The Quarry Girls(18)

The door was slammed shut.

Before I saw her face.

That’s not true it was Maureen of course it was Maureen who else has green streaks in her hair who were those men Claude grabbed my hand and Junie’s and Brenda led the way and we ran so hard and fast, into the earthy black gut of the tunnels, following Brenda’s bobbing circle of light, our breath ragged, not looking back, barely slowing to unlock and tumble through the nearest exit door—me and Junie’s—and race across our basement and upstairs and out into the rain-soaked front lawn, where I doubled over and retched beneath the moon’s incurious eye.





CHAPTER 10


“What was it, Heather, what’d you see?” Junie was balancing on one foot and then the other, nibbling at the edge of her thumb pad. The storm had come and gone while we were underground. It left behind a clear night sky glittering with stars, spongy ground, and the swollen scent of worms.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, stomach curdling all over again at the steaming pile of partially digested beans I’d hurled. Unless the storm returned, I’d need to unroll the hose and wash the chunks away.

“Yeah, what was it?” Claude asked. “What did you see?” He stood next to Junie, his face flushed, hopeful. His expression told me that by some miracle of positioning, he hadn’t seen inside that basement, either.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. I dragged my gaze to Brenda.

Her eyes were empty circles, her chin quivering. She looked so young, little-girl young, and I was instantly transported to the summer she agreed to jump off the high dive with me at the Muni. We were maybe seven years old. While teens and older hit up the quarries, the young Saint Cloud kids spent hot days at the municipal pool.

I think we all would have been fine doggie-paddling in the Muni’s shallow end that first summer. But then Ant found Maureen and me sitting on the lip by the pool stairs, Brenda floating in the water by our feet. He tried teasing us, but we didn’t pay him any mind. Then, out of the blue, he dared Maureen to leap off the high dive.

“No,” she said, leaning forward to scoop cool water onto her pink arms.

It wasn’t that she was scared. Maureen had never been scared of a thing in her life. It was that even at age seven, she didn’t care enough about what Ant thought of her to put in the effort.

Maureen, what were you doing with those men?

I was a terrible swimmer, frightened of the deep water. To my surprise, though, I’d called out, “I’ll do it.”

Brenda glanced up from the pool, so astonished that her eyeballs showed an extra ring of white. She didn’t know what had gotten into me, either.

“You don’t have to,” Maureen said, her nose crinkled.

“I know,” I said, hopping to my feet and marching off toward the soaring diving board. I made it all of a yard before I wondered why in the world I’d agreed to such a bananas thing and how I could back out of it.

But then Brenda leaped out of the water to follow me, the ruffled edges of her pink one-piece dripping on the hot concrete. “I’ll jump, too!” she said, her strong little-girl thighs tightening with each step.

“I’m not gonna let you two do it without me!” Maureen said, whooping. She scared off a duck that had been eluding the lifeguard. The three of us skipped to the pool’s deep end, weaving through clots of kids. The sun was hot, baking the chlorine smell, but we huddled in the shade of the fifteen-foot platform, shivering as we waited our turn.

“I can go first,” Maureen whispered. “Show you it’s safe. That okay, Heather?”

I nodded. I think I already knew there was no way I was climbing up that ladder.

We watched Maureen’s butt hike toward the sky, and then when her turn came, she ran off the edge with a rebel yell. She plummeted past us, cannonball-style, eyes wide open and nose plug in place. Brenda clutched my wrist, not letting go until Maureen resurfaced with a grin and a thumbs-up.

“I can go next if you want,” Brenda had said, looking at me, her mouth slack, like she’d just realized she’d made a terrible deal.

The same face she wore now.

Maureen, who were those men? Do they know you jumped off the high dive so I didn’t have to?

“Are you okay?” I asked Brenda.

She nodded dumbly and dropped next to me, even though we were right by the sick. She grabbed for a blade of grass and shredded it.

“Are we gonna get in trouble?” Junie asked. “I’m sorry I opened the door.”

“We don’t have to remember,” Brenda said, ignoring Junie, her eyes as deep and hopeless as the quarries. “We don’t have to have seen anything.”

“Come on,” Junie said, whining. “What was in there?”

“Nothing,” Brenda said, eyes still locked on me. “It was too dark to see.”

She held out her hand. I gripped it. It was shaking and cold.

“Swear,” she said, her voice grinding like a rock tumbler. “Swear it was too dark to see anything.”

But I didn’t need to be told not to tell. My brain was already scooping away what was left of the memory. I released the pieces I was trying to make sense of, the story that kept trying to form. Let it go. You don’t have to remember.

Brenda mistook my silence for doubt.

“Her reputation,” she said. “Swear it was too dark.”