What It Was Like (40 page)

Bumping heavily, I ground through the gravel, stepping down steadily on the brake to slow the heavy Caddy down. I had to practically stand on the brake to get it to a real dead stop. When I checked my mirror, Rachel was pulling off right behind me. I got out of the car.

It was good to step onto solid ground, even onto this gravelly, slippery asphalt. I stretched my body and looked up. The night sky was black with a million stars, pin-pricked into the velvet. I smelled that moist, new-mown grass smell of the country, and it threw me back to Mooncliff.

Rachel ripped open her car door, just as a car passed in the right-hand lane
waaay
too close for comfort for me. But Rachel seemed to ignore it, slamming the Mustang's door and running toward me. I could see that she was crying, with her purse flopping against her side by the shoulder strap.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” she sobbed into my neck as she clutched me tightly. “Please hold me! Just hold me! I'm so scared!”

I put my arms around her quivering body and tried to comfort her.

“Oh, baby,” I said softly as she trembled in my embrace. I held her tight, worried about her and worried also that someone was going to see us.

She pushed away from me and cried, “I was gonna drive off the road! I was going to smash into a –”

“Don't say it!” I said, pulling her close to me. “Don't!”

“I shouldn't have done it!” she sobbed. “No matter what they did, it was wrong to hit them like that. Nanci was an accident, but I hit Eleanor. I did. Hard. And she was wearing the Hermes scarf that I got her for Christmas!” She fell against my chest, breaking down in wordless sobbing.

I held her and rocked her gently, all the time afraid that some highway patrolman or pain-in-the-ass Good Samaritan would come along and start asking questions, all the while wondering what the hell “
Err – Maze
” meant. I realized that I didn't even have the registration for the Cadillac if someone asked me for it. Maybe it was in the glove compartment, or maybe it was in Eleanor's purse, in the trunk. I certainly didn't want to have to look for it there. I wanted to get back in the cars and get on our way.

But I held her close as she cried. A few cars were passing us. I could see the drivers slowing down slightly to stare at us as they went by.

“Let's talk about this later,” I said gently but with some urgency in my voice. And sympathy.

“I don't want you to hate me,” she wept. “For getting you into this. I couldn't help it. It just happened. I wanted it to happen, but I didn't mean for it to happen this way. It just happened. It wasn't supposed to be this way.”

I looked into her eyes and told her the truth, “You know I'd do anything for you.”

Her tears held back for a moment, and she said nothing, grateful and pitiful beyond words.

“Let's go,” I said.

She turned silently and went back toward the Mustang. I got back in Eleanor's Caddy and got us back on the road to finish what we started. I refused to think about what had just occurred; it was too late for thinking.

≁

It wasn't long before I started seeing Mooncliff-Boonesville-familiar landmarks: Billboards for the Old Pocono Inn and fishing boat rentals and the racing season at Goshen. Propane sold here. Ruby's Bed & Breakfast. Rachel was steady behind me as we pulled off Route 17. Now I really had to concentrate and try to remember those few rides in Stewie's Super-Coupe and the Mooncliff bus on these look-alike country roads that got us to Mooncliff. I slowed down at the exit and willed my memory to recall something/anything. Rachel was right on my bumper; I had to go
some
way. I turned left.

After a few hundred cautious yards, I saw a billboard for the Memorial Day Festival at the Boonesville Regional High School, “Home of the Spartans,” and I knew that we were going in the right direction.

Every turn seemed more and more familiar as I grooved along the winding, two-lane blacktop, with Rachel following behind through the absolute-pitch-black night. It was as if I were being magnetically
drawn
back to Mooncliff. (Funny, if I ever actually showed up at Mooncliff, Stanley would probably have me arrested for trespassing or at least have me escorted off the grounds. Can you imagine what he would think if he knew what we were doing now?)

I sped up a little, to avoid more thinking. Somehow, I
knew
these roads. Bailey's was around there somewhere. If I got to Mooncliff, I knew I could find Bailey's from there. Of course, we were going to the Quarry … and immediately back to the Island. We couldn't let anybody even
see
us around there, especially in these two fairly conspicuous cars. We would just do our business and go straight back to Rachel's house: to clean up more and decide exactly what to do next. Like how long should Rachel wait until she called the police – or Manny first, maybe – and say, “My mother is missing.” It was too horrible to contemplate; I was living an open-eyed nightmare, yet I felt that I had to go on with it. I had to follow through with what we'd started and somehow try to make it right. Eleanor and Nanci were gone; all I could do now was try to save Rachel.

With every sign on the side of the road – for the Kandy Kitchen, for the monthly Rotary Meeting at the American Legion hall, for “Bait – 100 yards ahead” – I knew we were getting closer. Then I saw a green-and-white “Camp Mooncliff – ½ Mi. Ahead” sign, and my spirit felt a jolt of joy. To make sure that Rachel saw it, I beep-beeped the Caddy's horn lightly. Once I was at the front entrance of Mooncliff, I felt pretty sure that I could find the fire road into the forest that led to the Quarry. At that moment, “pretty sure” was the best I could hope for.

I pressed all the switches in the armrest and opened all the power windows. The smell of Mooncliff came flooding in: clean, cold, fragrant night air that kicked me into a new level of alertness. I told myself that I should probably take one of the pills in my pocket for the drive back.
I
would drive the Mustang back to the Island, not Rachel, so I couldn't let myself fade. We still had so much to do. I turned off the radio; the reception was lousy anyway up there, and I had to concentrate. I could
feel
that the entrance to Mooncliff was somewhere around there.

There it was! The big Mooncliff entrance sign – in all its green-and-white, log-framed glory! I gave another tap to the horn, for good luck and to make sure that Rachel saw it. She beep-beeped the Mustang horn back to me as we drove straight by the entrance and on to our
real
objective.

I slowed right down and tried to imagine the landscape of Mooncliff from overhead: an eagle's-eye view. If the entrance was
here
, and the entrance road led back
that way
, that meant that the campus was set
this way.
I mentally flew over Mooncliff, over the Mess Hall and the flagpole, over the ball fields and the Rec Hall, down to the end of the pitch-and-putt golf course, down the old railroad trail that led to the Quarry. I tried to
see
where the trail wound through the forest to the Quarry, which should be . . .
that way
 . . . someplace down this stretch of highway.

I went even slower now, looking for the break, any break, in the trees. Rachel was right behind me: too close. I put my hand out of the window, palm down, to tell her to back off. I
had
to find the trail before we passed it. If not, we'd have to double-back on the other side, and then we could really be lost. We could wind up searching this dark edge of the forest forever, or at least until morning, and then we would be seen. We couldn't let that happen.

I turned on the Caddy's brights and slowed down almost to a crawl. It
had
to be somewhere along there. Boonies used this road all this time; there had to be a way in. Rachel started to flash her headlights, but I couldn't stop. I knew we were someplace close, but if we couldn't find the way into the Quarry, we might as well have been a thousand miles away. And I still had Eleanor and Nanci in the trunk. But what if Rachel was having another crisis? I was starting to – I don't want to say – panic, but I was losing my ability to focus on the road
and
the forest's edge
and
what might be going on with Rachel behind me. My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, but they were starting to shake.

Rachel blew her horn at me twice and kept blinking her headlights, distracting me even more,
and
potentially attracting attention if someone should come along, which was the last thing we needed. We
had to
find this place
now
, or we were totally screwed. Finally, when she wouldn't stop blinking and honking, I had to stop the Caddy and lean out the window to tell her to be quiet.

“It's back there!” I heard her yell over the hum of the Caddy's engine. “It's way back there on the right!”

I gave her a “thumbs-up” to show her that I heard her and made a stirring motion with my index finger in the air, signaling to her that we should turn around. Thank goodness that she saw the trail into the Quarry (assuming that she saw correctly). Thank goodness that
one of us
did.

Rachel led the way, driving back down the road, crossing over, and bumping down onto the shoulder. The entrance to the fire road was behind a guardrail, and it was set way back from the shoulder of the road and under the trees at the edge of the forest. I don't know how I missed it. Slowly, she steered the Mustang
around
the guardrail, off the paved surface, and into the opening under the trees. I watched her as she navigated the way deliberately, bouncing and pitching through the high grass. I simultaneously watched her
and
the road behind us, looking both ways, hoping/praying that no one was coming. For the time being, we were OK: blackness in both directions. The only light in the night came from us and the stars far above.

The Mustang disappeared into the forest. Slowly, I rolled the Caddy off the shoulder, onto the grass, and immediately scraped the bottom of the car loudly on the jagged edge of the asphalt. I gave the car more gas, dragging it over rock, my teeth grinding agonizingly from the grating sound. But I rebounded with a roll, back onto the grass, and followed Rachel onto the track through the opening and deep into the forest.

The Caddy bounced and jolted me along the weed-choked trail, still on that house-of-horrors-tunnel-of-love-ride-to-oblivion. I could see Rachel's red taillights a ways in front of me, so I knew the path was bending to the right. I could just feel it: we were almost there. As the Caddy jounced and scraped along the trail, I tried not to think about what was being tossed around in the trunk, just a few feet behind my head. And suddenly I had one more terrible thought: What if there was
another couple
at the Quarry? Or several couples, just like we saw that day, swimming and diving off the edge? OK, it was very late, after 3:00 a.m. according to the clock on the Cadillac's dashboard, and cold outside, too, but there still could be lovers like Rachel and me, Boonies who needed a place to be alone. It was cheaper than a motel and twice as romantic. Of course, we weren't exactly there for romance. So for those last few yards of trail, I felt this awful dread: What if someone was there? We just couldn't allow ourselves to be seen. I didn't want to have to explain anything. What could we say?

Suddenly, the trees ended, and we were in the clear. Rachel's car was ahead of me, with the open night sky and the huge expanse of the Quarry spread wide in front of us. But most importantly, no one else was there. We were completely alone. No other cars, no other couples. Finallyfinallyfinally, we were here. It was just us, the Quarry, and the vast, empty black night.

≁

“We made it,” I said to myself as I turned off the Caddy's engine and slumped over the steering wheel: thankful for getting there, thankful for being alone, and thankful for the silence.

After a moment I pulled myself up, got out of the car, and closed the door. Everything was quiet around me, except for some forest sounds and the faint buzz of some cars in the distance. I saw the Mustang, but I didn't see Rachel.

“Rachel?” I called softly. “Rache'??”

I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned quickly. There she was, walking back from some bushes.

“I had to pee,” she said. “I had to pee for the last hour.”

“Good idea!” I said and ran off to the bushes.

“Thank God I had some Kleenex!”

When I got back to the cars, Rachel was standing on the edge of the Quarry. I could see nothing but immense, dark, open space beyond her.

“Be careful!” I said and walked up to stand next to her.

“It's still so beautiful,” she said, gazing out on the full scope of the Quarry, eerily just visible in the starlight: the rough boulders and tall pine trees all around, the sheer walls of cut bluestone, and the dark water far, far below. At least a hundred feet. Across the water, I could just make out the little clearing and the flat boulder where we'd sat when we approached the Quarry from the Mooncliff side.

I pointed it out to Rachel. “That's where we used to sit. That's where we saw Bambi's mother, remember?”

“But now we're
here
,” she said, pulling my hand down. “You know we have to do this.”

My God. It hit me again. The reality of what we were doing there. Throughout the long drive up, I tried to keep out of my mind
the reason
for the trip. Now that we were there, there was no way to avoid the fact. Not that I liked Eleanor Prince one bit, but she was a human being. And Nanci? Poor Nanci Jerome. I actually did like her, and I thought that she liked me: So why did she do such bad, weird things to me and to Rachel? Rachel, her friend, whom she supposedly liked for so many years? And if she didn't like Rachel, then why did she hang out with her? And why did she rat us out to Eleanor? Continually? And break confidence after confidence? That was unforgiveable. Maybe not a killing offense, but it was a wrong thing to do. Hurtful
on purpose
. Still, for everything, at that moment if I could have wished them both back to life, I would have. In a broken heartbeat.

“Come on!” Rachel said. “The sun's gonna come up soon. Where do you think is the best place?”

“‘The best place'?” I repeated.

“To dump the car over the edge!” she said. “Don't forget what we're doing!”

She shook my arm and looked at me in the face, to jar me back to the present, a present I didn't want to be in.

“We can't
unkill
them now,” she said. “What happened, happened. We just have to make the best of it now, right? Come on! You have to save us!”

“You're right,” I said vaguely, not really hearing her clearly.

“Stop thinking, and
focus
!” she said then she walked closer toward the edge. “I'm trying to remember . . . What about over here? It's all deep, isn't it? It's just a big junkyard under there, right?”

“I guess so,” I said, reluctantly thinking about what the next steps were.

“I bet if we can get it to go off the edge right here, the water's deep enough that it'll just fall in and sink and disappear,” she said. “What do you think?”

“What do
I
think?” I echoed. “I think we should do what you say.” My mind was so filled with contradictory thoughts that it went almost blank. So many horrible choices presented themselves to me, including jumping off the edge myself, that I could make no choice at all.

“This is right where those Boonies jumped off, right?” she said. “So we know that it's deep here. . . . Are you listening to me? Please?”

“I'm listening,” I said.

I was thinking how far down it was, all the way to the water. The first light of dawn was just edging up over the hills, and I could start to see things more clearly. The Quarry was bigger than I remembered it; the drop from this end to the water looked enormous. The Boonies who jumped from a cliff of this height to impress their girlfriends were absolutely wacko. But if they could jump from this height and not hit bottom, it should be deep enough to swallow Eleanor and Nanci, the Caddy, and maybe this entire night.

“You should get a big stick,” she said.

“What?”

“To push down on the gas pedal.”

She mimed a stabbing gesture with both hands. I understood what she meant.

“You don't want to go over in the car
with
them, do you?” she said.

“No, I don't.”

I walked over to the edge of the clearing, to where the tall trees began. It was still hard to see things on the ground clearly. I stumbled around, looking in the grass, searching it frantically like an animal. I kicked around some leaves and found a thick branch lying on the ground by an old log. I pulled it up and shook the dirt off of it. It was about the size of a hockey stick but a little heftier. I stripped a couple of twigs off of it and felt its weight. It would do.

I walked back to the cars where Rachel was standing.

“Do you know what you're doing?”

“No,” I said, but I kept moving.

At this point, it was as if I were watching myself do these things: Slowly, methodically, and devoid of emotion I went back to the Cadillac, put the branch down on the ground, and got into the car . . . turned on the engine with the ignition key, with Eleanor's giant key ring dangling and jingling . . . pressing down on the foot brake, I took off the parking brake and shifted the car into drive . . . I opened the car door a little ways, so that I could see the ground . . . gently, I let up on the foot brake, letting the car roll forward, toward the edge of the cliff . . . “BE CAREFUL!” Rachel yelled . . . playing the brake, I inched the Caddy forward slowly . . . Rachel shouted again, “WATCH THE EDGE!” . . . When the car was about ten feet from the edge, I pressed down on the foot brake, put the car in park, and put on the parking brake.

Through the open door, I said to Rachel, “Do you want to look in the trunk one more time?”

“Why?” she asked.

“To say goodbye.”

Shaking her head, she said, “Uh-uh. I said my goodbyes a long time ago.”

“OK.”

I watched myself lower all the power windows, two at a time. I opened the door and let it swing open as wide as it could go. Carefully, I got out of the car, dashed back to where I had set down my big branch in the wet grass, and ran it back to the Caddy. Super carefully, I placed the branch into the car until one end of it rested against the gas pedal: the smell of gas poured out from under the Caddy until I thought that I was going to pass out.

“
Do it
!” shouted Rachel.

Moving like a ghost or Fate or anybody but myself, I released the parking brake with my hand and carefully reached under the steering wheel. Holding my breath, I shifted the car into drive and pulled back as it started to move – I grabbed the branch and stabbed down on the gas pedal with it.

The Cadillac instantly shot forward as I spun away, inches from the back wheel, tumbling in the dirt. I looked up just in time to see the car go over the edge. Rachel darted forward as I scrambled to my feet, running up next to her. She clutched my arm with both hands as we looked down just as the Caddy hit the water with an enormous crash-and-splash. It sounded like a bomb, the impact echoing around the Quarry, again and again and again and again.

Then . . . silence.

We looked down. It was still kind of dark at the water's surface far down below us, and it was hard to see, but when the splashing cleared, we saw that the Caddy's back end
hadn't gone all the way under the water
. The car stood there on its front end, half-in, half-out, with its fins sticking straight up in the air, well above the surface, not moving at all.

“Ohmygod,” Rachel whispered. “It's not sinking.”

I waited for the car to start to sink, but it didn't.

“It must have landed on top of something,” I said, not taking my eyes off the Caddy, its shiny chrome bumper glimmering in the dark, as it stood there above the water. “A boulder . . . or something . . .

“I opened the windows,” I continued. “It should fill up with water, and then sink.”

She squeezed my arm even tighter.

“It's
got to
!”

“Everyone can
see
it!” Rachel whispered. “What are we gonna – ?”

“Just wait!” I told her, putting my hand on hers.

We held our breath and, just as I had planned/hoped, the Cadillac slowly, slowly, slowly started to pitch forward as the car gradually filled with water. We both leaned forward, as if we could help it fall over.

“Go! . . .” said Rachel. “
GO
!!!”

And finally the Caddy tipped forward with a splash – roof down, wheels up – floating for a long moment on the water, listing back and forth, then disappearing into the blackness. A cloud of enormous bubbles came up to the surface and burst, one after another. We watched as the water gradually re-leveled and became absolutely still. Everything became calm again; nothing protruded above the waterline. No tires, no bumper, no fins: nothing.

“It's gone,” said Rachel. “They're gone . . .
She's
gone. . . . I can't believe it.”

I believed it. I started to shiver. I don't know if it was the cold air of dawn or what.

“You're shaking,” she said, turning me by my arm. “Here, hold me.”

“Can we get out of here?” I asked.

Rachel turned my face so she could look straight into my eyes and said, “Now I know that you truly love me.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, not wanting to think about anything. “Now can we get out of here?”

She wouldn't move, holding me by my arms. “We'll get past this, baby,” she said. “And everything will be all right. Now that
she's
gone, we'll be free.”

“We
have
to go,” I pleaded, not wanting to hear any more of her plans. “Do you want me to drive?”

“No,” she said. “I want to. You've done everything.”

“Yes, I have,” I said. “I've done everything. I was your lapdog. Just like I've always been.”

“Oh, don't say that!” she said, grabbing me by the arm. “Don't you believe anything Nanci said! You know she was a liar and always was really against us!”

“I suppose so,” I said, unable, as usual, to forget anything.

“No ‘suppose so'!” she said decisively. “Come on! We've got to get home. We don't have much time. We've got to give that floor another good scrubbing. The cleaning lady comes on Monday. I wonder if Max would lick –”

“OK-OK-OK! Can you please just stop for a second!” I implored her.

“I'm sorry,” she said dispassionately. “But didn't you say that we had to keep moving? Mr. Ivy League is never wrong.”

She pivoted and walked away from me, toward the Mustang. Wasting no time, I ran and got in the passenger's side.

“OK, let's just go,” I said, as I settled into the seat. It was pretty light now. People would be starting to go to work, and trucks and cars would be on the road. Wait, it was
Sunday
morning; people would be going to
church
. We definitely had to get out of there.

She slammed her door closed and put her key in the ignition.

“This never happened,” she said confidently, turning on the engine, flipping on the headlights, and shifting into gear.

She gave it gas, made a wide circle, and found the trail in the dark trees that would lead us back through the forest, and away from the Quarry forever.

“This never happened.”

The Mustang rode low to the ground, and Rachel scraped the bottom as we dipped down into the deep ruts of the trail, even worse than the heavy Cadillac. I thought I saw the reflection of some animal's black eyes in the light cast by Rachel's headlights. She swerved the car and the bottom scraped again, making a ripping sound.

Finally, I said, “Do you want me to drive?”

“No, I don't,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I can drive perfectly fine. Didn't I follow you all the way up here? Which wasn't the easiest thing in the world. You're no great driver yourself.”

“It was a brand new car,” I protested. “One I had never driven before.”

“I know,” she said tartly. “You'd never driven a Cadillac before. You told me.”

I didn't say anything as we slowly rambled along the bumpy trail.

“The thing is,” she continued. “We're in this together now – like in The Zone. And this will keep us together forever.”

I knew that she was right about that, but The Zone never felt like this before.

“If we just keep our story straight,” she said. “We'll be fine.”

“And what
is
our story?” I asked, my voice sounding far away from me.

“She never came home,” said Rachel firmly.

“‘She never came home,'” I repeated.

“Anybody asks us anything,” she said. “She never came home. ‘
I don't know what you're talking about
.' All the way on the drive up, I rehearsed what I'd say. What
you'll
say.”

“Then how did her car disappear?” I asked.

Rachel paused.

“OK,” she recited innocently. “She must have come home for her car, but I never saw her, Officer.'”

Through the trees, I could see the highway coming up in front of us. We were almost out of the forest now.

“You've been thinking about this for a long time, haven't you?”