The Quarry Boy

The bell for first period had rung twenty minutes ago, maybe more. I could hear it echo faintly through the hills like a church chime underwater... just barely there if you knew what to listen for. I lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, not from nerves, just the morning chill still caught in my bones. July heat hadn’t kicked in yet, though the air already felt like warm glue.

I didn’t even pretend to head toward the school. Walked straight past the gas station, past the church with its peeling white paint, past the Dollar General where the old men sit out front like sunburnt gargoyles with their Mountain Dews and half-lidded stares. Nobody stopped me. Nobody ever did.

Pinegate Hollow doesn’t ask questions. Not unless it’s got a knife behind its back.

I kicked a rock down the middle of the cracked road. It bounced off a beer can and clattered into a ditch. My boots stuck to the pavement like they hated me. Half the town smelt like burnt tires this morning. The other half smelt like wet dog and diesel. Summer made everything worse.

I passed Jessie Leigh’s house. Her screen door was open, but the inside was dark, and the music leaking out was something old and scratchy... maybe Patsy Cline. I didn’t wave. She wouldn’t expect me to.

I cut through the backyard instead of walking up the gravel drive. Our mailbox was still duct-taped shut from when some kids from Larkspur Hollow took a bat to it last spring. It hung off its post like a crooked jaw.

The grass hadn’t been cut since Mom died. Long enough now that even the snakes didn’t bother hiding in it. One had curled up on our porch last week. I’d let it stay.

The screen door creaked like it always did, but I eased it shut behind me anyway, just in case.

Inside smelt like old oil and meat gone wrong. The window AC unit groaned but didn’t blow. Our kitchen table was covered in newspapers from March, stacked like someone thought they were worth saving. There was a mason jar of cigarette butts in the sink, a dead fly floating in the water beside it.

I stepped over a pair of steel-toe boots and heard a grunt from the living room.

Dad was slumped in his recliner, shirtless, with a warm bottle of Wild Turkey balanced on his gut. His mouth was open. There was dried blood on his knuckles...left hand this time. A dog on TV barked at something no one could see.

He didn’t open his eyes.

I stood there for a second too long. Just watching the rise and fall of his chest. He looked smaller now. Not in a pathetic way, more like something caved in.

There was a photo on the wall across from him, crooked in its frame. Me and Mom on the church steps. I was maybe eight. She had this loud yellow dress and too much lipstick, and her eyes were halfway closed like she was mid-laugh. I didn’t remember the sound.

I turned away before the heat in my throat could rise.

In the bathroom, I peeled my hoodie off and stared at the red welt curling across my forearm. A cigarette burn leaves a clean little circle if it’s fast. But this one had been slow. An accident, maybe. Or not.

Didn’t matter.

I washed it under the sink and bit down hard on the side of my tongue.

No one saw. That was the point.

I left without making a sound. Dad didn’t stir. The bottle didn’t spill.

The walk to the quarry cut through a mess of trees and kudzu. Old deer trails, broken glass, and a rusted bike frame I used to ride before the tyres gave out. Pinegate had a way of swallowing things and never giving them back.

The air got thicker the farther I went. Humid, like someone breathing heavily on your neck. A branch snapped somewhere in the woods, but I didn’t flinch. Out here, everything was too tired to chase you.

When the trees broke, I was standing on the edge.

The quarry stretched below like the mouth of something too old to name. Water dark and still. It’d been flooded decades ago, after they dug too deep and hit a spring. Now it just sat there... no fish, no bottom, just cold and quiet.

People said it was cursed.

I figured it was honest.

There were broken beer bottles lining the ledge, crushed soda cans, and graffiti caked in dust: TINA SUX DICK, JESUS WATCHES U FUCK, A + R 4EVER.

I threw my hoodie down on a boulder and peeled off my shirt. The welt on my arm had already scabbed around the edges. I didn’t look at it long. Just lit another cigarette and let the smoke fill my mouth without breathing it in.

The edge crumbled under my boots as I stepped closer. The water below barely rippled.

I wondered, like I always did, how far down it went. If you jumped wrong, your spine might crack on the way in. Some kids used to bet on it. Who’d go the deepest? Who’d come up gasping.

Who wouldn’t?

I’d never told anyone, but I didn’t always want to surface.

I took one last drag, dropped the cigarette, and kicked off my boots.

Then I stepped forward.

I tugged the sleeves of my hoodie down even though it was already too hot. Last night I’d burnt my arm on my dad’s cigarette by accident. He didn’t notice. Or maybe he did. Hard to say.

The town’s only hill came up fast. It led toward the quarry, that old mouth of God nobody prayed to anymore. The road narrowed, crumbled, and then vanished into gravel and dirt. That’s where I belonged. Away from the houses, away from the eyes. Out where the sky felt bigger than the people under it.

I pulled the hoodie tighter around my shoulders and spat on the ground just to hear the sound.

No one would miss me.

No one would even know I’d been gone.

The water didn’t hit... it took.

Like falling into something that didn’t want you.

I plunged straight down, arms out, lungs still full. The cold punched the air from my chest in a sharp burst, but I didn’t surface. Not yet. The silence pulled me under like fingers around my ankles. I let it.

Eyes open, everything was green and murky, like soup left too long in a pot. My ears popped. My knees grazed something sharp...maybe a rock, maybe a bottle. I didn’t flinch. Just drifted.

Down here, nothing could touch me that wasn’t already inside me.

I counted slowly. One. Two. Three.

I’d gotten to twenty once, last summer. Only came up because my chest had started to cramp, and I’d panicked. Not today. Today the ache felt like a promise. Honest. Solid.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I let my arms float loose. My shirt dragged like seaweed around my waist. My fingers brushed the edge of something slick and cold... then nothing.

My lungs began to pinch at me.

I kept still.

Fifteen. Sixteen.

The burn started in my ribs, curled inward.

Seventeen.

I opened my mouth just enough to taste the water. It was iron and stone. Not sweet like creek water. Not dead, either. Just... still.

Eighteen.

My body jerked a little, instinct clawing up through the calm.

Nineteen.

I kicked once, hard. Broke the silence.

The surface above was a pale smear of light. I pushed toward it slowly, slower than I should’ve. My chest ached like I’d swallowed a storm.

When I broke through, I gasped like a fool. Air slapped into me like it’d been waiting.

I floated on my back, chest heaving, the world a blur of sky and sweat and breath.

Then I heard it.

A cough.

Footsteps on rock.

And then... his voice.

At first, I thought I was hearing things. Wind in the trees. Some kid on a dirt bike out past the treeline.

But then I heard the gravel shift. A footstep... light, careful. And a cough.

I wiped the water from my face, squinting against the sunlight.

He was standing on the ridge like some damn ghost.

Eli McDowell.

Leaning against a cypress tree with his arms crossed and that same unreadable look on his face. Older now. Taller. The soft baby edges of him carved down into something sharp and mean. Hair darker than I remembered. Shirt tucked in like he cared about shit like that.

He didn’t say anything.

Neither did I.

I treaded water slowly, breath still ragged. The quarry stretched wide between us, but the distance felt thin. Like if I breathed too hard, it might crack and let him through.

His eyes were on me. Steady. Not curious. Not kind. Just watching.

I didn’t move toward the ledge. Didn’t give him the satisfaction.

He tilted his head just a little, like he was trying to figure out what I was now. Or maybe what I wasn’t anymore.

"Didn't think anyone still came out here," he said finally, voice low, dry.

It cut through the air like a knife being drawn.

I stared up at him. "Didn't think you still existed."

He almost smiled. Almost.

Then he crouched down on his heels, elbows on his knees, and looked at me like we were kids again... but we weren’t. Not anymore. Not even close.

“Still jump in with your clothes on?” he asked.

I didn’t answer. Just floated there, chest rising and falling, water curling behind my neck like fingers.

He glanced away first.

And just like that, the moment snapped.