The Quarry Girls(7)
“But I didn’t get to play the tambourine,” she whined, blinking her long-lashed eyes.
Junie was another thing in my life that was changing. Until recently, she’d been my baby sister, emphasis on “baby,” all Pippi Longstocking hair and freckles plus sass to the moon and back. But then like Maureen, she’d started to fill out early (and unfairly, if you asked flat-chested me). She’d lately reminded me of a fox. Part of that was her red hair, sure, but there was something more, something liquid and clever in the way she was starting to move. Made my skin itch.
“I’m sorry, J,” I said, and I was. She’d been so quiet like I’d asked, and I’d promised her she could play with us if she was. “Next time?”
Outside, a car motored past and honked. We all waved, not bothering to look. It would be a parent or a teacher or a neighbor.
Brenda strolled over and dropped her arm around Junie’s shoulder, exactly like Ricky had done to Maureen. “Those turkeys coming by really messed everything up, didn’t they? How about I stop over this weekend, and the three of us can practice our smiles?”
Claude had mentioned a few weeks ago that I had a nice smile. I’d checked it out when I got home, and he wasn’t exactly right, but my mouth was my feature least likely to make children cry. I figured if I practiced, I could make it prettier so that when guys asked me to smile, I had something to offer. Brenda had promised to help, and Junie had begged to be included, but so far we’d been too busy with summer jobs and practice.
“You swear to God?” Junie asked.
“Sure,” Brenda said, chuckling. “Claude, you better come, too, before we all get so old our faces are stuck in place.” She tapped her wristwatch. “Time’s ticking fast.”
Claude whooped and rushed us, and we started wrestling just like we had when we were little. Brenda gave me a noogie, Claude piled on with his signature tickle monster, and Junie darted in and out to pinch noses. We kept it up as we unplugged the lava lamps and closed down the garage together.
We were having so much fun that I almost didn’t see the man behind the wheel of the car parked at the end of the street, still, his face shaded, seeming to stare at us.
Almost.
BETH
It wouldn’t be accurate to say Beth didn’t regain consciousness until she reached the dungeon. The fog had receded twice while she rode in the car’s passenger seat. Just enough for her body’s alarm to start clanging, her vision to brighten, and a scream to build in her throat. He’d reached over and casually squeezed her throat both times. She’d sunk back into the darkness.
But the pitch-black room was the first place she fully woke.
It was a bottomless blankness, a space so dark that at first she felt like she was falling. She threw out her hands, scrabbling at the slimy dirt floor. When she blinked, she couldn’t make out any shapes. Just a suffocating black forever. A scream erupted, dragging at her throat like rusty fishhooks. Desperate to wake from this nightmare, she lurched to her feet and ran forward—crack—straight into a wall. The impact shoved her onto her butt and elbows. She was sobered by the salty taste of her own blood.
She remained on the cool floor, splayed out, breath ragged, and probed herself gingerly. The left part of her forehead and nose were throbbing where she’d run into the wall. Her throat was swollen and pulpy, tender as an exposed tooth to her touch. Her hands kept moving, moving, anything to focus on the here, the now, the real. Her fingers traveled over a braille pattern of ketchup flecks across the front of her Northside Diner blouse. A customer had hit the bottom of a bottle too hard, slaughtering those nearby. Had that been a few hours ago? Yesterday? She blinked back tears and kept exploring with her hands. She couldn’t stop or she’d lose courage.
Her skirt. She was still wearing it.
She tugged it up around her hips. She still had on her underwear, too.
She pressed. No soreness.
The relief threatened to drown her.
He hadn’t violated her yet.
Yet.
It was so dark.
CHAPTER 3
The Pantown neighborhood consisted of six square blocks.
It was built by Samuel Pandolfo, an insurance salesman who in 1917 decided he was going to construct the next great car manufacturing plant in good old Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His twenty-two-acre factory included fifty-eight houses, a hotel, and even a fire department for his workers. And to be sure they made it to work come sleet or snow, he ordered tunnels dug linking the factories and the houses.
For those who’ve experienced a Minnesota winter, it made good sense.
Pandolfo’s company folded two years after it opened, leaving the massive factory buildings empty and all those new homeowners without jobs. I had a history teacher, Mr. Ellingson, who swore that Pandolfo was sabotaged because his ideas were too good. My dad said that wasn’t the case. He said Pandolfo was a rotten businessman and he got what he deserved, which turned out to be ten years in prison. In any case, Pandolfo left behind the factory—currently the Franklin Manufacturing Company—the houses, and the underground tunnels.
Claude, Brenda, and I all lived on one side of the same Pantown street, Maureen on the other. Claude’s house sat on the corner, the house Maureen shared with her mom directly across. Three down from Claude’s was Brenda, who lived in a sprawling brown bungalow with a wraparound porch. She had two older brothers, Jerry in the army and Carl at an out-of-state veterinary program. Junie and I lived on the opposite end of the block. And right beneath all our feet, an underground maze connected everybody’s basements. We had our regular smiling life aboveground, but below, we became something different, rodents, scurrying creatures in the dark, whiskers twitching.