“What? Why?” She slid down, following him, hurrying, blood rushing in her ears, instinct making her scramble. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“What’s going on?” asked Leo.
Ria could feel Cotton trembling. The shaking rumbled through his chest, down to his hands now gripped tightly around her biceps.
“Stay away from there,” yelled Cotton.
“You’re hurting me.” She twisted out of his clutch. Gasping, feeling like the air was too thin and pale, “What did you see?”
“That thing. It’s wrong.”
“The blanket? Probably some couple fooling around left it here.” She looked back at the shelf, still unable to find what had hit him so hard.
“Don’t you see the stuffed animal?”
Now she saw something brown. A bunny, judging by the ears.
“Do you recognize it?”
He stood, staring. She wondered if she needed to remind him to breathe. Flutie was silent, visibly pulling back, stepping behind Leo.
“Is that bunny Esther’s?” Ria whispered, leaning into his arm.
“No.” His voice was impossibly small. Fragile.
“Hey, Cotton. It’s okay,” said Leo.
“We have to tell someone.” His voice sounded urgent now, desperate.
“Tell who? And what do you want them to know? I don’t get it.” She bit her lip, trying desperately to understand.
“Someone’s been using this cave.”
“People hang out in caves. People like us.” She pointed in the direction of the graffiti. “People like Jerry and Joey.”
“There are so many sickos in this world, Ria. People do bad things. All the time.”
Flutie started crying.
“That’s enough, Cotton,” said Leo.
“We have to tell the police.”
“What will you tell them?”
“They need to do DNA testing on that blanket. Someone must have brought a kid down here. They need to look for a body.”
“That’s . . .” Ria bit back the word “crazy,” because it seemed too true. Cotton looked wild. Unhinged. Out of his mind with misery. His hands smacked against his legs. “We don’t know who brought the blanket and stuffed animal there. Or why. There are plenty of reasons behind things. That’s an awful lot of filling in the blanks.”
“It’s a stuffed animal!” His voice was a mix of rage and tears. “What if we could save some kid?”
“Stop it, Cotton!” Flutie sounded harsh. “You’re spiraling. Get a grip.”
“No! No, no, no!”
“Don’t yell!” Leo sounded awfully close to yelling. Beside him, Flutie slipped and knocked against the wall.
“We can’t help anyone until we get out of here.” Ria swallowed the deep lump of sad in the back of her throat.
“Yes,” Cotton said in a rush of motion, heading back the way they’d come.
“Wait.” With Cotton so close to hysterical, adrenaline and confusion made it even harder to transform her thoughts into words. She said, slowly, trying to figure out if she was as right as she thought, “I think we should keep going the other way.”
He didn’t argue. But he didn’t agree, either. He hummed softly, fidgeting with his coveralls. Flutie moved in next to him, wrapped her arm around his waist.
“I think this must lead us to another entrance,” said Ria. “That’s what we’ve been looking for. I think we found it. That’s why there’s this stuff here. They didn’t come the way we did. There has to be another way in that’s closer.” The logic of it sharpened in her mind. If she was right, Cotton would see there was another explanation for what they’d found. “We need to go this way.”
Now that she’d said it, she believed it even more strongly. Every inch of her sensed there was another way to reach air and light.
“We need to get Cotton out of here, now,” said Flutie.
Leo wasn’t as easily convinced. “You don’t know where we’re headed. Even if you’re right and there’s another entrance, we have no idea where we’ll end up.”
“We have some idea. We haven’t gone that far. It’s not like we’ve left the planet.”
“Think how long it took us to get here.”
“Exactly. This has to be shorter and faster.”
“No, it doesn’t. It could be as far, or even farther. Or not at all.” Leo had his arms crossed over his chest.
Anger bubbled up inside her. Leo looked so damn stubborn. Like he knew everything. She felt like shoving him into the rock. Slapping him. He’d thought she was messing around back there, like she was dumb, impulsive Ria, leaping in with her clothes on.
But he couldn’t know what she didn’t tell him.
“I didn’t go swimming behind the waterfall. I fell. There was a current or something swirling all around me. I kept