The Dig (8 page)

So I did what any eleven-year-old liar does. I booked it for the hallway and ran all the way back to my room.

A few months later, I was lugging books back from the library when Mr. Cullerman appeared on the main quad. There‘s no way to run away on the main quad. As we got closer, I shifted my books uncomfortably, nearly dropping them.

―Hi, Mr. Cullerman.‖

He didn‘t stop walking. He just tipped his hat. ―Hello, girl who hates to play the flute.‖

For weeks, I couldn‘t get his words out of my head. He had made such sense of it all. Why couldn‘t I just accept that I simply did not and would never like the flute? And that it wasn‘t worth tormenting myself just for a sense of belonging in the band? I chuckle now thinking about all those misguided hours in the basement of the music hall. I never had a passion for music and I‘d been too young to understand that the kids in the band were tight with each other
because
they all shared the same passion for music, resin and those flimsy metal music stands. I smile at a rock. It‘s the prettiest one I‘ve seen today, almost pearl blue. I don‘t close my eyes this time. I just ask the rock to transform into what it‘s meant to be, a heart.

It‘s the first time I actually see my powers in action since the havoc in the town square. It‘s as if a million tiny invisible jackhammers are at work as the rock splinters. Then, lightning fast, invisible stonemasons begin shaving and sanding the edges so that they‘re round. At last, their work is done. I pick up the heart.

It‘s absolutely perfect. This one I won‘t break, I tell myself, and I tuck it into my pocket, next to the obolus.

I should be content with my progress and take a break from my powers, but that‘s the problem with success. It makes you want to keep going, to try even harder things.

And why should this pretty little heart be hidden away in my pocket anyway? It‘s like a charm. What‘s a charm without a necklace on which to hang? And really, if I can make rocks explode, if I can make a huge wall surge up from the center of the earth, well, why not try for a little hunk of silver? I‘m not trying to get rich or anything; I just need a tiny little block of silver to meld into a single strand. No big whoop, right?

As Julia Roberts says in
Pretty Woman
, ―Big mistake. Big. Huge.‖

I‘m trapped.

I try to move but nothing happens. Even my fingers are stuck. My entire body is pinned beneath a heavy blanket of damp, caked soil. I can‘t open my eyes because the dirt has plastered my eyelashes to my cheeks.

Obviously I can‘t open my mouth to scream for help.

Not that there‘s anyone around to help me.

Imagine, seconds ago, I was starting to believe that I really might be some kind of powerful goddess, and now I‘m trapped underground, breathing through my nose and quivering like a felled fawn. Too panicked to focus and unsure if the trickling sound I hear in my ears is the approach of, heaven forbid,
worms
, I know that I have no one to blame but myself for my inevitable death.

I never should have believed that I was a superhero or anything like that. After all, I don‘t even know where my powers come from, and what kind of a superhero doesn‘t know her own origin story? Superman didn‘t just wake up one day in a magical unitard, and Catwoman isn‘t just some girl who got dressed up as a cute cat one Halloween and realized she would always land on her feet. I can‘t control these powers if I don‘t know why I have them! I start to cry and then the fear hits me again and I part my lips and yell into the dirt.

The sound disappears into the soil, hollowing out a tiny hole before a pile of loosened dirt falls back into my mouth. I gag with disgust. I‘m not trying
that
again, I tell myself—only to realize seconds later that it could be my way out. If I was able to push the dirt with the force of a scream, imagine what I can do if I purse my lips and blow.

I exhale a stream of air between my lips, and a handful of dirt loosens and blows aside. I‘ve carved out enough room so that I can almost move my neck…but for all I know, I‘m under hundreds of feet of soil. At this rate it could take me days to dig my way out, maybe even weeks.

Oh god, where is Creusa? Where is
anyone
? I‘ll never get out of here on my own!

The panic sets in again, and the particles of dirt begin a slow landslide back onto my face.

Think
, Zoe.

Okay. When I first conjured the silver to come up, I was immediately blown back by a huge black wall of dirt. So all this earth trapping me now was summoned by
me alone. No one else did it. Which means…I don‘t need anyone else to get rid of it for me. If I have the power to do it, then I should have the equal power to
un
do it.

I imagine that I have giant lungs, and I take a deep breath and blow as hard as I can, ignoring the specks of dirt trickling into my mouth. There is a rush of sound like a car passing way too fast on the highway and then a loud, jarring burst, and the mound of dirt is blown away. I scramble up, coughing, and watch as the dirt fans out in a massive hundred-foot-radius blast.

I inhale the fresh air, wiping the dirt from my mouth. Wow. Creusa is right. I really should learn how my powers work. I don‘t know if I just dug myself out with sheer will or if my lungs have some kind of new magical force.

Spying a leaf on the ground, I take a deep breath and blow at it as hard as I can.

The leaf just sits there.

Again I stare at it, but this time I imagine the leaf flying away from me.

And the moment I do, a little carpet of dirt beneath the leaf lifts it up and carries it off.

Okay, universe. I get it. I control dirt and rocks and soil…but that‘s it. No superbreath here.

I‘m still the same girl who can barely blow up a balloon or put out seventeen candles on a cake. I‘m still me.

Or am I? The frustration over not knowing where my powers come from is really getting to me. Why
can
I suddenly manipulate earth? There has to be a reason. I‘m willing to concede that magic exists—I
did
just party with a nymph—but why can
I
do it? Why not those villagers? What makes me so special all of a sudden? I‘ve never been special before. Not unless you call being an outcast special.

Hang on, I think, brushing aside some dirt to reveal the small silver bar that caused the underground volcano of dirt. Not bad, Zoe. I hold it in my palm, admiring the weight of it. Just as I‘m preparing to use my powers and sculpt the silver into a necklace, I catch my reflection in the metal. I gasp in shock. My face is covered in dirt. And above it, my hair looks filthy and knotted into crazy curls. It‘s a warbled view and I can‘t look away, but I had better stop staring or I‘m going to turn into some kind of narcissist.

There are two versions of the Narcissus story. In both versions, Narcissus is a hunter who people just worship because of how hot he is. And he goes around treating everyone in this arrogant, dismissive manner. He looks down on them because they aren‘t as good-looking. In one version, this goddess Nemesis is just fed up with Narcissus, so she draws him toward a lake.

Narcissus sees his reflection in the water and is so taken with his beauty that he can do nothing but stare at his face in the water, unable to eat or drink, until he eventually dies. In the other version, Narcissus commits suicide because he‘s devastated by the realization that he can never fully connect with the stunning beauty he sees in the water because, well, it‘s him.

I‘ve always preferred the version where he sort of dehydrates and starves to death. It makes more sense to me. After all, that‘s what I see happening every day in the girls‘ bathroom at Greeley. All the girls in my dorm—the jocky ones who are always in sneakers, the hipster ones with earbuds permanently in their ears, the preppy popular girls who brandish flatirons morning, noon and night—they all stand in the bathroom and lean over the sinks and study themselves in the mirror. It doesn‘t matter who the girl is, even Patricia Something oro ther, who‘s always putting up flyers about starving children and human trafficking and won‘t drink the milk in the cafeteria because of cows‘ rights, well, she‘s just as passionate about zit cream as Victoria Whatserface, whose vanity case is bigger than my duffel bag. Anyway, almost all the girls who don‘t socialize outside the bathroom seem to speak the same language
in
the bathroom. Only I can‘t speak the language, and I don‘t want to. I just want to sneak in with my toothbrush, toothpaste and the other bare essentials and sneak out. And you couldn‘t pay me to stare at myself for an hour every morning and an hour every night.

And this is why I don‘t understand the ancient Greeks. Why is Narcissus a boy when there is no creature on earth more narcissistic than a junior girl at Greeley who subscribes to
Allure
and treats her face like a science experiment/canvas?

―Duh,‖ CeeCee said when I asked her one time. ―It‘s not narcissism. It‘s the opposite.

We‘re all in there obsessing because we
don’t
like what we see.‖

―That can‘t be true. You won‘t watch
Planet Earth
for more than five seconds because you think it‘s boring.‖

―It is boring.‖

―Nobody looks at something they don‘t think is beautiful.‖ CeeCee stuffed her hairbrush into her bucket of products. ―Zoe, this is why I can‘t blame everyone for thinking you‘re a cocky snob.‖ I blushed.

―You‘re obviously, like, in love with the way you look because you‘re the only person I know who‘s never trying to change it.‖ I couldn‘t think of anything to say to her as she set off to the bathroom for her nightly rituals. But she was so wrong. I worry constantly about my cowlick, about my smile, which seems too big for my face. But my problems aren‘t solvable with makeup or gooey French creams. I mean, you can‘t make your mouth smaller, even if you live in Orange County! I guess I‘ve always had a laissez-faire attitude and thought of myself as the peach pie on the dessert table: Everyone goes for the brownies and the ice cream, but only one kid likes peach cobbler. I need only one boy to like me, not hundreds of them.

A peacock screams in the distance, jarring me out of my thoughts of Greeley and CeeCee and a world that already seems millions of miles away. I feel something slippery in my hands and look down to see that I‘ve carelessly melted the silver bar down into a kind of Silly Putty. I rub my palms together and roll out the silver into a long, skinny strand. My necklace chain! I take the heart-shaped charm out of my pocket and string it through and then pull it over my head and rest it against my neck.

I would give anything to look in a mirror right now and see the first necklace I‘ve ever owned. Okay, maybe I could stand to be just a
little
more narcissistic. I reach into my back pocket, pull out the obolus and hold it in front of my face. But while it‘s luminescent, it proves not to be reflective, so I stuff the faintly glowing coin back into my pocket.

That‘s when I remember my iPhone. I had completely forgotten about it in all the strangeness of the day‘s events. I take the phone out of my backpack and turn it on. I can‘t help but stare longingly at the screen for a moment, waiting for a text message or a voice mail alert to pop up. Of course I know that there‘s no reception to be had—there are no satellites yet, or cell phone towers, or whatever other technological stuff you need to make a cell phone call work. Oh well, at least the camera still functions. I snap a couple photographs of me in my necklace, admiring my handiwork, and then I quickly switch off the phone. I don‘t know how long it‘s going to take to reach the Oracle and get home, so I vow to conserve my battery and only use the phone for emergencies.

A peacock cries out, this time from a different direction, and then a sudden wind blows through the trees. The red velveteen leaves scatter and dance, revealing a lake behind a copse of trees. Without thinking, I run for the shore of the lake, tossing aside my backpack, then tearing off my boots and feeling the push of the bare earth beneath my feet, propelling me forward. So that‘s how I got to the village so fast: the earth was boosting me onward with each stride.

And then I am by the lake, staring out at the crystal clear surface. The water looks stunningly pure, and I ache to climb in and scrub off all this caked-on dirt. I glance around, searching for a sign of danger. But there is nothing in sight. Only trees and ferns and wildflowers.

I listen for any sounds of approaching creatures, but suddenly the forest is silent.

Eerily silent.

I‘ve never been skinny-dipping. As I nervously pull my top over my head and look around for the fifth time to make sure that I‘m alone, it dawns on me that even though I‘m buck naked on a beach and about to get into the water, I can‘t really call this ―skinny-dipping‖ because skinny-dipping only counts if you‘re with at least one other person. Imagine if Columbia Darren had followed me into the room. Imagine if he had been like the leading man in a romantic comedy who won‘t take no for an answer and pursues the girl even as she flips her hair at him and sets off on her own.

I dip a toe in the lake. Cold. I stare at the disarmingly blue and clean surface of the water and think that I have to stop beating myself up about silly, smug Darren. So what if I‘ve never gone skinny-dipping or I don‘t have a boyfriend? I have powers! I can walk on water!

Well, sort of. I focus a few feet ahead of me and picture a giant lily pad made of stone.

Slowly, one rises up from beneath the water. Ta-da! The only thing more fun than one stone lily pad is two, so I conjure up another and I leap onto it. And then another, just because I‘m alone in another time. And now one more because I have no idea if I‘ll ever make it back to modern times.

And another because even though I am rational enough to understand that my phone gets no reception, its silence still breaks my heart a little, the idea of nobody looking for me, nobody wondering, nobody calling.

Creusa is right. The powers really work better when you‘re thinking good thoughts. As I‘m standing on a stone lily pad feeling sorry for myself, the rock suddenly dissolves and I fall feet-first into the water. I come up for air and summon a new stone lily pad, this one three times as big, shaped like a swimming pool raft.