“If it was at all because of me,” I said, “I want to say I’m sorry for that last night. It was kind of… impulsive. It didn’t really mean… I don’t know. I was just a dumb kid, you know?”
The silence that followed my fumbled words made me wince. I shouldn’t have brought this up. Bad timing.
“What are you talking about?” Temi finally asked.
Now I was the one who didn’t speak for a moment. She couldn’t possibly not know what I was talking about, could she? “That last night we hung out before you left, and we went walking out to the canyon in the moonlight.”
“Yea…”
“Well, I kissed you, right?” I said in a rush. “That’s what I’m talking about. I thought it might have offended you or made you think I was nuts and not want to talk to me again because you were afraid I’d… I mean, I wouldn’t. It was like I said, an impulse. I, uhm, date guys now.” We could have been crawling through a volcano tube full of molten lava and my cheeks wouldn’t have been any hotter. I resolved to stop talking before I made myself more uncomfortable, if that was possible.
“Oh,” Temi said, the single syllable doing nothing to relieve the awkwardness cloaking me.
I told myself not to say anything else. I’d uttered what I’d needed to. Time to drop it and pay attention to what we were doing. The sound of trickling water had grown louder. I hoped that meant we’d reach our destination soon, whatever that destination might be.
“I’m not sure how to say this in a way that won’t be insulting,” Temi said, “but…”
I cringed, certain the answer would slay me.
“I don’t remember that,” Temi finished.
For the first time, I stopped and turned to face her. “You don’t remember it?”
Temi spread a hand. “I mean, I guess I do, but I didn’t really think anything of it at the time, and I’d forgotten about it until now. Mainly what I remember from that night was going over and over in my head whether to run away from home. I appreciate that you were there… but I was so focused on myself that I don’t remember anything you said. Or much of what you did, I guess.”
I managed to wait until my back was to her again to roll my eyes. All this time, I’d wondered if I’d irrevocably offended her, and she didn’t remember it. Unbelievable. I continued down the tunnel. Well, as clear as the air was now, I ought to be able to shoot straight bull’s-eyes with my bow.
“I’m sorry I never wrote,” Temi said. “I meant to, but I was really busy and then it seemed like it’d been so long that I thought… I don’t know. I thought you’d think the way my parents did. That I was wasting my life smacking a little ball around a court. Yaiyai made a point of writing and telling me your SAT scores when you took them and that you were on your way to college. I had the distinct impression she wished you were her adopted granddaughter.”
“Please, you must have been smoking something out there in Florida if you think my SAT scores impressed anyone. It’s not like Harvard was knocking on my door, eager to offer me a scholarship.”
“Hey, they were good. If you didn’t get scholarships, it’s because you were more interested in roaming the desert, poking your nose into old caves and pueblo ruins, than doing extracurricular activities at school to impress admissions officers.”
Huh, I hadn’t realized she’d followed my school career at all, or that her family had. By then she’d been winning junior tennis tournaments all over the world; my accomplishments had been nothing in comparison.
“So,” I said, “basically we haven’t talked in nine years because we were worried about what the other person was thinking about us?”
“Apparently,” Temi said, a smile in her voice.
A whisper of damp air brushed my cheeks. It seemed like a good time to focus on what we were doing.
“I think we’re getting close,” I said. “Close to what, I couldn’t tell you.”
My flashlight had been playing along the same monotonous gray stone, but it glinted against something bright, and I paused. A golden vein streaked along the ceiling. I withdrew my utility tool, pulled open one of the knives, and scraped at it. Flakes of the soft ore fell away.
“Huh.”
“That’s unexpected,” Temi said.
“And apparently not what our guys are looking for, because they didn’t pause to dig any out.”
“Are we going to pause to dig any out?”
“I suppose we could scrape away few flakes. Technically, you’re not supposed to do anything more than recreational gold panning and metal detecting in parks. I’d say this qualifies as a more in-depth excavation, though, since we didn’t dig the tunnel, the interpretation could be a little fuzzy.”
“Who would know?” Temi sounded amused.
“I would, I guess, and knowing my luck, I’d get caught. I already have enough people ragging on me for going rogue. No need to truly do anything illegal.”
“Ah.” Temi ran a finger along the vein. Maybe she was less worried about her reputation.
She followed after me when I trundled off again though. We could always come back later.
The breeze grew more noticeable as we continued, and the next time the view changed, it was because the beam from my light disappeared into darkness. Our tunnel ended, the walls disappearing as it opened into a chamber. I crawled to the edge and probed the blackness with my flashlight. It shone onto water some twenty feet below us, water filled with jagged stalagmites that would feel none-too-comfortable to fall on. An underground lake stretched for as far as my light could reach. In places, thick stone columns rose out of the water, reaching to an arched ceiling ten feet above our ledge. Other chambers and tunnels waited, their openings too dark and distant for my light to pierce. This cave was much larger than I’d expected from the blob on Simon’s screen.
“I guess it was a mistake not to bring the kayaks,” Temi observed.
“Too bad they weren’t the folding kind.”
Aside from the tunnel, I didn’t see any signs that people had passed this way. In fact, the flashlight chanced across more veins that sparkled in the distance. That assured me more than anything else that people had never been down here. Amazing. As a girl, I’d dreamed of discovering undiscovered places; I hadn’t expected it to happen in Prescott, Arizona.
Movement at the edge of my vision made me jerk my flashlight in that direction. Something landed in the water with a splash. Something big.
“What the-”
A large, dark head popped up in the water. My heart sank. The familiar oily black form of the predator looked in our direction. For a long moment, it stared at us, and in that moment, I told myself three or four times that it couldn’t fit into our tunnel and that we were safe as long as we remained where we were. But the creature didn’t head toward us; when it started swimming, it veered in the opposite direction, toward those tunnels at the back of the lake. I lifted the flashlight toward the ceiling. There was a dark hole in the stone up there with water dribbling from one side. The predator must have found some other entrance to the cave system and come out of that opening. The drips made me wonder if it linked to the lake somehow. Maybe there was an entrance nobody knew about underwater up there. However the creature had arrived, its presence didn’t reassure me, not at all.
“There’s no way we can warn Jakatra and Eleriss, is there?” Temi asked.
I’d been more concerned about warning Simon. “No, if they have a phone they stole from Elizabeth and Maude Somersett along with the Harleys, I don’t know their number. I doubt any of us has reception down here anyway.” I pointed behind us. “Let’s find Simon.” And preferably another way down. I didn’t fancy jumping onto those stalagmites. Although, with the creature trolling the cave, maybe we needn’t jump down at all. If it wasn’t guarding the entrance anymore, it ought to be an excellent time for us to head back to the surface and escape while we could.