The door cracked open.
Brenda, Claude, and I inhaled in shock.
Strangers’ doors were not supposed to open.
None of us had ever tried, not that I knew of. We assumed they’d be locked.
Music poured out of the opening door, music and cigar smoke and something salty and sweaty, but I could barely catalog the smell and sound because what I was seeing punched me in the face.
Strobe lights.
A row of three men.
No.
Flashes of brightness then darkness scissoring them, illuminating only their waists to their knees, that same light slicing my chest, revealing the TAFT patch sewn into the borrowed fatigues.
Elvis, singing. Well, that’s all right, mama, that’s all right for you.
No no.
A girl on her knees, her head bobbing at the waist of the center man.
That’s all right, mama, just anyway you do.
Her hair long and blonde.
Flash. Strobe.
Feathered, with green streaks.
The hand at the back of her scalp pressed her face into his crotch. He was wearing a copper bracelet that looked familiar.
No no no no no.
I couldn’t hang on to a thought, my mind erasing what I was seeing while I was staring at it.
Well, that’s all right, that’s all right.
“Close it!” Brenda screamed, and the girl on her knees whose face I did not want to see was turning, her chin, her cheek, her profile appearing. In a second she and I would be staring straight into one another’s eyes.
The door was slammed shut.
Before I saw her face.
That’s not true it was Maureen of course it was Maureen who else has green streaks in her hair who were those men Claude grabbed my hand and Junie’s and Brenda led the way and we ran so hard and fast, into the earthy black gut of the tunnels, following Brenda’s bobbing circle of light, our breath ragged, not looking back, barely slowing to unlock and tumble through the nearest exit door—me and Junie’s—and race across our basement and upstairs and out into the rain-soaked front lawn, where I doubled over and retched beneath the moon’s incurious eye.
CHAPTER 10
“What was it, Heather, what’d you see?” Junie was balancing on one foot and then the other, nibbling at the edge of her thumb pad. The storm had come and gone while we were underground. It left behind a clear night sky glittering with stars, spongy ground, and the swollen scent of worms.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, stomach curdling all over again at the steaming pile of partially digested beans I’d hurled. Unless the storm returned, I’d need to unroll the hose and wash the chunks away.
“Yeah, what was it?” Claude asked. “What did you see?” He stood next to Junie, his face flushed, hopeful. His expression told me that by some miracle of positioning, he hadn’t seen inside that basement, either.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. I dragged my gaze to Brenda.
Her eyes were empty circles, her chin quivering. She looked so young, little-girl young, and I was instantly transported to the summer she agreed to jump off the high dive with me at the Muni. We were maybe seven years old. While teens and older hit up the quarries, the young Saint Cloud kids spent hot days at the municipal pool.
I think we all would have been fine doggie-paddling in the Muni’s shallow end that first summer. But then Ant found Maureen and me sitting on the lip by the pool stairs, Brenda floating in the water by our feet. He tried teasing us, but we didn’t pay him any mind. Then, out of the blue, he dared Maureen to leap off the high dive.
“No,” she said, leaning forward to scoop cool water onto her pink arms.
It wasn’t that she was scared. Maureen had never been scared of a thing in her life. It was that even at age seven, she didn’t care enough about what Ant thought of her to put in the effort.
Maureen, what were you doing with those men?
I was a terrible swimmer, frightened of the deep water. To my surprise, though, I’d called out, “I’ll do it.”
Brenda glanced up from the pool, so astonished that her eyeballs showed an extra ring of white. She didn’t know what had gotten into me, either.
“You don’t have to,” Maureen said, her nose crinkled.
“I know,” I said, hopping to my feet and marching off toward the soaring diving board. I made it all of a yard before I wondered why in the world I’d agreed to such a bananas thing and how I could back out of it.
But then Brenda leaped out of the water to follow me, the ruffled edges of her pink one-piece dripping on the hot concrete. “I’ll jump, too!” she said, her strong little-girl thighs tightening with each step.