Zoe tried sleeping in a dozen positions, as if she were inventing an alphabet with her body. Outside, the trees rustled peacefully, and a breeze brushed the window. The world was returning to normal, as if the word “normal” still meant something.
Whole days had slipped by since X had left. There would be school tomorrow. School! How absurd was that? Whenever Zoe felt a wave of sadness about to hit, she remembered how she’d stood in her socks in the driveway—how X had put his coat around her shoulders, how he’d pulled her body toward him. His mouth had been so warm it had made her lips glow like the ring on a stove.
At midnight, her door creaked open, and Jonah crept in, along with a cone of yellow light from the hall.
Zoe pretended to be asleep. Dealing with her brother was not on her list of priorities.
She let out a loud snore.
“I know you’re awake,” said Jonah. “Duh.”
Zoe snored louder.
“Faker,” said Jonah. After a moment, he added, “Where’s X? Why isn’t he back? I liked it when he was here.”
Zoe groaned, and sat up in bed.
“He had to leave,” she said. “You know that, bug.”
“But, like, leave leave?” said Jonah. “Forever leave?”
His voice faltered.
The reality of the situation flooded through Zoe, too. Maybe she’d never see X again. Maybe their kiss had been so engulfing, so singular, because it would be the only one.
“I don’t know about forever,” she said. “All I know is that he wants to come back and that he’s stubborn, like us.”
Jonah seemed to accept this. He approached the foot of Zoe’s bed and prepared to burrow under the blankets.
“No, bug,” she said. “You can’t sleep here. Not tonight.”
He didn’t think she was serious. He lifted the covers.
“No, bug,” she said, snatching away the sheet and blanket.
Jonah left the room without a word, trailing a cloud of hurt. Zoe fell back onto the bed. Through the wall, she could hear Jonah push open their mother’s door and say, “Zoe is the worst. Can I snuggle with you?”
Zoe changed positions yet again. She missed X—there was a lake of pain where her heart should have been—and now she felt guilty, too. Up on the roof, a clump of snow broke apart. It slid down the shingles, dropped past the windows like a body falling, and landed in the snow with a thunk.
She was never going to sleep.
Exasperated, Zoe sat up and hurled her pillow across the room. It struck the shelves above her desk, and sent some trophies clattering to the floor. She tried to assess the damage, but, in the darkness, could only identify an award for Best Sheep Shearer among the casualties. The trophy was of a golden half-naked sheep. It was one of Zoe’s favorites because it reminded her of Val, who shaved the left side of her head. (Val was so gorgeous she could get away with it.) Zoe had bought the trophy at a thrift store in Columbia Falls. The man behind the counter—he’d been dozing and she had to wake him up with the shiny hotel bell—was so surprised that someone wanted the thing that he said, “For real?”
Zoe banged the back of her head against the wall in frustration. Once, twice, three times. Her mother must have thought she was knocking because she knocked back. It was a comforting sound.
Zoe realized she didn’t really want to be alone.
The door to her mom’s room stood open. Zoe entered tentatively, wondering if she’d be turned away. Her mother and Jonah lay huddled under the blankets, whispering like conspirators. Jonah heard Zoe’s footsteps and lifted his head.
“This room is for sad people only,” he said.
He’d been crying.
“I’m sad, too,” said Zoe. “I promise.”
Jonah put on his frowny thinking face. Finally, he nodded.
Zoe went to the foot of the bed and tunneled under the blankets like a gopher, for Jonah’s benefit. When she popped her head out, she saw him snuff out a smile he didn’t want her to see.
Zoe settled against the wall so that she and her mother lay shielding Jonah like parentheses.
“Your body’s so warm,” she told him.
“I get warm when I’m sad,” he said. “Because of science.”
Zoe and her mother took turns patting Jonah’s hair. A clunky metal fan that their mom used to lull herself to sleep spun noisily in a corner, like the propeller of an old plane.
Jonah fell asleep within minutes, and Zoe’s mother drifted off soon after. Zoe lay on her side, her thoughts swirling. Was this what love was like—one part pleasure, two parts pain? Zoe thought of Val’s obsession with Gloria. She understood it now. She’d never felt anything like that with Dallas—it had never even occurred to her to make a Tumblr about his feet. For one thing, she was pretty sure he waxed them.
Zoe laughed softly, and her body relaxed, muscle by muscle. She could feel sleep coming for her at last.
But then Jonah, who’d apparently not been sleeping, announced into the darkness, “I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
Zoe clenched.
“Shhh,” said her mother, her voice soggy with sleep. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Okay, but I’m not going,” Jonah said, as defiantly as he could. “And you can’t make me.”
“We will talk about it in the morning.”
“I know you’ll try to make me. But I won’t. I hate it.”
Zoe knew she should keep her mouth shut. But the idea that Jonah hated school was ridiculous. His homeroom teacher, Miss Noelle—he worshipped her. Once, he’d drawn a picture of her on his arm, like a tattoo.
“You don’t hate it, bug,” she said. “Don’t say that.”
“I hate it if I say I hate it,” he said.
He sat bolt upright, and kicked the covers to the bottom of the bed.
Crap, thought Zoe. Here comes a meltdown.
“Jonah, control yourself,” her mother said. “Please.”
“Only I know if I hate school,” he said. “So Zoe shouldn’t say I don’t hate it. I hate it if I say I hate it.”
Zoe got out of bed, and stalked across the room, allowing herself a childish outburst of her own. She was carrying around enough pain already. She couldn’t add her brother’s misery to the pile. Not this time. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t Jonah know that she missed X, too? Didn’t he know that she was thinking about him with every breath?
On her way to the door, she kicked over the idiotic fan with her bare foot. Behind her, Jonah said, “See how she just left? Nobody says good-bye.”
The morning was a nightmare. Zoe avoided Jonah as she printed an essay for English, but she could hear his shouts of “I hate it if I say I hate it” ringing through the house. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t brush his teeth, wouldn’t get dressed. Zoe felt her mother’s impatience rise. As she passed Jonah’s bedroom, she saw her mom trying to dress him herself. Jonah refused to cooperate. He stiffened his body like a war protester.
Zoe motioned for her mother to come into the hall.
“I can’t believe he’s being so heinous,” she said.
“He’s in pain, Zo,” said her mom. “We all process pain differently.”
“Yeah—and he processes it heinously,” Zoe said.
“Anyway, look, there’s no way I can go to work today,” said her mom.
“Can you afford to take a day off?” said Zoe.
“No, but I can’t afford a sitter either,” said her mother. “And who could I call? All the sitters are going to be in school, which is where children are supposed to be.”
Jonah must have overheard them because he called out from his room.
“Could Rufus be my babysitter, maybe?” he said. “I would never be heinous at Rufus.”
Zoe’s mom didn’t like the idea. She didn’t want to take advantage of Rufus’s crush on her, probably. But Zoe thought it was genius, and she wanted this morning, this crisis, this escalating Jonah nonsense over with.
She called Rufus herself. He sounded surprised by the request—chain-saw artists are rarely asked to babysit—but before she could say never mind he had declared the idea to be rad.
“Thank god,” said Zoe. “I was afraid you’d think it was gnarly.”
“You’re making fun of me, I know,” said Rufus, laughing, “but tell my man Jonah to prepare himself for an epic hang.”
Twenty minutes later, Rufus’s van could be heard negotiating the mountainside. Zoe saw the wooden bear affixed to the roof as it rose above the treetops, waving like the queen.
At last she was free. She drove the decrepit Struggle Buggy to school as if it were a race car. Every nerve in her body seemed to be humming. Every song on the radio seemed to be about X.
Zoe’s and Jonah’s schools were nestled next to each other in Flathead Valley near a dense settlement of chain stores (Target, Walmart, Costco) and beef-slinging restaurants that Zoe’s mom referred to as the Cannibal Food Court (Sizzler, Five Guys, House of Huns). Students were allowed to eat lunch at the mall once they became juniors. For everyone else, it merely shimmered across the highway like an unreachable promised land. Zoe was a junior, but the thrill of eating in the Cannibal Food Court had lost its shine. It was partly because her mother’s ethics had sunk in over the years—Zoe wasn’t a vegetarian, but she felt a cloud of guilt whenever she ate meat—and partly because House of Huns was where she’d told Dallas she didn’t want to go out anymore.
Val had begged Zoe not to see Dallas in the first place. She thought he was cocky and kind of a douche. But Val’s relationship with Gloria was so intense that she had a skewed idea of what was generally possible in 11th grade. Zoe loved that Dallas was a caver like her and her dad, that he was fun and uncomplicated, and that—so sue her—you could see his triceps through almost any shirt. When she told Val that she was going to give him a chance, Val said simply, “I weep for you.”
They began dating in September, and Zoe soon discovered that there were many sweet things about Dallas: His favorite color was orange. He still slept in pajamas. He used a photo of his mom for the wallpaper on his laptop. Val didn’t want to hear any of it. Once, when Zoe and Dallas passed her in the hallway, Zoe sang out, “Still dating!” Val nodded, and sang back, “Still weeping!”
In November, when her dad died and she was crying constantly and everything was so raw and dizzying that she felt like she’d been thrown out of a moving car, Zoe decided to strip away everyone who wasn’t essential to her life. And Dallas just wasn’t. She broke the news to him at House of Huns, which was a Benihana-type place where shirtless men grunted like barbarians in front of a massive circular grill. At first, Dallas flatly refused to be dumped. He told Zoe she was in too messed-up a state to be making “mega-life-altering decisions.” Zoe had face-palmed—she couldn’t help it—and said, “Dude, this is in no way a mega-life-altering decision. I know what a life-altering event is, okay? My father just died.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dallas. “I didn’t mean to compare this to—to that. To your dad. I just think you’re a badass. And you’re hot. And those are, like, the two best things.”
Dallas asked if they could still hang sometimes—as friends, or whatever. He said it very simply and genuinely. Zoe said of course. Dallas grinned and told her that there was another girl at school he was kind of into anyway—and that he was pretty sure if he asked her out she’d say yes. He said Zoe was probably “too complicated” for him anyway. The air cleared, Dallas then turned his attention to the comments card and the miniature-golf pencil that had been left on their table: How was your meal? Let us know! Dallas reflected for a moment, and wrote, Solid salad bar! When Zoe left, he stayed behind to apply for a job.
Today, Zoe swung the Struggle Buggy into the parking lot that connected the schools. She was an hour late, thanks to Jonah’s meltdown. She gathered up her books and bags, and slammed the car shut—a complicated process that involved pulling the handle up and to the right because the door had been sideswiped by a snowplow and now sagged several inches too low.
No one at Jonah’s school even looked at Zoe sideways when she told them that he’d be out sick. Everyone knew that Zoe’s family had slipped into a dark tunnel. She’d always been an A student, but lately her grades had been sliding. Given the awful stuff that had happened, she found it harder and harder to believe that there was really an earth-shattering difference between an A and a B, or even between a B and a C. Today, Jonah’s vice principal, Ms. Didier, asked if Zoe was doing okay with so much compassion—with so much eye contact—that Zoe knew rumors must be circulating about what had gone on at the lake with Stan. God only knew how the story had been twisted in the retellings.
“I’m okay, yeah,” Zoe told her. “Jonah’s kind of … not.”
“Well, look,” said the vice principal, “this is incredibly scary, upsetting stuff. There’s no handbook. But we will do whatever your family needs. Let Jonah know we’re thinking about him. Who’s with him now?”
“Our friend Rufus,” said Zoe.
“The chain-saw guy?” said Ms. Didier.
“Yes,” said Zoe. “But he’s—”
“Oh, no, no, I love Rufus,” said Ms. Didier. “I didn’t mean to sound critical. He made a moose for me.”
By the time Zoe got to the high school, the only period left before lunch was Spanish. Zoe sat between Val and a girl named Mingyu, who penciled little wings at the corners of her eyes, dressed in layer upon layer of black, and drew pentagrams and 666’s on the undersides of her wrists during class. Mingyu played bass in an all-girl punk band called the Slim Reaper and claimed to be a Satanist. Zoe didn’t believe the devil-worshipping part. But sitting down next to Mingyu now, she wished the girl actually was a Satanist, so she could freak her out.
Hey, Mingyu, guess where my boyfriend’s from!
The Spanish instructor, a slender woman named Ms. Shaw who had what Zoe and Val agreed was by far the best teacher hair, rapped her wedding ring on the Smart Board to get the class’s attention. Zoe raised her hand four times in the first eight minutes, so she could spend the rest of the period staring out at the mountains and thinking about X without being called on.
She tried to imagine where he was now. Had he found Stan or was he still hunting him down? All she could picture was the model of the Lowlands that he’d built with Jonah, so she imagined him talking to a Revolutionary War soldier while an orc from Lord of the Rings waved a club nearby. Zoe was terrified for X, but she told herself that she would see him again. She would. Meeting X had convinced her that things were possible. She didn’t even know what things, but it didn’t matter. Things!
She’d take him swimming in Tally Lake—not just at the dinky, roped-off pebble beach, but in the big blue bowl of the water. She’d go huckleberry picking with him. She’d take him hiking on the Highline in Glacier National Park. She’d tell him all the names of the wildflowers. She’d ask what his tattoos meant. She’d ask if he had ever kissed anyone but her. She was pretty sure he hadn’t—his lips had trembled just the slightest bit.
His lips were so warm. Had hers been too cold? Had he noticed? Was he disappointed?
Okay, she was seriously losing it. When she surfaced from her daydream, Val and Dallas were making bug eyes at her and motioning toward her desk. Zoe looked down, and saw a quiz she was supposed to be taking.
As soon as the bell rang, Val rushed up to her, but Zoe floated past her and spent the rest of the day in a daze.
In the Struggle Buggy after school, Val started up again.
“Okay, what were you high on in Spanish? You know that quiz counts, right?”
“Counts how?” said Zoe. “Counts toward what? My total life score? Esta quiz no es me importa para mi!”
“Yeah, see, even that was terrible Spanish,” said Val.
Zoe laughed.
“Sí, usted eres razón,” she said.
“Ugh, just stop,” said Val. “You’re mauling a beautiful language.”
They were crossing farmland on a long roller coaster of a road. The car shook and rattled. The windshield had a spiderweb crack—there was still a rock, about the size of a blueberry, wedged into the center—and the floorboard on the passenger side had rusted through so that, if you moved the rubber mat, you could actually see the ground fly by underneath.
By the time the Buggy sputtered up the driveway, Zoe had told Val as much as she could about X, though she substituted “aspiring musician” for “supernatural bounty hunter.” It was what she’d told Rufus when he’d shown up unannounced that day. And it seemed plausible, if nobody pressed too hard about why an aspiring musician was on a frozen lake in the middle of a blizzard—and how he’d fought off a murderer.
Zoe had never withheld anything from Val before. She told herself she wasn’t lying about anything significant. Where X was from and what he was didn’t matter as much as who he was—how he’d woken her whole life up and helped her set aside some of her pain. All this from a guy who had never been given anything ever.
She pulled up to the house, and turned off the ignition. The Buggy bucked and chortled even after she and Val slammed the doors and walked away.
Before they could make it up the steps, Rufus stepped outside. He looked weirdly serious. Was something wrong with Jonah? Zoe had to fight an impulse to push past Rufus and run into the house.
“Just wanted to give you a heads-up,” Rufus said. “Oh, hey, Val, what’s shakin’?”
“Hey,” said Val.
“Talk, Rufus,” said Zoe. “You’re scaring me.”
“No, no, no, it’s all good, it’s all good,” he said. “I mean, it’s mostly good. I mean, honestly, it’s not great. The little guy’s just super-super-bummed. Like in shock, almost. I couldn’t get him out of the house at all. Not even a step. He just froze up. He’s in real bad shape.”
Zoe groaned.
“He wouldn’t go outside after our dad died,” she said. “I’m not going through that again. I’ll give him some tough love.”
“Actually,” said Rufus, “I think that might just make things worse.”
Zoe ignored him. She liked Rufus, but didn’t need him telling her what was best for her own brother.
“It’s okay, I can fix this,” she said. “Jonah just got really tight with that guy X I introduced you to.”
Val couldn’t help but interrupt: “Rufus got to meet X, but I didn’t? What kind of hot garbage is that?”
“The musician dude?” said Rufus. “Supercool guy. Epic hair. And I don’t blame him for not wanting to talk about his musical inspirations, or whatever. I’m an artist, too. I get it. You gotta blaze your own trail.”
Rufus scratched at his bushy reddish beard, which he allowed to go wild in the winter. It was currently edging perilously close to his eyes.
“But, see, this isn’t about X anymore, I don’t think,” he said.
“It is,” said Zoe impatiently. “I know my brother.”
Rufus shook his head, and his fledgling dreads swung back and forth. His stubbornness surprised her. In her experience, he disliked confrontation and would go with the flow no matter where the flow happened to be headed.
“Look, we talked about X,” he said. “And honestly? I think him taking off was a bigger deal for you than for Jonah. Jonah liked him, heck yeah. He’s bummed he split, heck yeah. But this stuff—the crying and the shell shock and the not leaving the house—this stuff is deeper than that. This thing’s got roots like a big-ass tree. This is about something else now.”
The front door opened. Jonah hovered near the threshold. He had his shoes on, which could have meant something—or nothing.
“I want to talk to you,” he told Zoe. “I have a question.”
He was a single step away from the outside world. A wind came up and rattled the storm door in its frame.
“I can’t hear you,” said Zoe. “Come closer.”
Rufus shook his head and leaned toward her. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he whispered. “I tried this.”
Zoe ignored him. Why hadn’t he left already? She waited for her brother to answer.
“No,” said Jonah. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m not trying to do anything, bug. I just can’t hear you.”
Rufus turned away, as if he didn’t want to see what was about to happen.
“He’s just not ready,” he said. “You’re playing with matches.”
“Stop it, Rufus,” Zoe said under her breath. “You’re not his sister.”
Jonah eyed them all suspiciously.
“I have to talk to you, Zoe,” he said again. “Because of my question.”
“Just come out on the steps,” she said. “You can go right back inside.”
Val put her hand on Zoe’s shoulder.
“Maybe Rufus is right?” she said.
Zoe gave Val a look: You, too? She focused on Jonah again. He was leaning against the door, his hair flattened into a fan.
He pushed the door infinitesimally forward.
Come on, that’s right, thought Zoe. Come on, just do it, you little shit.
He pulled it shut again.
“You’re trying to trick me,” he said.
“I’m not, bug.”
“Don’t call me bug when you’re trying to trick me.”
“Look, if you can’t come out on the steps for two seconds, then let’s talk later. Your question can’t be very important.”
“I want to know—”
“Later, Jonah.”
She hated being cruel, but someone had to get tough with the kid or he was going to turn into a shut-in. When somebody was scared of the water, weren’t you supposed to just throw them in the pool? Wasn’t that a thing? If it wasn’t, it should be.
“You stopped calling me bug,” said Jonah. “That means you were trying to trick me. You didn’t use to try to trick me.”
Zoe walked toward the door—slowly, like someone trying not to frighten a cat.
From behind her, she heard Val say worriedly, “What are you doing?”
Zoe ignored her and climbed the steps. She heard Rufus say, “I can’t watch this.” She ignored him, too. She was going to put an end to this before it got any worse.
She opened the door. Jonah withdrew farther into the house. There was fear in his eyes, distrust.
Zoe smiled. She held the door open with one foot.
“Hug me?” she said.
Jonah made a confused face. He shivered as the wind slipped inside. After a moment, he inched forward and held out his arms. Zoe reached for him.
She clamped her arms around him and bolted outside.
Jonah panicked. He fought and screamed and pulled Zoe’s hair. She kept going. She was convinced that what she was doing was right. Later, he would understand.
Rufus and Val stared at her like she was insane. She veered away from them. The ground was snowy and rough. She nearly fell. Jonah was heavier than she remembered. She tried to soothe him. She whispered in his ear, “I know you miss X. So do I! But he’ll come back. I promise, I promise, I promise.”
“So what!” Jonah wailed. He was beating on her back with his fists. “I don’t care about X! I don’t even miss him!”
“You do,” said Zoe. “And it’s okay!”
“I don’t, I swear to god I don’t!” shouted Jonah. “I miss Daddy!”
He landed a kick to her right knee. Zoe’s legs buckled and she collapsed into the snow.
Jonah fled into the house.
Rufus managed to slip in after him before he locked the door.
Zoe leaned against the Buggy and cried a long time, mortified by what she’d done. Val put an arm around her. She tried to console Zoe by describing every idiotic and embarrassing thing she had ever done, which took almost 15 minutes. None of it was as bad as traumatizing your little brother just as he reached out to you for help. None of it was as bad as allowing an obsession with a guy make you forget that your father was dead, that he’d been abandoned in a hole, and that you and just about everyone you loved were still wrestling with grief.
Finally, Zoe went inside and called Jonah’s name like a question. She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. She peered up the steps to the bedrooms. Jonah had kicked a stack of laundry that their mother had folded before leaving for work. T-shirts, bras, and plaid little-boy boxers were strewn over the staircase. Zoe hung her head and climbed.
Rufus sat outside Jonah’s door, trying everything he could think of to get the kid to open it. When he saw Zoe, he stood, hugged her, and—without saying I told you so, god bless him—lumbered down the stairs.
Zoe sat, and scratched at the door playfully. Jonah didn’t answer. She could hear him jumping on the ladybug.
“I’m sorry, Jonah,” she said. “I’m a really bad example of a person right now. I know that.”
The bouncing stopped. The bed squeaked as Jonah hopped off it. Zoe heard him come to the door. Rather than open it, he sat on the other side and said nothing. It was a gesture, at least.
“I shouldn’t have tried to trick you,” she told him.
She spoke gently. She could hear him breathing.
“And I should never have said your question wasn’t important,” she added. “And I should never, ever have bought such an ugly car.”
Silence.
There was a gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet. She slipped her fingers through it and wiggled them. A gesture of her own. She was about to pull her fingers back when she felt Jonah’s hand grasp hers.
Zoe didn’t want to scare him off, so she kept quiet. Soon Jonah let go of her fingers, stood, and retreated farther into his room. A minute later, he slid a piece of paper, which he’d folded a ridiculous number of times, under the door.
“You’re an excellent folder,” said Zoe. “Everyone says so.”
She opened the paper and smoothed it against the carpet. Even before she read the message, she smiled fondly at Jonah’s handwriting, which was … eccentric. His lowercase y’s, for instance, were always uppercase—they stood up proudly wherever they happened to fall in the sentence, like gold medalists raising their fists. Zoe never teased Jonah about it. She knew that his ADHD made it hard for him to write—the pen couldn’t keep up with his brain, for one thing—and that he was ashamed that his classmates had pulled so far ahead of him.
She read his message:
WhY didn’t DaddY Man take You with him to that cave? He alwaYs took You.
Zoe didn’t know what to say.
She bought herself some time by telling him, “I don’t have anything to write with, bug.”
Jonah padded off and then back again. He rolled something under the door—a sleek black pen attached to a beaded silver chain. He must have yanked it off the desk at the bank. Zoe would let her mom have that conversation.
She pressed the paper against the door.
I don’t KNOW why he didn’t take me. I have wondered about that MANY times—even more times than I’ve wondered why I bought SUCH AN UGLY CAR. Maybe Dad was sad? Or maybe he thought I couldn’t handle the cave?
They continued passing the paper under the door. Jonah stopped folding it, which seemed like a sign that he was opening up to her.
WhY was DaddY Man sad?
Money stuff maybe. NOT because of you or me or Mom. He LOVED us. LOVED LOVED.
There was no answer. Zoe couldn’t tell if the conversation was over. There was a jittery, unresolved feeling, like a field of static, in her chest.
The paper finally came back. Jonah had folded it a zillion times again. The sight of it made Zoe’s heart fold in on itself, too.
WhY did we leave him DOWN THERE? I hate it & worrY he is cold.
Zoe turned the paper over. The other side was blank, though creased a dozen times and starting to tear. She wrote another message. It was a promise to Jonah and a promise to herself. She didn’t pause to think about it. It just spilled out of her.
Bug, she wrote,
I will MAKE the police go find Dad’s body—or I will go in that cave and find it myself. I swear to god. I always wanted to prove I could. And if I can’t get Dad out of there myself, I will at least make sure he isn’t cold. I WILL BRING HIM A BLANKET.
She’d written the message in huge letters and even signed it, dated it, and drawn a small picture of herself as a superhero wearing a cape and flexing her biceps.
Jonah opened his door, looking happy and shy. Behind him, Zoe could see that he’d jumped so hard on the ladybug that the bed had drifted away from the wall.
Downstairs, Zoe asked Rufus if he could babysit a couple more hours—she was so ashamed of how she’d behaved that she could barely make eye contact—and then went outside, where Val was doing a handstand in the snow. (Val did not believe in being bored for even one second.)
After Val had tumbled back onto her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans, Zoe handed her the paper that she and Jonah had scribbled on. Val pored over it, turning it this way and that as necessary.
“Jonah is so awesome,” said Val. “I mean it. I just want to squeeze him till he pops.”
Zoe nodded, and walked past her to the car.
“I’m going to the police station,” she said. “I’m going to tell them they have to get my dad’s body. You wanna come?”
“Is there gonna be a big confrontation?” said Val.
“Probably,” said Zoe.
“Then I absolutely want to come,” said Val.
They didn’t talk in the car. They just took turns fiddling with the radio. Zoe was deep in a country music phase, and Val liked a station that played the same four pop hits over and over and over, like a psychology experiment. The landscape that had seemed so bright and hopeful on the drive home from school now drifted by the windows looking hopeless and dead.
Zoe parked outside the police station, and took one of those “deep, cleansing breaths” her mother was always talking about.
“What do you want me to do in there?” said Val. “Can I play a character? Can I improv?”
“Just be my friend—and don’t let me get arrested,” said Zoe.
Val made a pouty face.
“What if I want to get arrested?” she said.
“We’ll come back another time for that,” said Zoe. “With costumes and stuff. Cool?”
“Very.”
She and Val high-fived. They pretended to do it ironically, but the truth was that they just liked high-fiving. The only time they had ever tried fist-bumping neither of them wanted to make the stupid explosion sound.
The station was bustling, but the one cop Zoe liked, Brian Vilkomerson, stood up behind his desk when he saw the girls enter. He must have seen the tension pouring off them, like a vapor trail.
“Is this about Stan Manggold?” he said, before Zoe and Val even reached his desk. “Because—”
Stan Manggold! Zoe hadn’t thought about that psycho in days, and hearing his name threw her off balance.
“No,” said Zoe. “Stan’s been taken care of.”
Fortunately, Brian didn’t ask what she meant. What could she have said? You guys had your chance. Now my boyfriend’s taking him to hell.
“This is more important,” Zoe said quickly. “This is about my father.”
She told Brian she didn’t want to talk to Chief Baldino. She referred to him as “the mean one—the one who looks pregnant.”
Brian pursed his lips to kill a smile.
“Why don’t you and your friend sit with me for a minute?” he said.
He gestured to two green chairs by his desk. Zoe could hear Baldino back in his office, noisily unwrapping a sandwich and laughing on the phone about something that probably had nothing to do with police work.
Brian reached out to shake Val’s hand. Not everybody was that respectful to teenagers. Also, Brian didn’t do the patronizing triple take that virtually all adults did when they met Val. First, they’d see the half-shaved hair with orange streaks, and grimace as if they were passing a wreck on the highway. Next they’d notice how hot Val was. Finally, their brow would furrow, and they’d wonder why on earth a girl that pretty would blah yadda blah. It never bothered Val. She had the same opinion of people that Zoe had of trophies: that they were both ridiculous and awesome and all you could do was collect the coolest ones.
Zoe was grateful that Brian just stuck out his hand and said hello and didn’t treat her friend as if she were some Object of Interest. There was already a star next to his name in her head, so she added a second one, along with an exclamation point.
“Hey, there, I’m Sergeant Vilkomerson,” he said.
“And I’m Val,” she said. “I’m Zoe’s attorney.”
Brian tilted his head at this, but let it go.
Now that Zoe was sitting there, with a sympathetic audience leaning forward, she found she no longer wanted to scream or make threats. She just wanted to be heard and to be taken seriously. She tried not to be too rattled by the noisy everyday life of the station—the radio squawking, the baby crying, the officers jabbing at their keyboards. The hardest thing to block out was the sound of Baldino on the phone, doing impressions he thought were funny. The sound of his voice repulsed her.
“It’s been months since my dad died,” she said.
She stopped for a second, surprised by how much emotion that one sentence kicked up in her.
Val put an arm around her shoulder, which made her even sadder somehow. She shrugged it off.
She told Brian that the thought of her dad’s body lying in a cave was eating away at her family. She told him about Jonah locking himself in the house, about the notes he’d passed under the door. Brian looked pained. Zoe could tell he was trying not to look at the pictures of his daughter that stood like monuments all over his desk.
“Look,” he said. “This is so, so complicated—and not just because that particular cave is so dangerous.”
Zoe waited to hear why it was so, so complicated, but as Brian was searching for words, Chief Baldino ambled heavily out of his office, like a bear. Zoe’s stomach did its tightening thing. She prayed that he wouldn’t notice her. If he said one rude thing to her, she’d lose it.
She watched Baldino out of the corner of her eye. He crumpled up his lunch bag, compacting it into a tight ball as if it were a feat of strength. Then—though Zoe could count at least four garbage cans in plain sight—he handed it to Officer Maerz and said, “Throw that away for me, would you, Stuart? Can of Coke Zero on my desk, too.”
The chief yawned, stretched, and surveyed his kingdom.
He noticed Zoe.
He grimaced and moved toward her. It was clear he hadn’t forgotten that nasty night at the house. It was clear that he loathed her as much as she loathed him. She just prayed he wouldn’t say anything to set her off.
Baldino came so close that all she could see was his gut. Crumbs from his shirt fell onto her lap.
“I thought I smelled teenager,” he said.
Zoe sprang out of her chair. She began talking too loud, her hands shaking all the while, as if they wanted to disconnect from her body. The whole station got quiet. Everyone stared.
Just as Zoe finished shouting—and just before Baldino, whose face had swelled with anger like a balloon filling with water, began yelling, “You’re a disrespectful brat, and your old man can stay in that hole for all I care”—she heard a microwave ding preposterously in the silence. Somebody’s burrito was ready.
Val and Brian were standing now, too. When had they stood up? Everything was blurring. They each had a hand on one of Zoe’s arms, and they were steering her toward the door. She didn’t want to cooperate. She stiffened her body, like Jonah when he refused to get dressed. Finally, Val whispered, “I love you, but stop it or you really are gonna get arrested. I’m saying this as your lawyer.”
Baldino seemed to notice Val for the first time now. He did the least subtle triple take Zoe had ever seen.
Val gave him a wide smile—god, she loved Val, she was a born blurter, too—and said, “I could show you how to get this look, if you want.”
Baldino snorted.
“Get your little friend out of here,” he told her.
Zoe let her body go slack.
There were tourists at the door, openly gawking at her. Brian cut a path through them.
“It’s all good,” he told Zoe gently.
The door swung open. She felt cold air on her face. She heard car tires hissing on the wet street. Already, she’d forgotten everything she had said to Chief Baldino. She knew she’d been loud, but had she been clear? Had she been heard? Had she told him what she’d promised Jonah?
She turned back to the chief. Brian’s head sagged. He just wanted this to be over. And it was. Almost.
“If you guys don’t go get my dad, I’m gonna go get him myself,” she told Baldino. “And then you may have two bodies to fish out of that cave, not just one.”
Val took Zoe’s car keys and escorted her to the passenger side. Zoe was still in such a cloud that Val had to help her with her seat belt.
Brian leaned in through the window.
“Let’s all just breathe for a second,” he said.
He rested against the Struggle Buggy, hands stuffed in his pockets, head tilted up at the sky.
Zoe waited for the tension of the last ten minutes to dissipate, for the wind to sweep in and break it up and turn it into rain, or something. She regained her equilibrium slowly. Everything started to come back into focus.
Brian patted the roof of the car twice in an okay-let’s-do-this sort of way. He crouched down beside Zoe’s window again.
“First, the good news,” he said.
He waved a small bag of candy—sour gummy worms, it looked like—and offered it to the girls.
“I confiscated these from my daughter this morning,” he said. When they smiled, he added, “It was a routine stop-and-frisk.”
Zoe and Val each took a handful of worms—Brian winced when he saw how many they were about to ingest—and dropped them one after the other into their mouths. The girls squirmed as the bitterness corroded their tongues.
“Thith ith horrible,” said Val.
“Weally horrible,” said Zoe.
When they’d calmed down, Brian did another one-two pat on the roof of the car.
“Can we talk for a second?” he said.
“Yeth,” said Zoe.
“Abtholutely,” said Val.
Brian cast his eyes back at the station to make sure no one on the force was milling around.
“I know the chief doesn’t seem like the world’s awesomest guy,” he said. “And I’m not going lie to you, Zoe—he is not the world’s awesomest guy. Between us, his wife is leaving him and he’s pretty torn up about it. Anyway, the point is…”
He paused, frowning.
“The point is, he’s not saying no about your dad because he’s some colossal jerk,” he continued. “He wanted to recover the body, believe me. There’s some good cave-rescue units out there. He was in touch with them.”
Brian paused again, looking tortured.
“But he was told to let it go,” he said. “Well, not told, really. I shouldn’t put it that way. He was asked to let it go.”
Zoe and Val replied simultaneously:
“By who?”
“It’s not my place to say,” said Brian. He dropped his head, like a dog that knew it had done something wrong. “I’m sorry.”
Zoe needed an answer. She made Brian look at her. Her eyes, she knew, were teary and bloodshot. Good. Let him see the kind of pain she was in.
“By who?” she said again.
Brian groaned. He swept a hand through his hair, which settled back down into an even messier formation.
“I just know I’m going to regret telling you this,” he said.
He thumped the car a final time, by way of good-bye.
“Your mother.”
Zoe slipped down in the passenger seat, her mood darkening by the second. There was a bank of black clouds approaching. It looked like the underside of a massive spaceship.
“You should call your mom,” Val said quietly.
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “But can we just sit here a second?”
“Whatever you need,” said Val. “I’ll sit here forever if you want. I’ll sit here until they tow the car to the junkyard. I’ll go in the trash compactor with you, if I have to.”
“Thank you,” said Zoe.
“I mean, I’d prefer not to go in the trash compactor,” said Val.
Zoe laughed despite herself.
“You want to hear something weird?” she said.
“Of course,” said Val. “Have we met?”
“When the cops came to ask us about Stan,” said Zoe, “I made some comment about how they were idiots and how they’d never gotten my dad’s body out of the cave. And my mom gave me this look, like, Nothing good will come from stirring all that up! Now I know why—because she told them to leave him there. Because she was glad he was gone.”
“Maybe there was another reason,” said Val.
“Like?” said Zoe.
Val twisted her mouth into a frown.
“I got nothing,” she said.
When Zoe was ready to call her mom, Val slipped out of the car to give her some privacy. She gave Zoe an encouraging shove as she left.
Zoe watched Val disappear into a thrift store across the street, then finally called. Even the phone sounded jittery as it rang. It took her mother forever to answer.
“Zoe, what’s up? Are you okay? I’m working.”
The first fat drops of rain had begun to detonate on the windshield.
“Zoe? Are you there? What’s wrong?”
Zoe hardened her voice so she wouldn’t cry.
“What’s wrong is that you told the cops not to go get Dad’s body,” she said. “Which is so messed up! And you lied to me about it.”
There was a long pause. Zoe waited. She could hear the everyday sounds of the Hot Springs in the background—the ping of the door opening, the beep of the cash register, the scuffling of bath slippers on the concrete floor.
“Look, this is a long conversation,” her mother said. “And I can’t have it right now. I’ve got people asking for their money back because they don’t want to sit outside in the rain—like I’m responsible for the rain.”
Zoe slid over to the driver’s seat and switched on the windshield wipers so she could see out. The rain was already coming down hard, hitting the roof like nails.
“I don’t care how long a conversation it is,” she told her mother. “I want to have it now.”
Across the street, Val was waving at her through the thrift store window. She was modeling a red suede blazer, and asking Zoe’s opinion. Zoe shrugged in a meh sort of way. The red clashed with the orange streaks in Val’s hair.
“I told the police to leave him because I didn’t want someone else to get themselves killed,” said Zoe’s mom. “And that is the truth.”
Zoe considered this.
“You’re full of crap,” she said.
“Zoe!” said her mother.
“I’m sorry, but you are,” said Zoe. “That may be part of the truth, but it’s definitely not all of it.”
“So tell me,” her mother said. “Why’d I do it?”
“Because of all that stuff you told me about him and Stan,” said Zoe. “Because Dad was never around. Because he was a ‘disappointment’ or whatever you called him. Because you hated him.”
“You’re wrong,” her mother said. “I never, ever hated your father. I wouldn’t have spent twenty years with someone I didn’t love. If nothing else, I wouldn’t want to set an example like that for you and Jonah. You’re going to have to guess again.”
“I’m sick of guessing,” said Zoe. “I told you before X left that I want to know everything.”
“And I told you that you don’t,” her mother said.
There was another silence, a stalemate.
“Listen,” said her mother. “There’s stuff I’m still sorting through. There’s stuff I’m still forgiving your father for. I’m not ready to talk about all of it yet—and I don’t think you’re ready to hear it. I’m sorry.”
Val appeared in the shop window again. She was holding an absolutely enormous plastic skunk. How about this?!
Zoe laughed silently, so her mom wouldn’t hear her.
A car cruised past, kicking slush up against the windows. Her mother was still waiting for her to say something.
Zoe wasn’t ready to forgive her. She just wasn’t.
“You know what?” she said. “I don’t really care what you thought of Dad. Jonah and I loved him, even if he was lame sometimes.” She paused. “I warned the police, and now I’m gonna warn you. Dad taught me how to cave—and you know what that means? That means I know how to go get him.”
Val trotted back to the car in the rain. She crossed in the middle of the street and, when a pissed-off trucker honked at her, responded with a quick curtsy. She slipped into the car, and handed Zoe a bag. She’d bought her a trophy at the thrift store. It had a weird golden O at the top.
“You won Best Donut,” said Val.
Zoe broke out of her mood long enough to smile and accept the award graciously.
“There are so many people I want to thank,” she said.
Zoe set the trophy on the backseat, and started up the Struggle Buggy. The engine coughed before catching, annoyed at being woken up. But soon they were out on the wide, rain-slicked highway to Kalispell. Zoe told Val they had to make one more stop. They had to see Dallas. When she began to explain, Val interrupted her.
“You want to see him because he’s a caver,” she said. “You want him to train you in case you have to go into Black Teardrop.” She paused. “Hello? This is me, Zoe. I’m the one you don’t have to explain things to.”
The rain was gentler now. The clouds were pulling apart, and there was a small blue hatch in the sky. Zoe felt herself beginning to breathe again. She had a plan—and she’d won Best Donut. On the road in front of them, there was a massive pickup with dual back tires and a bumper sticker that read, Montana Is Full! I Hear North Dakota Is Nice.
Ten minutes later, Zoe pulled into the giant lot outside House of Huns, where Dallas had gotten his dream job on the grill. Val still wasn’t a huge fan of Dallas. He’d never asked out The Girl Who Was Gonna Say Yes, and Val was convinced he still had a thing for Zoe.
She told Zoe she was going to hit FroYoLo.
“I can’t stand to watch Dallas drool over you,” she said.
“Dallas and I are just friends,” she said. “He gets that.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” said Val. “I don’t actually care if you hurt him because—bottom line—that dude is basic. I mean, he was named after a TV show.”
“He says he was named after the Dallas Cowboys,” said Zoe.
“Of course he does,” said Val. “I’d say that, too, if I was named after a TV show.”
Zoe felt the greasy air settle onto her skin as she entered House of Huns. Dallas and three other cooks were grunting around the giant grill, which they referred to as the Ring of Doom. They were all comically hunky. They carried rubber-tipped spears and wore cone-shaped leather hats, which were ringed with fake fur. They had wide leather straps crisscrossing their chests and backs, but were otherwise shirtless. Because of the heat, they perspired constantly. Every so often drops of their sweat hit the grill and sizzled.
The grill itself was an imposing black circle with a hole in the middle for scraps. Customers handed over the frozen meats, veggies, and sauces they had selected from the salad bar—placards suggested at least five ladles of sauce, and recommended various combinations—and then pushed their tray along the cafeteria rails that surrounded the grill as the cooks fried the stuff up and chanted nonsense that sounded Hunnish. There was a miniature gong positioned nearby that patrons could strike with a mallet if they put something in the tip jar. Whenever the gong was struck, the cooks stopped whatever they were doing and flexed.
To say that Dallas loved his job would be a tremendous understatement.
He beamed when he saw Zoe—then remembered he was supposed to be a Hun.
“What want?” he barked theatrically.
“Can I talk to you?” said Zoe.
“No talk,” said Dallas. “Eat.”
Zoe gazed down at the grill. It was heaped with grayish chips of what purported to be pork and beef. A handful of frozen peas rolled around like marbles.
“I’m not eating this stuff,” she said.
She saw, with a pang, that she had insulted him.
“No eat, no talk,” he said. “Mrgh!”
“Seriously?” she said.
At this, Dallas transformed back into Dallas for a second and said, almost pleadingly, “Come on, Zoe. Work with me!”
Another cook—was he Head Hun?—stomped over to where they were standing and pounded a fist against his pecs, which were glistening with sweat and body lotion.
“Girl no eat?” he said to Dallas.
Zoe rolled her eyes.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Girl eat, girl eat. Mrgh!”
Later, when Dallas was on break, he sat across from Zoe as she twirled noodles around a fork.
He’d taken off his Hun hat, and pulled on a white V-neck T-shirt torn slightly at the base of the V. He was fanning himself with a laminated menu.
“What’s up?” he said cheerily. “I haven’t seen you in here since you dumped my ass.”
Zoe smiled.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” she said.
“You kinda broke my feelings, dawg,” he said.
“I know,” said Zoe. “I didn’t realize—”
“You didn’t realize what?” said Dallas. “That I had feelings?”
“Kind of?” said Zoe.
Dallas surprised her by laughing, and she saw a flash of the cute, unpretentious guy she used to make out with in the handicapped bathroom at Target.
“Totally honestly?” he said. “I didn’t really know I had feelings, either. But it’s all cool. No worries. I mean, I’m about to ask somebody out, anyway.”
“The Girl Who’s Gonna Say Yes?” said Zoe.
“She is gonna say yes,” said Dallas.
“I know she is,” said Zoe. “I’m seeing somebody else, too.”
Dallas’s face fell.
“Ugh,” he said. “Why’d you have to tell me that?”
“You just said you were asking someone out,” said Zoe.
“But still!” said Dallas.
Zoe ate a sickly looking chip of pork as a goodwill gesture. Dallas pretended not to care, but she could see a flicker of pride in his eyes.
“It’s better than you thought, right?” he said.
Zoe nodded.
“It’s really not,” she said.
Behind her, another cook began beating the gong in a low steady rhythm to signal that Dallas’s break was over. When Dallas didn’t immediately stand, the cooks added an unintelligible chant on top of the beat. Dallas looked over Zoe’s shoulder at the half-naked savages who were his co-workers.
“I should go soon,” he said. “Before my bros get rowdy.”
“I can do this quick,” said Zoe. “I want to go caving again, and I want you to go with me. I don’t know how to do it in the snow, and you’re the only caver I know who’s as good as my dad was.”
Dallas shook his head.
“No way,” he said.
Zoe’s heart fell—until he continued.
“Your dad was way better than me,” he said.
“Here’s the messed-up part,” said Zoe. “I told Jonah I’d go into Black Teardrop if the cops wouldn’t. Actually—this is crazy, but whatever—I told him I’d bring my dad a blanket.”
Dallas took this in. The cooks were chanting louder now. Dallas looked up and shouted something that sounded like, “Furg!”
“Why would your dad need a blanket?” he asked Zoe. “He’s … dead.”
“Jonah thinks he’s cold,” she said.
“Wow,” said Dallas.
Zoe waited.
“Will you help me?” she said.
“This is pretty bat-shit crazy, Zoe,” said Dallas. “And really gruesome.”
“You know what would be more gruesome?” she said. “If I didn’t give a shit what happened to my father’s body.”
Dallas’s face took on a meditative expression.
“True dat,” he said.
“And, look, maybe the cops will deal with it,” Zoe said, “and I won’t have to.”
“But you’re not just bluffing, are you?” said Dallas.
“No,” she said.
“That cave’s a beast,” said Dallas. “Obviously.”
“Yeah,” said Zoe.
“Black Teardrop’s only a couple hundred yards from Silver Teardrop, which is less of a ballbuster,” he said. “We could do a training run there, and see how you do.” He paused. “This new boyfriend you like more than me—is he a caver?” he said.
The question surprised Zoe.
“Sort of?” she said. “But I’m asking you. Will you help me?”
“Well, I’m not gonna let you go alone,” said Dallas. “But we’re going to have to do it fast because when the snow starts to melt, those caves are going to be like waterslides. Also, if we spend too long training, you’re gonna get all attracted to me, and then that’s gonna be a whole big thing.”
She laughed.
“True dat,” she said.
Dallas stood and slipped back into character, like a Method actor about to hit the stage. He put on his Hun hat. Then, with a loud cry, he ripped off his V-neck T-shirt with both hands. (The tear at the base of the V made it easy to shred and, Zoe suspected, had been put there for that very purpose.) An older woman sitting nearby hooted happily at the sight of Dallas’s biceps. He tossed the shirt to her, then leaned down to Zoe and whispered proudly, “They give us the T-shirts for free.”
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.