, you’d think there should be something stinky, right? It just smells like my Grandma’s basement.”

“Okay, there is some seriously weird stuff going on here. That’s no ‘water pocket’, either,” Emily said. “I told you I had a feeling about this.”

Just as Sarah opened her mouth to respond with a snide comment, the white pickup pulled up to its opening in the yellow tape. The girls ducked behind the old oak and tried desperately to think of how to get away unseen. Both doors on the truck opened and closed, and Emily head the men talking about lunch as their conversation moved and settled only a few feet away.