The Impossible Knife of Memory(37)

I sat and scootched a few feet. “Will this make you happy?”

“No, but it’ll reduce my terror to panic.”

“You can stay there, you know. Guard the fence.”

He shook his head and muttered, “Man Law,” then sat and scootched behind me.

When I got to the edge, I crossed my legs and took a deep breath, enjoying the view. From one side to the other, the quarry was almost as wide as a football field is long. Scraggly bushes and grass grew on thin ledges in the sheer walls, with a few birds’ nests tucked into them. The surface of the water was at least fifty feet below me. There was no telling how deep it went.

According to Finn, an underground spring had flooded the quarry decades earlier. The ghosts of the workers killed in the flood still haunted the place, he said, operating the skeletons of the dump trucks and earthmovers underwater. (The ghosts of the people who killed themselves were probably here, too, but I didn’t mention that.) A gravel road sloped up out of the water on the far side. Trees grew through the roof of a building over there and heavy chains stretched across the road, maybe to protect the ghosts.

Finn moved a few inches at a time, breathing like he was sprinting.

“You okay?” he asked.

I chuckled and inched forward until my legs could dangle over the edge. The smooth rock warmed my butt; the wind ruffled my hair like a giant hand. The quarry water rippled and reflected the dizzy clouds above. The whole place felt alive, somehow, like the ground knew we were here, like it remembered every person who had every stopped to enjoy this view. Or maybe every person left something behind her: fingerprints, DNA, secrets whispered near the rock face and recorded, hidden and kept safe until time ended. Maybe the flood was the rock protecting those secrets so that men would not dig them out with monstrous machines.

“This place is amazing,” I said.

Finn scootched once more and, a body length behind me, caught his first glimpse of the quarry. “Oh, God.” He bent his knees and leaned his forehead against them, hiding from the sight.

“We’re okay. We’re safe,” I said. My heels bounced lightly against the quarry wall. “This rock isn’t going anywhere. Touch it.”

He didn’t answer but his hands slowly came out of the pouch of his hoodie and spread out across the sun-warmed granite. “How far down to the water?”

“Not that far.”

He craned his neck for a brief look and shuddered. “Ohgodohgodohgod.”

“Don’t like heights?” I asked.

“What was your first clue?”

“You’re a swimmer. Don’t you ever jump off the high dive?”

“Hell no,” he said. “Please don’t tell me you’re the girl who can do double flips off it and come up laughing.”

“Hell no,” I echoed. “I can’t even swim.”

“What?” He stared at me. “Everyone can swim.”

“Not me.”

And there it was, that awful knife again

ripping . . . sun glaring off the pool grown-ups crowded I can’t find him music so loud nobody hears when I slip into the deep-end water closes over my face I open my mouth to yell for Daddy and water sneaks in my mouth my eyes watching the water get thick and then thicker and grown-ups dancing . . .

“Why not?” Finn asked.

A couple of birds flew by. Their shadows floated across the water.

“Never learned,” I said.

ripping . . . in the water above the water flying like a cloud grown-ups screaming grown-ups splashing in the water still can’t find him . . .

Finn scootched forward a few more inches and wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. “I’ll teach you.” “Seriously, I don’t do water, except in the shower.” “Chicken.”

“You never hear about chickens drowning.”

He scootched at an angle to come closer to me. “I’d like to point out that right now I’m confronting my fear of heights, precariously perched on this ledge in an attempt to impress you.”

“Puh-leez, Finnegan. You’re at least a meter from the edge.”

“If I make it to the edge will you let me teach you how to swim?”

I laughed. “Your feet have to dangle.”

He shot me a dirty look and slowly inched forward, his legs straight in front of him, until the soles of his sneakers were technically inhabiting space a millimeter past the edge of the cliff.

“I did it,” he croaked, his voice breaking on the last word. Sweat had beaded on his forehead again and he was shaking, even though the rock under us was radiating heat like a furnace.

“Isn’t it fun?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “The opposite of fun. This is like dealing with subway rats, antibiotic-resistant infections, and the cafeteria’s mystery nuggets all rolled together and magnified to the tenth power. Why aren’t you scared?”

“The higher, the better.” I yawned and closed my eyes. “When I was little I used to pretend I could fly because I had wings hidden under my skin. I could unfold them,” I stretched my arms out, shoulder height, “lean into the wind and—” My butt shifted on the rock, sending pebbles rattling down the quarry wall. My eyes flew open as Finn yelled and grabbed a handful of my shirt, yanking me backward and sending both of us sprawling.