Ben knew their plan involved an element of hypocrisy. Using Francesca’s gift could be considered an exploitation along the same lines as that of the freak-seekers who made pilgrimages to the Cillo gravesite. The activity had gotten heavier in the last few months, and Ben had started to think of their plan less as righting a wrong and more like a rescue mission. Vandals were getting braver, most recently spray-painting other graves with arrows pointing to the Cillos’ bench, which Ben and Kyle realized early on was too heavy to move.
Off the exit, Kyle took the corner around Johnny’s Foodmaster too fast, and the truck lifted on two wheels. Ben leaned toward Kyle, sure they would tip. The truck righted with a bounce—Klunk!—and flew past the rusted rack where the kids left their bikes before they entered the quarry. Ben hadn’t considered that his and Kyle’s escape out of Bismuth might be accelerated by dying. Though that would be right in line with Bismuth’s new rap. Consider People’s article on what was being called the “Deadly Quarry Mystery.” The article was less about the girls and more about Bismuth as a place where young people disappear (“Famed ‘Town of No Old Men’ Now Losing Its Youth,” December 2016). Ben had memorized the first line: Some call it a karmic correction, others see it as the inevitable result of the town’s youth’s unrestricted access to the dangerous Bismuth quarry. Regardless, a spike in suicides and accidental deaths among the town’s young people is a reversal for this rough “town of no old men” nine miles outside of Boston, where for decades, silicosis meant death for many by middle age. A trio of reporters had done some creative demographic addition that showed the number of deaths of citizens ages eighteen to thirty was triple the number of most towns in the Commonwealth. Ben noted that eighteen to thirty didn’t include the ages of the Cillo girls, or Connie, for that matter. A special insert box explained the nature of the poisonous quarry, that had “given so much and taken so much away.” Ben, who had taken to collecting clippings about the Deadly Quarry Mystery, would have known about the story anyway, since “local epidemiologist” Carla Lattanzi was a primary source.
Kyle looked over at Ben.
“You ready?” he asked.
Ben locked his fingers underneath his seat. “Now or never.”
Kyle jammed the accelerator, and the truck’s wheels spun dirt as they climbed the steep incline. He weaved in and out of saplings and drove right over the smallest ones. Ben could barely see ahead of them, and he bounced on the seat next to Kyle, who screamed and hollered, “Yee-haw!” Ben answered with a lame whoop. Ben checked over his shoulder for their precious cargo, strapped tight but probably bouncing around inside, though Kyle would remind him that human ash is indestructible and he needed to chill. Besides, it was too late to tell Kyle to stop. If he did stop, they could tip or get stuck in the mud. A couple of times he was sure they would die. The hill to the quarry seemed much steeper than it did when he hiked it, and he came to thinking about Mira, and Francesca and Connie, and the day they took Connie’s last hike. It wasn’t hard for Ben to understand how Connie had overexerted herself; perhaps she’d even run. He knew no one ran without being chased, or without a goal to reach at the top, and he wondered which of these it had been. Or did they have to convince her? He saw Connie that day on the ledge, looking like a rejected puppy, gazing at Ben with those wide-spaced eyes—“I thought, I mean, if you did like me, too, we might…”—so unconvincing on her own.
Who had held the EpiPen while she struggled to breathe?
Kyle hit a rock and Ben slammed his head against the roof. For a second, he saw black, and an electronic hum dulled the crashing noises of the truck tearing up the hill.
Teenagewasteland blogger Grim Reaper, a.k.a. thirteen-year-old Tyler Peavey of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, blogging from his parents’ house to more than one million subscribers, had instituted a Countdown Clock on his home page wherein he ticked off the deaths of teenagers and children in Bismuth, Massachusetts. Ben wondered if he would be another statistic to the Grim Reaper, or if he’d make his connection to the sisters at all. It would depend, he imagined, on whether or not Kyle got out alive and completed their mission. Surely it would be a big story if they were discovered here, splayed on the ground next to the toppled truck, with their stolen goods locked in the stowaway trunk. They’d say he and Kyle were fetishists, necrophiliacs, whacked on drugs. Who would tell their story?
Kyle shook Ben’s sore shoulder.
“Ouch,” Ben murmured, pulling his arm away.
“You smacked your head again. You gonna make it?”
Ben blinked and rubbed the top of his skull. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Then get out of the truck. We’re here.”
Ben had slunk far down in the seat, and he shimmied upward, dazed, until he could see over the windshield hinge. Kyle had parked in the tiny clearing before the ledge. Ben knew if he looked backward, he might crap his pants, because going down meant jamming it into reverse, at least until they had enough room to clear a three-point turn. Kyle jumped down and strode to the back, shaking out his dead hand. Ben’s legs felt heavy, like the magnitude of the act had lodged in them.
He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He began looking for excuses. “They said last night on the news they might drain it.”
Kyle came back around to the front of the truck. “Your mother said it’s too expensive and it’ll never happen.”
“What if they find out what we did, and then this place becomes a theme park, the way the cemetery is now?” Ben asked.
“We’ll cover our tracks by hand,” Kyle replied.
“What if it backfires on us? What if, since there’s nothing for them to look at in the cemetery, they start coming here because it’s the scene of the crime?”
“The papers said the electrical fence project starts next week.”
“Fine. But that’s three days from now.”
“Dude…”
“The gawkers might still come to the cemetery to see Connie.”
“It’s different for Connie. She wanted the attention. You know that. In a way—”
“Don’t even go there.”
“Right. I won’t. Because we don’t have time.” Kyle checked the skyline. A squiggly red line glowed at the horizon. “It’s almost daylight. We do it or we don’t do it. Unless you want to take these babies home and hide them in your bedroom closet, we need to execute.”
Ben looked over the swirling quarry water to the Boston skyline. Black night brightened into gunmetal as the sun stirred somewhere below. He slid over the seat and circled the truck on spent legs, back to the flatbed. Kyle followed and stood on the opposite side.
Kyle smiled. “How do you want to do this?”