Tubby shrugged and started kicking. The noise was loud, plaster cracking, lathing tearing, bits of wall and clouds of dust flying every which way, but Tubby felt fairly certain that nobody would hear him. The stupid school had walls thicker than a fort's.

Van Syke haunted these basement rooms like he lived here . . . maybe he does live here, thought Tubby, nobody's ever seen him live anywhere . . . else . . . but the weird custodian with his dirty hands and yellow teeth had not been seen by the kids for days, and it was obvious that he didn't give a shit if some of the boys (Boy's, thought Tubby) kicked in a wall in the intermediate John. Why would Van Syke care? In a day or two, they'd be boarding up this big old shithouse of a school. Then they'd be tearing it down. Why would Van Syke care?

Tubby kicked away with a fury he seldom showed, putting all the frustration of five years of suffering, even in kindergarten, and being called a "slow student" in this rotten heap of a school. Five years as a "behavior problem" having to sit there, tucked up close to old bags like Mrs. Grossaint and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Farris, his desk rammed up right next to theirs so they could "keep an eye on him" so that he had to smell their old-lady stink and listen to their old-lady voices and put up with their old-lady rules . . .

Tubby kicked at the wall, feeling it give quickly now as the hole enlarged, until suddenly plaster tumbled across his sneakers, a two-by-four collapsed, and he was staring into a real hole. A big hole. A fucking cave!

Tubby was fat for a fourth grader, but this hole was so big that he could almost fit in there. He could fit! A whole section of wall had come down so the hole was like a hatch in a submarine or something. Tubby turned sideways, forced his left arm and shoulder into the opening, his head still out of the hole, a big grin beginning to form on his face. He moved his left leg into the gap between the fake wall and the old one behind. It was a goddamn secret passage in here!