"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.
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.)
EW. 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.