by Sarah Tomp
Her feet bumped against the wall. The surface felt nobby and craggy—climbable. She sat up in the water and immediately was thrust downward. Being vertical made for dangerous suction. She returned to her back-float position and braced her fingers against the slick walls behind her head. Carefully, slowly, desperately, she spun her body clockwise, reaching for the rougher place she’d felt with her toes.
Once her fingers found the rocky handles, she paused to catch her breath and bearings. To be sure she knew which way was up. Now she could see her helmet sitting on a ledge, only a few feet above. Close enough to look possible.
Keeping her head back, she bent her legs, then, ignoring the dread of returning upright, braced her feet against the rock and used all her strength to lift her torso up, above the water’s surface, scrabbling for the rock, and grabbing on, precariously hanging in the middle.
“Cotton?” She could barely hear her own voice over the sounds of the waterfall and the whirlpool below. She couldn’t yell again; she had to focus on her grip.
There were only inches above her fingers to the ledge where her helmet sat or inches below her feet where the water swirled and roared.
Inches in either direction.
The direction mattered more than the distance. She needed to go up. But the pull of gravity urged her down.
The water swirled below her. Circling, twirling, calling to her. It looked beautiful in the dim and eerie light. It would be so easy to let go.
Forty-One
Leo’s face appeared above her, looking curious, then annoyed. “What are you doing? That’s so dangerous. Do you have a death wish?”
She couldn’t hold on much longer. But at least now someone knew where to look for her body if she got sucked under. Her parents wouldn’t have to wonder where she’d gone.
Then Leo reappeared through a different, wider opening and sprawled facedown on the ledge.
“Grab my hand. I’ll help you climb.” His hand was only inches away, but she couldn’t make herself let go. Everyone knew Fear brought about a fight-or-flight response. But too often, in between those two choices was paralysis. The instinct to freeze. Even though her fingers ached and felt ready to slip, to move them would require something she didn’t have. Something called trust.
Leo must have understood, or he was tired of waiting, because he reached down and grabbed her wrist. Only then was she able to let the rock go and grab his wrist in return—and then they did it again with her second hand. Her feet pressed against the notches in the rock, her legs lifting the rest of her along with Leo’s tug.
Finally up, she scooted herself into sitting position, pulling her helmet back on her head. Her panting echoed loud and rough. The cold hadn’t fully kicked in yet.
“Figures you went swimming. You can’t see a pool and not dive in.” Leo sounded amused, only slightly annoyed. Definitely not like a hero who’d saved her life.
Too out of breath to speak, she shrugged. He had no idea she’d almost died. Vanished. Gone forever.
She followed Leo out of the whirlpool chasm, back to a space near the waterfall. He climbed down to the path where Cotton and Flutie were looking at something carved into the rocks. She’d almost died and everyone else was exactly the same.
“There’s a chimney pool behind the waterfall. Ria went swimming, of course,” said Leo.
Flutie laughed but Cotton frowned.
“Did you get your bandage wet?”
She nodded.
“Your clothes are wet too.”
“Can you bring me my pack so I can change?”
It was bizarrely easy to act like nothing bad had happened. There was no point in crying now but her eyes filled anyway. She was so tired of this heavy, annoying dark.
Cotton brought her the pack along with her shoes. He focused on examining the walls while she awkwardly replaced her wet clothes with drier ones. She slipped on her shoes and tied them. She completed her transformation as though she’d never fallen into that whirlpool. It felt crucial that they not know. It would only upset them. And her. She had to pretend she was the same. She was okay.
“Is this yours, Cotton?” She picked up a pocketknife a few feet away.
“No. Where did you find that?”
“Look. There’s also a water bottle. Hey, do you think this is Australia? Is this where everything falls?”
“No. That’s not right. Those are not our things.”
Now she saw that deeper back on the shelf where they sat, in a crevice—a cave within a cave—a blanket lay spread across the rock. It looked inviting. She reached out to touch it, then pulled her hand back. The blanket was wet. Cold and clammy.
Cotton’s smile was gone. His face looked crumpled. Melted. Then it turned hard and full of lines. The shadows intensified his glare.
“Get down, Ria. Don’t touch anything.” His voice sounded raspy, afraid.
A sickly panic rushed through her.
“What? Why?” She slid down, following him, hurrying, blood rushing in her ears, instinct making her scramble. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“What’s going on?” asked Leo.
Ria could feel Cotton trembling. The shaking rumbled through his chest, down to his hands now gripped tightly around her biceps.
“Stay away from there,” yelled Cotton.
“You’re hurting me.” She twisted out of his clutch. Gasping, feeling like the air was too thin and pale, “What did you see?”
“That thing. It’s wrong.”
“The blanket? Probably some couple fooling around left it here.” She looked back at the shelf, still unable to find what had hit him so hard.
“Don’t you see the stuffed animal?”
Now she saw something brown. A bunny, judging by the ears.
“Do you recognize it?”
He stood, staring. She wondered if she needed to remind him to breathe. Flutie was silent, visibly pulling back, stepping behind Leo.
“Is that bunny Esther’s?” Ria whispered, leaning into his arm.
“No.” His voice was impossibly small. Fragile.
“Hey, Cotton. It’s okay,” said Leo.
“We have to tell someone.” His voice sounded urgent now, desperate.
“Tell who? And what do you want them to know? I don’t get it.” She bit her lip, trying desperately to understand.
“Someone’s been using this cave.”
“People hang out in caves. People like us.” She pointed in the direction of the graffiti. “People like Jerry and Joey.”
“There are so many sickos in this world, Ria. People do bad things. All the time.”
Flutie started crying.
“That’s enough, Cotton,” said Leo.
“We have to tell the police.”
“What will you tell them?”
“They need to do DNA testing on that blanket. Someone must have brought a kid down here. They need to look for a body.”
“That’s . . .” Ria bit back the word “crazy,” because it seemed too true. Cotton looked wild. Unhinged. Out of his mind with misery. His hands smacked against his legs. “We don’t know who brought the blanket and stuffed animal there. Or why. There are plenty of reasons behind things. That’s an awful lot of filling in the blanks.”
“It’s a stuffed animal!” His voice was a mix of rage and tears. “What if we could save some kid?”
“Stop it, Cotton!” Flutie sounded harsh. “You’re spiraling. Get a grip.”
“No! No, no, no!”
“Don’t yell!” Leo sounded awfully close to yelling. Beside him, Flutie slipped and knocked against the wall.
“We can’t help anyone until we get out of here.” Ria swallowed the deep lump of sad in the back of her throat.
“Yes,” Cotton said in a rush of motion, heading back the way they’d come.
“Wait.” With Cotton so close to hysterical, adrenaline and confusion made it even harder to transform her thoughts into words. She said, slowly, trying to figure out i
f she was as right as she thought, “I think we should keep going the other way.”
He didn’t argue. But he didn’t agree, either. He hummed softly, fidgeting with his coveralls. Flutie moved in next to him, wrapped her arm around his waist.
“I think this must lead us to another entrance,” said Ria. “That’s what we’ve been looking for. I think we found it. That’s why there’s this stuff here. They didn’t come the way we did. There has to be another way in that’s closer.” The logic of it sharpened in her mind. If she was right, Cotton would see there was another explanation for what they’d found. “We need to go this way.”
Now that she’d said it, she believed it even more strongly. Every inch of her sensed there was another way to reach air and light.
“We need to get Cotton out of here, now,” said Flutie.
Leo wasn’t as easily convinced. “You don’t know where we’re headed. Even if you’re right and there’s another entrance, we have no idea where we’ll end up.”
“We have some idea. We haven’t gone that far. It’s not like we’ve left the planet.”
“Think how long it took us to get here.”
“Exactly. This has to be shorter and faster.”
“No, it doesn’t. It could be as far, or even farther. Or not at all.” Leo had his arms crossed over his chest.
Anger bubbled up inside her. Leo looked so damn stubborn. Like he knew everything. She felt like shoving him into the rock. Slapping him. He’d thought she was messing around back there, like she was dumb, impulsive Ria, leaping in with her clothes on.
But he couldn’t know what she didn’t tell him.
“I didn’t go swimming behind the waterfall. I fell. There was a current or something swirling all around me. I kept getting pulled under. Leo saved me, but he didn’t even notice. Thank you, by the way.” She took a deep breath.
“You could have drowned,” said Cotton. “You could have died. You could have . . .”
“I’m fine. None of that happened. But yeah, it could have. And right now I need to get out of here. We all do. And our best chance is to find a different exit.”
“Seriously?” Leo sounded confused. Then he added, “It’s up to you, Cotton. Which way do you want to go?”
She’d understand if they wanted the sure thing. Even if they didn’t follow her, she was going on her own.
“Let’s go.” Cotton started to walk the direction she’d hoped he would. It was more of a shuffle than a step, but he was moving forward.
Their progress was slow. Especially with the beat of hurry hurry hurry matching her heartbeat, urging her to move, to get out of the dark. Each step felt too long, the rocks too rough, everything too, too much.
A whoosh of wind swirled around her face, startling her, setting goosebumps along her skin. She wanted to hurry away from it, but Cotton grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
In a steady monotone he said, “It’s a pit cave. We can get out that way.” He pointed up.
They circled around him to see. A slit of light shone down, hitting the walls of the rocky chimney that reached up, way over their heads.
Leo went first, scrambling up the rocky wall. “I see the opening. The tunnel flattens out. We’re almost there.”
Wherever there was, they’d find it soon.
Cotton lifted Flutie, and Ria coached her climb, pointing out the knobs to reach for, the crannies where she could tuck her foot. And then it was Ria’s turn.
She didn’t want to leave him down in the cave alone, but Cotton had to boost her to the spot where she could get her foot on a ledge. She scrambled up, the bulk of her backpack scraping and bumping against the last bit of cave. She paused for a second and was relieved to hear him following.
Finally, they reached fresh air and sunlight. Ria hoisted herself out of the hole, then Cotton came too. Both of them stood in the sunshine, blinking back tears against the light.
Forty-Two
The world was wide and bright. Blinding.
Ria looked down the hole to see what it looked like from this angle. It was as deep a fall as she’d felt climbing out, but the dank, dark of it smelled sour and wrong. Or maybe that was them. Their sweat and extended time in the cave had caught up with them in the fresh air.
“Do you recognize this place?” Leo pulled out his GPS unit.
“Yes. Ria climbed that wall, from the other side.” Cotton’s voice sounded clipped and monotone. He started walking in that direction. “We’re on someone’s property. We need to leave.”
That’s what she wanted to do. Escape. Bolt. Vamoose.
The climb over the wall wasn’t hard, but they moved slowly, getting reacquainted with the sun and the sky and the living growing things. The others were talking and making a plan. They made calls and arrangements, but she wasn’t listening. The buzz in her ears, the hum in her torso, the ants-in-her-pants squirm of gotta go made everything else fade away.
If Cotton was right about the blanket and the stuffed animal, she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to know the how or the who or the what. She knew it was weak and cowardly, but her heart couldn’t take knowing something bad mixed in with the cave. Their cave.
Even if he was wrong, and the blanket was only a blanket, that was awful too. Because that horrible idea was in him, close to the surface, ready to bubble up. He carried that with him, always. It wasn’t fair that he knew things that made him see the world that way. She couldn’t look at him now. She didn’t want to see that hurt in his eyes. She wasn’t strong enough.
Losing Esther had changed him. He had scars, thick and twisted. Most of the time he kept them buried but now they were out in the open, raw and tender.
Hers, too.
She’d buried her hurts for years. Ashamed of pushing Benny to the point of exploding, she’d hidden the truth. She’d worn all his disappointments, his frustrations, his anger, and covered them, keeping them tucked away, out of sight. But the tender spots had reshaped her, made her heart beat to a different rhythm. His anger had twisted and rewired her mind, making it hard to trust her own senses.
As they reached the road that would lead them back to the strip club, she dropped her backpack and helmet on the ground.
And then, without looking back, she ran.
The wind felt sharp and cold on her face. Her eyes watered. Or maybe those were tears. She concentrated on running. Her battered body could take her away from thinking.
The sharp pain in her leg, along the bandage line and stretching out beyond, past the tug and pull of her skin, became her focal point. A way to count her steps and regulate her pace. It reminded her that she was, in fact, moving.
At some point, it stopped hurting. She was too busy concentrating on breathing. Her lungs felt tight and hot. It was like being stuck in the moment of resurfacing after a dive. Desperate for air, but wary of the water all around. Her body, untrusting and unsure.
She’d known somewhere, in the back of her mind, where she was headed. Seeing the Aquaplex building in the distance gave her a burst of adrenaline.
Her rubbery legs carried her up the sidewalk. She staggered past the outdoor pool, closed now for fall and winter. She headed around the building, to the back, where she knew Benny had entered. He refused to use the entrance at the front. Not slowing her momentum, she crashed against the door, hard.
Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate to work the handle. It was slippery and overly complicated, and she couldn’t see through the mess of sweat and mud dripping in her eyes. But then, suddenly and wonderfully, with a rush of light, like the moment the sun pops up over the horizon, the door opened and she fell forward, with a crash onto the cement floor of the storage room.
She crawled, lifted into a crouch, grabbed one of the shelves to steady herself, then stood upright. She made her way through the crowded room, out to the pool deck. She moved across the tiles, slowly, smoothly, careful not to slip.
Voices echoed around her as she headed for the three-meter board. She knew, in one small,
distant part of her brain, that she looked deranged and lost. Mud on her ragged clothes, streaked with sweat on her skin, her hair mussed and plastered.
A whistle from the lifeguard pierced the air as she made her way up the ladder, leaving a trail of mud along the rail. The minerals within the muck shone in the artificial light. They looked so pretty, sparkly and brilliant, against the shiny chrome. She headed up and up, back to where she belonged.
On the board, she wished she’d taken off her shoes. But it didn’t matter. She’d dealt with far worse inconveniences before. She looked out over the pool area where her team had stopped diving, stopped talking, stopped everything. With her contacts in, she could see everyone. Clearly, finally. All eyes were focused on her.
Benny’s, too. But he couldn’t touch her here. The board was her refuge.
“Hey!” Sean frantically waved his arms from the lifeguard chair, then blew his whistle as a bonus. “Ria! What are you doing? You have to get down.”
She moved to the edge of the board.
“No! Use the ladder! Ria! Don’t go in the pool like that!” Sean sounded hysterical. “Benny! Do something! Get her down!”
“Turn around and climb down that ladder.” Benny stood up from his chair, moved to the edge of the pool. She knew what he might do. What he was capable of. What he’d already done to her. Because she’d let him.
“I can’t,” she said. “That’s against the rules. Your rules. Once I’m on the board, there’s only one way down. No balking allowed.”
She peered over the edge. The blue of the water rippled and shimmered. It was fake, that blue. It wasn’t the water. It was only paint. An illusion. Water didn’t have any color at all.
“This used to be the scariest part of diving for me,” she said. “Standing here, knowing I had to do something hard, something I wasn’t sure I could. Fear would keep me company up here. It reminded me to slow down and be careful. It wanted to help. Fear helped me be a better diver. But you messed that up, Benny.” She bounced once, feeling the spring of the board.
