Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,53

agenda to have her ruin our plans.

I glanced in the side mirror. She and Bing were making out. Nothing so graphic it would offend the Junior League, but just obnoxious enough to make me wait until she was out of earshot, tripping up the steps to her family’s nice little brick house, rushing to get changed, before I took the opportunity to smack him upside the head.

“Man, you’re such a puritan, Collie,” he said, rubbing his ear. “Pop told me it’s genetic. You’re a certain kind of Irish Catholic. . . .”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Typical Fantastic Flanagan horseshit.”

“Admit it. You are a bit of a puritan, Coll,” Rosie said. “So it’s not all horseshit.”

“Next to Bingo, the Marquis de Sade would seem uptight,” I said. “I just like a little decorum, you know. A bit of restraint might be nice. I know it’s a foreign concept in our house, but it’s something to consider.”

The front door opened, and Erica, in shorts and sweatshirt, said good-bye to her mother, who smiled and waved at us from the porch as Erica ran down the steps and toward the car.

You’ve got to be skinny to go caving. You never know when you’re going to run into a tight squeeze. We had a couple of flashlights among the lot of us, no headgear, and we decided not to worry about the rain. Rosie and I had been through the caves in the past. I was familiar with one route in particular and was confident we could make it a pretty straightforward excursion. We talked about bringing ropes, but in the end we thought forget it, we don’t need them, we’re going on a lark, we aren’t Stanley and fucking Livingstone, for Christ’s sake. Parents took their little kids on excursions through those caves.

We got to the cave entrance—a narrow opening in the limestone—and right away we had problems. Bingo was slim enough, he could pass through the eye of a needle no sweat. I wasn’t as slender, but I was pretty lean, so it was no problem for me or Erica, but Rosie had put on a little beer weight, and he couldn’t make the cut.

Even with Bing pushing down on his shoulders at the surface and me pulling his legs from below, we couldn’t budge his fat ass.

“You guys are gonna kill me,” he said, his face getting redder with each passing moment.

I was so disgusted, I was all for leaving him wedged in there for the rest of his life.

“Well, this was a total waste of time,” I said, hoisting myself back up to the surface, unkindly poking Rosie in his soft gut with a long stick I picked up off the ground.

“Let’s look around for another entrance,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. We didn’t bring any stuff with us. And I only know my way from here.”

“Come on, Coll, where’s your sense of adventure?” Bing said mischievously, eyeing Erica. It was plain to see his reasons for wanting to go belowground. She smiled back at him.

“Adventure’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “You don’t know what’s down there. If we get into a jam, we’ve got no way of getting out. I don’t want to be one of those weekend spelunker dorks they have to rescue after they’ve spent three days wandering around in circles in the dark.”

Bingo started squawking like a chicken.

“That’s mature,” I said.

“I’ve come all this way. I’m looking for another entrance. Are you coming?” he asked the others.

“I’m in,” Erica agreed, pointedly looking at me. I shifted involuntarily.

Jesus, I thought, outclassed by a girl.

“What the hell? Come on, Coll, we’ve come this far . . . ,” Rosie said, hauling himself up and dusting off his jeans, stained a rich brown from the earth.

“Jeez, we’ve driven for a couple of hours. You guys make it sound like we trekked for days through the Himalayas,” I said, bringing up the rear as the others scrambled out across the limestone, searching for another way in. But no one was listening to me. The momentum, clearly, was for going in.

Everything was telling me it was wrong. I felt my uneasiness spreading as if it were poison ivy. My skin itched with reluctance, and still I went ahead. What is that? Every part of me covered in hives, my whole body screaming out an alarm, and I ignored it? Even after years of thinking about it, the only explanation I have is that those whom God