“Let’s not get lost in the details, Holmesy. The point is he made it and submitted it to this supercool arts collective Known City, and they are putting it in this one-night-only gallery show they’re doing Friday night called Underground Art, where they turn part of the Pogue’s Run tunnel into an art gallery.” Pogue’s Run was the tunnel that emptied into the White River that Pickett’s company had been hired to expand, the work they’d never finished. Seemed an odd place for an art show.

“I don’t really want to spend Friday night at an illegal art gallery.”

“It’s not illegal. They have permission. It’s just super underground. Like, literally underground.” I scrunched up my face. “It’s like the coolest thing ever to happen in Indianapolis, and my Just Friend has art in the show. Obviously don’t feel obligated to be there, but . . . do be there.”

“I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

“I am going to be nervous and surrounded by people cooler than me and I’d really like my best friend to be there.”

I opened the Ziploc bag containing my peanut butter and honey sandwich and took a bite.

“You’re thinking about it,” she said, excitement in her voice.

“I’m thinking about it,” I allowed.

And then, after I swallowed, I said, “All right, let’s do it.”

“Yes! Yes! We will pick you up at six fifteen on Friday; it’s going to be amazing.”

The way she smiled at me made it impossible not to smile back. In a quiet voice, not even sure she could hear me, I said, “I love you, Daisy. I know you say that to me all the time and I never say it, but I do. I love you.”

“Ahh, fuck. Don’t go all soft on me, Holmesy.”

—

Mychal and Daisy showed up at my doorstep at six fifteen sharp. She was wearing a dress-and-tights combo dwarfed by her huge puffer coat, and Mychal was wearing a silver-gray suit that was slightly too big for him. I had on a long-sleeve T-shirt, jeans, and a coat. “I didn’t know I was supposed to dress up for the sewer,” I said sheepishly.

“The art sewer.” Daisy smiled. I wondered whether maybe I should change, but she just grabbed me and said, “Holmesy, you look radiant. You look like . . . like yourself.”

I sat in one of the backseats in Mychal’s minivan, and as he drove south on Michigan Road, Daisy started playing one of our favorite songs, “You’re the One.” Mychal was laughing as Daisy and I screamed the lyrics to each other. She sang lead, and I belted out the background voice that just repeated, “You’re everything everything everything,” and I felt like I was. You’re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You’re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You’re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody’s something, but you are also your you.

As Daisy switched the song to a romantic ballad that she and Mychal were singing, I started thinking about turtles all the way down. I was thinking that maybe the old lady and the scientist were both right. Like, the world is billions of years old, and life is a product of nucleotide mutation and everything. But the world is also the stories we tell about it.

—

Mychal turned off Michigan at Tenth Street, and we drove for a while until we reached a pool supply store with a flickering backlit sign saying ROSENTHAL POOLS. The parking lot was already half full. Daisy stopped the music as Mychal pulled into a spot. We got out and found ourselves surrounded by a weird mix of twenty-something hipsters and middle-aged couples. Everyone but us seemed to know one another, and the three of us stood next to Mychal’s car for a long time in silence, just watching the scene, until a middle-aged woman in an all-black outfit walked over and said, “Are you here for the event?”

“I’m, um, Mychal Turner,” Mychal said. “I have a, um, a picture in the show.”

“Prisoner 101?”

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“I’m Frances Oliver. I think Prisoner 101 is one of the strongest pieces in the gallery. And I’m the curator, so I should know. Come, come, let’s head on down together. I would be fascinated to learn more about your process.”

Frances and Mychal began walking across the parking lot, but every few seconds Frances would pause and say, “Oh, I must introduce you to . . .” and we’d stop for a while to meet an artist or a collector or a “funding partner.” Slowly, he was swallowed by all the people who loved Prisoner 101 and wanted to talk with him about it, and after we stood behind him for a while, Daisy finally grabbed him by the hand and said, “We’re gonna head down to the show. Enjoy this. I’m so proud of you.”

“I can come with,” he said, turning away from a gaggle of art students from Herron, the art college in town.

“No, have fun. You gotta meet all these people, so they’ll buy your pictures.” He smiled, kissed her, and returned to his crowd of fans.

When Daisy and I reached the edge of the parking lot, we saw through the trees a flashlight waving back and forth in the air, so we wound our way down a little hill toward the light until the brush opened up into a wide concrete basin. A tiny stream of water—I could easily step over it—bubbled along its bottom. We walked toward the bearded man waving the flashlight, who introduced himself as Kip and handed us hard hats with lanterns and a flashlight. “Follow the tunnel in for two hundred yards, then take your first left, and you’ll be in the gallery.”

The light from my helmet followed the creek downstream. In the distance, I could see the start of the tunnel, a light-sucking square cut into a hillside. There was an overturned shopping cart just outside the start of the culvert, trapped against a moss-covered boulder. As we walked toward the tunnel’s entrance, I looked up at the black silhouettes of leafless maple trees splitting up the sky.

The creek ran along the left side of the Pogue’s Run tunnel; we walked on a slightly elevated concrete sidewalk to the right of the creek. The smell enveloped us immediately—sewage and the sickly sweet smell of rot. I thought my nose would get used to it, but it never did.