I had to stop what I was doing and sit down to get the editing finished on this chapter so I could get it posted ASAP for fanfar3. Hope you like it!

Chapter 8

It wasn't that long before I was out of breath. Being unsure where those guys planned to enter the tunnels we were in, and having no idea how to get out of them, we had decided to keep moving forward and hope we lucked out and found an exit.

"I'm starving," Ponyboy said about an hour later. Our hair was damp with perspiration from both the pace we were keeping and the humidity level of the caves, we were both out of breath, and we had come across at least four junctures where we'd had to decide between two or three different pathways each time. Finally, we'd gotten to a place where one of the tunnel choices actually had light coming out of it, instead of just the light from our flashlight going into it. The only weird thing was that the lit-up tunnel seemed to lead downward, while the dark one had an upward incline.

Before we'd made a decision, our loyal duck buddy, wings flapping in haphazard joy, waddle-galloped down the left tunnel toward the light.

With a shrug and not another word, Ponyboy and I followed the duck.

"Can you imagine," I said as we walked, "what it would be like to actually find the money those guys were talking about? I mean, what you and Darry and Sodapop could do with-"

"Now just stop right there," Ponyboy cut in. "Me and Darry and Sodapop are doing just fine. Last thing we need is some dirty money bloodying up our lives."

"But two million-"

"Two million problems. Yeah, no thanks. Money's great for gettin' your needs met, but having too much ain't always so great either." He stopped to turn back to me. "Or did you miss that part of my book?"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on. Stop being so serious. Just imagine it for a second. I swear to God, if I find a bag full of two million dollars, I'll pretend I never saw it. But for just a second, pretend it's yours. Pretend you can do anything you want. Because you know as much as I do that money in the right hands, and with the right amount of thought put into it, could be an amazing thing. Right?"

My pretend brother grinned at me for a second before he started walking again.

"What?"

He shrugged. "You just surprise me sometimes is all."

"And that's bad?"

"No, not at all. It's just surprising. Okay, then-two million dollars." He gave it a few more steps before offering up phase one of his OMGmoney plan: "First thing I'd do is pay off the house."

"Okay," I said. "Very sensible so far. How about something a little more un-sensible? Something that screams 'I'm a teenager who has a lot of money'." I wiped away the sweat that had been rolling down to my eyes.

"I'm gettin' there, hang on." Ponyboy, with the spindly legs of a thoroughbred and the grace of a gazelle, leapt over a puddle that spanned the width of the tunnel. "Next," he went on, reaching out to grab my arm as I landed just past halfway over the puddle and splashed water all over both of us, "I'd make Darry quit his job." He got a faraway look for an instant. "Yeah. Darry could walk away, find what he loves to do, and never look back." He blinked then, though, and gave his head a little shake.

"What?"

"I don't know. I guess the thing is, Darry loves working. He just ain't the kind of guy who'd be happy just sitting around all day with nothing to do. You know?"

"Okay," I reasoned, "so Darry can do whatever work he wants. He can go to college, right? Then maybe he can build houses for people who can't afford them. Something like that. Keep going. What else?"

He sighed. "I don't know. I guess I'd want to give a lot to the guys we know. Course," he said with a laugh, "I'd have to give Two-Bit's share to his mom, so she can bail him out of jail when he gets picked up for shoplifting all the stuff he can finally afford to buy, but won't. How about you? You're so smart, what would you do with two million dollars?"

After pausing to think for a second, I licked my lips and swallowed. "It's stupid."

"No it ain't."

When I slowed my pace, Ponyboy slowed down with me. "I'd … I'd find the best doctors in the world to take care of my Grandpa. I'd find somebody who could fix him."

A silence passed between us before Ponyboy spoke again. "The rock guy?"

I nodded, though he was in front of me now. "Yeah. The rock guy."

He paused to wait for me to catch up with him. "So what happened? What's wrong with your grandpa?"

I licked my lips again as my mouth went dry. "Stroke," I managed to say, then cleared my throat. "He had a stroke. He's, uh, not doing too well."

Ponyboy stopped walking and put a hand on my shoulder, waiting for me to look into his face. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry about your grandpa. And if I had two million dollars and it would fix him for you, I'd give it to you."

I nodded and turned my head away as my eyes blurred. "Thanks."

The sound of quacking, flapping, and splashing jolted us out of the moment, and we both hurried forward just in time to watch the duck disappear through a hole in the ceiling of the water-filled cavern our tunnel had led to. A beam of light shone down from the hole the duck had flown through. More water poured from above in gentle cascades in several places, and below the ceiling hole, there were ledges covered with glimmering metallic circles. The falling water made the glimmering circles even more pronounced as the light from above was caught and reflected hundreds of times over.

Instantly, I was hit with an extreme sense of de ja vou.

We waded into the water to move toward the light only to realize that leading off to our left, behind a waterfall, was another tunnel just above the water level. Wary of any dark corners, we both stopped and cautiously approached it, me leading the way for once.

A few seconds later, I held up my hand to stop Ponyboy from moving past me. "Do you … wait, do you hear that?"

Ponyboy leaned forward with me so we were both another four or five inches closer to the sound. I swear, it actually seemed like it made a difference. "What do you think it is?" he asked.

"Kind of sounds like people. Kind of like people yelling. And …." We looked at each other.

"Screaming?" he suggested at the obvious sound of hysterics that was now being emitted in ever-growing waves from whomever was at the other end of the dark, damp cavern that stood before us.

Things got quiet then for a minute before we heard voices again coming from behind the waterfall. Ponyboy motioned to an area behind the waterfall and to the left, next to the entrance to the tunnel. We both ducked through the cascade of water and pressed ourselves against the jagged wall. Ponyboy reached out and set his arm across me, kind of the way your mom puts her arm across you when she has to slam on the breaks, as if she's going to do a better job than your seatbelt of stopping you from catapulting through the windshield.

My entire body tensed a few seconds later at the sound of footsteps, but instead of coming face to face with one of the lunatics from earlier who was supposed to "get rid of" us, the voice of a boy emerged from just beyond where we could see. "Oh, wow! You guys, look! It's a beautiful waterfall!"

And with that, a bunch of kids around our age, a couple of them carrying lanterns, stepped out of the tunnel.

They were so fascinated by the waterfall at first, they didn't see us standing there watching them. But then I sneezed, and everything went sort of crazy. They screamed, we (or rather, I) screamed, two of them jumped into the pool of water, and three of us slipped and fell. It took a few seconds for everyone to calm down and realize that the only person who seemed the least bit threatening was Ponyboy, who was standing there in some sort of hoodlum ninja pose with his switchblade dangling loosely from his hand.

"Oh jeez, oh jeez," an Asian boy kept saying to me. "So sorry. So sorry I knock you over. Here, let me help." Instead of offering me his hand to help me up, he pressed something on his belt, and a stream of ink hit me square in the chest. "Oh! Oh jeez, so sorry."

Somebody else hauled me up off the ground from behind while the rest of the mismatched crew stopped to figure out what was going on.

"Thanks," I said, and my breath caught in my throat when I turned around and saw his face. All at once, I knew exactly who they were and where my de ja vou had come from. It was the weirdest thing ever, and I was actually speechless for a couple minutes just staring at them all. I mean, I literally could not force any words to come out of my mouth before my brain was done processing all of this.

"Sorry about that," Mouth was saying to Ponyboy, though it was really more like he was talking to Ponyboy's knife, because he hadn't taken his eyes off of it.

Apparently realizing that we weren't being jumped, mugged, or otherwise attacked, Ponyboy took a breath, relaxed, folded up the switchblade, and slid it into his back pocket.

"Do you know how to get out of here?" a girl asked him. I recognized her as Andy, the girl that Brandon liked.

"No!" shouted Mikey, the one who'd first commented on the waterfall before they'd discovered us. "We're not going back. We need to find him! This is our time!"

Immediately, they were all arguing amongst themselves.

"Stop!" Ponyboy shouted in an uncharacteristic display of semi-rage that produced instant silence, at least for a few seconds. I guess they weren't taking any chances with the guy who had the knife. He lowered his voice again. "What are y'all doing here? How did you get here?"

"Y'all?" mimicked the only girl I didn't recognize.

Ponyboy narrowed his eyes and gave her a fake-o grin before clarifying what he knew she already understood. "You. All. What are-you all-doing here?"

"You know, we could say the same to you," Mikey countered.

"You could," Ponyboy agreed, "but you didn't."

I gave Brandon, who was still standing behind me after helping me up, a polite nod and stepped forward because I was pretty sure my voice had been reactivated. I cleared my throat just to be sure. "I think I can clear this up. Sort of." I brushed my slime-coated hand against my skirt and swished at the ink stain on my shirt, which only served to get more slime on my skirt and ink on my hand. "Crud. Anyway. So, yeah. They're looking for One-Eyed Willie. The pirate."

Mikey stared at me. "Wow. How did you know?"

Ponyboy's face was scrunched in confusion. "Who? What?"

I waved my hand in a little circle to try to let Ponyboy know that this was something he should somehow be familiar with. "The Goonies. They're from The Goonies." Judging by the look on his face, my explanation wasn't helping. "It's a movie," I whispered loudly as if Ponyboy would be the only one to hear me, even though he was standing farther from me than anyone else was. That did the trick, though, and I saw the comprehension in his face.

The girl who had made fun of Ponyboy's accent looked really annoyed. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. Her oblivious comrades had gathered together and were discussing the origin of the handfuls of coins they were scooping up. "And who are you?"

"Look," I said, "things must have gotten a little mixed up. This is my story."

"No," she said, looking me up and down, "it's mine. Where even are you supposed to be from, anyway, dressed like that?"

I licked my lips and tried again. "Look, this is my story, okay? It's The Outsiders. It's from-"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh my God, I hated that book. We had to read it in school. It was so stupid."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was petty enough to bristle a little, and passive aggressive enough to respond with, "I guess not everyone's got the mental fortitude to understand the subtle intricacies of such a groundbreaking and brilliant piece of work. And by the way, where's Stef? Please tell me you didn't get rid of Stef just so you could get it on with Mouth?"

The girl looked horrified. "Mouth? No!" She smiled. "Mikey's the cutie." She leaned in close and lowered her voice, though she did manage to insert a giddy giggle. "Look at him over there. Isn't he just the most adorable thing ever?"

I gave a sympathetic click of my tongue. "You know, he's not really into girls yet."

She glared at me and went back to full volume. "Neither is Ponyboy."

"Touché. But at least I'm supposed to be his sister."

Ponyboy had moved closer and was staring at the girl. "Don't I know you?"

She shrugged and averted her eyes, like all of a sudden there was something really interesting on the cave wall. "No."

He gave a slow nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember you. You showed up with that other girl with the short blonde hair. The two of you were hanging all over Dally and Tim. You had them tickling you and carrying you around and-"

"That wasn't my fault!" she cried, reddening. "My friend was writing most of it. I was doing it for her!"

Ponyboy gave knowing grin. "Yeah, okay. Sure."

She gritted her teeth. "Your name is stupid."

He outright laughed at that one. "Really? My name is stupid? You were calling yourself Butterfly Lightning Shade."

"Guys," I said, before things could get any more out of control, "whatever happened, we're all in the same story now and we've got to deal with it. So is this, like, a crossover or something? Because if it is, what decade are we in? The 60s or the 80s? What happens when we all get out of these caves? Does the universe, like, implode or something?"

Ponyboy raised his eyebrows and considered for a minute. "Honestly, I'm not sure this has ever happened before." He gave me a pat on the back. "Congratulations, Sarah, you broke fanfiction."

"Shut up."

"Look," Girl said, "I don't care what you two do, as long as you don't mess with my story." She gave Ponyboy a particularly hard stare. "There will be no stabbing of people going on. And no cigarettes. They're gross."

Who did she think she was talking to? "Keep flapping your gums," I told her, "and that 'no stabbing' rule is going straight out the window."

"Alright," Ponyboy said, like he was all of a sudden the voice of reason, "just calm down. Nobody's stabbin' anyone. All we need to know from you," he told Girl, "is whether the tunnel divides up ahead."

She shrugged, as if she had never been off in that direction before in her life.

"You just came from there," Ponyboy reminded her, and when she didn't answer, he continued with, "I guess we can just tag along with you guys then. The way I saw things, it kind of looked like that little Mikey guy over there might have a thing for my sister here anyway."

Girl looked horrified again. "Look, there's nothing back there except the stupid family that's chasing us. Good luck with that."

"Butterfly!" one of the kids called out, and she closed her eyes for a second and pursed her lips. "We need you, Butterfly! We're not sure what we should do next."

"Just get out of my story," she told us, then ducked through the waterfall and joined the Goonies, who clearly couldn't function without her. Seemingly awestruck in her presence, they followed her through another tunnel just past the one we'd come in through. Almost as soon as they'd disappeared, the hole closed up into solid rock like it'd never been there.

Shortly afterward, we heard the faint echoes of an organ.

"So now what?" I asked Ponyboy.

He glanced toward the light coming from the ceiling. "Can't go forward, can't go back. I guess the only choice we've got is up."