Zoe sat alone awhile, pushing around noodles. She was nervous about the plan—she’d be an idiot not to be—but she was doing it for Jonah, and she wasn’t going to let him down.
There was a commotion on the other side of the restaurant. Zoe looked up and saw that Val, having finished her frozen yogurt, was outside the window. She was bored and doing jumping jacks to get her attention.
A strange thought struck Zoe as she headed for the door: she was going into the earth for her dad, while X was trying to get out of it for her.
thirteen
Zoe and Dallas planned the Silver Teardrop trip like it was a military operation. In the gleaming, high-ceilinged halls at school, they passed each other notes about rebelays, cowstails, and carabiners, and about whether they should use 11-millimeter rope, which was the safest, or 9 millimeter, which was lighter to carry. Dallas was the treasurer of a caving club with the unfortunate name of the Grotto of Guys. His enthusiasm reminded Zoe so much of her father that sometimes when Dallas was waving his hands around and babbling excitedly about the trip, she felt her eyes prick with tears.
It was a Friday night now, close to midnight. They were going caving in the morning. Zoe lay on the couch in the living room, a list of supplies and a map of Silver Teardrop in her hands. Her body felt jangly. She couldn’t get her mind to sit still. The moon, bright and big, was blaring through the window next to her. A larch scratched at the window with its skeletal hands.
Silver Teardrop was just a practice run. It was less daunting than Black Teardrop, where her father had died—but still, she had never gone caving in winter. She’d never dealt with snow and ice. She’d never gone without her dad at all.
Her father had treated caves like they were holy ground. Zoe thought some of the graffiti on the walls of the caves was cool, especially the ancient-looking stuff. But it used to make her dad mental. He’d shine his headlamp at a wall where somebody had carved Phineas in the rock, and he’d shake his head: “Even in the 1800s, some people were assholes.” Her dad had shown her caves with amazing domed ceilings, caves with lakes so blue they seemed phosphorescent, caves with enormous, glassy stalagmites that looked like a pipe organ.
“Here’s the deal, Zoe,” he’d tell her. “There are still a million unexplored places on earth—places where no human being has ever set foot. How cool is that? How freakin’ cool is that?! It’s just that they’re all underground.”
Zoe’s father had always been a few feet in front of her, testing the tunnels and drops and underground rivers. He’d always been right there, smiling goofily and shouting over his shoulder, “You’re freakin’ awesome! You can do this! You’re my girl!”
But not anymore. Not ever again.
She took her phone from the coffee table and texted Dallas to psych herself up.
Tomorrow Tomorrow TOMORROW!!!! she wrote.
Dallas texted back instantaneously, as if he’d just been waiting to hit Send.
Pumped! he wrote. Just gotta get out of work. Huns are being HUGE a-holes. Stand by.
WTFF? Zoe texted back. Don’t you dare blow me off!
Never! I’m PUMPED!!! G2G—I’m shaving. (Not my face.)
EWWWW. Tell the Huns if they don’t let you go, I will kick them in the MRGH and shove a spear up their FURG.
Ha!
Too much?
Hells no! LMNO!
N?
Nuts, Zoe. NUTS!
She set her phone on the coffee table and stared at the map of the cave. In the top right corner, there was an inscription:
Silver Teardrop. Bottomed March 2, 2005. Team leaders: Bodenhamer & Balensky. Water temp: 32°–33°.
The map, which had been drawn by hand, looked like an illustration of a digestive tract, like they used to give out in ninth-grade Bio. The entrance to the cave (the mouth) was a narrow crawlway. It was going to be claustrophobic, and they’d have to be roped and harnessed as they crawled, because after 50 feet the passage arrived at a steep, 175-foot drop (the esophagus). Water ran down one of the walls year-round. How much water there would be—a trickle or a waterfall—was the only question mark that nagged at Zoe and Dallas. They hoped the snow outside the cave hadn’t started to melt and flood underground.
Zoe’s eyes drifted down the map. At the bottom of the drop, there was a big, bell-shaped chamber (the stomach), where the waterfall splashed against a giant rock and spilled onto the floor. She and Dallas would be touching down in a freezing lake. They’d have to wear wet suits under their clothes.
The chamber was what the cavers came for. It must have some spectacular ice formations hanging from the ceiling: it was called the Chandelier Room.
Zoe let the map drop to the floor and rubbed her eyes.