_*_ 41 _*_
He was waiting for me when I got out of detention on Friday.
“Rogak?” he asked.
“Diaz.”
We fell into step next to each other and headed for my
locker. “What did you do this time?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“I just pointed out that calling it the ‘Mexican–American War’ falsely gives the impression that the Mexicans
started it, and that in fact, in Mexico they call it the ‘United
States Invasion of Mexico,’ which is the truth, or the ‘War of
1847’ which is at least neutral-ish.”
“You got detention for that?” Finn asked.
“Not exactly. Mr. Diaz, who really needs to work on his
anger management issues, yelled at me for disrupting his
class with what he called my ‘pedantic quibbles.’ Then this
idiot named Kyle lost it because he thought ‘pedantic’ meant
the same thing as ‘pedophile,’ and I sort of melted down a
little.” I handed him my books and dialed the combination
on my locker. “And I wasn’t being pedantic or quibbling.
Diaz was being an imperialist first worlder.”
“How do you know such a bizarre amount of history?”
Finn asked.
“Dad was a history major at West Point. I know more
about the fall of the Roman Empire than the Romans did.”
I lifted the latch. The locker didn’t open. I dialed it again.
“But that’s the wrong question. Ask why everyone else is so
pathetically stupid and why they’re always whining about
how hard American history is. Instead of getting detention,
I should get a medal for not slapping people in the face every day.”
The latch still would not open. I kicked the locker, remembering too late that I was wearing sneakers and not
boots.
Finn nudged me to the side and spun the dial. “You
whine about precalc.”
“That’s different,” I said, trying to stand casually on the
foot that wasn’t throbbing in pain. “The zombie overlords
numb our brains with math so they can implant their devious consumer-culture agenda in us.”
Finn pulled up the latch. My locker magically opened. “I hate you,” I said.
“I’m not being obtuse,” he said as he crossed his arms
over his chest, “but you’re acute girl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a math joke.”
I shoved my books into the locker. “‘Math joke’ is an
oxymoron, Fishhead, like ‘cafeteria food’ or ‘required volunteer community service.’”
“I think we should take each other to the limit to see if
we converge,” Finn said.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I’m flirting with you, Miss Blue, flirting in the perfect
language of calculus. It’s a sine I think you’re sweet as pi.
Get it?”
I paused. He’d said “flirt” twice. My detention rage
contracted into a small, spinning ball. Finn raised his eyebrows, waiting, maybe, for me to say something. What was
I supposed to say to an irritatingly good-looking guy using
stupid math puns to flirt with me in an empty hallway on a
Friday afternoon?
“You are the biggest dork in the history of dorkdom,” I
declared.
“Even though you have a mean value,” he said with a
grin, “one of these days I know you’ll want to integrate my
natural log.”
“Okay, that’s just awkward,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But you stopped scowling.” “The library is closing in five minutes so you don’t have
to tutor me today.” I slammed the locker closed. “But can I
get a ride home with you?”
“Um . . .” He suddenly frowned and spun the dial on the
locker next to mine. “Yeah . . . about that.”
“What? Is your car dead?”
“No.” He lifted the latch to check if he had broken in.
He hadn’t. “I was thinking maybe we could do something.
Together. Do something together.”
“Now?”
“Well, yeah. Now.”
“Like what? Write another article?”
“Um, no.” He jiggled the locker latch again. “I was
thinking more like a movie. Or maybe we could go the
mall.”
“A movie or the mall? Are you asking me on a date?” “Not quite.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “What
was that word you used at the game? ‘Anti-date’?” “Yeah, an antidote to the stupidity of dating. An anti-date by definition can’t be a brain-dead movie or a spirit-crushing trip to the mall.”
“What could it be?”
The conversation had suddenly veered into dangerous
waters. “I don’t know. I guess we could go to the mall if we
liberated all the animals in the pet store.”
“We’d be arrested and put in jail,” Finn said.
“That could be fun.”
“No, that would screw up my chances of getting into a
decent college, which would freak my parents all the way
out.”
“It would give you the best material ever for a college
essay.”
“Our mall doesn’t have a pet store.”
“Okay, so that’s a real problem,” I said. “Liberating hot
dogs at the food court doesn’t sound as interesting. What
would you normally do on a Friday afternoon—stuff your
face and game yourself into a coma?”
He shook his head. “I’d probably head to the library. No
one uses the computers there on Friday afternoons.” “That’s pretty lame for a guy whose middle name is
Trouble,” I said. “What about the quarry?”
He blinked. “You want me to take you to the quarry?” “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not exactly the kind of place to go in the daylight.” “Well, duh, it is if you actually want to see it.” He looked very confused, which made two of us, and I
decided that was better than being confused alone.
_*_ 42 _*_
The quarry was closer to my house than I realized, hidden from Route 15 by a grove of old maple trees with flame-red and caramel-orange leaves. We drove past the trees onto a dirt road and started up a steep hill. The quarry was on my side of the car, beyond a tall chain-link fence and about twenty feet of dirt and rock. I felt the emptiness before I saw it.
At the top of the hill was a large plateau; Finn swung the car so that it pointed toward the fence and parked. “The view is better at night.”
“You keep mentioning that,” I said. “Will we get arrested?”
“Doubt it.” He turned off the engine. “The cops only patrol at night when the view is better and conditions are ripe for all sorts of things.”
I unbuckled my seat belt, and unlocked and opened the door.
“Where are you going?” he called after me. “Hayley?”
The fence was fairly new: ten feet tall and built with steel mesh nearly as thick as my pinky finger. I stuck my foot in a hole, reached up, and started climbing.
“Wait,” Finn said.
“You coming?” I asked.
“You’re not supposed to do that.”
“So?” I reached, pulled, and climbed.
“In fact, that sign we passed back there?” he continued.
“That definitely said no trespassing.”
I lifted my left foot, found another opening. “We trespassed by driving up here.” My right hand was just below the top of the fence.
“Yeah, but you’re taking it to another level.”
I clutched the top bar and slowly worked my feet up until I could swing one leg over, then the other, and climb down the forbidden side.
“Ta-da!” I threw my arms in the air, victorious. In front of me, uneven granite sloped up to the quarry’s edge. It made me think of an ancient map. Like if we went over the edge, we’d be lost forever in the “Great Unknown.” Here be dragons . . .
“Now what?” Finn asked.
“I’m going to walk over there and look down.” “Oh, no, you’re not.” He leapt at the fence and started
climbing. “Don’t move, don’t you dare. The whole thing could crumble.”
“I am standing on a block of granite, Finnegan. It’s not going to crumble for another billion years.”
He swung his legs over and quickly climbed down the inside of the fence, sweating and breathing hard even though he was in way better shape than I was.
“What if an earthquake hits?” He stood in front of me, right hand clenching the fence tightly, his knuckles bonewhite.
“The only natural disasters around here are blizzards. It’s fifty degrees out, so I think we’re safe for the next ten minutes or so.”
“Fracking.” He licked his lips and swallowed. “Earthquakes can happen anywhere now because of fracking. You could be walking to your seat at the movies, your face in a box of popcorn, and boom, a massive earthquake rips open the ground and thousands die.”
“Another reason to avoid the movie theater and the mall,” I said, taking a step away from the fence.
“Don’t!” he shouted. “I mean, it’s dangerous, going to the edge.”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“I do,” he said miserably. “It’s a Man Law.”
“You did not just say that.”
“I don’t make the rules. I just have to follow them.” “That’s ridiculous and patronizing.” I took another step.
“Stop, please,” he said with a groan. “Can you do it on your butt?”
“What?”
“Like this.” He let go of the fence and sat, hyperventilating. “Scootch on your rear end. It’ll be safer. Please?”
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.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “You almost went over. I’m not even exaggerating. You jerked forward and I really, really thought you were going to fall. Oh, God. You hate me now, don’t you?”
I sat up, rubbing the back of my head where it hit the ground. I didn’t almost fall. It felt more like something wanted to pull me into the air, but that was crazy, right? Nothing like that could ever happen.
“So do you?” Finn brushed dirt out of my hair. “Do you hate me? Should I drive you home now? I don’t want to, but I will.”
I blinked twice, three times, and pretended I had dust in my eyes so I could rub them hard, trying to rub out the sensation of almost launching myself over the edge.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “Do you hate me?”
He sighed and smiled. “I could never hate you, even if I wanted to.”