They found themselves, almost without realizing it, on the path to the lake. The dead part of the forest loomed ahead of them—the trees stood stripped and charred, as if they’d been decimated in an atomic blast. X watched as Zoe took in the grim sight. He offered to turn back. She shook her head no, like it was something she knew she had to overcome. To distract herself, she began singing: “‘Row, row, row your boat / Gently down the stream /Verily, verily, verily, verily / Life is but a dream.’”
“Even I know that tune,” said X. “Yet I think you have misrepresented the words.”
Zoe laughed: “Have I? I don’t think so.”
Again she gave him a little bump with her hip, and again he felt heat ripple through him.
When they reached the lake, Zoe walked directly to the hole that Stan had made, as if to convince herself that she hadn’t dreamed it all. X trailed after her.
The hole had mostly frozen over. It looked like a scab that was healing.
X wanted to pull Zoe away, wanted to protect her from the memories he knew would be sinking like pins into her brain.
She spoke before he could conceive of a plan.
“So Stan really did know my father,” she said. “That disgusting reptile knew my father. I thought he was lying when he said they were friends.”
X searched for something suitable to say. He was so unused to talking that forming even the simplest sentence felt like building a wall. Every word was a stone he had to weigh in his hands.
“Stan is poison,” X said carefully. “You must not let a single syllable he uttered into your blood.”
Zoe nodded, but he could see that she was distracted and had not truly heard him.
“You’d think that once my dad died,” she said, “he couldn’t disappoint me anymore.” She stopped and kicked at the ice with the tip of a snowshoe. “There goes that theory.”
X saw both hurt and anger in her—they were like competing storms.
“Yet you loved your father?” he said. “Or the disappointments would not pain you?”
Zoe hesitated just long enough that X felt his cheeks redden and wished he hadn’t spoken.
“I loved him,” she said. “Sometimes I think I loved him just enough to screw me up for the rest of my life.”
X was silent a moment.
“You do not seem … You do not seem screwed up to me,” he said.
Zoe laughed.
“Get to know me,” she said.
This time X spoke without thinking.
“Would that I could,” he said.
Zoe frowned and turned away. X wondered if it was because he’d reminded her that he would eventually have to leave. He decided it was better that she not forget it. It was better that neither of them forget.
She was staring down at the ice now. The edge of the hole was speckled—decorated almost—with Stan’s blood.
Zoe shivered, and straightened up again.
“There’s other stuff that Stan said,” she said. “I can’t stop hearing it in my head. He said he heard my dad died in ‘some goddamn cave’ and that we just left him there.”
“More poison,” X said.
“No,” said Zoe. “It’s true.”
There was another silence and, because the wind had quieted, it felt deeper somehow. X waited. Zoe began to tell him about her father—about the morning she woke up to find him gone, about the search for his body. She seemed surprised that the story flowed out of her so freely.
“I was pissed when I realized he’d gone caving without me,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t just our thing—it was our only thing. If he thought I wasn’t ready to go caving in the snow or whatever, he should have waited for me. He should have trained me. We had one thing! How hard is it to keep one thing sacred?”
Zoe stopped for a second. X didn’t know if she would continue.
“I figured he’d gone up to Polebridge,” she said, at last. “There are two really tough caves up there—Black Teardrop and Silver Teardrop—so about 20 of us helped the cops look for him. It was insanely cold. My friends Val and Dallas came. They don’t even like each other, but they pretended to because I was so freaked out. Dallas brought a big jug of this disgusting, like, weight-lifter shake that he said would give us ‘the strength of a thousand badasses.’ I refused to drink it.” Zoe paused. “Jonah came, too. I mean, it was nuts that he was there. Some therapist told my mother it was a good idea. The kid was still seven—and he was up in the mountains looking for his dead dad.”
Zoe fell silent again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t want to hear all this.”
“I do,” said X.
Zoe searched his eyes to see if he was telling the truth.
“It’s a horrible story,” she said.
“Perhaps telling it will take away some of its power,” he said.
She nodded, and continued. X didn’t recognize all the words—some swam past him in schools, like exotic fish. Still, he felt Zoe’s pain seep into his chest and become his own.
“We searched around Silver Teardrop first,” she said. “We didn’t find anything. The caves up there both have supersteep caverns—just straight, like, hundred-foot drops—so nobody actually went inside. But at Black Teardrop, we found the rope my dad had used to lower himself down. One end was tied around a tree. The other just kind of disappeared into the cave.” She looked at X, and paused. “Jonah was the one who found the rope. He had this happy, little-kid look on his face, you know? He was like, ‘I found him! I found him!’”