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.)