“How’s Will?” someone shouts. “And Tom.”
Tom. His name was Tom. The boy who bled on my jacket.
Devin doesn’t say anything, just puts his hand to his eyes to block the light. Someone else calls out, “What did you see past the gate, Dev?” This rouses him. He moves his hands and speaks in a voice that needs to be lubricated. There’s blood on his teeth, and someone gasps.
“Soldiers. Wearing those suits. Full mask and everything. A tank.”
Everyone gets really quiet. A couple of people discreetly back away from him.
“They’re dead.” His voice cracks.
The Well’s End
The Dark Water
1
WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU REMEMBER?
I’ve heard the Question before. Who hasn’t? But when someone asks me, the Question has a different meaning. It’s not often that the whole world knows who you are, has known you forever, has given you a nickname. Baby Mia. They still call me that. Strangers still call me that. Baby Mia, who fell down the well. Like a nursery rhyme. When someone asks about my first memory, what they really want to know is do you remember the well?
Do I remember the well? I was four years old in 1999, when I became famous. I broke my arm, two ribs and my nose—it’s still a little crooked. People tell me that they honked their horns when I was pulled free, that they hung the picture of me bundled and bandaged on their fridge for years. Baby Mia, who fell down the well.
But truthfully, there is no memory. Only darkness. Considering how deep I was, maybe darkness is the memory. Blackness, water up to my knees, lucky it was August and it didn’t rain, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich lowered in a Pink Power Rangers lunchbox. My memories are the stories everyone tells, the stories about where they were, what they were doing, about the time Baby Mia fell down a well.
Reporters come and go. When my mom died (blizzard, pine tree), at least a dozen inquiries came through. As if what I most wanted to do after my mother’s funeral was talk about my stint underground. The funny thing is, underground was all I could think about. My mother was going to be cold down there, dark, with no one to save her and with no one watching and holding vigils and honking horns and crying.
I’m sure that’s what reporters wanted to hear from me.
But I admit that something about this reporter feels different. For one, he looks different. No wrinkled, collared shirt underneath a wrinkled beige sweater. No notebook and no smell of fast food. He’s clean-shaven, his cheeks looking almost crisp, like a banker. But he’s not in a suit. Instead, he’s wearing a tight fleece, hiking boots and dirty jeans, as if he’s just returned from a stroll in the woods. His brown hair recedes hesitantly back up his forehead, leaving a small tuft up front. He smiles gently enough, and he has a notepad and paper, but he hasn’t pulled out a recorder of any sort. I’m not sure I remember ever doing an interview where there wasn’t a recorder. Staring at him, I find myself uneasy and keep wiggling in my chair. He seems distracted, uninterested in me and the story, which, I’m embarrassed to say, is making me jealous. We’ve been sitting here on a cloud-covered Thursday, in the conference room of the main faculty offices at my boarding school, Westbrook, for about ten minutes now, quietly bouncing our legs. We’re waiting on my father.
The reporter—his name’s Blake Sutton—glances at his watch and sighs, then pulls himself to his feet and goes to examine the class photos strung evenly along the walls.
“Your father is in one of these photos, isn’t he?”
These are his first words since nice to meet you. At least we’re done with the staring contest. “That’s right,” I say, pointing down a few frames from where he’s standing. “Class of ’78.”
Mr. Sutton shuffles over, bends and squints at the photo. He shakes his head a little and looks back at me, then to the image. “Quite the similarities.” It’s true: we both have the same high cheekbones and small foreheads, same wavy brown hair, same camera-shy smile.
“I guess,” I say, bored already. Why do I agree to do these interviews anymore? Maybe it’s time to stop. As if reading my mind he turns back to me and claps his hands together once and then pushes his right fist toward me—the mike’s on you—and asks me what the local attractions of Fenton, Colorado, are.
I don’t roll my eyes, but it’s close. “What? Are you talking about Gracie?”
“Gracie?” he asks, returning to his seat.
“The tallest sycamore in the world.” She’s five miles up the road and a few hundred yards into the tree line, and it takes five kids holding hands to ring around her trunk.
Mr. Sutton smiles, and his teeth are überwhite and straight and thick. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t? It’s true. Did you know that Fenton has the only Roman aqueduct in North America? It’s handmade of over a million bricks.”
He leans back now, impressed, letting me run the show. “What else you got?”
“I’ve got annual migrations of locusts, and we’re the home of the national-chicken-thigh-eating competition.” Suddenly I’m relaxed, in my element, having answered this line of questioning dozens of times, the familiarity of this back-and-forth a comfort. He’s not taking any notes, but whatever—at least he hasn’t asked me the Question yet.
The door opens behind me, and since I’m staring at Mr. Sutton’s face, I get a good look at the moment he sees my father walk into the room. He grins, his lips parting slightly, and I see his tongue peeking out ever so slightly like a giddy dog. And then he seems to realize what kind of face he’s making, because he straightens up and stands, extending his hand. Dad hasn’t come into the room yet. He’s still in the doorway.
For some reason, I don’t move. I feel off-kilter, like I’m missing something very important. After a short while, Mr. Sutton lowers his hand, unshaken, and backs into his seat.
“Please, Mr. Kish, join us.” He nods toward the empty chair next to me. “I was waiting for you to begin. Mia’s been telling me all about Fenton.”
The boards bend under my dad’s feet, and he moves to kiss my head. “Hi, hon,” he whispers, and takes a seat. He’s clenching his jaw over and again, the bone protruding from his cheek like a twitch as he stares intently at Mr. Sutton.
“Dad?” I ask, sensing something wrong.
“Mr. Sutton,” Dad says, not acknowledging me, “when I agreed to this meeting I didn’t know it would be with you. I have to get back to work soon, so why are we here?”
Mr. Sutton nods his head knowingly, but ignores Dad’s question. “Yes, yes. Late nights at the Cave nowadays?”
My father grips the chair tight enough for the wood to creak. There is no Take Your Kid to Work Day with my dad. In fact, I’ve never met another employee of Fenton Electronics. I think about the tunnel he drives into every morning on his way to work. The one that’s behind steel doors. I’ve only ever seen the entrance of the Cave—a nickname since before my time—because all us kids do it in the summer: take our bikes to the door, dare each other to pedal up and knock. Not many people actually work up the guts to do so, but I have. Not with anyone else, though. It was in the snowstorm; it took me a couple hours to walk there. It was after Mom died, and Dad wasn’t picking up his phone. I beat on that door for fifteen minutes until it opened, and there he was, warm as can be, totally clueless. But that’s all I’ve seen. Behind him was a long driveway and then another steel door. Like an air lock; I bet the two doors are never open at once.
Dad doesn’t talk about work; I’ve just come to accept it. Everyone has. He goes into the mountain and then comes home. He makes me lunches and watches my swim meets. He only admits that his work is classified, that he programs code for the government; my dad says the mountain helps keep their electronics cold. But he also says that the code he programs is boring, basic stuff. I believe him. Why shouldn’t I?
“Why are you here?” my dad asks again, this time through gritted teeth. And suddenly I realize, just as my dad already knew, that Blake Sutton is not here to see me.
Mr. Sutton raises his hands, palms up, in a shrug. “You know why I’m here . . .” He pauses, taking in my father, then looks at me and smiles again. “To interview your beautiful daughter, of course. What a story! Falling into that well must have been incredibly terrifying.” His voice has taken on a familiar tone, one I’ve heard dozens of times, almost baby-talk. It’s the buildup to the Question. And here it comes: “I have to ask, Mia. What is the first thing you remember?”
I have it all in my head. I’ve said it enough that sometimes, for no reason at all, I find myself rehearsing the speech. In bed, walking to class, in the pool. But before I even have a chance to open my mouth, Dad blurts out, “Mr. Sutton, I think you should go.”
The reporter shakes his head sadly and points at my dad. “Testy, isn’t he?” he says to me, like it’s a joke and I’m on his side. I’ve never seen Dad like this, and I feel helpless and uncomfortable, itchy and unable to scratch. “The thing is, Mia, your father’s right. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in the Cave right now, granted a ‘tour’”—he actually uses air quotes—“of Fenton Electronics, as I have requested so many times before. I’m sorry to use you this way. Your story really is quite incredible.”
“I don’t get it,” I say—I can’t help myself. “Dad, what does he mean?”
“I mean,” Mr. Sutton says, answering for him, “that Fenton Electronics has some pretty big secrets, and it is my job as a reporter to make sure the doors of the Cave are as wide open and forthcoming to the public as they ought to be.” He gesticulates with his hands held apart in front of his face, as if he were describing a huge fish he’d caught. Then he stands and gathers his bag and the heavy jacket that he’s laid on another chair and heads for the door, but stops and turns back to us. “Did you know, Mia, that I’ve been trying to get into the facility for years now? That I’ve been stonewalled the entire time? No interviews, no responses. But there’s a time limit to how long they can keep this up. And that’s the reason I’m here. To let your father know that if he doesn’t grant me access by this weekend, I’ll have to make it happen by other means.” He opens the door and steps through, staring intensely at Dad. There’s a vein that has snaked its way onto his forehead, slithering up under his receding hairline. I swear his lips glisten, as if they were soaked in spit. “Maybe, Mr. Kish, I’ll bring young Mia with me to show her what her daddy really does.”
Dad’s out of his chair in a flash, but Mr. Sutton closes the door in his face. He moves to the doorknob, but I call out, “Dad!” and he freezes. He stands there for a moment, his hands clenching and unclenching, his body heaving. Unlike the reporter, Dad’s in slacks and a tie, his undershirt peeking through the thin white cotton of his button-down. There’s a thick line of sweat running down his back, even though it’s winter and the room is chilly.
“What’s going on? What’s he talking about?”
One thing my father has always been is quick to smile, and quick to forget—or hide—his anger. He turns to me and does just that: his forehead smooths, and his bushy eyebrows lose their furrow. He seems old, suddenly, as if his hair went from salt-and-pepper to gray instantly and the bags under his eyes became permanent and not just about his recent spate of late nights. Dad’s always seemed young for his age, looking late thirties when he’s really in his fifties, but at the moment, he projects old and a sort of helplessness I don’t like being witness to.
“Oh, Mia,” he says, his voice tired and even a little bit sad. “He’s just some crackpot conspiracy theorist. He’s been trying to get in for years, writing letters, leaving threats in our mailbox, calling the sheriff. Of course we have secrets, but you know that. We handle government contracts, which necessitate a certain level of secrecy.”
“But what makes your company so special?” I ask. “I mean, why here?”
Dad mulls this over. He has been coming home late and devoting more time to the job. I know because he’s never home when I call. He gets obsessive, and it’s tough because I live here at Westbrook, on campus, and I can’t be home to make him dinner and take care of him. When I don’t have a swim meet, I visit him on weekends, and I often find the house a mess, delivery boxes everywhere and laundry needing to get done. But now something’s worse. I have the feeling that, even though he’s staring right at me and talking directly to me, his mind is back in his lab. He’s fidgeting, ready to leave. I’ve never seen it this bad. The reporter must have really spooked him.
“Dad?” I ask again, vying for his attention. I imagine the pages I’ve seen lying on the kitchen table. The notes. The blueprints. Does he actually keep state secrets out for me to see? No idea what they’re for, of course, but I’d be an idiot if I couldn’t take a shot in the dark: “Is it about those computer chips you’re designing?”
He jolts, shocked. I definitely have his attention now.
“What are you talking about?”
“What?” I say, a little embarrassed at being so forward. “You leave your paperwork around the house. Who do you think cleans it up?”
“Well,” he finally says, not without some reluctance, “custom programming for microscopic analysis is one thing.”
I get a thrill hearing this; my dad programs top-secret computer chips? But for what, microscopes?
“But that’s not what this guy’s talking about,” he says, going on. “I don’t like that he’s here speaking to you as a way to get to me.” Dad comes close, takes me by the shoulders and looks me in the eyes. Whenever he does this, he looks first at my left eye, then my right, back and forth and back and forth, and it’s superdistracting. “Mia, listen . . . if he calls you and tries to set another interview up, don’t let him. Stall him and let me know, okay?”
“Relax, Dad. I wouldn’t anyways; he’s really strange. And I won’t even be around. I’ve got my race in Durango this weekend. Remember?” I don’t bother mentioning my birthday on Sunday. It will just give him something else to forget about.
He pauses, then smiles. “Right, right. Okay, great. Just trust me on this one, okay?”
I nod, feeling a tremor of fear flutter in my stomach. Why would this reporter stalk me to get to my dad? I think of his muddy shoes and imagine him staking out the Cave, watching my father come and go. “Are you sure you shouldn’t call the cops on him or something?”
Dad raises his eyebrows and smiles weakly. “I wish. No, he’s harmless, just annoying.” I don’t believe him, of course. I’ve seen him try to make me feel better before. “Listen, hon, I have to get moving. You’ll call me if you see him?”
“Sure . . .” I follow him into the hallway, and he kisses me on the head again, something I normally hate in public but now, even with a few faculty members coming and going, it is exactly what I need.
I head the opposite direction, toward central campus and my dorm. On the way, I pass the dean’s office, with its great mahogany doors spread wide, and I see him. Mr. Sutton. He hasn’t noticed me at all, and for a moment I’m stuck in the doorway, watching this strange man who freaks my dad out so. The thing is, he’s just standing there, shaking Mrs. Applebaum’s hand. I stop and put my back to the wall, listen for a moment. Mrs. Applebaum, the dean’s secretary—most students love her—is asking about his piece. If he got everything he needed. If he had ever been to Fenton before, or Westbrook. Mr. Sutton says, Yes, absolutely, then asks about last week’s snowfall.
I shake my head, entirely confused by the encounter, and push my way out the glass doors of the building and into the quad. The weather is sharp, the wind biting; the sidewalk is sure to be covered in ice. It’s dark, and I think I can see my dad’s car pulling out of the main gates, heading for the Cave.
I breathe the cold air and move quickly along the path from lamp to lamp, trying to stay in their light. I don’t do well in the dark. But this time, with my dad acting all weird, it’s worse than usual. I’m sucked back in, like I’m in the well, feeling the darkness around me, all through the campus and blanketing half the world. Just like my first memory. I think of my friends hanging out in the dorm, entirely unaware of this discomfort in my skin. I think of my dad in his car, the air only just now turning warm, his hands clutched tight around the steering wheel as he drives onward, through town and down the snowy roads, catching up to whoever else works at Fenton Electronics as they go one by one through the air lock and deep into the mountain.
2
THE WATER IS COLD, BUT YOU DON’T FEEL IT FOR MORE than an instant. It’s supposed to be cold. Anything warmer than seventy-five degrees, and you’re in a sauna, muscles floppy and useless. I’m under for almost the entire first length of the pool, then it’s all breathing and eyes, rotating my breaths to see the competition in the adjacent lanes. Look left, look right. My body knows what to do, my breath comes in even bursts, my muscles begin to slowly burn, and I watch the girls fall behind, unable to leech off my wake. Even with my drag suit, designed to slow me down and work me harder, by the time I come out of my turn at the end of the pool, they’re a full body-length back. By the time I touch the finish, I’m all alone.
No one congratulates me, not even Coach Hart, who sees me as his gift horse and picks on me more than the others because, heck, they aren’t going to make it to nationals. He’s turned swimming into a solo sport, despite the fact that I also anchor the relay. During meets, he runs up and down the edge of the pool shouting “WOOP WOOP,” telling me where he is, giving me signals like kick harder, double tempo, you’re falling behind. To push me, he had me swimming with the boys, which immediately pissed off the girls. Thirty of us spending six hours a day together on different sides of the pool, and no girl who would talk to me. And while I didn’t realize that this would happen, I didn’t really care at first. The boys were fun, crazy and cute together. I guess I never thought about how they’d react to being beaten by a girl. For about a month, I went side by side with the best in the state, winning a couple races too, watching the boys watch me, feeling sexy for the first time in my Lycra Aquablade suit. I thought they were my friends, and maybe they were. Maybe the boys didn’t mean any harm, but I’m alone now, back to beating the crap out of the girls. All because of the time when I was tapering at practice the day before a big race, doing laps just to stay loose, and I saw one of the talented boys, Eric, swimming underneath me, crosswise, faceup, and I smiled at first because I wanted to, because I was into Eric. He’s taller than me, looks good with his swim cap on or off. His blue eyes are so bright you can see them through his goggles. But then I heard laughing above my head, and Eric rolled over and his Speedo was down and he was mooning me, which was funny enough, but then there was another boy, Steve, passing by Eric and his wiener was out, flopping like a third leg, and when I came up gasping for air, they were all exposed, swimming around me like dirty dolphins, laughing to tears.
I might have been able to get them all expelled, but probably not. Their parents own the world (Eric’s from Manhattan, his father a vice president at Goldman Sachs, his uncle a congressman), while my dad works in a cave. Coach Hart saw it all and did nothing. Well, not nothing. He put me back with the girls, who no longer wanted me. So I swim faster now, just to get away from them.
At one point in my life, I swam to win. But the summer before last, I watched the London Olympics, saw Phelps after twelve years and that many medals; I thought, what’s the point? I’ll swim my way into a good college and then give it up. Or at least give all this team sport mumbo jumbo up.
I rest my arms on the pool’s edge, my nose sucking in the chlorine, and watch Jo make her dive from the platform. She twists perfectly, her tall body a ball of muscle and slick edges, and then dissolves into the pool. I smile. At least I have one friend in the pool area. I’ve known Jo forever; she’s one of six townies at Westbrook Academy, though we weren’t always this close. Her father teaches AP Calculus, which is why most people think Westbrook let her in, but watching her dive, I know that’s not entirely true. She, like everyone at Westbrook, has a legit talent. The standard entry formula is obscene wealth and power coupled with talent, but if your father teaches at the school and you get invited to the junior nationals for platform diving, that usually works just fine too.
“Mia!” shouts Coach Hart. “Get your ass back in gear.”
I look around, startled, and I see all the other girls already on the starting blocks watching me, their eyes encased in plastic, their expressions dull and robotic. They hate me. I might hate them too.
I climb out of the water and shake my limbs, loosening my muscles, stretching my neck. Back to the block, where this time Hart tells us we’re going to hold our breaths and swim under for fifty meters, then freestyle back, then under for fifty, then back. Ten times. They’re called “over-unders”—surprise, surprise. And I’m the best at them too. No wonder my teammates don’t like me.
• • •
Jo’s dressed first and leans against a locker next to mine, humming a country song I sorta recognize, looking effortlessly perfect as usual. It’s eight thirty at night, our second practice of the day and last before the meet. Normally, we’d be up at five thirty going at it again, but Coach gives us one off to rest the muscles. How thoughtful of him. I’m in my flip-flops, trying to avoid getting plantar warts, and am scrambling to change. Everyone else is gone, Coach made me do a few more laps, and Jo is kind enough to wait almost every day. For the morning sessions, that means we’re usually late to first period. Now, she’s off in her own world, her lips puckering a touch, as if she’s about to actually sing, when suddenly she bolts upright and grabs my arm.
“Shit, I meant to tell you.”
“What?” I ask, slipping my shirt over my head.
“Odessa’s throwing a party tonight.”
I groan. Of course she’d throw a party on a Thursday. Odessa’s one of the other townies, and she lives next door to Jo and me. We all live there, in what the students like to call “Scholarship Row,” though I have seen Odessa’s house, and I know for a fact she doesn’t need a scholarship to attend Westbrook. The thing about Odessa is that she’s done all she can to connect to the others, to prove that she isn’t some new-blood rich girl from a backward town that doesn’t understand the ins and outs of social convention. Usually that means she’s nowhere near our hallway. Unless she throws a party. And a party the night before we travel to a swim meet means no sleep will be had.
Jo’s not concerned. “Oh, come on, Mia. It’ll be fun.”
“What?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re actually trying to convince me to go?”
She shrugs, her eyes on her phone. “It’s not like you’d sleep through the noise anyway.”
“And it’s not like you have to be rested to jump off a board.” I sort of expect to get a rise out of her at that—despite her perfectly choreographed boredom routine, she’s fiercely competitive—but nothing. Her thumbs are moving fast, and she doesn’t look up. When I first became truly close with Jo, it was a late night just like this. I heard her splashing into the water over and over again as I swam laps. When I finally pulled my goggles from my eyes, I saw her climbing the concrete stairs. She was running, hurrying to do another dive, pumping her legs until she made it up the platform. I remember watching her compose herself and balance on her toes, bounce, fall, do it again. I’d seen her around and knew who she was, but never did I expect her to be so dedicated and hardworking. By the next year, we were roomies. She told me, later, that she thought I was cool because I could beat the boys. I thought she was cool ’cause she could get them. Which has me thinking.
“Todd’ll be there?” I ask, tying a shoe and looking up from my crouch.
She flashes a grin. Jo’s a real friend, so it’s rare that I can get genuinely annoyed with her, even if she’s trying to drag me to a party to be a wingman when she knows I need the sleep.
“Maybe we can get Rob to come,” I venture, my way of relenting.
“Already texted him,” she replies, and as if on cue, my phone buzzes. I take a look, and it’s Rob, responding to Jo and adding me in.
Long day?
Jo and I share a smile. Rob, another townie and friend who lives across the hall, has a way with understatement. He’s probably at his computer, his desk lamp the only light on, plugging away at some code or other—his hobby. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in Lulz Security or Anonymous.
Absolut, Jo texts back, which, of course, pops up on my phone too.
I thought Mia’s idea of unwinding was Seinfeld reruns.
Apparently, I type, 2nite it means following Jo to Odessaville.
O fun, he replies. I’ll remember to shower. C U soon.
We pause near the big gym doors, each taking an involuntary breath against the cold. I’m not looking forward to tonight, but the alternative is lying on my bed with a pillow over my head getting more and more annoyed at Odessa’s high-pitched laugh. Maybe Rob’ll cheer me up. He always does.
• • •
Westbrook Academy is, as elite private boarding schools go, a relatively new creature. Created in the ’60s by a new breed of wealth, the creators mimicked Groton or Milton or Dalton and bettered. Westbrook’s buildings are state of the art, but look like Gothic castles, like a mini Oxford or Cambridge without the cold drafts. Each student has the option of a single, and rooms are equipped with bathroom, living room and kitchen. The professors were poached from the best universities in the country, the coaches from the big state schools, the students from the czars worldwide.
Entitlement is a way of life at Westbrook. But, I have to say, there’s nothing easy about the curriculum. Sure, kids smoke pot every night, their doors open, waving the student RA in to take a hit. But my classmates have goals or come from families that demand goals of them. No one would be caught dead with less than a 2250 on the SATs. Without a 4.0. Without an acceptance letter to higher learning, traditionally known as the four-year vacation from Westbrook. Good grades are greatly rewarded, pep rallies are for academics as well as sports, and you actually win a snowmobile if you’re the valedictorian.
Sometime in the early 1990s, kids around the country began to hear of Westbrook. And, to Westbrook’s credit, mos
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