The Becoming - a novella by Allan Leverone Read Free Book Online

a
poker in the fire pit behind his house. Tim hoped it would be strong enough to
do what he was about to ask of it.
    He stood up and
leaned against the handle with all his weight, pushing and shoving, trying to
use the screw driver as a lever to force the slab away from the wooden beam and
break another of the iron bolts. And it worked. Sort of.
    The nearly one
hundred year old slab of concrete broke apart. The top half shattered, breaking
along one of the thicker cracks in its surface. Tim lost his balance and fell
to the ground next to the slab as concrete pieces, some as big as his head and
others looking like tiny grains of sand, showered the ground in front of the
mine shaft.
    Tim scrambled to
his feet and surveyed the damage, wide-eyed. This wasn’t exactly what he had
planned—less than half of the gigantic slab had been removed—but the opening
looked big enough to wriggle through. It probably wouldn’t accommodate a
full-grown adult, maybe not even a normal-sized kid, but for once in his life,
Tim was thankful for the fact that he was small for his age.
    He grabbed a
flashlight out of his pack—another unwitting contribution from Matt—and swung a
leg over the top of the broken and crumbling slab. The inside of the ancient
mine was pitch-black and terrifying and Tim knew he would have to move fast or
else he would lose his nerve. He eased into a sitting position on the slab and
ducked his head and prepared to slide into the tunnel.
    And his cell phone
rang.
    He dropped the
flashlight and fumbled around in the front pocket of his cargo shorts. School
hadn’t gotten out yet, so it couldn’t be any of his friends calling. In fact,
there was only one person it could be. He lifted his phone to his face.
“Hi, Mom.”
    “Hi, Timmy, you
sound much better! How are you feeling?”
    He mentally kicked
himself for forgetting he was supposed to be sick, then lowered his voice and
tried to sound ill. “H-hi, Mom, yeah, I guess I’m a little better.”
    “Is everything all
right? You sound preoccupied.”
    “Uh, no. Yeah, I
mean. Everything’s okay, you just caught me in the middle of a nap, that’s
all.” He mentally kicked himself for not anticipating that his mom would call;
of course she would, he was supposed to be home sick, after all.
    “Oh. Well, I’ll
let you get back to sleep, then. I just wanted to check in on you and let you
know I might be able to get out of work early and come home to take care of
you.”
    “NO!”
    “What?”
    “I mean, you don’t
need to do that, Mom, I’ll probably just sleep the rest of the day, anyway. I’m
pretty sleepy.” He tried to yawn and realized he had no idea how to do it
convincingly when he wasn’t really tired.
    “Are you sure
nothing’s wrong, Timothy?”
    “I’m sure, yeah.”
    “Okay, I’ll see
you when I get home, then.”
    “Bye, Mom.” Tim
ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket. He was suddenly
miserable. He hated lying to his mom. The rest of the adventure was cool, challenging
and fun, although also kind of stressful. But he had always been close to his mom
and almost never lied to her.
    He picked up the flashlight
again, his enthusiasm suddenly dampened. If his mom came home early and
discovered he had faked an illness just so he could play hooky, it would be
months before he could earn her trust back, maybe longer. Heck, maybe he never
would. What had seemed like a harmless lark when he planned it now felt less
like something fun and more like a really bad idea.
    He sat on the
crumbling slab thinking, his right leg dangling into the black pit. Did he
really want to do this?
    His plan had been
to take a few pics from inside the mine with his cell phone camera to prove to his
friends back at school—the babies who liked to pretend they were tough but
hadn’t had the guts to join him—that he had really done what they were all too
chicken to do.
    But what if Mom
really got out of work early like she said she was going to? He