The Quarry

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  Coming out into the living room, they found Steve sitting on the stained futon, shoveling spoonfuls of mushy rainbow flakes into his mouth and watching an old rerun of The Golden Girls. Looking up at the pair, he said, “These old bitches are a riot.”

  Ignoring him, they headed for the door, but before stepping outside, Connie turned back to Steve. “Just promise you’ll take care of Dale for me, okay?”

  “What am I, his nursemaid? He’s a big boy, I’m sure he can take care of himself.”

  “Seriously, Steve. He had a rough night last night.”

  “So did I, but I don’t see you all worried about my welfare. Trust me, we’ll both be rested and recuperated in time for practice this afternoon.”

  “I see, so even when you can’t make it to class, you can still make it to practice, is that right?”

  “Shit yeah, we got our priorities straight.”

  Connie rolled her eyes at Emilio and closed the door behind them. “That guy is such an ass,” she said as they climbed into her Jeep.

  “Which one?”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I think Dale’s been hanging around with Steve too long.”

  Emilio chewed on his lip and scratched idly at the rope burns on his hands. Heading back toward Limestone, he stared out the window and said, “I’m worried about him. There’s something wrong.”

  “He’s not acting like himself, that’s for sure, but other than that cut on his arm, he doesn’t seem to be hurt. And even the cut looks superficial.”

  “Still, something’s not right. Whatever happened to him in the Quarry scared him a lot more than he’s letting on, and it’s causing him to lash out.”

  Connie chuckled. “Maybe you should be majoring in Psych instead of English, but I agree with you. That’s why I didn’t lay into him the way I really wanted to. I figure we just need to give him a little time to get over this. We’ll just have to be a bit patient with him.”

  “I’d hate to see full on wrath if that was holding back.”

  She laughed. “Don’t test me, Em.”

  “You’re a remarkably understanding girlfriend.”

  “You know it. Of course, when he does finally come to his senses, I’ll require a lot of groveling and perhaps some jewelry before I give him my full forgiveness.”

  They shared a laugh then a bit of silence as they coasted through a four-way stop and onto Quarry Drive, passing the gym before turning into the resident parking lot. Collecting his books from the backseat, Emilio said, “Guess I’ll see you in Bio lab this afternoon.”

  “Hell, I already missed the class. I might as well miss the lab too.”

  “Wow, there’s just a rash of skipping going on today.”

  “Life on the typical American college campus, my friend.”

  Emilio smiled weakly and nodded, but he didn’t immediately get out of the Jeep.

  Connie reached over and put her fingertips against his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “He’s going to be fine, Em. Maybe this will teach him a lesson, show him he needs to cool it with all the wildman stunts.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  But Emilio didn’t really believe it.

  Chapter Three

  EMILIO DID AN hour of work study before lunch and then returned after his afternoon classes. He worked in the Eastwood Library, mostly shelving and occasionally working the counter while the fulltime librarians were busy with other tasks. The head librarian, Ms. Cosgrove, always seemed to watch Emilio with a suspicious eye, as if expecting him to rip the pages out of irreplaceable books and use them for toilet paper. He hated having to work on campus, but his scholarship only covered tuition; he needed the work study to cover room and board and provide him with a tiny bit of spending cash since he couldn’t count on any from his mother. And there were worse jobs—he could be in a hairnet down at the dining hall.

  Thinking of the dining hall caused his stomach to grumble, a low sound like thunder in the distance. He checked his watch and saw that his shift was nearly over, but he couldn’t head to dinner just yet. He needed to stick around the library and start researching his Toni Morrison paper for Modern Fiction.

  He quickly found the correct places for the last two books on his cart then trundled to the old rickety elevator that would take him back to the first floor. The elevator was a cramped thing that always made a little too much noise for comfort, lurching up and down as if every trip was its last. As far as Emilio knew, no one had ever been stuck in the elevator, but fear loomed large every time the doors squealed shut and the cab momentarily took on the cramped, cold qualities of a tomb.

  Making it safely to the first floor, he pushed the cart into the office and parked it next to the others. From her desk, Ms. Cosgrove glanced at Emilio, pushed her glasses down to the tip of her nose, and looked rather pointedly at her watch.

  “I know it’s only ten ’til seven,” Emilio said, feeling unaccountably guilty as he always did in the stern librarian’s presence, “but I’ve shelved all the books on the cart, and I didn’t figure there would be much point starting anything else with so little time left on my shift.”

  Ms. Cosgrove smiled tightly, a smile that never touched her eyes. “Very well. We’ll just keep you ten extra minutes tomorrow.”

  Emilio nodded and ducked his head as he left the office. He stepped into the library proper, turning to the bank of ten computers that served as a card catalogue and provided limited access to the Internet. Emilio had seen no one upstairs, and down here there were only two students at the computers. The library tended to be dead after 5 unless it was the night before a large class had a big paper due or finals week.

  Ignoring the insistent twinges of hunger in his gut, Emilio sat down in front of one of the computers, several empty seats between him and the two young men—one with sandy colored hair, the other sporting a deep black mane—who talked quietly to one another while they browsed the ’net. Emilio didn’t know them by name but was pretty sure they were on the lacrosse team.

  Emilio pulled up the library’s home page and started a search for Toni Morrison. Grabbing a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, he scribbled down the call numbers for a few titles that looked promising. He was about to head upstairs when the blond athlete turned to him and said, “Hey, you’re friends with Dale Sierra, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where was he this afternoon? It’s not like him to miss practice.”

  “He didn’t show?”

  “I just said he didn’t.”

  “Coach Harris was pissed,” said the dark-haired lacrosse player. “He made it clear at the start of the season that we had to get in touch with him if we were going to miss a practice.”

  “And even then we’d have to have a pretty compelling reason.”

  Emilio was silent for a moment, frowning. “Was Steve Kenton there?”

  The two jocks laughed and the blond said, “Oh yeah, Stevie was there all right. Gave us all a blow by blow of his streaking run through Eunice Ford.”

  Dark-hair snorted. “He wishes it had led to some blow by blowing.”

  Ignoring the crude joke, Emilio asked, “He didn’t say why Dale wasn’t there?”

  Dark-hair shook his head. “Steve said Dale slept all morning. But when Steve got out of the shower, ready for practice, Dale was gone.”

  “Next time you talk to him, tell him he better call the coach pronto and explain himself, or the shit’s really going to hit the fan.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Emilio crumpled up the scrap paper with the call numbers and tossed it in a wastebasket on his way out of the library.

  * * *

  Connie sat with her roommate, Patricia Moore, at a table in the noisy dining hall. Patty, perpetually on a diet, nibbled at a salad while Connie finished off a huge plate of spaghetti. Connie had a big appetite and wasn’t worried about her figure, mostly because she was blessed with an overactive metabolism that kept her trim. She suspected her roommate, not fat
but not exactly thin, secretly hated her for it.

  Patty was blathering on about some boy in her Philosophy class, the latest in a seemingly endless succession of unrequited crushes, when Connie spotted Emilio across the dining room, tray in hand. She called his name and waved him over.

  Patty immediately fell silent and became fixated on the croutons in her salad. Connie smiled at this; she suspected that her roommate also had a secret crush on Emilio.

  Emilio took a seat and smiled weakly.

  “So,” Connie said, “did I miss anything interesting in lab?”

  Emilio took a sip of milk then said, “How do you know I went?”

  “Give me a break, Em. It’s a miracle I convinced you to blow off Biology. No way you’d miss two classes in one day.”

  “Emilio actually skipped a class?” Patty blurted loudly. When she realized that several people from nearby tables had turned to stare at her, she blushed to a near-purple hue.

  Emilio shrugged one shoulder, a slight blush creeping into his own cheeks. On the surface, Connie thought, her friend and her roommate seemed perfect for each other. But a hunch, something she couldn’t quite articulate, said Patty wasn’t Emilio’s type.

  “What can I say?” Emilio said. “Guess I’m becoming a rebel.”

  “Yeah, you’re a regular James Dean,” Connie said, punching him gently on the arm. “Seriously though, did you go to lab?”

  “You know I did. We just looked at some different plant cells under the microscope, nothing major. I felt like Dr. Franklin was giving me the evil eye the whole time for missing this morning.”

  “She probably didn’t even notice.”

  Emilio took a bite of his meatloaf, chewed methodically, swallowed, then said, “Have you heard from Dale at all?”

  “Nope, and I have no plans to call him. When he gets ready to talk, he knows my number.”

  “I heard from some guys in the library that he didn’t go to practice this afternoon.”

  This got Connie’s attention. Dale was on a lacrosse scholarship, and he took practice very seriously. She’d never known him to skip out on his coach before. “Did they say why he wasn’t there?”

  “They don’t know. Apparently he was gone when Steve got out of the shower this afternoon, and he didn’t call Coach Harris or anything.”

  Suddenly Connie’s dinner wasn’t sitting well. She shoved her plate away, and a moment of silence ensued between Emilio and Connie. She could tell he shared her unspoken worries and fears about Dale.

  Filling the empty space, Patty talked about her latest assignment for Public Speaking, a class she shared with Emilio and Dale. She was doing a speech on Limestone’s beginnings as an all women’s college, but Connie—though she admired her roommate for trying to overcome shyness around Emilio—wasn’t really paying attention.

  Connie, worry deepening, pushed back from the table and said, “I’m going to get back to the room. I have a math test in the morning I need to cram for.”

  Patty seemed flustered at the prospect of being left alone with Emilio. She stood abruptly, nearly toppling her chair to the floor. “I’ll go with you.”

  After telling Emilio goodbye and dumping their trays, the two girls left the dining hall by the side door. Patty returned to her prattle about her crush in Philosophy, but Connie interrupted her to say, “You go on back to the room. I’ll be there in a minute. I just want to make a quick call to Dale.”

  Hand on her hip and a knowing smirk twisting her lips, Patty made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. “What was all that bluster earlier about how you weren’t going to call him—that he’d have to come to you?”

  “I know, but I just want to make sure everything’s all right.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. If I had a boyfriend that cute, I’d be on the phone with him all the time.”

  One reason you don’t have a boyfriend, Connie thought. “I won’t be long.”

  “Take your time.” Then with a wink and a giggle, Patty headed toward the dorms.

  Connie watched her go for a moment then shook her head sadly. Patty was one of those girls who seemed to think the primary reason for going to college was to find a boyfriend, but she was looking in all the wrong places, chronically drawn to those without the slightest interest in her.

  Putting Patty out of her mind, Connie pulled out her cell phone and walked onto the deck. The sun was a thin line of dying light that bled over the horizon, the sky above clouding over, concealing the stars. She dialed Dale’s cell and wasn’t surprised when she reached his voicemail again. She then called his home phone. After several rings, Zeke Wood answered. In the background she could hear loud voices and louder music. Apparently another impromptu party had broken out.

  “Zeke, this is Connie. Can I talk to Dale?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “Still? How the hell can he sleep with all that racket?”

  “Beats me. When we got home from practice, he was back from wherever the hell he’d been and conked out before we could really talk to him. We tried to wake him, but he just told us to go fuck ourselves and each other, so we let him be. Been in bed ever since.”

  “Is he okay?”

  She held the phone away from her ear as the noise on the other end got louder, several people chanting, “Chug it, chug it, chug it,” then the sound of something breaking. “Oh shit, Connie, I gotta go.” Zeke laughed, then: “They’re tearing the place apart.”

  “Tell Dale to call me when he gets up, no matter what time it is.”

  “Will do. Take it easy.”

  Connie disconnected the call and placed the phone back in her purse, a sense of dread settling on her shoulders like a lead weight. She briefly considered going over to Dale’s house but dismissed the idea. Whatever Dale was going through, she couldn’t force him to talk to her about it until he was ready.

  Rummaging for a piece of gum, Connie accidentally knocked the keycard to the dorm out of her purse. It flipped onto the railing, skidded across, then fell over the side. “Fuck!” Connie leaned over to see the card hit the water, float for a second, then slip beneath the surface. Great, now she’d have to get one of the other girls to let her into the dorm and request a new card from the Resident Director, Deanna Shytle, tomorrow.

  As she stared at the spot where she’d lost her keycard, she noticed ripples forming in places on the water’s surface, concentric circles that spread out until they faded. She watched this for a full minute, brow furrowed, before realizing it was starting to rain.

  * * *

  When Emilio returned to his dorm room—drenched, thanks to his run from the dining hall—he found Phil lying in bed in a pair of sweat pants, watching Ghost Hunters. “Dude, your Mom called a little while ago.”

  Emilio froze on his way to the bathroom, feeling as if the ceiling had just caved in on him. Trying to affect a nonchalant manner and failing miserably, he said, “What did she say?”

  “Couldn’t understand most of what she was slurring. Think she was drunk off her ass. But she did ask me to tell you that she was so proud of her baby boy and was glad you didn’t turn out like your good-for-nothing, pussy-chasing father.”

  Emilio could hear the smarmy laughter in his roommate’s voice but chose to ignore it. “Thanks,” he said, then hurried into the bathroom and locked the door. Sitting down on the side of the tub, he fought back tears.

  * * *

  Norman Barrett looked up from his Abnormal Psych book and glanced at the clock. Almost midnight, time for his first set of rounds. After a quick check of the monitors that showed live feeds from various cameras on campus, concentrated mostly around the four dorm buildings, he grabbed his slicker and flashlight and headed out into the rain.

  He’d only been working security at the college for a couple of months, and he was still trying to adjust to the graveyard shift, but he had ample downtime to study and, more importantly, working for the college meant he didn’t have to pay for the classes he took.<
br />
  Taking a seat in the golf cart he was provided for rounds, he was thankful for the vinyl roof overhead, even though the open sides still allowed rain to pelt him on nights like tonight. It was really coming down hard.

  He puttered away from the security office and took the small road that led between Ebert and Hamrick Hall, then he took a right, heading by the Greer dorm toward Stephenson. One good thing about Limestone being such a small campus, his rounds never took long, and he really needed to catch up on his reading for class. He’d gotten almost nothing done last night because of that lacrosse player and his childish stunt.

  The rain intensified, severely reducing visibility, so he slowed the cart. Up ahead in the small parking lot, he thought he could make out a shape by the metal barricade at the edge of the Quarry. Squinting and aiming his flashlight beam in that direction, he still wasn’t sure until he was close enough for conversation. A student—Norman recognized him but didn’t know his name—was just standing there in the rain without an umbrella or even a jacket. He didn’t turn when Norman approached, just continued to stare out at the water.

  “Hey you,” Norman said loudly. “What are you doing out here?”

  At first the boy didn’t respond, but then he slowly turned his head. His eyes were glazed and vacant. Probably high, Norman guessed. “Just enjoying the view,” he said in a dull voice.

  “Well, maybe you’d enjoy it some other time when it’s not pouring.”

  The boy frowned then looked up, blinking rapidly as rain fell into his eyes, as if he had just noticed the weather. “Ahh, I like the rain,” he said at last.

  “I think maybe you should get inside.”

  A little bit of life came back into the boy’s eyes. Not much, but some. “Sorry Officer, is it against the law to stand out in the rain?”

  “Suit yourself,” Norman said, already backing up and steering the cart toward the dining hall. “But don’t blame me when you catch pneumonia.”