“Rope,” he says. “There’s rope buried.”
He pulls at his end while Casey and I continue to unearth it, scooping the dirt off to the side. The rope is looped through a partially exposed root, and as we free it from the ground, it disappears into a path that takes us farther from the tree. It’s braided and fraying and off-color, but I know June’s hands were here, seventeen years earlier. We pull at the rope, all four of us, all completely focused on the task of unearthing it, and the ground cracks and disintegrates as the rope emerges. It stops suddenly, and I feel resistance just as I hear a clang of metal.
Dominic uses his shovel to move the dirt off the surrounding area, and a dark-green tarp emerges underneath, the rope disappearing below. I go to pull at the tarp, but Dominic points at me with the shovel. “Wait,” he says, and he continues to move the dirt off the top. I use my feet to brush aside the dirt that he has broken and softened, and Cameron and Casey do the same.
Eventually, all that remains is a pine-green tarp with remnants of dirt covering an area of the forest the size of my bathroom floor in the small clearing. My limbs are shaking.
Dominic nods at me and this time I carefully peel back a corner, heavy from the dirt that still remains. I lift it and shake it out, careful not to disturb the area below. I’m still removing the tarp when Casey sucks in a breath and Dominic lets out a laugh.
“Holy shit,” Cameron says.
I drop the tarp in a heap, forgotten.
In the middle of the forest floor, in the middle of nowhere, there’s a wooden door. The rope attaches to a metal hook in the center of the panel of wood. Dominic pulls on the rope, and the door gives, just a bit. Dominic’s hands tremble as he reaches his fingers under the splintered edge and pulls it back.
The hinges moan in protest, and the door scrapes against the wooden sides after decades of resettling. And then there is a dark cavern. I can’t see a ladder and I can’t tell how deep it goes, and apparently neither can anyone else. “Flashlight,” Dominic says.
Casey drops her pack and rifles through it, pulling out two palm-size flashlights. She keeps one for herself and hands the other to Dominic. Both of them lie on their stomachs, leaning over the mouth of the entrance, their beams pointed below. We’re all leaning over the opening, casting shadows, but I can make out a dirt floor not too far below and a wooden ladder lying across the ground.
Dominic crouches down, and for a second I think he’s going to jump in first, but then he eyes me—eyes us—over his shoulder and says, “Casey, care to do the honors?” It’s as if he’s constantly holding Casey hostage, as if he doesn’t quite trust any of us.
I don’t blame him. For that split second, I considered shutting the top over him, of making a run for it, but the pull of finding out what’s inside is too great. I wouldn’t run right now. He’s holding the information hostage. I’m completely in. He doesn’t need Casey.
She shines her light around before sitting on the edge and hanging for a second before dropping. “Whoa,” her voice echoes from below. Dominic motions for me to go next, and I do. I feel the temperature drop before I hit the ground. It’s colder here, under the earth. Mustier. And before I can see anything, I get the premonition that this is a coffin, and I am June, and this is what becomes of us both.
I don’t have a flashlight, but my eyes follow Casey’s light everywhere it lands. There are walls—beams of wood that have created a shelter inside the earth. There’s only the one large room, but it’s much bigger than I originally thought. It covers the space of the clearing above, though the walls join at weird angles, not squared off at all, like someone had to work around the root system of the trees. But the walls are only the beginning.
There are cots, the type I assume are used in medical triage, against the wall. Two of them. And there are boxes stacked in the corners. There are lanterns around the room, requiring a match and not a battery. And thermal blankets, thick sleeping bags, and a huge supply of canned food and water. It’s like a bomb shelter, except it’s not reinforced to withstand a blast. It’s for hiding.
I didn’t hear Cameron or Dominic land down here, but Cameron actually has a hand instinctively on my arm. Maybe he doesn’t know it’s me. Maybe in the semidark he thinks I’m Casey. Except very gradually, and very slowly, he moves his fingers down my arm until his fingers find mine. He gives my hand a quick squeeze before letting go. I think it’s meant to reassure me, which only has the opposite effect. Dominic whirls on me with the flashlight, and I pull my hand away even farther, using it instead to shield my eyes. “Do you know what this is?” he asks.
Oh, I can guess.
And so can he.
“This is June’s hideaway,” he says.
Does he not see the two cots? The two sleeping bags? The two sets of everything?
“Liam and June’s hideaway,” I correct.
I look at the boxes, and it’s as if I can feel June’s whisper coming from across the room. What do you want to show me? I wonder.
There’s nothing personal belonging to June in the entire room, at first glance. No heart-shaped engravings of June loves Liam or Liam loves June. Guess there was no time for that kind of romanticized love. June was my age when she went to college—a year ahead of her peers. My age when she met Liam White. My age when she broke into the database. They met in college and broke into the database six months later. I imagine they were nearly always on the run after that, and Liam was dead within the year.
There’s also nothing at first glance, boxes included, that gives away the fact that this was left by June. It’s like she wanted to be extra sure that, if this place was found, it wouldn’t be connected to anyone.
There are no trinkets or pictures—nothing to live on that wasn’t completely generic. Maybe the boxes are full of her things. I hope so. I imagine her discarding everything that was once hers, that she cared for, that reminded her of someone or something, until all that remained was this. And here she sat for over a year, with nothing but boxes and food. Until she became nothing more than this.
At least my room had a window.
At least my island had electricity and running water, books and computers, TV and people.
Dominic heads straight for the boxes. He’s practically ravenous, a hunger I’ve never seen in him. Casey fidgets, looking over his shoulder. It’s meant for me, the information inside, and I feel the anger rising. These boxes are mine.
He takes the top box off the stack and peels back the tape, which has been binding the top closed, and I feel him peeling back my skin.
He unfolds the top, and I feel him staring through me, my soul exposed.
And just when I think of doing something impulsive and reckless, Cameron leans over and says, “You doing okay?” like he knows I am not.
I can’t really see him down here, and it almost feels safe to lean into his body for absolutely no reason I can give, other than the fact that I want to.
I feel like a magic trick—that I am both out here and inside the box, and I want to ground myself here. To grab something on this side. I want him to hold me here.
I’m reaching for him, and the flashlight swings at me, exposing me. Cameron looks at my hand, halfway between us, but Dominic is too amped up to notice or say anything. “Come see,” he says.