She left the trail, away from the slippery gravel. As she jogged down the grassy hill, momentum made her slide. Thick blades scraped against her legs. At the bottom, the land flattened out amid the weeds. This area was filled with hazards like rocks and sticks and who-knows-what living behind the bushes and trees. She should turn around before she got hurt or lost. But it was easier to keep moving in the same direction.
Her contacts felt dry and scratchy, and sweat dripped around her eyes, making it hard to see. Her breaths came rough and jagged, sounding loud and embarrassing.
As she followed the trail around a collection of boulders, she slammed into what felt like a wall.
A muddy, moving wall.
She stumbled backward, awkwardly bending her legs beneath her. “Damn!” was all she could manage around her gasps for air.
Two figures stood in front of her. One—the wall—was enormous, the other shorter and wiry, both of them covered from head to toe in mud. They each wore a yellow hard hat with a lightbulb in the middle.
“Ria?”
The enormous wall took off his helmet and wiped the mud coating his face. Now she could see it was Cotton Talley. They used to be friends back in elementary school—the kind of friendship too embarrassing to reminisce over. He was with his friend Leo, who she didn’t know as well.
“Were you cleaning out sewers or something?” she asked.
“No. We were not cleaning sewers. We were spelunking.”
She had no idea what that meant. “Well, you have some of it on your face. And your clothes. And pretty much all of you.”
“We were in a cave. Over that way.” He swung his arm outward, sending a spray of gunk through the air.
Ria wiped the mud droplets off her leg. “Is that allowed?”
The two boys looked at each other briefly. “Yes and no,” said Leo.
“Technically, we should have written permission from the owner of the property,” Cotton said in his usual stiff way of talking. “But as the owner is the housing developer who built our neighborhood and is based out of Alexandria, Virginia, we assume we, as residents of this neighborhood, have access rights.”
He sounded so formal. Even though they were both wearing the same kind of weird olive-green full bodysuit, Leo’s looked loose and baggy, while Cotton’s was zipped all the way to his neck and fit him precisely, borderline tight. Maybe that was just because he was so tall. His dark brown curls, matted and twisted from the helmet, looked more rebellious.
“We know what we’re doing,” said Leo dismissively.
She scanned the overgrown field of shrubs and knobby trees. In the distance were hills and boulders—but also, somewhere, apparently not too far, was a cave.
“The latest rain made it muddier than usual,” said Cotton.
“Looks like it,” she said, even if she wasn’t entirely sure how they’d gotten from one place to another. “You’re completely muddened.”
Cotton laughed. Loud and staccato. The same laugh she remembered from when they were little. As always, it made her laugh, too. With the way he grinned, the cave must have been worth the mess.
“Muddened,” he said. “We are muddened. Completely muddened.”
“Yep,” said Leo, loudly, as if hitting a reset button.
She hated the way Leo looked embarrassed for his friend. She ignored him and instead focused on Cotton. “I had no idea there was a cave nearby.”
She knew there were caves, in theory. They were probably composed of the same limestone that was dug out of the quarry back when mining employed most of the town. Every year in elementary school they’d been given a safety presentation warning of the dangers lurking below the ground. It had never occurred to her to look for one so close to her house. She shivered in the early sunlight, but it wasn’t only the breeze hitting the sweat on her skin.
Now she was thinking about Esther, Cotton’s little sister. When they were in fifth grade and Esther was in third, she’d gone out to play and never came back. She was someone Ria had seen almost every day, even if she never thought much about her. Esther was always there, until she wasn’t. Their quiet town had suddenly become big news. Invaded by strangers, all wanting to help, but making everything feel wrong.
“Where’s the entrance?” Ria turned to Cotton, felt him tense up. She’d forgotten he didn’t like being touched without warning. She pulled away, leaving a clear space between them. She felt desperate to know more.