by Jeff Giles
They were crossing farmland on a long roller coaster of a road. The car shook and rattled. The windshield had a spiderweb crack—there was still a rock, about the size of a blueberry, wedged into the center—and the floorboard on the passenger side had rusted through so that, if you moved the rubber mat, you could actually see the ground fly by underneath.
By the time the Buggy sputtered up the driveway, Zoe had told Val as much as she could about X, though she substituted “aspiring musician” for “supernatural bounty hunter.” It was what she’d told Rufus when he’d shown up unannounced that day. And it seemed plausible, if nobody pressed too hard about why an aspiring musician was on a frozen lake in the middle of a blizzard—and how he’d fought off a murderer.
Zoe had never withheld anything from Val before. She told herself she wasn’t lying about anything significant. Where X was from and what he was didn’t matter as much as who he was—how he’d woken her whole life up and helped her set aside some of her pain. All this from a guy who had never been given anything ever.
She pulled up to the house, and turned off the ignition. The Buggy bucked and chortled even after she and Val slammed the doors and walked away.
Before they could make it up the steps, Rufus stepped outside. He looked weirdly serious. Was something wrong with Jonah? Zoe had to fight an impulse to push past Rufus and run into the house.
“Just wanted to give you a heads-up,” Rufus said. “Oh, hey, Val, what’s shakin’?”
“Hey,” said Val.
“Talk, Rufus,” said Zoe. “You’re scaring me.”
“No, no, no, it’s all good, it’s all good,” he said. “I mean, it’s mostly good. I mean, honestly, it’s not great. The little guy’s just super-super-bummed. Like in shock, almost. I couldn’t get him out of the house at all. Not even a step. He just froze up. He’s in real bad shape.”
Zoe groaned.
“He wouldn’t go outside after our dad died,” she said. “I’m not going through that again. I’ll give him some tough love.”
“Actually,” said Rufus, “I think that might just make things worse.”
Zoe ignored him. She liked Rufus, but didn’t need him telling her what was best for her own brother.
“It’s okay, I can fix this,” she said. “Jonah just got really tight with that guy X I introduced you to.”
Val couldn’t help but interrupt: “Rufus got to meet X, but I didn’t? What kind of hot garbage is that?”
“The musician dude?” said Rufus. “Supercool guy. Epic hair. And I don’t blame him for not wanting to talk about his musical inspirations, or whatever. I’m an artist, too. I get it. You gotta blaze your own trail.”
Rufus scratched at his bushy reddish beard, which he allowed to go wild in the winter. It was currently edging perilously close to his eyes.
“But, see, this isn’t about X anymore, I don’t think,” he said.
“It is,” said Zoe impatiently. “I know my brother.”
Rufus shook his head, and his fledgling dreads swung back and forth. His stubbornness surprised her. In her experience, he disliked confrontation and would go with the flow no matter where the flow happened to be headed.
“Look, we talked about X,” he said. “And honestly? I think him taking off was a bigger deal for you than for Jonah. Jonah liked him, heck yeah. He’s bummed he split, heck yeah. But this stuff—the crying and the shell shock and the not leaving the house—this stuff is deeper than that. This thing’s got roots like a big-ass tree. This is about something else now.”
The front door opened. Jonah hovered near the threshold. He had his shoes on, which could have meant something—or nothing.
“I want to talk to you,” he told Zoe. “I have a question.”
He was a single step away from the outside world. A wind came up and rattled the storm door in its frame.
“I can’t hear you,” said Zoe. “Come closer.”
Rufus shook his head and leaned toward her. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he whispered. “I tried this.”
Zoe ignored him. Why hadn’t he left already? She waited for her brother to answer.
“No,” said Jonah. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m not trying to do anything, bug. I just can’t hear you.”
Rufus turned away, as if he didn’t want to see what was about to happen.
“He’s just not ready,” he said. “You’re playing with matches.”
“Stop it, Rufus,” Zoe said under her breath. “You’re not his sister.”
Jonah eyed them all suspiciously.
“I have to talk to you, Zoe,” he said again. “Because of my question.”
“Just come out on the steps,” she said. “You can go right back inside.”
Val put her hand on Zoe’s shoulder.
“Maybe Rufus is right?” she said.
Zoe gave Val a look: You, too? She focused on Jonah again. He was leaning against the door, his hair flattened into a fan.
He pushed the door infinitesimally forward.
Come on, that’s right, thought Zoe. Come on, just do it, you little shit.
He pulled it shut again.
“You’re trying to trick me,” he said.
“I’m not, bug.”
“Don’t call me bug when you’re trying to trick me.”
“Look, if you can’t come out on the steps for two seconds, then let’s talk later. Your question can’t be very important.”
“I want to know—”
“Later, Jonah.”
She hated being cruel, but someone had to get tough with the kid or he was going to turn into a shut-in. When somebody was scared of the water, weren’t you supposed to just throw them in the pool? Wasn’t that a thing? If it wasn’t, it should be.
“You stopped calling me bug,” said Jonah. “That means you were trying to trick me. You didn’t use to try to trick me.”
Zoe walked toward the door—slowly, like someone trying not to frighten a cat.
From behind her, she heard Val say worriedly, “What are you doing?”
Zoe ignored her and climbed the steps. She heard Rufus say, “I can’t watch this.” She ignored him, too. She was going to put an end to this before it got any worse.
She opened the door. Jonah withdrew farther into the house. There was fear in his eyes, distrust.
Zoe smiled. She held the door open with one foot.
“Hug me?” she said.
Jonah made a confused face. He shivered as the wind slipped inside. After a moment, he inched forward and held out his arms. Zoe reached for him.
She clamped her arms around him and bolted outside.
Jonah panicked. He fought and screamed and pulled Zoe’s hair. She kept going. She was convinced that what she was doing was right. Later, he would understand.
Rufus and Val stared at her like she was insane. She veered away from them. The ground was snowy and rough. She nearly fell. Jonah was heavier than she remembered. She tried to soothe him. She whispered in his ear, “I know you miss X. So do I! But he’ll come back. I promise, I promise, I promise.”
“So what!” Jonah wailed. He was beating on her back with his fists. “I don’t care about X! I don’t even miss him!”
“You do,” said Zoe. “And it’s okay!”
“I don’t, I swear to god I don’t!” shouted Jonah. “I miss Daddy!”
He landed a kick to her right knee. Zoe’s legs buckled and she collapsed into the snow.
Jonah fled into the house.
Rufus managed to slip in after him before he locked the door.
Zoe leaned against the Buggy and cried a long time, mortified by what she’d done. Val put an arm around her. She tried to console Zoe by describing every idiotic and embarrassing thing she had ever done, which took almost 15 minutes. None of it was as bad as traumatizing your little brother just as he reached out to you for help. None of it was as bad as allowing an obsession with a guy make you forget that your father was dead, that h
e’d been abandoned in a hole, and that you and just about everyone you loved were still wrestling with grief.
Finally, Zoe went inside and called Jonah’s name like a question. She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. She peered up the steps to the bedrooms. Jonah had kicked a stack of laundry that their mother had folded before leaving for work. T-shirts, bras, and plaid little-boy boxers were strewn over the staircase. Zoe hung her head and climbed.
Rufus sat outside Jonah’s door, trying everything he could think of to get the kid to open it. When he saw Zoe, he stood, hugged her, and—without saying I told you so, god bless him—lumbered down the stairs.
Zoe sat, and scratched at the door playfully. Jonah didn’t answer. She could hear him jumping on the ladybug.
“I’m sorry, Jonah,” she said. “I’m a really bad example of a person right now. I know that.”
The bouncing stopped. The bed squeaked as Jonah hopped off it. Zoe heard him come to the door. Rather than open it, he sat on the other side and said nothing. It was a gesture, at least.
“I shouldn’t have tried to trick you,” she told him.
She spoke gently. She could hear him breathing.
“And I should never have said your question wasn’t important,” she added. “And I should never, ever have bought such an ugly car.”
Silence.
There was a gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet. She slipped her fingers through it and wiggled them. A gesture of her own. She was about to pull her fingers back when she felt Jonah’s hand grasp hers.
Zoe didn’t want to scare him off, so she kept quiet. Soon Jonah let go of her fingers, stood, and retreated farther into his room. A minute later, he slid a piece of paper, which he’d folded a ridiculous number of times, under the door.
“You’re an excellent folder,” said Zoe. “Everyone says so.”
She opened the paper and smoothed it against the carpet. Even before she read the message, she smiled fondly at Jonah’s handwriting, which was … eccentric. His lowercase y’s, for instance, were always uppercase—they stood up proudly wherever they happened to fall in the sentence, like gold medalists raising their fists. Zoe never teased Jonah about it. She knew that his ADHD made it hard for him to write—the pen couldn’t keep up with his brain, for one thing—and that he was ashamed that his classmates had pulled so far ahead of him.
She read his message:
WhY didn’t DaddY Man take You with him to that cave? He alwaYs took You.
Zoe didn’t know what to say.
She bought herself some time by telling him, “I don’t have anything to write with, bug.”
Jonah padded off and then back again. He rolled something under the door—a sleek black pen attached to a beaded silver chain. He must have yanked it off the desk at the bank. Zoe would let her mom have that conversation.
She pressed the paper against the door.
I don’t KNOW why he didn’t take me. I have wondered about that MANY times—even more times than I’ve wondered why I bought SUCH AN UGLY CAR. Maybe Dad was sad? Or maybe he thought I couldn’t handle the cave?
They continued passing the paper under the door. Jonah stopped folding it, which seemed like a sign that he was opening up to her.
WhY was DaddY Man sad?
Money stuff maybe. NOT because of you or me or Mom. He LOVED us. LOVED LOVED.
There was no answer. Zoe couldn’t tell if the conversation was over. There was a jittery, unresolved feeling, like a field of static, in her chest.
The paper finally came back. Jonah had folded it a zillion times again. The sight of it made Zoe’s heart fold in on itself, too.
WhY did we leave him DOWN THERE? I hate it & worrY he is cold.
Zoe turned the paper over. The other side was blank, though creased a dozen times and starting to tear. She wrote another message. It was a promise to Jonah and a promise to herself. She didn’t pause to think about it. It just spilled out of her.
Bug, she wrote,
I will MAKE the police go find Dad’s body—or I will go in that cave and find it myself. I swear to god. I always wanted to prove I could. And if I can’t get Dad out of there myself, I will at least make sure he isn’t cold. I WILL BRING HIM A BLANKET.
She’d written the message in huge letters and even signed it, dated it, and drawn a small picture of herself as a superhero wearing a cape and flexing her biceps.
Jonah opened his door, looking happy and shy. Behind him, Zoe could see that he’d jumped so hard on the ladybug that the bed had drifted away from the wall.
Downstairs, Zoe asked Rufus if he could babysit a couple more hours—she was so ashamed of how she’d behaved that she could barely make eye contact—and then went outside, where Val was doing a handstand in the snow. (Val did not believe in being bored for even one second.)
After Val had tumbled back onto her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans, Zoe handed her the paper that she and Jonah had scribbled on. Val pored over it, turning it this way and that as necessary.
“Jonah is so awesome,” said Val. “I mean it. I just want to squeeze him till he pops.”
Zoe nodded, and walked past her to the car.
“I’m going to the police station,” she said. “I’m going to tell them they have to get my dad’s body. You wanna come?”
“Is there gonna be a big confrontation?” said Val.
“Probably,” said Zoe.
“Then I absolutely want to come,” said Val.
They didn’t talk in the car. They just took turns fiddling with the radio. Zoe was deep in a country music phase, and Val liked a station that played the same four pop hits over and over and over, like a psychology experiment. The landscape that had seemed so bright and hopeful on the drive home from school now drifted by the windows looking hopeless and dead.
Zoe parked outside the police station, and took one of those “deep, cleansing breaths” her mother was always talking about.
“What do you want me to do in there?” said Val. “Can I play a character? Can I improv?”
“Just be my friend—and don’t let me get arrested,” said Zoe.
Val made a pouty face.
“What if I want to get arrested?” she said.
“We’ll come back another time for that,” said Zoe. “With costumes and stuff. Cool?”
“Very.”
She and Val high-fived. They pretended to do it ironically, but the truth was that they just liked high-fiving. The only time they had ever tried fist-bumping neither of them wanted to make the stupid explosion sound.
The station was bustling, but the one cop Zoe liked, Brian Vilkomerson, stood up behind his desk when he saw the girls enter. He must have seen the tension pouring off them, like a vapor trail.
“Is this about Stan Manggold?” he said, before Zoe and Val even reached his desk. “Because—”
Stan Manggold! Zoe hadn’t thought about that psycho in days, and hearing his name threw her off balance.
“No,” said Zoe. “Stan’s been taken care of.”
Fortunately, Brian didn’t ask what she meant. What could she have said? You guys had your chance. Now my boyfriend’s taking him to hell.
“This is more important,” Zoe said quickly. “This is about my father.”
She told Brian she didn’t want to talk to Chief Baldino. She referred to him as “the mean one—the one who looks pregnant.”
Brian pursed his lips to kill a smile.
“Why don’t you and your friend sit with me for a minute?” he said.
He gestured to two green chairs by his desk. Zoe could hear Baldino back in his office, noisily unwrapping a sandwich and laughing on the phone about something that probably had nothing to do with police work.
Brian reached out to shake Val’s hand. Not everybody was that respectful to teenagers. Also, Brian didn’t do the patronizing triple take that virtually all adults did when they met Val. First, they’d see the half-shaved hair with orange streaks, and grimac
e as if they were passing a wreck on the highway. Next they’d notice how hot Val was. Finally, their brow would furrow, and they’d wonder why on earth a girl that pretty would blah yadda blah. It never bothered Val. She had the same opinion of people that Zoe had of trophies: that they were both ridiculous and awesome and all you could do was collect the coolest ones.
Zoe was grateful that Brian just stuck out his hand and said hello and didn’t treat her friend as if she were some Object of Interest. There was already a star next to his name in her head, so she added a second one, along with an exclamation point.
“Hey, there, I’m Sergeant Vilkomerson,” he said.
“And I’m Val,” she said. “I’m Zoe’s attorney.”
Brian tilted his head at this, but let it go.
Now that Zoe was sitting there, with a sympathetic audience leaning forward, she found she no longer wanted to scream or make threats. She just wanted to be heard and to be taken seriously. She tried not to be too rattled by the noisy everyday life of the station—the radio squawking, the baby crying, the officers jabbing at their keyboards. The hardest thing to block out was the sound of Baldino on the phone, doing impressions he thought were funny. The sound of his voice repulsed her.
“It’s been months since my dad died,” she said.
She stopped for a second, surprised by how much emotion that one sentence kicked up in her.
Val put an arm around her shoulder, which made her even sadder somehow. She shrugged it off.
She told Brian that the thought of her dad’s body lying in a cave was eating away at her family. She told him about Jonah locking himself in the house, about the notes he’d passed under the door. Brian looked pained. Zoe could tell he was trying not to look at the pictures of his daughter that stood like monuments all over his desk.
“Look,” he said. “This is so, so complicated—and not just because that particular cave is so dangerous.”
Zoe waited to hear why it was so, so complicated, but as Brian was searching for words, Chief Baldino ambled heavily out of his office, like a bear. Zoe’s stomach did its tightening thing. She prayed that he wouldn’t notice her. If he said one rude thing to her, she’d lose it.
