A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

  “I can’t do this,” I said, panicky. “I’m suffocating.”

  Calder gently took my elbow and guided me around the rocks. “Lie down,” he whispered. “It makes it easier to breathe.”

  I felt my way down to the floor, immediately recognizing the raw, prickly hair of some animal hide, and lay supine, trying to control my breathing.

  “Finley? Is that you?”

  My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, but I’d recognize that voice, that tone anywhere: irritation laced with the slightest bit of affection. “Owen?”

  “You stupid motherfucker, what did you do now?”

  “You’re supposed to be at the softball game. Where’s Serena?”

  “Over here.” She was also lying on her back, but she lifted one arm, and even in the almost darkness her pale skin gleamed like a beacon.

  I crawled over to her, running my hands up and down her arms, legs, torso, checking for injuries. She was soaked in sweat, as if she’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve seen better days.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I was worried, so I followed you. Silas found me hiding in the woods and dragged me in here.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Owen said weakly. “Don’t believe a fucking word she says.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Be quiet,” Silas told us.

  He ladled water over the rocks, and a fresh cloud of steam filled the sweat lodge, which seemed to contract around me. My breaths came fast and shallow; I couldn’t get enough air. I sat up too quickly, and the world turned to white. I managed to get up and start stumbling blindly toward the door. Silas grabbed me around the waist.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  He took me by the hand and led me outside, where I promptly dropped to my knees and vomited heartily into the grass until my eyes and nose were streaming. My stomach was wrenching itself inside out; I couldn’t stop dry-heaving. A breeze came through the woods and licked at the sweat on my bare skin, and I shuddered.

  When the puking finally stopped, I was left sobbing and shaking, hugging myself, grass tickling my knees and Silas standing over me, his voice oddly distant, telling me to get the fuck up, but I couldn’t move or speak. Finally he reached down, grabbed me by the armpits, and pulled me to my feet. I wrested free of his grasp and made a desperate dive for the pile of my clothes, frantically trying to locate the pockets of my jeans, but my hands were shaking too badly. Silas grabbed me by the armpits again. My knees buckled, but he held me upright.

  “Are you looking for this, Finley?” he said, and I saw he was already holding the knife. He opened it, laying the blade across his palm. “What exactly did you think you were going to do with it?”

  Suddenly my tears dried up. A weird calm swept over me and I went numb. Maybe it was the drugs kicking in or an almost comforting sense of inevitability, as if I had been courting this moment for weeks, months. Since Betty’s death.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m not going back in there.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  I saw the punch coming but I didn’t have the reflexes to dodge it. His fist caught me square in the temple and this time the world went mercifully black.

  • • •

  When I came to, I was back in the sweat lodge, curled up in the fetal position. I guessed Silas had laid me on my side so I wouldn’t choke to death if I started vomiting again. So considerate of him.

  My head was throbbing, my mouth was dry and tasted like bile. I rolled over onto my back and cried out in pain, a small, agonized mewl, all I could muster. I closed my eyes; maybe I could go back to sleep and wake up when this was all over.

  “Fin,” Owen whispered, stroking my damp hair off my forehead. “Finley. You have to stay awake. You probably have a concussion.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not going to let you slip into a coma.”

  “You would probably be doing me a favor.”

  “Just sit up.”

  With a great deal of effort, I managed to obey Owen’s instructions. Silas was pouring more water on the rocks; the temperature had risen significantly.

  “Just breathe,” Owen said. “Breathe through your mouth, it helps.”

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered at him.

  “He tricked me into coming. He told me you were here.”

  “And now she is,” Silas said. “The order in which you all arrived is irrelevant. We’re here because of Betty. Her death has poisoned all of us in some way. We need to purify ourselves of what happened to her, and of whatever role we played in it.”

  “I call bullshit,” Serena said weakly. She was lying on the ground to my left. I reached for her damp hand and took it in mine. She looked over at Calder. “You killed her. Nobody else but you.”

  “Nothing is that simple,” Silas said.

  I closed my eyes and let my head fall to my chest. I’d lost all sense of time. Was it last call at Charlie’s yet? Was my father there, having a beer and scanning the crowd for me, wondering where I’d gone off to? My mind drifted, and I thought about the fountain in Washington Square Park and my first boyfriend, Tad, sitting next to me, awkwardly kicking my foot while the sun spangled the water and I ate my falafel sandwich and a warm rush of happiness flooded my belly. I squeezed Serena’s hand and wished we’d had even one day together like that, sly sideways glances and the slowly dawning realization that the person you want actually wants you back; that first kiss, when you’re stupefied by your unbelievable good luck. Serena and I were rage and drugs and desperation, and maybe I loved her anyway; I wasn’t sure, but I did know for certain I didn’t want to die with her in this sweltering cauldron.

  “She came to me,” Calder said. “She asked me, over and over again. I said no so many times. She wouldn’t let it go. But she meant it. I knew her well enough to know that she was serious. I told her I wouldn’t do it, that I couldn’t. I’d never hurt anybody. But she kept after me, until finally I said yes. I still never thought it would happen. I thought I’d take her out to the beach and she’d change her mind. I thought maybe she needed to feel like she was actually going to die to realize she wanted to live. But then we got out there and she just waded into the water like it was nothing, and I started to wonder—” He suddenly stopped.

  “You wondered what, Calder?” Serena asked impatiently.

  “I wondered if I could do it after all. What it would feel like.”

  “Jesus Christ, you sick fuck,” I said. “You sound like you’re talking about going skydiving. She was a person, a living, breathing person.”

  “Don’t act like you’ve never thought about it.”

  “Of course I’ve thought about it! I’m thinking about it right now! That doesn’t mean I’d ever actually do it!”

  “Why not?” Calder said. “What’s stopping you? What’s stopping any of us? You show up here, Finley, so self-righteous and out for justice, and everything’s so black and white for you. There’s right and wrong, except when it doesn’t suit you. Owen gave Betty the pills that almost killed her the first time, he sold my sister the drugs that got her in the hospital, but you’ll bend the rules for him, and why? Because in your heart you just know he’s such a good guy?”

  “That’s different,” I said.

  “Different how? Look, at least I finally told the police where she was buried. It’s not like I don’t have a conscience at all.”

  “You made the anonymous phone call?” I said, confused. “I thought it was some random hiker.”

  “I thought maybe it would help, if she finally got a proper funeral.” He looked at me dolefully. “I saw the flyers you had made, the ‘Have you seen this girl?’ poster with that picture of Betty, and I thought, I knew where she was, maybe th
at was all you wanted, to know where she was. I thought finding her might be enough for you. I just—I thought it would help.”

  “Help what?”

  He looked at me across the darkness of the sweat lodge, but I couldn’t read his features. “Everything.”

  “Why?” Serena asked.

  “Why what?” Calder said.

  “Why were you able to do it? So she asked you? So what, she asked a lot of people. You got curious, you wondered if you could. And then you did. How?”

  “I just did it,” he said softly. “Like sneaking out of your house or shoplifting or doing anything you’re not supposed to do, anything you think you can’t do, and then you do it, and you realize this is all just made up. There’s nothing holding any of this together. You have no idea, Finley. You have no idea how easy it all falls apart.”

  It was falling apart for me right now. The darkness had become a living thing with a pulse and hot, wet breath. At some point Serena’s hand had slid out of mine, and though I knew the others were still there, only a few feet away—shadowy outlines on the floor, Silas’s skin lit a faint, sinister red by the coals—I felt them recede until I was alone, or might as well have been, and I thought about the night I swam out into the ocean, how easy it would have been for me to give up, slip under, disappear; how hard I had fought to make it back to shore. I wasn’t sure I had another victory like that in me. I was so tired.

  But I wasn’t Betty. I could see the appeal of the thing, the potential relief, but that was different than seeking it out and embracing it. And I wasn’t Calder either, somehow managing to paint himself as both a victim of circumstance and its architect. What scared me the most, though, was that I could see his point. That heady, liberating feeling the first time you defy your parents and walk out the front door even though they’ve forbidden you to go to the party, and you realize their authority is based on an agreement you made as a child and are now free to break at any time, that the rules are all made up. And how quickly that exhilaration can turn on you, spin into a terrifying vertigo when you discover that if your parents are not in charge, then no one is, and therefore nothing is standing between you and every conceivable impulse—to storm out the door to the party, to set the high school on fire, to sleep with your best friend’s un-boyfriend, to drown your ex-girlfriend in the ocean on Thanksgiving night.

  I struggled to prop myself up on my elbows. “Betty didn’t start asking people to kill her until after she OD’d at Owen’s. After he stopped selling to her.” I looked at Silas. “After she started coming straight to the source. You.”

  “What difference does it make?” Silas said. “She wanted to be at peace, and she lacked the courage to do it herself. All I did was tell her there might be another way.”

  “Then why didn’t you do it yourself?” Serena said.

  Silas shrugged casually. “I have to keep a low profile, if I’m going to protect my business.”

  “Holding us hostage in a sweat lodge, does this count as low profile, too?” I asked.

  “I’m not holding you hostage, Finley, I’m hosting a ceremony.” Silas scared me the most when he talked like this, like a perfectly reasonable psychopath. “I’m trying to help all of you move on. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “The only thing that’s going to help me move on,” I said, “is seeing Calder punished for what he did.”

  “Don’t you understand? He’s not the only one responsible. If Calder’s punished, doesn’t that mean we all should be? What if it could be the opposite? What if we could all be forgiven? What if I could make all of Owen’s problems go away? Reopen the diner, forgive his debt to me, let him start over? What if I could fix it all for him, and in return all you had to do was live with the fact that Calder would never be punished? She’s already dead, she’ll never know. Could you do it?”

  “What about Serena?” I said. “She had nothing to do with Betty’s death.”

  “Now I call bullshit,” Owen said, his voice steadier than it had been since I came into the sweat lodge. “Who do you think started getting Betty high in the first place?” He glared at Serena. “She flirted with you like she flirted with everyone, and when you realized you would never have her, you cut her off from the pills, from everything. She thought you were one of the only real friends she had here and you stopped speaking to her.”

  “You’re lying,” Serena said.

  “For months after she disappeared, you said nothing, did nothing, and then suddenly Finley shows up in town and you’re raring to go, losing your shit at graduation, ready to go after Calder. What were you doing in the meantime, huh?”

  “Owen, what are you saying?” I asked, not sure if I understood what he meant—not wanting to understand.

  “I’m saying she was waiting for you, Betty’s best friend, to come back to town. She bided her time until you were here so if anything went wrong there’d be someone else to blame.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said.

  “You don’t sound so sure,” Silas said.

  “I don’t feel so good.” I lay back down on the floor, ignoring Owen’s protests, Serena leaning over me, her worried face peering into mine. I closed my eyes and saw Betty, the Betty of my childhood, nine years old and plump-cheeked, wearing a green velvet dress she’d been given special for Christmas that year. It was Christmas Eve, and I was over at Betty’s for dinner, wearing a red-and-black-checked dress with a starched white collar that itched my neck, and my belly was full of lobster and cod, and in another couple of hours I would tag along to midnight mass with the Flynns. But first we were going to play Snapdragon. Betty’s mom cleared the table, and her dad turned down the lights in the dining room.

  “You girls ready?” he asked.

  Betty squealed with excitement while I pulled anxiously at my dress. It was our first Christmas together, and Snapdragon was a Flynn family tradition Betty was eager to share with me; she’d spoken of it frequently in the weeks leading up to the holiday. Betty’s dad filled a wide, shallow bowl with rum and raisins; with a flourish, he set the liquor alight so that blue flames danced across the surface and gave his face an eerie glow that only tightened the knot in my stomach.

  “So now what happens?” I asked.

  “It’s easy,” said Betty. “I’ll show you.” She jumped out of her chair, rolled up her velvet sleeves, and reached without hesitating into the bowl, retrieving as her prize a rum-soaked raisin, still aflame. She blew it out and popped it in her mouth.

  “It doesn’t hurt?”

  “Sometimes it stings a little,” she said after she swallowed. “You’ve just got to be quick about it.”

  I watched as Betty and her parents played, laughing as they snatched their hands from the bowl filled with blue tongues of flame; sometimes they came up empty, but that didn’t seem to be the point.

  “Come on, try it!” Betty urged.

  “Finley, you don’t have to play if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Flynn reassured me. “I know it’s a peculiar game.”

  “No,” I said abruptly, standing up and pushing back my chair. “I want to play.”

  I held my hand over the bowl, hypnotized by the flames—really, they weren’t very big, and they moved back and forth across the rum, and all the Flynns had done it and remained unscathed, so there was nothing to be scared of, and if I was scared anyway, I wouldn’t let it show.

  Show no fear. Okay, then.

  So I plunged my hand in and plucked out a raisin, and it stung but just a little; it didn’t really hurt. The Flynns all clapped, so I did it again, and again, and then let Betty have another turn, until we were raking the bottom of the bowl with our hands to find the last few raisins and the flames had nearly gone out. In the fading light all I could see was her smile and her bright blue eyes.

  “Finley,” Owen said, shaking me by the shoulders. “Wake up.”

  “Leave h
er alone,” Silas told him. “She’s not asleep, she’s having a vision. It happens all the time during a sweat.”

  “She’s not having a vision, for Christ’s sake, she’s nodding out,” Serena said. “Seriously, you two goddamn drug dealers can’t tell the difference?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, brushing Owen away and sitting up slowly on my own. “I’m just dehydrated. We all are.”

  “What did you see?” Calder asked softly. “Did you see Betty?”

  I was about to tell him to go fuck himself when Silas, surprisingly, leaped to my aid.

  “Not cool, man. You never ask another person about their visions. That shit is private.”

  “I’d rather see us all punished,” I said. “You asked me if I could live with it, if Calder got away, if you made all of Owen’s problems disappear? The answer is no. If we’re all responsible for Betty’s death, then we should all pay for it somehow. But first I want to know one thing. How did you get her body into the woods, Calder? If you drowned her in the ocean, how did her body turn up miles away, off the highway? There’s no way you carried her up that hill alone. Emily said something that made me think there was a witness, that somebody saw you do it, but now I think I had it all wrong. It wasn’t a witness. It was an accomplice. Who was it?”

  Calder didn’t answer. I crawled over to where he lay. My arms were tingling and my vision blurred around the edges. I didn’t know how long a normal sweat ceremony was supposed to last, but Silas had kept us trapped inside the lodge for what felt like hours at this point. I took Calder’s wrist weakly and shook it, but he didn’t move. He was limp, blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, but his skin was surprisingly dry, like he’d run out of perspiration.

  “Calder, wake up,” I said, but he didn’t stir.

  “Jesus Christ, is he dead?” Owen said.