And I was impressed. But, as we curved along in the dark, me running my hands along the packed-dirt walls and the rusted iron of the archways, I began to get a little annoyed, too.

‘So these tunnels have been here all along,’ I said. ‘And we still have to walk to class when it’s negative-forty wind chill with snowdrifts up to my tits? We could be strolling along down here all warm and cozy, sipping hot cocoa. Total bullshit!’

‘They’re secret tunnels. That’s the whole fun of it! No one’s supposed to know about them.’

‘So how do you know about them?’

‘All the hockey guys do. Every year we do this ritual with the freshmen hockey players. We wake them up at midnight, pull them out of their beds, drop them down in the tunnels and shut the sewer grates. No phones, no flashlights, nothing. Just them in the dark. If they find their way out, they make the team. If they don’t … well … watch out for that skull right there …’

I tripped over a rock and screamed. Pat burst out laughing.

‘You jerk,’ I said. ‘You know, it’s really unfair that you guys get to sneak around down here and no one else does.’

‘Not only that,’ he added. ‘We carve our names down here, too. Major conquistador complex going on. Look.’

He shone his light on the next iron archway. It began with 1932. The year was carved high up on the iron archway, a foot above my head, and below it were the initials, all down the rusty metal surface: J. D., T. S., M. O. D. …

‘I think it’s pretty rad,’ Pat said. ‘Look at how long this has been going on. World War Two, Kennedy, the sixties! The summer of love …’

‘All hockey players?’ I shook my head. ‘Just another example of the patriarchy at work. Yet another reason the only people who ever have any fun at this school are you Gatorade-guzzling cavemen …’

But my rant drifted off because we were in the eighties now. I was curious. I slowly approached the next archway and shone my flashlight up at it: 1989.

That year was special. Carved under 1989 was a sentence: We Brought It Home: NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!

And under that were the initials … I slid my finger down the letters until I found it: T. I. H.

Thomas Ian Heck.

‘My dad,’ I said softly. ‘I can’t believe he was actually right about the tunnels.’

Even in the dark, I could hear the soft rustle of Pat’s hair as he shook his head. ‘O ye of little faith.’