Boom.

The explosion was too low to hear, and yet it spoke through every solid thing inside the classroom. The windowpanes rattled. The hands on the clock trembled. A shiver ran up from the floor into the bones of my dead legs.

At the blackboard, the teacher paused. "Anyone feel that?"

All of the kids answered her at once. All except Billy Rascoe. He sat across the room from me, his legs stuck way out in front of his desk, big holes in the knees of his jeans. A t-shirt featuring a comic strip (How to Pick up Chicks) hung baggily off his shoulders. The smile I had seen two days earlier during roll call was still there, but harder, smaller. He was staring at me and picking his knuckles, peeling the scabs off them one at a time. Blood damped his fingertips.

"Was that an earthquake?" asked a boy near the front.

No, it hadn't been. I didn't know what it was, but I had grown up along the fault line in Southern California and when Mother Earth had something to say, she usually said it loud. This had been a whisper. Whatever this was.

A girl spoke up in the back of the class. "I bet it was the mine. They're always blowing shit up at the mine."

"Ashley! Language!"

"How do you think they dig down through all that rock? Shovels?"

Before anyone else could speak, the wail of sirens carried into the room. The notes started soft and grew softer, hanging on the air as they died.

"They're going the other way," the teacher said under her breath.

Someone finished her thought, "They're going to the mountain."

Ashley spoke again, low, ominous. "Maybe this time they dug too deep."

I turned to the back of the room, but I could find no face to match her voice among all the boys sitting back there. The bell shrilled, and everyone rose together to leave. When I glanced back to Billy's seat by the door, he was already gone.

On his desk sat a neat pile of scabs, a message:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

♫

The rumors started coming in next period. An accident at the mine. Cave in. People dead. People missing. Never had a history class hummed with so much excitement. Our teacher didn't even bother opening the book. She had a cousin or a friend of a friend who worked up in the mountain, and so did everyone else it seemed, at least for the day. I had no connections there myself of course (and neither did my aunt, being a bit of a recluse), but the buzz worked its way into my nerves all the same. By the time lunch began I was fidgeting in my chair, my whole body restless with energy, ready to go, to run.

Smoke rose over the northern tree line. It curled hazily, a looming black question mark in the sky.

What had happened up there?

What was happening up there right now, deep down in the dark of Widow's Peak?

I don't know much about mining (copper or otherwise), and what I do know I learned from a man whose incontinence stank up his bedroom, a man so insane oven mitts had been duct-taped over his hands to keep him from plucking out his own eyes, but—

That's later.

This is the part where Nip drops out of the air at lunch and lands right next to me.

♫

"Hey."

I twisted my head to the empty space beside me on the bench, and there sat Nip. He had on another ugly shirt, red spots over green. His thin legs straddled the seat. He stared at me, eyes squinted, like there were lines on my face, like I was one of his books.

"Your family died."

I nodded, barely.

"You're paralyzed."

I nodded again.

"That sucks. Want a jelly bean?" He held out his hand. In the center of it sat a red lump, like a spot off his shirt. I took the bean and chewed it slowly, cinnamon spicing my tongue. Nip's hair hadn't been washed or combed in a week to judge by the grease and tangles. A big dangly mole perched on his neck. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I asked, "Why do they call you Nip?"

You know when the sun appears from behind clouds and the day instantly becomes warmer? That's what happened to Nip. The sun came out of his face and beamed. "Because I was born with a third nipple." He lifted his shirt and pointed to a scar in the middle of his skinny white chest. "The doctors cut it off when I was ten, but they let me save it. I have it at home in a jar. It looks like a raisin now."

I didn't respond.

"Billy's going to kill you."

"Yeah."

"He's got a knife. Switchblade." Nip looked off and added, almost fondly, "He showed it to me once."

"Better that than his dick."

Nip blinked at me and then laughed an explosive laugh that turned several heads toward our table. "Come sit with us."

"Who?"

"Me and Ash."

"Who's he?"

"Ash is a she, and she's Ash." Nip hopped off the seat. "Come on."

If it had been an invitation, I probably would have turned it down. But he didn't ask me, he told me, and it seemed easier to go along. I hoisted myself off the bench and onto my wheelchair and let him lead the way. He talked fast as he walked, occasionally popping a jelly bean into his mouth. I couldn't keep up with all of it. Something about a story, and a character with a big wooden revolver. "'You,' this guy says in shock when he sees him standing there, and 'Me,' he says right back as he pulls the trigger and blows the guy's head off."

"Cool."

"I know, right?" Nip made his hand into a gun and banged off a round. "And then the kid, he has this pet, like a dog only it's got razor teeth . . ."

We moved out of the sun into the shade of the gymnasium. Lockers decorated by sharpies lined the wall. In a recess between two sat a boy with buzzed blond hair and earmuff headphones around his neck. He lifted his head as Nip and I came close, revealing a delicate jaw line and a pair of full, pink lips.

"Hey Ash," Nip said, pausing his recital of the story. "This is Joel."

I stopped. "You."

"Me," she replied.

"I recognize you."

"Well, I should fucking hope so." Ash clamped her skull-print headphones to her ears, launched to her feet, and blasted off like a fighter jet minus the contrail.

Nip stretched his stick arms up into the air, cracking his elbows. "Where was I? Oh yeah. The whole city is dying . . ."

♫

I didn't have to wonder about Ash's behavior for long. Fifteen minutes later, as I positioned my cumbersome self behind the handicap desk in English, she appeared in the seat beside mine. I looked at her. She looked at me.

"We have this class together," I said.

"And Algebra."

"And Algebra," I echoed, still processing. "That was you the teacher yelled at for swearing."

"Yup. The bitch."

"And you've sat here, right here, every day this year."

"All three of them."

"Well."

"Indeed."

An angry guitar riff carried from her headphones. I glanced down at them, realized I was staring straight at her small breasts, and looked back up at her face in a hurry. "What are you listening to?"

"Ozzy."

"Osbourne?"

"No, Ozzy the Wizard of Oz. Who else?"

The class was fully seated but far from settled. That same nervous energy buzzed about the room like a swarm of subconscious bees. The English teacher (I don't remember his name; I don't remember many of my teacher's names to tell the truth) had his cell phone out and was staring at it with narrowed eyes. Behind me someone spoke in a hushed voice, "Two confirmed dead. Seven missing."

Ash rolled her eyes. "Everybody cares about the mine now that something happens. Until an hour ago it was, 'Cadmium in the water supply, you say? What's cadmium?' Now everyone will tell you they always had a bad feeling about what goes on up there. Don't get me wrong, people should be talking about this, I mean, Christ on a stick, it's a big deal. People dead? That's shitty. But it's cool shitty. It's popular shitty. And that's just fucked up, don't you think?"

I shrugged.

She leaned in closer. "It's not even the first time there's been an uh-oh up in the mountain. Back in 1974, the exact same thing happened."

"An accident?"

She smiled conspiratorially. "If you can call it that. This guy Leonard Higgins who worked for the mining company, a different company than the one running things now, he snuck off into the hole with a few satchels of dynamite and"—Ash whapped her hands together—"ka-boom, brought the whole operation down around himself."

I found myself becoming taken along by her enthusiasm. "Why?"

"No one knows. His motives remain a mystery. But it shut everything down just like he must have wanted, and it wasn't until a few years ago that Blackstone came along to clear out the rubble and pick up where things left off. But was anyone interested in that story? No sir. I'll bet you they will be now, though. Bunch of lousy bandwagoners."

For a second it seemed she was done, but she was only taking a breath.

"Look," she said, waving a hand at the class. "Most of these kids don't even live here. They just bus up the mountain because there's only one other school in the county and it's a shithole with a bunch of bad-news types, and their Mommies and Daddies think Honaw is safer. Honaw. Don't even get me started." She laughed. "You do know what Honaw means, don't you?"

I shook my head.

"Bear."

I suppressed a shiver. Of course it did.

"You see, there was some council a hundred years back or whatever. All the founders of the town got together and someone said, 'Wouldn't it be neat if we named this place something, like, Indian? And then someone else said, 'Hey, we sure do have a lot of grizzlies wandering around,' and then out came the Native American dictionary and a few minutes later good old Honaw was born."

She stopped talking and a voice as sharp as a knife sang out of her headphones. It cut right into my ears, even though it was little more than a whisper, and you know what?

I kind of liked it.

Ash shook her head in exasperation. "Honaw is a Hopi word, from a tribe down in Arizona. It's not even the right language for this region."

"How do you know so much about all this?"

"Because I read, dumbass."

For the record I kind of liked her calling me a dumbass, too.

"It was the Maidu people who lived up in this area," she went on, scratching at her legs through tight denim jeans. "Well, I should say, around this area. No one lived here. No tribes would even think about settling Widow's Peak."

"Why's that?"

She held up her arms, thin but toned."Who can say? But a few clans from tribes further east did pass through, and at least two names began to float around the future Honaw. The first was Donehogawa."

"Donay-what?"

"It's a real mouthful, huh."

"What's it mean?"

Putting on a mystical air, she said, "'He who guards the gates of sunset.'"

"And the other one? The other name?"

"Askuwheteau." She turned her head to the window and the smoke fanning out above the mountain's peak. Her voice lowered. "He watches."

A heavily freckled boy leaned across the aisle. "You telling stories again, Ghost Girl?"

Ash spun on him. "Shut your mouth or I'll shove it up your fart box."

Freckles landed in his seat with a laugh, then returned to cultivating gossip within his group. Rotating back my way, Ash gave me another exaggerated eye roll. She had blue eyes, I noticed. Like my mother's.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing." I twisted the ring on my finger, diamond up, diamond down.

"Nice rock," Ash said. I played her voice back in my head, picked it apart, but couldn't find any trace of sarcasm.

"Thanks."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Found it on the side of the road."

"Just lying there?"

"Yeah."

"Lucky."

It was almost the truth, only I hadn't been the one to find the ring and it hadn't been just lying there. There had been the hand attached to it, too, and the arm. And the body, tossed down into the bushes like a peeled candy wrapper.

Her gaze remained on my ring another second, and I thought I detected something in her eyes, a hungry little twinkle, but then she lifted her head and her face grew serious.

"I heard what you did the other day," she said. "Nip told me."

"Yeah."

"You shouldn't have done that. Billy . . . he's bad news."

"Like those kids down at that other school?"

"Billy got expelled from that school. For stabbing someone." Her face had looked serious before; now it looked solemn. "He's going to get back at you, and worse than you got him. It doesn't matter you're already in a chair. He'll put you in the ground."

Above the blackboard the clock chipped away at my last few hours of life. An ache traveled up my left leg, made a U-turn through my pelvis, and rolled down my right thigh. My breath was even, my heartbeat slow.

A wondering expression dawned on her. "You don't care."

"Guess not."

Ash said nothing for a long time and then she spoke fast, her voice breaking out of her all at once. "Behind the E's there's a fence. Nip and me hop it, but you don't have to. It's got a gate, hard to spot at first because of the ivy growing all over it. The gate's not locked. Past it there's a path that leads to the old football field."

"The old football field?"

"Yeah. We've got two. Blackstone funded us a new one, a new everything. Their way of giving back to the community. How do you think a small town like Honaw has such a big high school?"

"I didn't think about it."

"Whatever. On the other side of the old football field is another path and a hidden dirt road where I park my van."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're meeting us there, dumbass. So you don't die."

Well, I couldn't argue with that.

____ ____

Author's Note:

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