Dig Too Deep (5 page)

Eight

“The school bus stops at the end of the driveway,” says Granny.

“Great,” I mumble around my toast.

She comes to stand behind me, her tiny hands on my shoulders. I feel like a giant compared to her. “You nervous, sugarplum?”

“No.” Why would I be nervous about starting at a new school where Ashleigh's probably the homecoming queen? I can feel the concentric red rings appearing on my back already.

“Well, you just be yourself. Them kids'll warm up to you soon enough.”

Hm.

“I better go,” I say, dropping the crust of my toast into the trash. Stooping down, I kiss Granny's cheek. It's warm and dry and smells like Jergens.

“Have a good day,” Granny says.

“Not likely.”

“Well, try anyways.”

“I gotta run.” And I do, because I hear what sounds like a bus rumbling up the road.

“Love you, sugar pie,” she calls after me.

“Love you too,” I yell back. Her cough follows me down the drive and I cringe, remembering the blood.

My messenger bag bangs against my hip as I run and try to avoid the muddy parts. The bus honks. I turn the last bend and run straight into a spider web of colossal proportions. Suddenly, I'm limboing backward, trying to get the sticky stuff off my face and out of my hair. My bag falls off my shoulder and lands with a splash, but all I'm concerned about is whether the spider that built this natural wonder is crawling into my shirt.

Judging by the laughter coming from the bus, I'm a pretty entertaining sight. Once I've pulled off the worst of the threads, I pick up my bag, duck the remainder of the web, and make my way onto the bus, where in the very front seat I'm unpleased to find my favorite bitchy blond.

She raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Quite an entrance.”

“Shut up.” Taking an empty seat in the middle, I try to imagine what my hair looks like, post–spider dance. There's mud on my jeans from where my bag rubbed against them. I'm a mess, but that's not why everyone on the bus is openly staring at me. I might as well have
Outsider
tattooed across my forehead.

Plurd County High School is a fortress of brick. Flat, square buildings, low walls, and one tall chimney, all done in standard terra-cotta red. It's state-of-the-art 1950s, complete with giant flagpole. But there are a lot of big trees in front, dotting an expanse of what's probably grass when it's not mud season. I stick to the sidewalk, avoiding the red clay.

This is way different from Westfield Academy, located two drug-dealer-infested blocks from Dupont Circle without a tree in sight. I'm thinking that here, in the spring, it must be nice to lie on the grass in the shade. Maybe with Cole, sharing a kiss or two. I feel the corners of my mouth turn up just as a hand claps me on the shoulder. I spin around, prepared for Ashleigh's angry angel face.

“New girl!” Dobber says. He gives me the full benefit of his smile, and I think, again, that he could probably charm the pants off most any girl here. Maybe even me, if it weren't for the Olympic cuteness that is Cole standing right behind him. I swear Cole's teeth are putting out sunrays.

“Hi.” I try to smile at both of them, but I'm pretty sure my eyes don't leave Cole's face.

Dobber puts his arm around me and pulls me away. “So tell me, beautiful, how you liking Plurd County High?”

I don't remember anybody calling me beautiful before. Once, when Ryan Miller was trying to undo my bra, I asked if he thought I was pretty and he said, “Mm-hm,” but it wasn't quite the same. I start to think Dobber's just as dangerous as his daddy, but in a totally different way.

“You'll have to ask me tomorrow,” I say.

Dobber grins. “Is 'at a date?”

“Dobbs.” Cole's voice is quiet and calm, but even I catch the undertone of warning.

“A'ight.” Dobber's arm snakes back toward his own body. “Ain't nothin'.”

Dobber steps away from me. Cole steps in and puts
his
arm around me, right where Dobber's was just a few seconds ago. I feel like a piece of meat getting tugged back and forth in the middle of an alpha-wolf challenge.

I don't like it.

“You know what?” I say, pulling free of Cole. “I have to check in with the guidance counselor before class, so I better go.”

“Oh.” Cole's smile goes flat.

I kiss him fast on the cheek. “See you later though? At lunch?”

“Sure.” His smile is back. “You want to sit with us?”
“Yeah, great.” Thank God. The “where to sit at lunch” issue is the absolute worst part of a first day at a new school. “See you then.”

He winks and smiles. “Bye.”

“Bye. Bye, Dobber.”

“Later.” He doesn't even look at me.

I head for what looks like the office thinking that, aside from the emotional whiplash, my first day at Plurd doesn't totally suck. So far.

“So? How's things?” Cole asks at lunch. He, Dobber, and I are sitting at a table alone. I wonder if it's normally just the two of them or if their other friends bailed because of me.

I poke at the über-basic salad I cobbled together: iceberg lettuce, grated cheese, and canned black olives. “So-so.”

The counselor had bad news about my schedule. There's no Comparative Religion, no Anthropology, and no German III. There's no German at all, actually. Instead I'm taking Literature, something called Life Skills, and starting a whole new language—which should be interesting halfway through the year.

“Can't ask for better than so-so,” Dobber says. “Not at school, anyway.”

I don't tell him that I've always liked school. Or that I'm hoping I'll like it here. Eventually. After I make some friends. I glance across the cafeteria to where Ashleigh sits at a table with some other girls. Seeing their smiles and whispers makes me homesick for Iris.

I fold open my chocolate milk, drop in a straw, and suck down half the carton. I haven't had milk since I got here, just hot tea and water. Which reminds me …

“Hey, what do you guys know about the water situation?” I try to keep a casual tone. “Why's it orange?”

Cole shovels in a fork full of baked beans. “Well water's just weird.”

“It's not usually orange though,” I point out.

“Sometimes it is,” Dobber says. “Like that summer we had that drought and ever'body's wells got low?”

We visited Granny that summer, and I remember it. “Yeah, but that was rust-colored. This is like … Crayola.”

“D'your granny have her water tested?” Dobber asks.

I nod. “She said the report was okay.”

“Then what're you worried about?” Cole asks.

“It's just weird,” I say, impaling my last black olive with my fork. “Granny said it changed color after Tanner's Peak was blasted. Is that when you guys noticed it?”

Dobber shrugs.

Cole pushes his tray away and lays his arm across the back of my chair. “We have city water.”

“Oh.” His arm against my back feels warm and nice. I could sit like this for the rest of the day. “I think I'm going to look into it.”

“Into what?”

“The water.”

Cole scoffs. “What for?”

“Maybe there's something wrong with it. I mean, what if the water is what's making Granny sick?”

“Waste of time,” Cole says. “If the county said the water's fine, then the water's fine.”

I wish I had his faith in the system.

The bell rings and Cole groans.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“Class from hell next.”

“I see. And what are they teaching in hell these days?”

“Es-pag-no,” Cole says.

“Huh?”

Dobber shoves the last half of his corndog into his mouth and pulls out the stick. “Thpanith.”

Great. Now I'm covered in a light dusting of wet corn bread. “Spanish One?”

Cole nods.

I gather up my trash and stand. “Cool. You can show me where it is.”

His brown eyes widen in the cutest way. “Really?”

I nod. “I had to take a language, and they don't have German here.”

Cole grins and grabs his books. “Es-pag-no is now my favorite class of the day.”

“That's sad, man.” Dobber shakes his head as we walk out. “Ain't no girl cute enough to make Spanish good.”

Nine

By the time the bus drops me back at Granny's, it's after four o'clock. I'll have to drive fast to get her to her appointment at four thirty.

Luckily, she's all ready to go.

That's an understatement, actually. She's dressed up, hair fixed, lipstick on, sitting in the car.

“What took you so long, slowpoke?”

I throw my bag into the back and settle into the driver's seat. “The bus,” I say. “It goes all over the county before it drops me off.”

“You better haul ass. We got twenty minutes to get there.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I put the car in gear and paint the sides with mud, speeding down the driveway.

“Holy Ghost in heaven,” Granny yells as she bounces across the seat. “Easy on them potholes, Richard Petty.”

“You said
haul ass
. I'm just doing what you said.”

“That's a first.”

Traffic is pretty light, meaning there aren't any tractors or coal trucks on the road, and we're pulling up to the clinic right on time. We walk in, and I tell the receptionist we're here.

“It'll be about thirty minutes,” she says.

So much for hurrying.

The waiting room is dark and sounds like a TB ward. At least half the people in here are coughing like Granny. I start to feel a little better. It sounds like something's going around. Maybe that's what Granny's got.

We sit down in mismatched folding chairs and thumb through
People
magazines from two years ago. The waiting room slowly empties until, forty-five minutes later, a nurse sticks her head around a door and calls, “Katherine Briscoe?”

“That's me.” Granny stands up and says, “'Bout Goddern time.”

I mumble, “Sorry about that,” as we file past the nurse.

Granny hears me and looks over her shoulder. “Where you think you're going, missy?”

“I'm going with you.”

“The heck you are,” she says. “I been seeing doctors by myself for fi'ty years, and I don't need no chaperone now.”

“Too bad,” I say. “I'm coming with.”

“Like hell! You march your—”

“Oh quit bitching at me, you old bat.” I push past her and plop down in the chair in the exam room. I'm bouncing my foot and glaring at a poster of the human nervous system when she shuffles in and sits down on the exam table.

“The doctor will be in shortly,” the nurse says before closing the door.

“That was rude,” says Granny.

“I'm sorry. It was a long day, I have a ton of homework to do when I get home, and the longer you stand there yelling, the longer we'll be here.”

“That ain't no reason to be disrespectful.” She sniffs. “Old bat, my ass.”

The doctor is young, maybe thirty, and exhausted looking. “Okay, Mrs. Briscoe, what seems to be the problem?”

“Nothing.” She gives him a blazing smile. “I'm fit as a fiddle.”

“Really?” He puts his stethoscope into his ears and steps close to her. “That's great news, but let's just take a listen, shall we?”

Obviously, he's dealt with mountain people before.

“What'd you say your name was?” Granny asks.

“Dr. Lang.”

“You been doctoring long?”

He smiles. There's a gap in his front teeth that makes me like him. “Long enough.”

After checking her blood pressure and taking her temperature, he listens to her lungs in like eight different places.

“Did you have a long drive today?” he asks.

“Naw,” Granny says. “Just down the hill. Speed Racer here made the trip in record time.”

He looks at her fingernails and inside her nose. “You're on the east side of the mountain, then.”

“Yessir. Been there almost forty years.”

“That's a long time.” Finally, he leans against the sink in the corner. “Well, Mrs. Briscoe—”

“Oh, now. You can call me Kat.”

Oh my God. My grandmother's flirting.

“Well, Kat, I'm a little worried about your lungs. It sounds like you've got some fluid in there. Have you been coughing?”

Granny smiles. “No, not really.”

“You have too!” I say.

He glances at me then back to Granny. “And when you cough, do you bring anything up? Mucus?”

“Nothing at all,” Granny says.

“Bullshit. You've been coughing up blood for at least two days.”

“That weren't blood,” Granny snaps. “That was just some lung guck.”

“Which is Granny-speak for blood,” I say. Dr. Lang has pulled out a prescription pad and is scribbling away.

“Blood or guck, I'd like to get a better look at those lungs,” he says. “I'm sending you in for x-rays.” He tears the top sheet off and hands it to Granny. “The nearest imaging clinic is in Charlottesville. Will you have any trouble getting there?”

But Granny's worried about other things. “How much them x-rays gonna cost me?”

“I'll get her there,” I say.

“I ain't got no insurance, 'cept for Medicaid.”

“I understand, Mrs. Briscoe.” And, rubbing his tired eyes, he looks like he does. “But I'm concerned you might have something more serious than a respiratory virus.”

“Like what?” Granny and I both say at the same time.

The doctor waves us off. “Let's just see what the x-ray's show.”

“How about you tell us
now
why you want them,” I say.

“I ain't paying for nothing till I know what it's for,” Granny adds.

The doctor gives us a weak smile. “I don't want to worry you until we have more data.”

“Data?” Granny says. “I ain't a damn lab rat.” Raising her voice starts her on a coughing fit.

He pats her on the back. “I understand that, Mrs.—”

“I'm already worried,” I say. “She coughs up blood, for God's sake. You think that doesn't worry me?”

Granny's hacking up a lung, so I dig through her purse to find her water.

“There's no reason yet to think this is anything other than a lingering cold,” he says.

“Right. And you always prescribe x-rays for colds, do you?” I hand Granny the water.

“Of course not.” He's getting irritated with us. “I just want to rule out that it's not anything more serious.”

“Such as?” I ask.

Sighing, he tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.

“Well?” I say.

“Fine.” His voice is quiet now. “I'd like to rule out the possibility of cancer.”

“Cancer?” I feel my eyes widen. “Lung cancer?”

“Yes.”

Granny is surprisingly silent. I put my arm around her. “Is that really a possibility?”

“A distant possibility. Her lungs have some fluid and her mucous membranes are a bit blue. Her fingernails are starting to club.” His frown deepens. “And you live on the east side of the mountain.”

“So?” Granny and I say at the same time.

“There've been …” He pauses, choosing his words. “We've seen a lot of health issues cropping up in that area in recent years.”

I stare for a minute, my thoughts racing. “What are you saying? That it's a …” I try to remember the term we learned studying Chernobyl. “A cancer cluster?”

He blows out a puff of air. “Cancer. Heart disease. Kidney disease. Birth defects. It's a cluster, all right.”

Granny holds up her hand and starts ticking off fingers. “Ben Willis had cancer. Died last fall. My friend Mary Nell had a heart attack a few months back. Jason and Tracy Easter's baby got stillborn. Her sister, Tanya, her baby got a cleft palate. Virgil Nelson had his gallbladder removed. That's been a year or two.”

The doctor shakes his head. “I'd be surprised if there's a functioning gallbladder in the whole valley.”

“What's causing it all?” I ask.

The doctor chews his lip for a minute then shrugs. “No way to tell conclusively.” His mouth twists on the last word, like it tastes bad.

Granny stares hard at the doctor, then slaps the paper-covered exam table. “You want I should have that x-ray, Doc, I'll go have me a x-ray.”

“I'm glad,” he says. “But in the meantime, let's hope for the best.”

“We'll be praying,” Granny says. “Like a Baptist in a boat on fire. Won't we, Liberty?”

I nod, but my mind's fixed on something else—something abnormal in the valley. Something that might be causing all those health problems. And that
something
is bright orange.