Below

by Meg McKinlay

  We stopped at the bottom of the hill so Finkle could unlock the barrier, then eased out onto the main road. The smooth surface was a relief after the ridges of the dirt road and the way we had been careering wildly around the sharp turns.

  We picked up speed for the short stretch of road until we came to the outskirts of town, then Finkle jabbed at the brake to slow us back down. We rolled past the school and the timber yard, then around the corner onto Main Street. As the town square came into view, Finkle flicked another glance at us in the rearview mirror.

  “I’ll see you both at the centenary, I hope? Not long now.”

  I nodded. I was only too aware of how close the centenary celebrations were, what with Hannah constantly stressing about the book, and Dad doing the same over the head and how to make Finkle look good while still maintaining his artistic integrity.

  “Well, shall I let you out here somewhere?”

  Finkle slowed to a stop, and Liam opened the door on his side. “Thanks,” he began, but then the truck jerked forward. Finkle was staring out the window to the left, at the clock tower.

  “Maybe a bit farther?” he said suddenly. “Maybe just up here? Should we —?”

  Liam yanked the door shut as the truck lurched forward past the square and into the intersection. A horn blared behind us.

  “What are you doing?” A car swerved around us on the right-hand side, its driver yelling angrily out the window. “I thought you were parking!”

  “Sorry!” Finkle called. “My fault. Changed my mind.” He swiveled in his seat. “Sorry. Just thought I’d take you a bit farther.”

  “Just drop us off at the town hall,” Liam said. “You’re going there, anyway. And I can check on Dad.”

  “Of course! Good idea.” Finkle sounded relieved as he kicked the truck back into gear and cruised up the hill.

  When we had parked outside his office, he turned back toward us. “Remember what I said before. It’s not safe where you were. Technically, I could have you prosecuted. Don’t let me catch you up there again, okay?”

  I stifled a smile as I climbed out of the truck, then hurried around to Liam’s side. I wanted to remind him how technically not being caught wasn’t the same as not going.

  But Liam didn’t look my way. He followed Finkle inside, and the heavy door closed shut behind them with a sigh.

  “I didn’t know if you’d come back,” I said as Liam pulled alongside the raft. I had seen him coming through the trees and down the bank. I had watched his long, relaxed stroke as he made his way to me across the water.

  It wasn’t Liam I’d been keeping an eye out for. It was Finkle. Or any other so-called authorized person who might try to tell us we had to move on.

  I even had my excuse all ready — that I had just come to get the raft, that I was heading straight back to the Point. Sure, I had been stopped in one spot for about half an hour, but everyone knew Cassie Romano had weak lungs. Everyone knew she had to pace herself.

  Sometimes living in a small town could work to your advantage.

  It didn’t make sense if you knew that my bike was up here, that I’d had to trek all the way up here on foot, and that paddling over to the Point would mean leaving it behind again.

  But there was no way for anyone to know that.

  No one except Liam.

  He threw an arm up onto the side of the raft and swung one leg over. I shifted my weight to the other end as a counterbalance while he clambered up.

  He stretched out next to me on the warm wood. “Did you think I was going to let Finkle scare me off? He’s all talk.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, you seem pretty friendly with him. Or he’s pretty friendly with you. Or something. How come he was asking about camp?”

  Liam looked as if he wished he had a leaf to strip, but they were hard to come by in the middle of the lake. “I’m not really supposed to tell anyone. I mean, I don’t care, but he said not to make a big thing out of it.”

  “Out of what?”

  “The scholarship. At least that’s what he called it. For the fees.”

  “The town council paid your camp fees?”

  “Yeah. Or no. I’m not sure. I think he might have paid it himself. Mom said we couldn’t afford it. I don’t know if Dad mentioned it at work or something, but the next thing we know, Finkle’s on the phone offering to pay for the whole thing.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty nice of him.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Our camp was a big deal. It wasn’t some overnight pitch-a-tent-in-the-bush-and-cook-your-own-bread trip. It was a train all the way up to the city, two nights in a hotel, surfing lessons, and a bus tour. It was expensive. Mom made me do chores for months to help pay mine off.

  Liam raised his arms in a big, lazy stretch. “It’s so cool up here. We should tell the others.”

  I felt myself stiffen. “It’s cool because it’s just us,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Maybe just a few?” He turned toward me slightly. “Maybe just —?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to.”

  How many was a few, anyway? Even if we only told Emily and Max and Amber, that would already be too many. That would already be splashing and squealing and the kind of loud messing around that left no room for scratching maps out of mud or trailing your toes lazily off a raft or sitting quietly with your back to the warm wood of a drowned tree.

  I had always been the girl who focused quietly on the spine of a leaf while other kids ran around squealing. And Liam had always been the boy who looked up when someone came along, who stood up and walked off easily with them, smiling and talking.

  Sometimes I wondered if it was because I spent the first couple of months of my life alone in a plastic box that I got used to being by myself, with myself. But Liam was born with a ready-made friend. So he learned to be with people, to make room for them in his space. And then all of a sudden he didn’t need to, because it was just him.

  “Do you miss him?” I said. And then I froze. Because that was one of those thoughts that should have happened only in my head, and now there it was, hanging out in the still summer air.

  “Miss who?”

  I scrambled for something to say. His dad? Could I pretend that’s who I meant? Liam often talked about him when we sat out here like this, together but apart, looking out at the water and not at each other. Somewhere along the way that had become possible out here, but when we stood up to head back, we pretended it didn’t exist anymore, that those conversations had happened somewhere else, to other people.

  But that didn’t make sense this time. His dad wasn’t gone. He was just . . . different.

  Liam’s head turned slightly. “You mean Luke.”

  “Luke?”

  “My brother.”

  I nodded. Yes. That’s who I meant.

  “It feels weird to say his name.”

  It felt weird to hear it. Everyone knew what had happened, of course. Everyone knew there was a miracle baby and another one who wasn’t so lucky.

  “No one ever says it.” There was a tightness in Liam’s voice. “Like he didn’t live long enough to make it stick or something, like he wasn’t an actual person.”

  “That’s not . . .” I began. “I mean, I just forgot — that’s all.”

  “Yeah.” Liam drew his knees in to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His knuckles clenched pale across the tan of his legs. “I know.”

  We fell silent, but it wasn’t a comfortable silence. It was the kind of silence where it feels like time is stretching and stretching, and if you don’t let the pressure off, something will snap.

  “Sorry,” I said finally. “I shouldn’t have asked that. You don’t have to talk about it. I mean, I know —”

  “No, you don’t,” Liam said quietly. “You don’t know. People think they do, but they don’t.” As he spoke, the thumb of one hand ran roughly over and over the edge of his scar, turning it briefly white with each kneading moveme
nt. “I bet you didn’t know he was the good one,” he said. “Mom said so. I was always crying, and he was always calm. She said there was something in his eyes, like he was an old soul.”

  “She said that to you?”

  He shook his head. “It was in one of those baby books. She was writing everything down. Every time we burped and slept and cried. It’s all there, for five weeks. Then . . .”

  I nodded. There was no need to say anything to fill in that gap.

  “You know how there’s always one twin?” Liam went on. “One who takes more, who gets stronger, and one who hangs on and takes what’s left.” His voice took on a lightness that didn’t quite ring true, as if he was delivering a punch line he didn’t find funny. “So that’s me. The one who hangs on. Parents say they don’t have favorites, but he was hers already, and we were hardly even born.” He stood up suddenly and leaned out across the metal frame that surrounded the platform. “I always wondered if it was me . . . if I caused it.”

  My head snapped up. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. That didn’t make any sense.

  “He was the good one,” Liam repeated. “I was always crying. Screaming, Mom said. All the time. Like all the time.” He gouged a piece of rotting wood off the raft and crumbled it between his fingers. “She said car trips were horrible, that she was always turning around to settle me.” His voice cracked a little, coming out finally in a whisper. “I guess that’s okay when someone else is driving.”

  “Liam . . .” I began, then trailed off. He was shaking his head.

  “Dad was on his own with us. What if he was turning around? Because I was screaming. And then . . .”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  “Why not?” He glanced down at me briefly, then back out across the water. “There was no reason for it. Straight road. Good weather. Clear visibility. That’s what they said.”

  “You can’t think like that. No one knows what happened, not really.” As I spoke, headlines unrolled themselves before my eyes. “Driver Error: Fatigue a Factor?”

  “Yeah.” Liam let the crumbled pieces fall slowly through his fingers down onto the water. “But they think they do.”

  He was right. People thought they knew stuff. They thought that what mattered was what they could see. They let what was on the surface tell the story.

  I should have known better. I did know better. I knew that a heavy red glaze could cover a network of tiny hairline fractures that would shatter something utterly if you struck it hard enough in just the right spot. I knew that if you could bring yourself to stop staring at the smooth, clean surface and push your way through it, you might be surprised at the world buried deep underneath.

  “You’re right,” Liam said suddenly.

  “About what?”

  “This.” He nodded out across the lake. “Let’s not tell anyone. Let’s just keep it for ourselves.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled slightly, glad of the chance to talk about something simpler, to hear that easy lightness return to his voice. “Let’s.”

  “And also,” he said, standing up suddenly, wobbling the raft so that I had to hang on to the sides to stop myself from tumbling off, “let’s find this thing.”

  Liam had been clever yesterday.

  While I was worrying about being prosecuted, he was counting his strokes. He was positioning the raft on the bank, pointing it in the direction we needed to go to get back to the spot.

  “Good thinking,” I said, looking up at him from where I sat on the still-wobbling wood.

  “I counted 297 to here,” he said. “Yesterday we were at 312. Give or take.”

  We went out a little farther — Liam swimming, counting his strokes, and me following on the raft.

  We dived down. Both of us. We had goggles and flippers, which I had stuffed into my backpack and lugged up the hill. And we had a flashlight.

  Liam raised his eyebrows. “What’s that for?”

  “What do you think?” I pressed the rubber button on the shaft and flashed the light on and off.

  “Underwater?” He snorted. “That’ll last about ten seconds.”

  He was wrong. It lasted five. Approximately. Not that I was counting. It had taken me long enough to fix it to my head using the Velcro strap I had brought specially. It made me feel like an underwater explorer, the kind you see on Discovery Channel documentaries hauling themselves through underground caves on their way to discover treasure and fantastical lands. And, in my case, to discover the fact that batteries and water don’t play well together.

  When I came back up, Liam was laughing. “You realize they have waterproof flashlights, don’t you?”

  “I do now.”

  “Forget the flashlight,” he said. “We’ll just feel around until we find it.”

  We were close enough. Close enough to find whatever it was quickly with the goggles and the pair of flippers we had to share between us and the mostly useless flashlight. The goggles weren’t very useful, either, not once you got a few feet down, but they did help me feel better. Having something on my face, protecting my eyes, made going down headfirst slightly less creepy.

  We took turns. We dived. We kept an eye out for Finkle — for anyone.

  We brought up pieces of wood and pieces of wood and . . . more pieces of wood.

  “It’s a shed,” Liam said finally, surfacing for what felt like the hundredth time.

  “A shed?” Of course. That would be it. An old wooden shed, left to rot out on someone’s property.

  On the one hand, I felt a bit let down.

  A shed wouldn’t have any rooms to explore. It wouldn’t have passages to lead you down, nooks and crannies to uncover. A shed wouldn’t have much of anything. It would just be a space, a present you open to find an empty box.

  But, on the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling a bit excited. When someone gives you a present, you can’t help unwrapping it, can you? You can’t help opening it up, just in case.

  “The door’s on the other side,” Liam said. “It’s got a padlock.”

  “Locked?”

  “I think so. Or rusted shut.”

  When I went down, I realized that he was right. It was definitely locked, the padlock snapped tight through the links of a thick chain. I tried rattling the door, but although it was loose, the hinges were still bonded to the metal frame.

  “We need a hammer,” I said.

  Liam laughed. “A special underwater hammer? You could strap it to your head.”

  “Ha, ha.” I thought about the door, the hinges. “Or not a hammer. A screwdriver.”

  Liam shook his head. “The screws would be rusted.”

  “Well, what, then? We want to get the door open, don’t we? It’s stuck. So we need something to open it with.”

  I picked up a piece of wood and held it in the palm of my hand. The solid weight of history and all that. It was surprisingly light. And crumbly.

  Something flashed across Liam’s face.

  “What?”

  He raised a hand and smacked himself across the forehead. “We’re such idiots.” He stared at me. “Actually, a hammer would be kind of helpful. Here . . .” He reached out a hand. “Give me the flashlight.”

  “Oh, now you want —”

  I didn’t get the chance to finish. He grabbed the flashlight, strap and all, and said, “Wish me luck!” Then he sucked in a big breath of air and was gone.

  Gone. Under. He was gone and he was under, and he had been both things before, but this time was different. This time he wanted a hammer but took a flashlight, and I didn’t know what he was going to do, only that he was gone too long.

  That he was under too long.

  Probably. Not that I was counting or anything.

  I leaned over the edge of the raft, scanning the surface for signs. For bubbles, a rush of something, anything.

  Nothing.

  Even though I wasn’t counting, it had to be more than thirty, definitely. More than forty. Fifty, maybe. Was that even
possible? There were people who did that, who held their breath for ages. I had seen them on documentaries, hauling themselves down long cables that led them, like ladders, deep into the ocean. Maybe they had flashlights strapped to their heads. Or maybe I was mixing them up with the cavers. But the flashlights didn’t matter, probably. It was the breath that mattered. Wasn’t it always the breath? And they trained for it, didn’t they, for days and weeks and months and years? They didn’t just grin and grab a flashlight and take off for . . . how long now? A minute?

  I should have counted properly. It was so easy to speed up without realizing, to tell yourself it was a minute when really it was only thirty or maybe forty seconds.

  I should have done one-cat-and-dog, two-cat-and-dog, three . . .

  That way I would have known how long it was.

  Too long.

  There were no bubbles, no churn.

  Panic stabbed at my chest.

  I had to go down, but could I make it — without flippers to kick myself down, to get to the shed?

  To get to Liam.

  I took a deep breath.

  Wish me luck.

  Something slammed up from underneath me, tumbling me off the raft and into the water.

  A head, hands, a boy. Coughing and spluttering and grabbing at the air.

  “Cassie! Ow!”

  “Ow yourself!”

  We hung there, treading water. I listened to his breathing, rattled and rough.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, then pulled himself slowly over to the raft. “Yeah. I . . . hang on.” He held on to the side for a minute until his breathing slowed.

  “Where were you?” I said.

  He grinned. “I got in.”

  “You got it open?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, yeah, but . . . not the way you think.”

  He explained.

  How we were idiots. Because as soon as we found a door, that was all we could think about. Because doors were the way into a place. Even though we’d already broken off a big chunk of roof, making it weak, making a hole. Which Liam could hammer through, with an otherwise-useless flashlight, and then pull himself through, and past, and down into the shed.