The Quarry Girls(13)

“Me too! I get to play tambourine,” Junie said, tugging at the front of her favorite shirt, now more crop top than tee. DADDY’S FISHING BUDDY, it said, above a cartoon image of a smiling, curled walleye. Dad, who did not fish, had gotten it as a gift from a client back when he was in private practice, a client who misheard Junie as Johnny. Dad loved telling that story.

“No, you girls certainly did not tell me that,” Dad said, his face relaxing. “I want to hear everything. Do I have to camp out for tickets? How much will the concert T-shirts be?”

Then he smiled that younger-Kennedy smile that had been good enough to land my fairy-tale-beautiful mom back when she was 100 percent alive, and we finished our dinner.





BETH


Beth slumped on the dirt floor, her surroundings still so black she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. She counted her heartbeats, tapping them out on the cool earth with her fingers. Sixty heartbeats was a minute.

One one. One two. One three.

Sixty rounds was an hour.

Sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-three.

Nothing changed. The darkness didn’t shift, the smell of gravedirt didn’t recede, no sounds but the rabbit thump of her heart.

One hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three.

She first heard his footsteps as a counterbeat, a slight tremor overhead that made her lose count. She sat up, slowly, fighting waves of dizziness. She scurried backward until she reached the cold slap of a concrete wall. Her mouth was dry, lips cracked, her thirst a living thing. She’d already peed twice, reluctantly, in a far corner. She had to pee again.

Overhead, a heavy door creaked and screamed. The noise sounded like it came from the ceiling, but it wasn’t close, not yet. Then careful hangman’s footsteps on stairs, distant but nearing.

Then silence, except the salty crush of her heartbeat.

She tried to swallow it as the dark swallowed her.

Keys jingled on the other side of the dungeon door.

She chewed her tongue to keep from screaming.

The door opened.

What came next happened so fast. More darkness outlining him, not true belly-of-the-beast blackness like she was in. Regular dark. She caught a glimpse of what looked like a hallway behind him. She drank up that detail, swallowed it like icy water.

He stepped into the room and closed the door after him.

Blackness again.

She heard the clink of metal being set on dirt, smelled the kerosene, then burned her irises on the flare of a lighter. The illumination that followed was immediate and warm. A camping lantern.

He set it on the ground next to two metal pots. “I’ll leave it here if you’re good. You scream, I’ll take it away.”

The flickering flame underlit him, turning his face into a demon’s mask.

He’d visited the diner so many times. Sat in her section. She’d felt mildly flattered even while something about him made her uneasy, like whispers along the tender curve of her neck. But who do you mention that to? Who would listen without telling you to appreciate the attention?

Be happy. The guy likes you.

“You don’t want to burn it all up, though,” he said, bringing her attention back into the room.

The room.

It was a cube, maybe twelve-by-twelve feet. Cement walls. Dirt floor. A single door. She craned her neck even though it hurt terribly. Wooden beams on the ceiling. She’d explored it all on hands and knees, and then standing. There were no surprises.

“It’ll eat your oxygen, and you’ll suffocate.” He stepped aside and pointed toward the bottom of the door. It was sealed with a rubber ridge.

He’d planned to bring her here.

Or maybe she wasn’t the first.

“You can’t do this,” she said, her voice cracked and bloody. “People saw us together, I’m sure of it. Saw us talking outside the diner.”

“Kid, if they did, they decided to mind their own business. That’s what most people do, if they’re smart.” He laughed, quick and humorless, then picked up the pots. He moved them to the corner behind the door, directly over where she’d already peed. “One has clean water. The other’s for used.”

He hooked his thumbs into his pant loops. Shadows played across his long, snakelike fingers. She watched as he undid his belt, felt a cold paste filling her veins.

She moved her hands slowly behind her, not wanting him to notice, searching for a rock, a sliver of something sharp, anything to put between her and him.

“Remember,” he said. “You scream, and I take the light away.”





CHAPTER 6


If you balanced parents and doors, Claude had the best tunnel access of our group. Mom and Dad had kept our underground entrance original, a heavy oak door as fancy as our main one, the signature P for Pandolfo inlaid in its upper frame, same as Claude’s. Unfortunately, Mom’s situation made our place a hit or miss. Brenda’s parents were technically the mellowest of the bunch, but one of her brothers—Jerry, I think—got caught sneaking out after he was grounded a couple years back, and Mr. Taft sealed off their basement access. Now their basement door looked like that page from The Monster at the End of This Book where Grover was trying to keep some terrible creature out, all crisscross, knotted boards and heavy nails. Maureen’s basement was so full of storage that it made it a pain to reach her door.