Aidy read me. “You think we need to find an exit that goes back up,” she said.
“Ooooooh.” Ruby nodded her head. “Of course. His hands were reaching up. That’s good, Olivia.”
My answer was a nod to farther down the tunnels. Leaders didn’t always explain. They taught. Didn’t see Nick doing much of that.
Harrison took my cue and started walking. When we reached a crossroads, he stopped to examine the three tunnels that lay ahead. “Which way?” he asked.
He’d backpedaled, leaving me at the front of our pack. Various cell phones cast weak streaks of light in all directions. Not much could be made out from where we stood, loosely huddled like Scooby-Doo characters.
“I know this is like Horror Movie No-No 101, but I think we have to split up,” Aidy said. Everyone waited for her elaboration. “We’ll do it once, and find whatever we’re looking for, instead of coming back over and over. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not doing this again.”
It was three tunnels for five people. Everyone in this group had a set companion, and though mine sometimes fluctuated, it would end up Nick and me, I knew. The story wrote itself. Ruby would think we needed a moment alone, so she’d volunteer to go on her own. Harrison and Aidy would be paired up without acknowledgment. If Bigs and Teeny were here, they’d go together. It was the way things went.
To be more unique, I had to not only surprise Nick, but myself. No one could know what I would do next. Nick might’ve been a When, but I was a What If.
What if little Ollie Stanton turned out to be the one meant for greatness after all?
“I’ll go with Harrison,” I said in answer to the expectation. It was the most surprising option available. The only way to keep the Nick battle in my favor.
Harrison recoiled like I’d punched him in the gut. “Uh,” he said, looking to Aidy.
“I’ll go with Nick,” she countered. She thought this was the start of another fight between her and me.
I hadn’t meant to upset her. Still, I found myself throwing kindling to the flame. “That’s fine,” I said.
To have something to contribute, Ruby said, “I don’t mind being by myself.”
So it became Harrison and me down the left tunnel, Ruby up the center, Aidy and Nick to the right. Harrison and I spent the first few minutes listening to the pipes above us creak and rattle as we walked. It sounded like a constant stream of semitrucks driving over our heads. The farther we got, the more distant the noise became, and with it came the expectation of conversation to replace it.
It turned out I had no clue what to say to Harrison Shin. Everything I knew of him came from Aidy’s stories, mixed with a touch of the constant colorless interactions we had. Hey, Olivia. Hi, Harrison. How’s school? Good. How about for you? Good.
I always imagined his dreams to be as simple as our conversations. He wanted to marry Aidy. Get a good job. Buy a house in Cadence. My image of him floated as a mirage in front of us. As I contemplated it, Little Ollie emerged next to him, peace sign tankini stained with blood, struggling under the weight of an imaginary Marley wrapped around her neck. She cried out for help. Over and over.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Harrison, compelled by the memory of my younger self. Harrison had been hard for me to know. He belonged to Aidy almost entirely, and I’d accepted that for as long as I’d known him.
“For what?” He cast light onto the concrete walls in pursuit of another message, pretending to find our mission more interesting than an apology from me.
“I haven’t always been fair to you,” I started.
“Oh,” he said, stunned.
“I know, I’m being weird. But let me talk for a second.” I took a deep breath. It smelled terrible where we were. “I don’t like it when people accept only one idea of who I am. I do that to you. I’m sorry,” I said again. My magic words fell from my lips before I could consider the consequences of renovating my impression of him.
He stopped and shone his cell phone on me. Stark in the light, I fought the urge to cower. “Thank you for saying that. I have no idea why you did, but it means a lot to me.” He was being so earnest, it made me squirm. The two of us never communicated this way. My opinion of him was a veil I wasn’t supposed to lift. I’d pledged allegiance to my sister on the first day of my life. If her boyfriend bothered her, he had to bother me too. That was the unspoken contract of our sisterhood.
But I didn’t want to know only cardboard versions of the Albany kids. I didn’t want to do to them what had been done to me for so many years.
Before I could find a response that both honored Aidy and expressed my appreciation of our ability to look past what we knew of each other, Harrison turned his phone’s light toward himself. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Shit,” he said again. “My letter.” He began patting the wet, filthy ground, gagging as his frenzied hands grazed over discarded condom wrappers and various piles of unidentifiable muck.
I stood frozen, observing in horror and fascination. Once it occurred to me that holding myself like a statue would not be the choice of someone who didn’t know where the letter had gone, I crouched down to duck waddle around in pursuit of the paper.
“It’s just,” he started, his voice rising.
“What?”
He didn’t answer. Not on the second time either. By the third time I repeated the question, he managed a squeak that trickled with the possibility of tears. “Marley.” He was nearing the height of hysteria now. “I need that letter. I can’t lose it.” His face folded into a pile of grief. “It’s the only piece of her that’s mine.”
“It’s all right,” I cooed, my heart hammering so hard, its foundation started to crack, breaking into my newfound Harrison soft spot. “We’ll find it. It’s probably back by the first entrance. We’ll keep moving now, then go back and look a little later. Okay?”
“But what if there are more clues in there that I missed?” He made circles around himself like a cat chasing his tail. “What if it had the answer to why she wanted to die?”
I stopped moving.
“Every little piece matters,” he continued. “I didn’t spend enough time reading it. She said we didn’t love her like she asked. I should have memorized what my letter said. How could I lose it?”
Aidy had gotten to him. She’d spread her theory like a contagious disease, and Harrison was infected. As I staggered back, my foot pressed into a piece of paper.
Harrison’s letter.
Marley, Marley, Marley. What are you doing? I wondered as I picked it up. One corner was wet from my shoe, but it was otherwise unscathed.
“You found it,” Harrison whispered in awe. He wrapped his arms around me. “Thank you.”
I had no idea the last time we’d so much as brushed shoulders, let alone hugged. It was strange to let his gratitude envelop me. It made me feel unsteady. I didn’t want to give in and hold him too tight, but I didn’t want to push back either. There was no reason to perform with my head pressed into his chest.
I pulled back and tried to return his letter. My sweaty palm had softened the paper, dulling the dry edges and bleeding the ink where my shoe had dampened the corner.
Harrison pushed the letter away. “Will you hold on to it for me until we get outside? I don’t want it to fall out again.”
I tucked it deep into the front pocket of my shorts.
We kept walking. With each new step, the smell worsened and the tunnel darkened. Even with Harrison’s cell phone light as a guide, there was nothing to see. We walked side by side for fear of separating. We didn’t speak. We couldn’t. Opening our mouths and taking in the air seemed hazardous. I clutched onto his shirt. The muscles in his arms pressed up through the fabric. The sturdiness of him was a comfort.
I couldn’t see that there was someth
ing sticking up a few paces ahead.
When I reached whatever it was, I tripped. Stumbling toward the ground, my hand wrapped around his shirt, Harrison went down with me. Our faces splashed into liquid. We bolted upright, spitting and spitting to eliminate the tangy taste of whatever lay on the ground. Thicker liquid trickled down my nose and flirted with my lips. Blood, I recognized. I did my best to snuff it out, pinching my nostrils with one hand, wiping my face with the other, still spitting. My bottom was wet with whatever I sat in, seeping through the denim of my shorts.
Harrison’s spitting took up more weight. He’d begun throwing up, and through unexpected fortune, managed to do it without splashing me. I settled into my misery until it became unbearable, knowing I could turn it into motivation. If finding his letter was a gift from Marley, this was a punishment.
“Come on. Get up.” I patted to my left until I found Harrison and yanked him up alongside me. “We can’t stay here.” He was so much taller than me that my arm started burning, but I didn’t dare release, needing the touch to assure me he wouldn’t leave.
“Do you still have my letter?”
I patted my pocket. “It’s here.”
The hole we walked through blackened, anthropomorphizing into a vicious beast, eager to swallow us whole. Somewhere along the walk, a genuine connection formed in the poignant hush between us. We were disappearing into this hungry void, covered in vomit and blood and tears and who knows what else. The darkness became so complete that I no longer remembered how to be anything other than afraid. In the absence of other feelings, that fear became soothing.
A wall shattered our tragic mutual resignation. An actual wall. My free hand could not fathom its wholeness after infinitely reaching for nothing. The cold concrete startled me so much that I screamed out, my shrill voice bouncing around me, offending my own ears. We’d walked into the space between another crossroads. Once backed away a bit, subtle differences in our surroundings manifested. Two circular shapes blotted out of the void: one on the left, one on the right.
Come on, Ollie. Make the right choices, my letter had said.
On impulse, I sprinted down the right side, possessed by the promise of freedom and the belief that this was a way out of the mess we’d made.
I expected Harrison to be behind me. Instead, cries of “Ollie! Ollie!” echoed off the walls.
The wrong name for the wrong girl. I wasn’t her anymore.
Turning back, even a little, would’ve disoriented me, so I remained steadfast, my insides thick and syrupy, swirling like a washing machine. No stops, I repeated to myself. Harrison should’ve known how this went. Follow or defy. And he didn’t follow.
With arms stretched out in anticipation, I hit another wall. This one was fixed with metal bars that seemed to be for climbing. Each bar led to another, to another, and so on, until my head bumped into a ceiling. I pushed up, meeting resistance. Pushing again, sunlight shoved its way in like an unwelcome guest, nearly knocking me back down.
My eyes could not adjust to the change. Squeezing my lids tight enough to make my cheeks almost touch my eyebrows, I shoved the cover to the side and flopped stomach-first onto the sand in front of me. For a while I lay like that, easing up my squint in concentrated bursts, trying to train myself to see daylight again. The surface of the sand was hot, but the farther I burrowed into it, the cooler it became.
I tried to open my eyes all the way. I was not ready for the pierce of the sun, but I forced myself to keep looking, fighting so hard against my body’s reflexes that my eyes furiously watered. I was in the desert, which I should’ve known from the sand and shrubs, but had not registered.
Inch by inch, I crawled forward, my whole body splayed out like a corpse. The sky was pure and blue, not a single cloud in sight. To know Marley was to know this kind of day as the exact color of her eyes. In blinking desperation, I pieced together the world around me. A desert, I told myself again, then scolded my ignorance. There was always more to see. I spotted a sign staked into the ground in the near distance. Like a newborn foal, I clambered toward it until my eyes could make out the words: THE POINT OF NO RETURN.
I’d passed the point of no return.
The quicksand was not sand at all, but a sewer lid. In sweet relief, I collapsed back down and pulled Harrison’s letter out of my pocket, careful not to stain it with the blood still dripping from my nose.
HARRISON SHIN
Welcome to the Adventure. Eyes on your own paper, please.
I’ll never forget the day you moved onto Albany. We were all so excited to have another kid on the street. Especially Bigs. After Nick told us a new boy was moving in across from him, Bigs was the one who said we should ride our bikes over and check you out. Did you know that? Then Aidy took you on your own tour of the town without the rest of us. And that was that.
It’s so weird to think about. How did it take you only a day to know you liked her? It’s taken me a whole lifetime to decide on one single thing I like that much.
Don’t ask what it is.
I admire so much in you. You’re always around, living your life, keeping everything together. I know you’re like in love with Aidy. Your dad passed away. You keep Cap’n Crunch in a plastic bag in your pocket at all times. You’re pretty good at tennis. You’re ridiculously strong. And of course, there was that one time you saw a snake in your backyard and you freaked out. That’s my number one favorite memory of you. I’m pretty sure it was a garden snake, but you were hunched over in a corner like it was about to reach out and grab you. Tiny little Ollie had to be the one to catch it. So good.
It’s been years, and that’s pretty much all I’ve got. I should be able to embarrass you with your deepest secret or something. I’ll look at you when I’m trying to start some trouble and I’ll be like, “Hmm. I’ve got nothing worth saying.”
How do you do that? People find LOTS of things to say about me, even when I try to copy exactly what you do. Be in the room. Laugh at the jokes. Enjoy the company. Keep up a good appearance and stay out of drama. No one lets me get away with that.
Although I have to say, it’s kind of fun to be more than that. Sometimes.
Sometimes it’s the best thing in the whole world.
Sometimes it’s not.
Tell the group the tunnel goes farther than we know. Walk until the dead man’s eyes see you leave.
Love always,
Marley
July 11
Five Years Prior
My head screamed. My heart screamed. I screamed. My voice became louder than noise itself. Still barefoot, I sprinted out the door and down the street, my towel flying off and landing in the center of Albany Lane. The only word I could come up with was “Help!” I yelled it a thousand times in a thousand ways, my desperation begging for understanding, hoping for someone to fix the mess we’d made.
Aidy appeared at the edge of our driveway with Harrison and the Campbell twins. They took off toward the Bricket house before I could reach them. Spectators flitted blinds and pulled back curtains as I ran my voice ragged and hoarse, screaming to drown out the ringing in my ears. Black pavement scorched my feet, forcing my aimless yelling indoors.
One creak of our aging floorboards, sounding too much like a softened gunshot in my frenzied state of mind, broke my stream of wails. It was Ruby, with her big umber eyes widened in curious fear. She came from my bedroom holding our secret box: a collection of trinkets we’d taken while raiding our houses for hidden treasures. One of our stolen cigarettes, formerly property of my mom, filled a space between her unwashed fingers. She liked the habit more than I did. When Marley tried to teach us, I didn’t smoke it right, and I had no interest in learning the proper technique. It was gross and it burned my lungs. How anyone found enjoyment in it seemed mystifying to me.
Ruby said she only did it when she was stressed—which I think was something she’d heard my
mom say while trying to quit—but I didn’t have time to wonder what had Ruby worried enough to sneak off into my room and smoke. I was crying too hard.
“What’s wrong?” she cooed, the habit furthering the husky undertone of her voice.
I knew she wouldn’t smoke if my parents had gotten home, so I did what I’d wished to do so many times before—snatched her lit cigarette and put it out. It burned a shadowy mark into the carpet at the edge of my bedroom doorway. I grabbed her hand and dragged her along. She matched my wordless panic without question.
Outside, a good portion of our block had emerged from their windowsill perches. Contempt seeped from every seam of their breezy layers and crooked robes. They were grandparents and recluses. We were the rascals of Albany Lane. Marley was fifteen, Aidy was fourteen, Bigs and Teeny were thirteen, Ruby was twelve, and Nick and I were eleven. Our unattractive ages rendered us too old to be babysat, but too young to be so self-sufficient. Still, an unspoken trust permeated throughout all of Cadence. All residents granted the town’s children permission to roam without any real supervision, just as they had, and the generation before, and the one before that, and so on and so forth.
“What was that sound?” Old Mr. Jimenez, in his worn khaki shorts, half-buttoned Hawaiian shirt, and beige ball cap, asked me with a heavy undertone of disdain. “Are you setting off fireworks? Where are your parents? It isn’t—”
“Leave us alone!” Ruby shouted in protection.
We continued toward Marley’s, running down the street and around to the back of her house. The screen door was open. Bloodstained footprints, tracked in reverse, led us to the master bedroom.
Looking at the size of the prints in comparison to mine, sometimes stepping in one to measure the heel of it to my toe, I knew they were Nick’s, but there was no time to wonder where he’d gone.
Marley’s dead body lay in front of us.
12
Everything around me looked like textbook Cadence, the same exterior I’d seen nearly every single day of my life, washed out by the sun, strangled by dry heat. The ancient train tracks had disappeared completely. Rocky sand and starved shrubbery left little indication of where they’d once been. I walked up and down, feeling for what was left of them.
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