Ink and Bone(86)

He’d had a friend like that when he was growing up, Scott from three doors down. Rainer’s folks weren’t always around. His dad worked nights, slept days. His mom worked days and wasn’t usually home until right before dinner. But there were rules and chores, and he knew his parents loved him. Scott, on the other hand, was a stray dog. He never seemed to have to answer for where he was, skinny, rangy, dirt under his nails. He was smoking by the time they were ten, got Rainer his first beer when they were twelve. He was the kind of kid who said, “Hey, let’s go set these bottle rockets off in that abandoned warehouse.” And even though you knew it was a bad idea, you did it. With Scott, Rainer shoplifted, drank, smoked, explored a condemned building, and nearly got stuck inside an old refrigerator. Scott was dangerous; Rainer knew there was no bungee attached to that kid, nothing to pull him back from the hard landing of ugly consequences. Still, Rainer followed. There are always going to be people like that, Rain, warned his dad. They open dark doorways and invite you to walk inside. Just remember that you don’t have to go.

But that was the problem. Rainer wanted to go. He wanted to find the edge and push it, see how far you could go before you broke the seal and fell through. He always believed that he could pull himself back—just in time. And so far he had. He eventually graduated from high school, though several of the kids he hung with did not. He wasn’t dead like Jeb or in a wheelchair like Raife, who got into an accident drag racing. He wasn’t in jail like Scott, who was serving time for grand theft auto. It was like Finley always said about The Three Sisters, that she suspected they couldn’t get her to do anything that on some deep, dark level, she didn’t want to do herself. Rainer didn’t want to go all the way down. He just wanted to peer over the edge and see what was waiting below.

But this time, as he chased Abigail through the woods, the ground beneath his feet gave way. And he fell and fell, knocking against protruding objects on his way down and landing hard. He could barely comprehend anything but the surprise of it at first, his stomach lurching as he knew he was falling, calling out for Finley, who he knew couldn’t hear him. The pain, the fear came later.

And now, here he was in the darkness. He could hear the dripping of water somewhere, but that was it. And his own breathing. The ground around him was cold and wet, and he thought that if he died here no one would ever find him. Maybe a few years from now, some kid out in the woods with his friend would fall as he had and find Rainer’s broken bones down here far beneath the ground, the rest of him long ago eaten away.

Shit. No way. In spite of the rockets of pain shooting up his leg, so bad he had to cling to consciousness and breathe deep to keep himself from hurling. One hard push and he was sitting up unsteadily, sick, but not flat on his back. He forced himself to run a hand down his leg. Warm, slick and sticky with blood, but there was nothing sticking out, like a bone. He hadn’t impaled himself on anything. All good things.

That girl doesn’t want you, Rainer. His mother always knew how to cut right to the quick. If you follow her to that place, you’re just asking for heartache.

But his heart was already aching. It never stopped aching for Finley. From the minute he saw her, he was hopeless.

If you want her, if you love her, go get her, his dad said. If it doesn’t work out, at least you’ll know it wasn’t for lack of trying. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder. That’s why he’d followed her from Seattle to The Hollows, because he never wanted to wonder. Now he was wondering what would have happened if he’d just stayed in Seattle. At least he wouldn’t be down whatever hole he’d just fallen in.

Rainer felt on the wall for something to hold on to and found a grip. What was it? Wood, like a two-by-four. He knew where he was then, in one of those abandoned mine tunnels that Finley was talking about. He’d looked at the maps, marveled at how vast was the network, how deep and far the tunnels stretched. Finley had said that a kid falls into one nearly every summer, in spite of repeated warnings not to veer off park trails, in spite of the rangers’ attempts to find and cordon off weak areas. She said that a man hid down there for months while the police hunted for him. Did she say if they ever got him? Was he still down here? Surely not.

His heart was pumping—with fear, with effort—he tried to slow his breathing. He’d heard Jake talk about the mines, too, hadn’t he? Jake was some kind of history expert about The Hollows, was a total geek for the place, a lifelong member of The Hollows Historical Society. He said that there were climb-outs, places where ladders had been placed and led to openings, many of which had been sealed off by the park rangers.

Was it better to stay near the opening into which he’d fallen? Or feel his way deeper into the tunnel, hoping for a climb-out? He thought of the maps he’d looked at. There was a major mine head that Finley had circled, somewhere near the trail that he had been on. Had it been North? Rainer wasn’t great with directions.

“Finley,” he called, hearing his voice bounce around. “Finley, are you out there?”

His phone. Where was it? He patted at his pockets and found them empty. It must have fallen from his pocket when he fell. He reached around on the ground for it, finding only the damp and bumpy surfaces, not the slick, flat one he wanted.

“Come on,” he said. “Where are you?”

He kept feeling around. Please, please, please. Come on. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, the phone started to ring, just out of his reach to the right. It vibrated, filling the small space around him with its light. He reached, straining, and with effort and a nauseating wave of pain, he grabbed it. Finley’s face smiled out at him, a picture he’d snapped when she first loved him. Every time she called, he got to see the look that he didn’t get to see on her face in real time anymore.