by Sarah Ready
“The kind where you don’t fit. By the time I was eight I was reading college textbooks and building my first computer. I was bored in school and teachers didn’t know what to do with me. I got terrible grades and was labeled a troubled student. My parents didn’t understand how I could understand books on quantum computing and build databases but barely pass third grade.”
“It’s because you hated it.”
“I hated it.”
I follow his slow pace through the tunnel and keep moving forward, following the sound of his voice.
“So you were picked on.”
“You could say that.”
I can tell from the guarded sound of his voice that he was more than picked on.
“I wasn’t good at sports. I wasn’t good-looking. I was painfully shy. Just picture the stereotypical Brainiac in teen movies and you have me pegged.”
I have a picture of him in my mind now. He probably wears glasses for reading and working on the computer. I bet he doesn’t care about fashion or keep up with trends. He has a confident voice so I think he’s not bad-looking, but also not gorgeous like…ugh, Frederick Knight. No, I bet Sam has a pleasantly average face. With intelligent eyes and a steady expression. I like the picture I have of him.
“You weren’t bitter though. Or spiteful,” I say. I get the feeling that it may have hurt at the time, but he’s long over it.
He laughs. “No. I was too busy working on my programming ideas to be bitter.”
“So who made you ashamed of flying your freak flag?”
He snorts. “Do you have a freak flag?”
“Obviously. I have a two-year supply of food and resources all ready for the apocalypse. It’s all in my DIY fallout shelter. Man, if only I had a tenth of those supplies right now.”
“That’s incredible.”
“We’re not talking about me,” I say. “Who was it?”
“Me.”
“What?”
“It was me. Nobody can make you believe anything without your consent. I chose to believe it.”
I’m so surprised that I stop crawling for a moment. I’ve never known anyone to so calmly state that fact.
I pull myself over a rough section of rock. The tunnel is only about two and a half feet tall now. I’m not sure we could turn around it we wanted to. If this dead ends we’ll have to back out.
Sam grunts and I hear rock scraping. “It’s tight here,” he says. He kicks at the ground and keeps going. I hold my breath as I squeeze through the narrowing. Then, the tunnel opens up a bit and I’m able to stoop again instead of crawl.
“I got married in college.”
“Yeah?” My voice is high, and I realize that I hadn’t thought of him as married. It strikes me as wrong.
“Louisa. She was the first and only girl I dated before marriage. I didn’t have any experience and I thought…”
“What?”
“I started a company with my roommate. He was my best friend. The company was successful. I developed the software, he sold and marketed it. We were on top of the world.”
Oh no. I can see where this is going.
“But he and my wife had been sleeping together since before the wedding. I found out about the affair and they declined to stop. So, she got the company in the divorce settlement and I got my side business.”
They were players. I feel anger for him.
I adjust my image of him. He’s a comfortably average-looking, techy entrepreneur who is struggling to make a living after receiving a heavy blow.
“So…you stopped doing your computer thing?”
“You could say that.”
“Because you believed she cheated on you because you were a computer prodigy?”
“Sounds pretty idiotic when you say it that way.”
“I hope you know that whatever she said to you to blame you or make the affair look like your fault, none of it was true. When people have affairs they reach out and grab ahold of any excuse they can for what they did. Just as long as they don’t have to say, I did this.”
“So, are you telling me,” he says, and there’s another smile in his voice, “that she didn’t cheat because I love computers and am a super geek?” I can feel the laughter coming off him.
“I guarantee it,” I say.
“I like you,” he says.
I grin, and the dark doesn’t feel so scary.
“I like you, too,” I say. I have to amend my statement from the other day. There are three types of men, players, wanna-be players, and good men. Like Sam.
Up ahead, there’s the sound of rocks sliding, then Sam drops out from in front of me.
“Sam?” I call.
I hear him climb back up. I reach forward and feel the top of his shoulders. They’re solid and muscular.
“It’s another cavern,” he says. There’s excitement in his voice. He grabs my arms and pulls me down. I slide against his side and drop to my feet. I stay in his arms, pressed tightly against him. It feels good to stand and I don’t want to step away from him. After so long crawling through that tunnel, separated by the dark, I need to feel the heat of him.
He squeezes me to his side and I hold him.
Then he lights his watch and holds it high.
“Oh…wow,” I say.
It’s unbelievable. It’s…
“Is that the only way across?” I ask.
“I think so.”
We both look at the edge of the light. It spreads from his watch in a weak beam and traces the white limestone.
“It’s a bridge,” I say.
He brings his hand down and pulls me closer. His arms tense around me and I can tell that he’s worried. For me.
“I’m alright,” I say.
It’s a natural stone bridge, an arch that hangs above a dark chasm. If we want to keep going we have to cross it, an unknown, that extends beyond what we can see.
“We can turn around,” he says. “Try the other fork.”
“Alright. Yes, let’s turn around.” The metallic taste of panic is overwhelming.
He lifts me up and I start to scramble back up to the tunnel. But because of our previous passage, the displacement of rocks, or the echoing of my climb back up, something shifts the rocks in the tunnel. There’s a loud crashing noise, a rumble that shakes the tunnel, then the whole thing collapses. Sam yanks me down right before a section of the roof falls. He drops to the ground and throws his body over mine. A rush of dust shoots out of the tunnel and gravel sprays over us.
Finally, the noise and dust settle.
“I don’t think,” I say, “that we’re going back that way.”
6
Sam
I pull Veronica into my side. She’s brave. One of the bravest people I’ve ever met. She hasn’t shown an ounce of fear since we fell, she hasn’t complained or lost her head, but I can tell that she’s scared. She holds herself stiff against me and her breath comes out in short pants. I run my hands down her arms. Her skin is clammy. Of course, it can’t be above fifty degrees in here. It isn’t surprising that she’s cold, my clothing’s still damp and I’m feeling the chill.
I look at my watch. We’ve been in the cave for five hours. It’s just past noon.
“I’m sorry I had us leave the pool,” I say.
I knew before that we were in a serious situation, but it didn’t truly sink in until now. We’re trapped in this cave, and we can’t go back, we can only go forward and pray that there’s a way out. There’s no way back to the pool or to the chance that someone will happen upon us.
“It’s my fault,” I say.
“Don’t say that.” She stiffens against me, then buries her hands in my shirt. I feel her shake her head. “You can’t second-guess. We can’t start doubting our decisions. Besides, you didn’t have us leave…we made the choice together.”
“You’re right.” There’s nothing more to say about it. We won’t survive by sitting here regretting our choices. Whether in a cave or in life you have t
o move forward. “How should we do this?” I ask.
We walk along the edge of the cavern. The ledge we’re on extends twenty feet along the wall and five feet out over a deep hole. Veronica picks up a rock and drops it over the edge. I count slowly from zero to three before we hear the rock clatter at the bottom.
“Deep,” she says.
“One hundred and eleven feet deep,” I say.
“What? How do you know?”
“Newtonian physics. I modified the free fall equation to fit the specific environment and then…” I clear my throat. “It’s one hundred eleven feet deep. Roughly.”
She buries her face in my chest and her shoulders shake. I have a moment of panic until I realize that she isn’t crying. She’s laughing.
“I love how you just calculated how far we’ll plunge to our deaths. Roughly.”
I smile. “You like that?” I ask.
She keeps laughing. “Absolutely. What other amazing things can you do?”
She tilts her face up to mine and although I can’t see her, I can feel her warm breath and the nearness of her mouth.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
She moves her hands to my shoulders. “If we get out of here, what will you do? What do you wish you’d done?”
Kiss you. The thought pops into my mind. I want to kiss her. She doesn’t know who I am, how much I’m worth, or what I look like, but she likes me. And not the aloof, suave, billionaire me, but the me that I don’t show anyone. The me that no one can see anymore.
“I’d start another business,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about it for years. But I haven’t done it.”
“What kind of business?”
“I want to create a think tank with the mission of utilizing technology to aid humanity. It could be technology and ocean cleanup, or technology and clean energy, or technology and—”
“Search and rescue.”
I smile. “Exactly. We could create a remote-controlled, video and GPS-enabled rover that finds people lost in caves. Forget about Mars exploration, we need rovers for caves.”
“You should do it,” Veronica says.
I squeeze her arms. “I will.” Then I step back from her and turn to the bridge.
“What are the chances it collapses?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh. I was hoping you had another equation.”
She takes my hand and threads her fingers through mine. It’s funny, in the outside world where there’s light, touch isn’t so necessary. But here, touch feels almost as vital as breathing. Without touch the sheer blackness and oppression of the cave start to pull you under. A warm hand, a voice, they’re lifelines.
“There’s an equation for load-bearing capacity, but I can’t see the length of the bridge, or its width, or any of the other measurements I need.”
“Oh. So it could break with us on it?”
“That’s right.”
She lets out a long breath. Then, “I guess we better get to it then.”
“I can go first,” I say. “Make sure it’s safe. That way if it breaks only one of us will—”
“No way. I’m not going to sit up here on my own with your dead butt at the bottom of that one-hundred-and-eleven-foot pit. Nope. We do this together.” She squeezes my hand.
“Alright,” I say. “We’ll lay down on the rock, distribute our weight and crawl across.”
“Like on thin ice,” she says.
“Exactly. Stay behind me, at the light’s edge.”
“To distribute our weight.”
“Right. We’ll go slow.”
We’re at the beginning of the bridge. I start to bend down.
“Hang on,” Veronica says.
“Yeah?”
She puts her hands on my shoulders, then to my face. Her fingers feather over my jaw, rubbing over my stubble. I still as I sense her tilting her face up. She drags her thumbs over my lips and then I feel her lips a millimeter from mine. Her breath teases my mouth and the air between us heats. My lips tingle and then she leans in presses her mouth to mine.
Neither of us move. Her hands still on my face. Our lips remain as quiet and as still as the darkness around us. Then I taste her, sweet and salty. I take her bottom lip and run my tongue over her. She opens her mouth and invites me in. Slowly, I explore her. I can’t see her, so I paint her in my mind. Her lower lip is lush and full and wide. There’s a dip in the middle and I circle my tongue around it. Then I move to her upper lip and trace the shape of it. I never understood why anyone would call someone’s mouth bow-shaped until now. Her upper lip forms a perfect cupid’s bow. My hands itch to touch her, so I bring them up to her cheeks and run them over the smoothness of her skin. Her cheeks are high and full, and as I run my fingers over her, tracing her features, I explore her mouth. She lets out a small groan and her teeth scrape my bottom lip. I run my thumbs over her eyebrows, the soft skin of her eyelids, and I play with her eyelashes. She sends her fingers over my jaw and into my hair. She grabs the ends and tugs, then pulls me closer. Then she takes my tongue into her mouth and sucks. There’s no light in the cave, but sparks flicker and crackle like fireworks behind my closed eyelids.
I open my eyes, expecting to see the cavern light up. But there’s no light. Only Veronica pulling away, leaving my lips tingling and the rest of me wanting more.
“That was…” I trail off.
“For good luck,” she says. “Let’s try not to die.”
I swallow and the warm glow vanishes.
“Right.”
“But if we do,” she says, “it was really nice knowing you. You’re making me rethink some of my theories on life.”
“Oh yeah?”
I get down on my belly and start a slow crawl onto the bridge.
“Tell me about it,” I say. I know she likes to hear a voice in the dark. So do I.
“How about this, I’ll tell you if we make it across.”
“Deal,” I say.
I crawl forward slowly, keeping on my belly, scraping along the rock. I hold my breath for a moment, waiting for the bridge to crack. It holds. I breathe again. I hear Veronica drop down to the ground and begin to crawl after me. My heart pounds against the stone and my knees and shins scrape on the rock. They’re cut up from the tunnel, and the rock of the bridge grinds into my raw skin. The sting of the rock abrading my skin centers me and I move forward. The blackness opens before me, and the dim blue light of my watch illuminates the way a few inches at a time.
“You know how you said that you’re going to start your business when we get out of here?” Veronica asks.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to go see my mom,” she whispers.
I pull myself forward over a rough patch of rocks. A few stones fall and seconds later the crack of them hitting bottom echoes through the cavern.
“I haven’t…” Veronica’s voice shakes. We both ignore the next handful of rocks falling off the bridge. “I haven’t spoken to her in ten years. I’m…I’m going to see her.”
“What happened?” I ask.
The bridge starts to narrow and within a few feet, it’s only three feet wide. Then two.
“It’s narrow here. Twenty-four inches max. Be careful.”
“I will.”
I’m quiet as I concentrate on keeping on top of the bridge. As I crawl, more rocks slide off.
Behind me, I hear Veronica’s slow crawl and labored breathing.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’m good. I’m a rock climber, you know. You should worry about yourself. I’ve never seen such a flat-footed hiker.”
I smile at her teasing tone. I may have been awkward and not into sports as a kid, but as an adult I lift, climb at the gym on the rock wall, run.
“What happened with your mom?” I ask.
“I was angry at her for not meeting my standards. I blamed her for not living the way I wanted her to. I only just figured that out. In this stupid cave. I stopped talking
to her because I thought she’d ruined our lives by not walking away from my dad, that she was weak and…I wanted her to be stronger.”
“Kids want their parents to be invulnerable. Not to have flaws. That’s not anything to be ashamed of. It’s normal.”
“Yeah,” she says in a small voice. “But I punished her for it. I cut her off. I’d like her to know that I love her. That even though I don’t agree with her choices, I still love her.”
“She knows,” I say.
Then the glow of my watch illuminates the end of the bridge. “We made it,” I say. “I can see the other side. There’s a ledge and another passage.”
“Thank you God.”
The last few feet to the ledge seem to take hours. Waiting for Veronica to make it to the ledge seems even longer. When we’re both off the bridge we move away from the wall.
We sit with our backs to the wall taking deep, slow breaths. My heart slows and the sting in my shins fades.
“Alright,” I say, “It’s time for you to share what theories on life you’ve changed.”
She moves closer and presses her arm and legs against mine.
“I thought you’d forget.”
“Not a chance.”
She leans into me and draws her knees up. “I’ll tell you as we take on the next tunnel?”
“Deal,” I say.
We collect a few stones and make a cairn at the entrance to the tunnel then I lead the way in. This tunnel is about seven feet tall and five feet wide. I keep the dim glow of my watch lit and move carefully over the jutting rocks and stalagmites. We’re getting thirsty, so every so often we stop at a dripping stalactite and try to catch drops of water. The water drizzles into my mouth and tastes strongly of limestone and minerals.
“I had a theory for most my life,” Veronica says. “That there are two types of men.”
“Am I going to like this theory?”
She laughs. “Doubtful. But you’re the reason I’ve started rethinking things. You, well, and my best friend’s husband, but mostly you…you’re proving it wrong.”
I turn back to her, but can’t see anything but her outline.
“What’s the theory?” I ask.
“That all men in the world are either players or wanna-be players. There’s no other type.”
