Where She Fell Page 5

  Alice catches a mangled tree branch that’s floating by and sets it down close to Grayson.

  “Careful with that thing!” He flinches away. “I’d like to keep both my eyes, thanks.”

  “Where does that river come from?” I blurt out, while Alice is busy laughing.

  “We can’t get out that way, if that’s what you’re asking,” Grayson says in a sorrow-tinged voice. He sits down next to Alice.

  I shrug like that’s not why I was asking, but it hits hard to hear him say it.

  “The ceiling gets too low,” Alice elaborates. “Nowhere to come up for air. So you’d drown.”

  So we really are trapped. I want to say it, but it’s too depressing and I don’t want to be the girl who comes in and sucks the joy out of everybody. Not when they’re still watching me curiously, and I know they’ll discuss what they think of me next time we’re apart.

  I notice a woman examining some of the structures on the far side of the cavern. She appears to be taking measurements on a stalagmite.

  “Who’s that?” I ask Eleanor. “I didn’t meet her.”

  Her eyes follow my gaze. “Oh, that’s Mary. She’s our nerd.”

  She says nerd without cruelty, but my stomach clenches.

  No one will ever date you if you don’t stop being such a nerd. Cut it out with the nerd stuff; nobody wants to listen to that crap. You are such a nerd, Eliza; you’re lucky we hang out with you.

  Stop, I command my brain. Stop it right now.

  “She’s a scientist,” Eleanor elaborates. “Like a geologist or something. She’s … a little odd, but she knows everything.”

  My stomach clenches again, but in a different way, now. A hopeful way. Eleanor speaks of Mary so reverently. Like her knowledge, her nerdiness, is impressive. Worthy of respect.

  “I want to be a geologist when I grow up,” I blurt out, and then feel myself blush.

  Grayson looks straight at me and I think I might literally die.

  “Really?” Alice sounds interested.

  “Yeah, I mean … I like rocks and the earth and stuff.”

  “Huh.” Alice frowns thoughtfully. “That’s ambitious. I don’t even know what I want—would have wanted to be.”

  Grayson chews on the inside of his lip for a long moment, and then says, “Maybe together, you and Mary can find us a way out of here.”

  Alice elbows him in the ribs. “Would you stop with that? You know how pointless it is.”

  He shrugs, frowns, and looks away. Then mutters, “Nothing’s pointless except giving up.”

  I meet Mary later in the day, pretty much by accident. Eleanor explained to me privately that the reason Mary didn’t come meet me when all the others did is because she’s a bit odd. “Not because of the geology thing,” she was quick to add. “She’s just sort of … She can be hard to interact with. Very brilliant, though.”

  My ribs are doing better—confirming that they are bruised and not broken—but breathing and too much activity still hurts, so Colleen told me not to overdo my participation just yet. I’m listening to her but also I don’t want to sit around awkwardly while everyone else chips in to help keep this place running. So during working hours I follow Eleanor around, which actually helps me get a feel of the routine.

  But when I leave her side to pay the outhouse a visit, I notice something that sidetracks me. Against the far wall of the cavern sits a table that’s made from a flowstone formation with its top scraped flat. It’s covered in an array of rock and mineral samples, plus some cave formations that have been cut away from their original locations.

  Curious, I pick up one of the mineral formations, inspecting it. With the poor lighting, I have to bring it pretty close to my face to take a guess at what the almost turquoise-looking specimen is.

  “Malachite,” says a voice behind me.

  I whirl around, formation still clutched in my fist. It’s Mary, standing behind me, expressionless. “Is it? That was going to be my guess. I’ve never seen it raw before.”

  She looks startled.

  “Hmm, interesting.” She holds out a palm, on which I set the chunk of malachite. “So you actually know some things.”

  “I—well, I’m sixteen, so I have been in school for a while.”

  “I mean about geology.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s what I want to major in when I go to college.”

  “Excellent.” She beams at me. I return her smile, observing her in a way I hope is subtle. Mary’s in her thirties, if I had to guess, with long blond hair tied neatly into a ponytail. She’s slender—well, gaunt is probably more accurate; everyone here has a bit of a wasted look. And she’s a very intense person.

  Immediately, she starts quizzing me on all sorts of things. Types of rocks she’s got sitting out. The names of different styles of cave formations. The layers of the earth. She even gives me math problems. I am, fortunately, pretty excellent at math, and I can tell Mary’s glad about it. I’m getting a little stressed; it’s like taking the PSATs with no warning and hoping everything turns out okay. And after the math problems, it gets weirder. Mary starts asking me about my thoughts since I’ve been down here, digging really deep about my anxiety and what it is usually versus what it is right now. How I feel about this cave. What my family life was like and if I want to go home. I’m honest with her about everything, which terrifies me, but I feel, somehow, like she’ll be able to tell if I lie.

  She whips out a battered spiral notebook and starts scribbling furiously in it.

  “You have a journal, too?” I resist the urge to peer over the top of it for a glimpse of what she’s writing. I wonder if she, too, had to fight with Glenn in order to keep this.

  Her pen halts its movement. “You have one?”

  “Yeah. I mean, there’s not a lot in it right now. My friends and I were planning to go to this cave up on the mountain and …” I hesitate, worried that I’m boring her, but she doesn’t seem bored. “Anyway, I wanted to bring a notebook in case I saw anything interesting. I guess … I have seen some interesting stuff.”

  She barks a laugh. “I guess so.” She leans closer to me, radiating intensity. “Don’t stop writing in that journal, okay? Even if you start to feel … I don’t know, comfortable here, keep writing things down. And keep reading what you’ve written. You do want to go home, you said?”

  She says all of this so fast that it takes several seconds before I realize she’s stopped. “Of course! More than anything.”

  “Good. Do not forget that.” A haunted expression crosses her face, and when she speaks again, her voice is low and shaken. “You cannot let yourself forget.”

  “I won’t.” I cross my arms tight, like I can press the bad feeling out of my chest. “Why would I forget? I need to—my family thinks I’m dead. They have to know that I’m not and that I love them and I miss them.”

  A thick lump knots in my throat. I can’t swallow it away.

  “Have you always kept a journal?” Mary asks.

  I nod.

  “Have you ever read back through entries from when you were younger and seen how passionate you were about something, but in retrospect, you couldn’t recall that feeling, or even begin to understand it anymore?”

  “I guess.” My voice comes out hoarse. Every time I think of my family, it practically knocks the wind out of me.

  “Read back through the things you write in that journal,” she says, holding hers tight in both fists. “Read it every day and remember what is in there. Even if you stop being able to understand how you felt about certain things, think about it logically. Know that you did feel that way, and that there was a reason, and don’t let yourself become complacent.”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  She frowns and sets down her notebook. “I’m sorry. I’m scaring you. I’m just—this is a geologist’s dream, Eliza.” She spreads her arms wide. “It’s got everything. But it’s so easy to be taken in by the beauty, by the power of it all. You have to be—you have to
stay really strong. Keep your mind clear. Not let the whispers of the cave speak to you too strongly.”

  I don’t understand what she means and I wish she wouldn’t be so cryptic, but I’m afraid of what she might say if I ask her to be more blunt.

  There is something about this place that creeps inside of you. This bad-smelling cavern with its shadowed corners and uncomfortable beds and terrifying creatures already feels a little bit like home to me, after barely any time. But I would never want to live here more than I wanted to live in my actual home. That’s an absurd thought.

  Isn’t it?

  “There you are!” Eleanor approaches, jovial and unscary. “I was getting bored without you.”

  I grin and hope it isn’t too dorky. It’s a little embarrassing how long it’s been since someone outside my family made me feel like my presence was wanted rather than put up with. “Sorry.”

  She waves away my apology. “You say sorry too much. Anyway, Mary, just FYI, Glenn thinks he saw a bioluminescent, so he said we should all be on the alert for the time being.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask nervously. “What’s a bioluminescent?”

  “They’re nothing,” says Mary, annoyed.

  Eleanor’s eyes glint and she leans closer to me. “If you go deeper, you’ll find these other people-like creatures who were born down here. And they don’t like us.” Her tone is casual but her words are straight out of a horror movie.

  Goose bumps prick my skin from toes to scalp.

  “Goodness, Eleanor, you do have a flair for the dramatic.” Mary puts down the rock she was holding. “We don’t know where they live, Eliza. Or how many there are. They don’t seem to like venturing up this way, but we’ve come across them before with hunting parties, and from time to time, we think we spot one.”

  “Are they like … regular people who happen to live underground?” Of course they’re not. Or else Eleanor wouldn’t have called them people-like creatures or bioluminescents. This creeps the heck out of me. I never should have let Sherri talk me into watching The Descent.

  “Sort of. But also … no.” Mary picks up a mineral formation and begins inspecting it. “We call them the bioluminescents because, well … they are. They glow.”

  “And they don’t speak our language,” Eleanor adds.

  “If they did, I’d be deeply concerned about who taught them,” Mary says.

  And then I remember—the glowing thing I saw. It was a person, one of these bioluminescent beings. “I think—I think I saw one,” I say.

  “Really?” Mary sets down the formation. “When?”

  I describe what I saw, and they’re both riveted. “Have either of you seen one?” I ask.

  Eleanor shakes her head. “Only the skeleton.”

  Mary doesn’t answer.

  “What would happen if they … tried to attack us?”

  Mary sighs. “We don’t actually know that they’re hostile; everyone just assumes.”

  “Oh come on.” Eleanor folds her arms tight. “They attacked Glenn two months ago. We know they’re hostile.”

  Mary opens her mouth to respond, but that’s when a sound almost like a clanging bell alerts everyone that it’s time for dinner. It sounds before every meal, and it scared the crap out of me every time when I was isolated in my tent.

  “I guess we’ll pick this discussion back up later,” Mary says tightly.

  “I guess we will.” Eleanor scowls.

  The tension between them bothers me. I feel like it’s my fault for asking about the other humans, but I don’t want to apologize, because Eleanor said I do it too much. So I say nothing.

  Dinner is everyone sitting on the cave floor around the fire and eating food from stone-carved bowls. From what I understand of the system, everyone takes turns cooking the meals, but it’s nothing fancy for obvious reasons. I guess eventually I’ll help cook, too. Earlier, I watched Eleanor disembowel a dead and very large insect, and I can’t say it wasn’t interesting. But I can’t say it made the prospect of eating insect forever any more appealing, either.

  Eleanor and I sit with Grayson and Alice. The three of them immediately strike up an easy conversation, totally carefree. I stomp on the part of me that’s jealous. Among the three, Grayson arrived most recently, a few months ago. Alice has been here over a year, and Eleanor nearly two. Of course they’ve bonded. It doesn’t mean I’ll never be part of the group. But my brain is a troll and it tells me they’re already settled, that they might not want me, and that I have no other options.

  I try to keep up with their conversation as I eat, but Alice and Eleanor are gossiping about some of the adults, and I don’t remember everyone’s names yet, so I’m basically lost, even as Eleanor tries to include me, subtly pointing out the people relevant to the discussion.

  By the time the meal is over, I’m starting to feel very stressed, a little sweaty, and like I might devolve into a panic attack soon. I excuse myself with a weak story about needing something from my tent, and hide myself behind its closed flaps.

  It’s easier to breathe in the tent. Doesn’t feel like the world’s collapsing on top of me, like my lungs are being vacuum-sealed. This colony is a nightmare for the socially anxious. We’re here to survive, and survival is a team effort. No one’s asking me to do much of anything yet, but the group has to work together in order to keep this thing going. There aren’t enough of us for anyone to sit around, not pulling their weight. My tent is dark; it’s quiet. I’ve always felt better in the dark. It’s like a warm blanket closing me off from the gazes of people who make me uncomfortable.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting alone when there’s a gentle knock on the pole at the front of my tent.

  “Uh, come in?”

  The flap lifts, and here’s Grayson, holding out a cup. “I thought you might like some water or something.”

  I don’t want to send him away because that’s incredibly rude, but alone time with a cute guy is basically the least helpful thing that could happen to me right now.

  “Thank you.” I take the cup. I am thirsty.

  He lingers, and the awkwardness is practically sentient.

  “You know,” he says, sitting tentatively on the opposite side of my cot, “there’s nothing wrong with not being just … instantly okay with everything. This place sucks. I mean, it’s better than nothing, but it’s not … no one wants this.”

  I take a gulp of my water, thinking.

  Apparently not thinking fast enough, because he goes on: “I mean, we have to hunt for food every day. We can’t store anything very long; it spoils. We rely on fire for food and light, and if we ever run out of driftwood, we’re screwed. We don’t have normal building materials or food or—”

  “This is not …” I’m partway through my sentence before I realize I’ve interrupted, and the realization horrifies me. The rest of my sentence is more like a whisper. “… not helping me panic less.”

  He shuts up altogether, the muscles in his throat rippling like he’s literally swallowing his words.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” I rush on. “It’s just—you’re right. This isn’t a situation a person can be okay with right away, and I’m not. Honestly, I think I’m still in shock. Like, how can this possibly be something that happened in real life? I don’t know how to live in this reality. I can’t adjust. I’m not usually so rude, and I don’t usually ramble like this, I’m …”

  “I get it.” He smiles sadly. “This is the best home we could ask for down here, but even still, I’ve been here five months and I don’t know how to live in this reality. I don’t think I ever will.”

  “What happened?” I ask. “To make you end up here, I mean.”

  “Poor life choices,” he says dryly. “I was exploring an abandoned mine shaft just outside my town. It’s all blocked off and has a million warning signs about its instability, but people go in there all the time to drink and stuff. I got brave or stupid or both, I guess, and decided I should explore
a little deeper. Figured out the warnings about instability weren’t for nothing when I fell through a weak spot and ended up in this weird, narrow corridor of rock. Three days of wandering later, I saw firelight, and dropped from above. I’m lucky I lived, honestly.”

  “Where are you from?” I ask. The only person whose hometown I’ve asked about so far is Colleen. She lived in Albany, which is about a twenty-minute drive from my town.

  “Near Cobleskill,” he says.

  Not too far from me, then. But in the opposite direction of Albany. I wish it helped me figure out where we are. All it does is make me believe this cave system is truly massive. How much of the state does it stretch across?

  “And how’d you end up down here?” he asks.

  “I was near a swamp and got swallowed up by a sinkhole. It spit me out in an underground cavern, and then I was wandering around for a while before I started getting chased by that thing and then … well, you know the rest.” I feel shy again, reminding him of my dramatic entrance. “How did you learn to shoot arrows like that, anyway?”

  “I go bow hunting every year. So … a lot of practice.”

  “Does everyone here have some kind of survival skills?”

  He laughs. “Definitely not. Most of what you’d learn up above doesn’t help too much down here.”

  “You mean you didn’t take How to Survive When Trapped in a Deep Underground Cave System 101 in school?”

  He laughs again. Something unwinds inside me. We’re chatting and he’s laughing and it’s going fine. I will get through this.

  “You know what’s funny, in, like, a very gallows humor way?” I say, because now that I’m socializing like a normal person, it’s almost a high, and I feel emboldened. “The swamp I went into, it’s called Drowners Swamp. People have gone missing there before, and we actually have a myth that it’s because the sinkholes lead to a passage to the center of the earth. Which is so crazy, but …”

  “But also not that crazy,” Grayson finishes for me.

  It dawns on me now that if people have gone missing in that swamp, if they really were swallowed up by sinkholes like me and none of them are here, then either they suffocated at the muddy bottom when the sinkholes filled back in, or they made it to the cavern system but didn’t find this place. Putting things in that perspective, I’m pretty lucky.