our secret place was the drain near our house.
my
brother and me and our gang got down there one day and found a passage, with a
trickle of water in it.
it led to a round concrete chamber, big enough for the six
of us to hang out in.
we dragged in old car seats from the dump and cooked
stuff on the fire, we painted windows on the walls.
we were around 12 at the
time. for the next four years, you could find some of us there, whenever things
went wrong, just hanging out and reading damp curled comics by the light of a
torch.
the darkness felt safe.