The Unfortunates Read online

  “He’s obsessed with that book,” Maria says as she puts on a coat of lip balm.

  “Yeah, when that’s your only book, you kind of get attached to it,” Kit says as he settles back down.

  I’m embarrassed to think about my shelves at home. Hundreds of books I’ve never even thought about picking up. Leather bound—all the classics. I even cut into a few of them to make a stash for my weed.

  “Man, I bet you have access to all kinds of top secret information,” Darryl says. “Roswell. Blue Bean.”

  “It’s not really like that. All my dad does is shake hands, attend meetings … occasionally he votes on whatever his party tells him to vote on. He’s a puppet. Nothing more.”

  “Ouch,” Kit says.

  “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good guy, but sometimes I wonder if he just followed in our ancestors’ footsteps out of duty to the family name, not because it’s what he wanted. He was never given a choice. Like when he talks about this trip, how it was the best time of his life, I wonder if he thought about disappearing … about never going back.”

  Shy looks at me and I know she’s wondering if that was my plan as well.

  Darryl scratches the stubble on his chin. “I never thought about money like that. Being a trap.”

  “That’s kind of sad,” Maria says. “Your dad always looks so happy on TV.”

  I crack a smile. “He’s happy as long as he gets his Scotch in the evenings … time for his ducks…”

  “Ducks?”

  “Is that some rich slang?” Kit asks.

  “No.” I let out a soft laugh. “Ducks. Like quack quack.”

  “What, for pets?”

  “He carves them out of white cedar and paints them.”

  “Like a hobby,” Maria says. “That’s nice.”

  “It’s not nice,” I try to explain. “He makes them super realistic, so he can attract real ducks.”

  “To take pictures of them?”

  “To shoot them.”

  Maria mutters something under her breath.

  “Like Peking duck?” Kit grins.

  Darryl’s stomach growls. “Dude, come on.”

  “No.” I shake my head, sinking farther into the bag. “He doesn’t even eat them. Sometimes he’ll have the prettiest ones stuffed, the males, but most of the time he just gives them to the locals.”

  “Ah … the poor folk,” Shy says, raising her eyebrows. “How generous.”

  “You know what’s funny?” Kit stretches out his spindly legs. “They’re probably looking at that dead duck like What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

  Everyone starts cracking up, and I can’t help joining in. Maybe it’s lack of sleep, lack of food, but this is the most I’ve laughed in I don’t even know how long. And how pathetic is that?

  A strange whisper pulls my attention.

  “Did you hear that?” Darryl asks.

  My skin explodes in goose bumps. I want to tell him no, but I hear it all the time now. It seems to be getting closer.

  “Besides roaches and bats…” Kit shines the flashlight on the wet stone surrounding us. “What else could be living down here?”

  “Snakes? Lizards?” I reply.

  “What about people?” Darryl says as he handles the pocket watch he found, nervously opening and closing the hinged cover.

  “Whoever left that is long gone by now,” Kit says.

  “What if it’s his ghost?” Darryl raises his brows.

  “Cut it out, man. It’s bad enough.”

  “No … but seriously … hear me out. They say fugitives come down here to hide. Murderers. This one guy killed like nine—”

  “I’ve heard the story,” I interrupt, “but that was way down in the cave system, not anywhere near the tourist part.”

  “Do you see any lights? Any handrails?” Kit says. “I’m pretty sure we’re as far off the grid as you can get.”

  I shine my light into the tunnel behind us, but the darkness devours it.

  “Hey,” Kit says. “You’ve been spooked since we found you. Not just about the collapse. What is it? What aren’t you telling us?”

  I can feel Shy staring at me. I’m struggling to come up with a response, when Darryl unwittingly rescues me.

  “You guys … what if there’s something else down here?” His eyes light up. “Another life form … something that hasn’t even been discovered yet … aliens.”

  Shy, Kit, and Maria simultaneously pick up whatever’s around them and chuck it at him.

  “I’m serious.” He tries and fails to duck out of the way. “The government … this is where they’d hide stuff like that. This whole place could be an underground testing facility. Didn’t any of you guys watch Lost?”

  “You watch way too much TV.”

  “It could be in our heads,” I tell him, but I’m also telling it to myself. “The biggest enemy down here isn’t the cold or starvation or even the dangers of the cave. The real enemy is the dark. There’s a caving term for it. They call it the rapture. It’s when you see things … hear things…”

  “Guantanamo,” Darryl whispers. We turn to look at him, his face almost gaunt in the dim light. “They use sensory deprivation to torture people. One detainee scratched his own eyes out, trying to find the pins of light he kept seeing in the back of his eyes.”

  “I get that,” Kit says as he messes with the string on his hoodie. “I hate the dark.”

  Everyone gets extremely quiet and I know this has something to do with Kit’s freak-out back there, when his light burned out.

  “Have you had that flashlight for a long time?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says, absently running his thumb over his name. “Since I was six. This police lady gave it to me at the hospital. I know it’s dumb, but it’s kind of like a security blanket, I guess.”

  I instantly feel bad for even bringing it up. “Hey, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”

  “My first fosters were nice,” he says. “I mean, I don’t remember anything bad, so they must’ve been okay. But some people just like the babies. As soon as you start talking, moving around too much, it’s on to the next one. And that next one wasn’t so good for me. Whenever I got in trouble, which was a lot, they’d lock me in one of those old steamer trunks. It smelled like tobacco and old paper, but it wasn’t the worst way to spend a few hours. At least I knew I was safe from the other kids. There was this one kid, Ronny. He was a biter.” Kit squeezes his wrist like he can still feel it. “Anyway, one day they locked me in and never came back. I guess I fell asleep, and when social services stormed the place, none of those kids told them where I was. I was in there for three days before one of the kids finally cracked. But, ever since, I don’t like the dark. And now, here we are,” he says as he looks around. “Trapped in one big, giant trunk.”

  “I’m sorry.” I swallow hard, trying to imagine what that must’ve been like. I feel like the biggest jerk, complaining about my family, when all they ever did was try to protect me.

  Kit shrugs, but I can tell it still gets to him. “That’s when I landed at Miss June’s. She’s sweet as molasses when the state comes around, but she’s a stone-cold hustler. Taught me the ropes, though … how to cook her books … skim a little here and there. We have a mutual understanding. I stay out of her way and I get to keep the lights on. But sometimes, when we’re kicking back on the front porch, watching the traffic on Eastridge Boulevard, it almost feels like we’re a real family. It’s better than being alone.”

  “I love being alone,” Maria says. “I have my mommy and daddy, Nana, my two little sisters, and my auntie at my house. I can’t even hear myself think sometimes.”

  “I like it over at your house,” Darryl says. “At least your family talks. My dad works nights, Mom works days. There’s never any music. No laughter.” He tries to say it matter-of-fact, but I can hear the pain in his voice. “I come home from school, microwave a Lean Cuisine … I know what you’re thinking … it’s
not really working. But the truth is I eat all kinds of junk when my mom goes to bed. We never talk about it, but she knows. She has to. I mean, she keeps buying it.”

  “Your diabetes!” Maria smacks him in the leg. “She knows you’re not supposed to be eating that.”

  “What can I say? I have a sweet tooth, which is why I like you.” He smiles down at her and Maria softens. “I watch Judge Judy. Cops. Maybe Law and Order. And then I fall asleep on the couch. They think it’s because I’m too lazy to get up and move to my room,” he says as he stares into the dark. “But I really just want them to see me. To remember that I exist. That way, they have no choice but to walk by their lump of a son.”

  “Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Maria says. “Words are weapons. The words we use to describe ourselves … they have power. We have to talk nice to ourselves. ’Cause most the time nobody else is going to.”

  As I’m listening to all of this, I’m thinking about my family, my friends, how they’ve never said an unkind word to me. Yeah, they didn’t ask me about the incident, but they weren’t the only ones burying what happened. There are a hundred times I could’ve spoken up and I didn’t. I chose to live in that darkness because it was easier than fighting.

  These people had the best excuses in the world to give up on life, but it didn’t get in their way … it didn’t stop them. They were fighting every day of their lives, and maybe there’s still fight in me, too.

  It’s almost funny that it took getting trapped down here with a bunch of strangers to figure that out, but I feel a sliver of hope for the first time in a while. I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but it’s the first time I can see an exit hatch—not the exit hatch I came down here for, but something else … something new.

  I think about my friends up top, people I’ve known my entire life. I’ve never felt as close to any of them as I feel to Shy, Kit, Maria, and Darryl. Maybe it’s just the stress of going through something like this, but I hope it’s something more.

  The thing is, we all have problems. Some have loving families, some have none. I’m rich and Kit’s as poor as you can get. But we all want out—not just out of this cave but out of our circumstances. We all want to be better than we are.

  But then I think about who I really am. What I’ve done.

  A chill rushes over me.

  Who am I kidding? They would never be friends with me if they knew the truth.

  18

  EVERYTHING’S completely still.

  There’s billowy pillows all around me.

  A haze of tiny white particles dancing in the air.

  I try to inhale, but my lungs won’t let me. In a panic, I push away the pillows, bashing my knuckles against something—a steering wheel.

  I’m in my car. And these are the air bags.

  Fumbling with my seat belt, I grab my phone and open the door. A freezing burst of wind hits my face.

  As I look back at the carnage, the air comes back to me in one violent gasp.

  “Hey.” Shy nudges me and I sit up like a shot, the heat bag crinkling all around me.

  “Sorry, I must’ve fallen asleep. Here…” I start to get out of the bag. “Anyone need to warm up?” But no one seems to want it.

  “Quickest way to warm up is to get moving,” Shy says as she hands me the packet of beef Stroganoff. “The rest is for you.”

  I want to savor every cold, slimy bite, but everyone’s waiting on me. I down it. My stomach groans with how good it feels, but it still can’t fill the hole inside of me.

  Darryl helps me to my feet. I’ve never felt an ache like this before. It’s like I’m covered in one giant bruise.

  “How long was I asleep?” I try to stretch out, but it only seems to make it worse.

  “No clue. But you were talking.”

  “What?” I ask in alarm. “What did I say?”

  “You kept saying, ‘I don’t remember anything.’ It was kind of creepy, dude.” Darryl helps me secure the pack on my shoulders. “You know that sound we heard before? We heard it again while you were out. If it’s just our imagination, how come we’re all hearing it, at the same time? Think about it,” he says as he takes his place in the line.

  I don’t have an answer … for any of this.

  I peer back into the darkness. If someone’s down here, wouldn’t they have spoken up by now? Made a move? Or maybe they haven’t had the opportunity yet. To get me alone.

  “Where’s Grant?” Shy asks in annoyance.

  “Coming,” I say, turning my back on the darkness.

  As we plod forward I’m thinking about all the things I took for granted. Food, shelter, fresh air. Sunlight is the big one. Without it I feel so … lost. Rudderless. No wonder those places up north have such a high suicide rate. Without light, what is there? It seems so basic, but I wonder if that’s what happened to me these past few months. Maybe I just got so depressed I couldn’t see the light anymore.

  With Kit leading the way, joking around with Darryl and Maria, Shy lags behind. She’s humming a tune I recognize, but I can’t place it. Maybe a nursery rhyme, but it’s prettier than that.

  “What is that?” I ask. “The song.”

  She glances back at me over her shoulder, like she’s embarrassed that I heard. “Mozart. Sonata in C Major.”

  “You know classical music?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?” She raises a brow. “You think only rich people listen to classical music?”

  “No … that’s not what I meant.”

  There’s an awkward silence, but then she softens her tone. “My grandmother. She always wanted to play in an orchestra. The harp. But do you know how much a harp costs? It’s ridiculous.” She shakes her head. “Grandma Ruth sits in her favorite chair and plays the records. She closes her eyes. If you look close you can see her fingertips twitching along with the harp parts. She must’ve memorized them all.”

  I think about all the instruments that are collecting dust in our house—pianos, flutes, violins—whatever Mare and I showed the slightest interest in.

  “If we get out of here, I’m getting her a harp.”

  “I don’t need your handouts.”

  “It’s not for you. It’s for your grandmother.”

  “You don’t have to buy us anything.” She peers back at me. “That’s not how we choose our friends.”

  Her words hit me in the gut. I didn’t think that’s what I was doing, but maybe she’s right. I’ve never had to make friends before. They were just kind of handed to me. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable … It’s just, in my family, that’s how we show we care about things.”

  She stops walking and lowers her voice. “Look, I don’t need anything, but if you’re serious about helping Kit … that would mean the world to me.”

  “Consider it done,” I say as I hold out my pinky.

  She looks down in amusement. “What are we, twelve?”

  When I don’t back down, she locks pinkies with me. “People say all kinds of things when they’re in trouble, you know. When you get back to your posh life, you’ll probably forget all about us.”

  “I’ll never forget about this as long as I live. Especially you.” I can’t believe that just slipped out, but I’m not sorry.

  Even though it’s dark, I swear I can see her blush.

  She pulls away and continues walking, but she didn’t bite my head off, so I consider it a win.

  “Just don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she says under her breath.

  Kit comes to an abrupt stop, and we all go crashing into one another. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

  Craning my neck, I try to see what the holdup is, but all I see is stone. Pushing forward through the tunnel, I come face-to-face with the rock wall. I run my hand over it, feeling a zigzag opening. It’s so tight, even I’m nervous about getting through, but when I pull my hand back, there’s a sticky substance clinging to my palm. “Guano,” I whisper.

  Shy looks up at
me, a hint of a smile tugging on the corner of her mouth.

  “Great. Another dead end.” Darryl slumps against the wall.

  “It’s not a dead end. It’s a squeeze.” I try to keep my voice as calm and even as possible. “I read about this. Tough, but not impossible to get through.”

  Kit and Maria are small, so they’ll be fine, and Shy is super athletic, so I think she’ll be okay, but Darryl’s another story.

  Darryl makes his way forward, takes one look at the gap in the rock, and I can tell he’s thinking the exact same thing.

  “That’s it. I’m screwed.”

  “Maybe we missed something.” Maria says. “If we backtrack, we might be able to find another way—”

  “We didn’t miss anything,” Shy says. “It’s not like we sped by an exit on the highway. There’s guano, which means this is where the bats went through.”

  “You guys are going to have to leave me,” Darryl says.

  Maria looks at Shy in a panic.

  “We’re not leaving anyone behind. I told you that,” Shy assures them.

  “Hey…” Kit holds up the flashlight to get everyone’s attention. “Before we all start thinking about how we might have to chop up Darryl and eat him to survive, we need to see what we’re dealing with.” He slips inside the narrow crevice.

  “Kit, wait.” I start to go after him, but Shy holds me back.

  “He’s fine. He’s used to getting out of tight spots.”

  I look down at her hand touching my arm, but she quickly pulls away.

  “Guys,” Darryl says with a nervous smile, “you wouldn’t really eat me, right?”

  “No. Of course not, baby.” Maria hugs him, but I wonder if we would ever get to that point. The freeze-dried food isn’t going to last forever.

  There’s a lot of straining noises coming from inside the squeeze, a loud thump, and then nothing.

  “You all good?” Shy asks.

  When he doesn’t answer, we all gravitate toward the opening.

  “Kit?” Maria calls out.

  “Boo.” He pokes his head through, scaring us half to death.

  “Don’t do that!” Shy yells as he climbs back through.

  “It’s not funny.” Maria slaps his arm repeatedly.