way she balls her fists. Kurt grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the

door. This is why I’m here. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

“We’ll meet back here,” I say to everyone, but I’m looking at

Layla.

Hers is the face I take with me as I follow the faint smell of

tears and this girl dressed in white around another dark corner.

For a girl her size, she runs fast.

Kurt and I are head to head, eyes straight up the narrow hill as

if we’re climbing to the heavens.

“What does she look like?”

“I suppose she looks like a ghost,” Kurt says.

“The oracle, smart-ass!”

He glances at me but doesn’t say a word. Why would he think he had

to hide a girl from me? If there’s a guy you want giving advice on

girls, it’s me. Or…it used to be me. I’ve gotten girlfriends for all

my friends at one time or another. So why can’t I keep my own?

The sky is clouding over in fat, black and gray tufts. The row of

slanted buildings is an echo of slammed doors and shutters. The girl

makes a quick left into a skinny unlit alleyway.

I stop running.

“Why are you stopping?” Kurt bumps into me. “We’ll lose her!”

“I don’t know, man.” I bend down and squeeze my thigh muscles.

“What if she’s, you know, evil?”

“She’s not evil. She’s one of the oracle’s handmaidens.”

“You said you didn’t know her.”

His violet eyes are like beams against the shadow cast by the

slanted alley walls.

He says, “When you found the oracle in Central Park, she had women

with her, yes?”

“Fairies. But-”

“All the oracles do. They’re protected by other women.”

“Fine. But if she tries to eat your head off, I’ll let her.”

We shuffle sideways into the narrow path. The stones are cold and

slick with moss, the cobblestones like walking on crooked teeth. When

we reach the end of the path, the high walls form a circle around a

well. The girl in white hops up on the edge.

“Oh, hell no.” My first reaction is to take a step back. Really,

truly, the bravest thing I’ve ever done. “Don’t you people have clean

and sunny passageways? Something with palm trees and girls who don’t

look like Jack Skellington? It’s the goddamn rabbit down the goddamn

well.”

She looks down the well, then back up at us. Her white dress hangs

on her bony shoulders like on a coat hanger. Her lips are blue. If

this is how the oracle keeps her, then the oracle is not someone I’m

dying to meet.

“Why won’t you speak?” I ask.

She taps her stick-skinny fingers on her throat. She gives me a

smile that makes me cold all over before taking one step forward and

vanishing down the black hole. I move to follow her.

Kurt smacks a hand on my chest. “I’ll go first.”

“No, your part is done. Go back to the others.” When I say it, the

path behind us shifts. The brick walls close in on themselves. When I

look up, the sky is a dark speck at the end of a narrow tunnel. “Or

not.”

For the first time since I’ve met him, Kurt seems unsure of

himself. It’s in the way he presses against the walls closing in on

us. “If this is a trick, I should go first.”

I wave my weapon in the air. “Hi, supernatural dagger here? We

don’t know how deep this goes. How will you signal me? I’m the king’s

champion. I should be the one to go first.”

He grumbles and tightens the leather strap around his waist. “And

the king named me your guardian. Let me dive first. If only to

preserve the customs you are so haphazardly breaking.”

I gesture at the well. “Lead me to my premature death.”

And he does.

Down the well.

The blackness swallows him in a second. I look up to the bit of

sky above, the hovering clouds. I tap my forehead the way Kurt does,

just in case. I take a step and let the mouth of the well swallow me

whole.

***

This one time, the team got the inspiration to go skinny-dipping

on Valentine’s Day. It was freshman year and pretty much the coldest

winter I can remember. Your nose would turn red and runny the second

you stepped out into the street.

I wasn’t sure the guys would go for it. The cold doesn’t exactly

do the most flattering thing to us, but I reminded them that the girls

would want to huddle up when they got cold. They called me crazy but

did it anyway. Before I jumped, I didn’t feel cold. Even standing on

the pier in my boxers, peeling off my socks, I wasn’t shaking like the

others. The shock of the dive took my breath away for a second. I

think I even liked it because I lasted the longest and the guys were

pissed at me for showing off.

They wouldn’t call me a show-off now.

Here in the well, the freezing water wraps around me even before I

hit the water. I tense my body as narrowly as I can, just like passing

through a tube at a water park, switching the slippery plastic for

brick. I am colder than cold. Colder than getting locked in the

school’s refrigerator as a prank. So cold my gills won’t open and I

choke when I inhale.

When I shut my eyes, I see a woman’s face. The memory pushes its

way so deep inside me that it feels real. She’s golden against the

sun. I’m a child in her arms. She brushes my hair away from my face

and stares with violet eyes. I can feel her warm breath, smell sea and

lilacs, and even though I know this memory isn’t mine, it shakes the

cold away. I can breathe and see again.

The rough brick passage is gone, replaced by thousands of soft and

slick tiny tentacles. They tickle my face, grab at my hair. Their

suction cups suck hard on my skin, leaving slimy white circles. I’m

breathing hard.

Then the foreign memory of the woman is back. Not like the last

vision. This one comes from a different mind. Her hair is pulled to

the side and this time she’s under me. I love her. The kind of love

that makes the heart clench like a fist, that makes you want to part

seas, stay above clouds. I bring my whole body down against her, and

then she’s gone, replaced by a flood of others.

The tentacles suck harder on my skin, and I realize this is where

those memories are coming from. I see a girl in a white robe running

from an army. A man diving off a cliff. The sorrow of thousands. The

joys of few. The feelings permeate my body until all I can do is

scratch my skin raw.

I’m about to scream, but the well spits us out into the shallow

stream of a cave. I tumble onto Kurt who covers his face with his

hands. I wonder if we saw the same things. Felt the same things.

I choke. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. I-”

My muscles feel like rubber. The first time I try to push myself

up, I fall back down, so I just roll over and crawl onto the cool

rock. Something steel and sharp pokes my arm. “Kurt?”

In the darkness of the cave, we don’t hear them waiting for us.

Their steps are soundless as they circle us. Fire sizzles from a torch

held by the mute girl in white who led us here. At least, it could be.

The girl now jabbing a spear at my ribs looks just like her and the

rest-pale, skinny, blue at the mouth, and with big gaping eyes as if

all the lights in the house are on but no one is home.

Kurt and I stand back to back. He whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Remember when I said I’d let them eat your head off?”

The girl with the torch, the one who led us here, takes a step

forward from their circle, right up to my face.

I try to smile. “Hey, we’re the good guys, remember?”

She cocks her head, confused.