Maria

"I dare you to stand on the edge of that hole," I said.

"Okay," said Bethany, my cousin. She stepped over to the hole's cliff-like edge, wiggled her body a bit as if it was no big deal. She stepped away and said, “I dare you to jump in the hole.”

I peered down over the edge. The hole was narrow but wide enough to fit your average human. The edges were ragged and riddled with roots, so climbing back up could absolutely be possible. How strong were the roots, though? Would they snap under my body weight?

I looked over at Bethany. She stood with her arms crossed, staring at me with a look of contempt on her face.

Bethany had always been the first to tease me about things. Being a couple years older than me, she felt that she had the upper hand in life. When I got my first zit, she made sure to bring it up every day even weeks after it cleared. When I got my first boyfriend, she found every flaw in our relationship. When my first boyfriend broke up with me, she even had the nerve to date him for a couple weeks. She even made sure to tell me that he said she was a better kisser than me.

Now, she was prying on my fear of heights.

“Come on, Bethany, I don’t want to do that,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “You can’t even see the bottom.”

“Chicken,” she said, clucking. Then, in a singsong voice she taunted, “Maria is a chicken. Maria is a chicken. Puk-puk-puk-aak. Come on, Chicken. Flap your wings.”

“Stop,” I said, looking back into the darkness of the hole. “What if there’s something down there?”

Bethany stopped clucking and walked over to the edge. She bent down and looked down into the depths. Putting her hands to her mouth, she shouted, “Hey, is there anyone down there? We’ve got chicken on the menu! Oh, you’re a vegetarian?”

I gave her a snide look before bending down to look myself. I couldn’t see anything down there. I couldn’t see anything down there at all.

“I’m not doing it, Bethany,” I muttered, taking a step back.

Bethany, still hovering over the darkness, folded her arms up and started flapping like a bird. “Puk-puk-puk—”

“Bethany!” I cried as I watched her lose her balance. She faltered forward then backward and forward again.

“Maria!” she cried out, reaching out a hand toward me for balance.

I took a step forward to try and grab her but as I did, she lost her footing. It was almost like I was watching in slow motion but somehow moving even slower. Her right foot slipped down first. Her left knee bent to try to compensate, which sent her upper body forward. Her arms flailed wildly around her. I, too, stepped forward. I felt my toes leave the safety of the earth and the ground crumbled beneath me.

Bethany’s body twisted as she tried to catch herself. Instead of regaining balance, she had removed her left foot from its place. Her ankle was the last body part to touch the safety of the ground before she began to fall.

The hole, being narrow, caught her in a contorted position. I stood above her, frantically looking around to see if there was anyone who could help.

“Maria, please,” Bethany begged. “I can’t feel my leg.”

She was about four feet down. I dropped to my knees and reached out for her. She tried to stretch her arm out to me, but there was still too much of a gap.

“I can’t get to you,” I said, panicking.

“Come on,” she said, desperation in her voice. “Please, you have to. My back hurts so bad and I can’t feel my leg. What if it’s broken?”

I bit my lip, trying to consider my options.

We had wandered into these woods, playing dare or dare, away from our moms while they were getting their nails done. Even if I screamed at the top of my lungs, they wouldn’t hear me. They were at least a half a mile away, blocked off by brick walls.

The thoughts that whipped through my head were varied. I looked from left to right, then back again.

“Is anyone there?” I called out, just to check.

“Maria, please,” Bethany begged again. She started to cough. She had inhaled some of the dirt she had unsettled from the hole’s walls. Every time she said my name, her voice got weaker. “Maria.”

“I don’t know how to help you,” I said softly.

“Just climb down here and pull me out,” Bethany suggested. The idea was appalling. There was no way I was going to risk going down there. What if we were both stuck? No one knew where we were or what we were doing. We’d never be found.

No one knew where we were.

We would never be found.

“Hello? Is there anyone there?” I called again, just to be sure.

Only the chirps of the birds and the shuffling of the squirrels answered me.

“Hey, Bethany?” I called down.

“Yeah?” she replied weakly.

“I dare you to stay in the hole.”

“What? What do you mean?” she cried. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

I had stood up and backed away from the hole again. I looked at my surroundings and analyzed what was there. Broken twigs that had fallen from the ground were littered everywhere. There was the occasional piece of garbage, including the coffee cup Bethany had tossed listlessly on the ground before the initial dare.

I grabbed the cup and walked it back over to the hole. Tossing it in, I said, “I think you forgot this.” I watched as the cup gently hit her stomach, rolled off her and into the darkness below. I listened but I didn’t hear the cup hit a surface.

“How deep do you think it is down there?” I asked Bethany, not looking at her but past her.

“I don’t know, Maria. What are you doing? Help me,” she demanded.

I walked away from the hole again, this time over to a large rock. It took a bit of force, but I managed to unearth it. It was heavy, at least thirty pounds. I wasn’t particularly strong—another thing Bethany used to point out when she would pin me down and dangle spit over my face—so I stumbled a bit as I brought the rock over to the hole. I dropped it down near the edge and loomed back over Maria.

“Remember when we were little, how we used to collect rocks?” I asked her.

“Yeah, do you want to do that again? We can collect some rocks as soon as you get me out of here.”

I let out a dark chuckle and shook my head. Her eyes were wide, scared. “Remember,” I reminded her, “when we would collect rocks and then you’d find a nice big one. Do you remember what you used to do with them?”

She understood what I meant. I could see it in the way she shook her head, the way she called my name again.

“I’m sorry, it was just a joke. You know I’d never hurt you.”

“Do I know that?” I asked, thinking about the welts she had given me through the years. She’d used rocks, sticks, my own toys and even her fists. “I don’t think I remember what you remember. I can recall the time you found that rock in the lake when I was six. You were so excited. You said that you found the smoothest rock in the whole world. Then you know what you did?”

“I threw it,” she said, coughing. There were tears streaming through her eyes, leaving tracks in the dirt that had settled on her face.

“You threw it,” I confirmed. “You didn’t just throw it, though. You threw it at me. It wasn’t the smoothest rock in the whole world, though, was it?”

“No,” she sobbed, then coughed.

“No,” I agreed. “It had one big, sharp point on it. I know because that point hit my right above my eye.”

I lifted my bangs to expose the permanent red mark above my left eye.

“I’m sorry, Maria. Please, help me. I don’t want to die.”

“Bethany, Bethan, Bethany. I’m not going to kill you,” I promised. I stood behind the rock and placed my foot on it. “But I’m also not going to help you live.”

With that, I pushed as hard as I could so that the rock toppled over the edge, landing on Bethany’s waist. I heard her cough as the air left her body and she began to sink down further into the hole. Based on the cracking noises coming from Bethany, I could only assume that she either had fireworks on her person or more bones had broken.

“Maria,” she screeched as I walked away, heading back toward the nail salon.

----

I told my mother that we went to the park—the complete opposite direction of the hole in the woods—and Bethany had run off after a cute boy. I told her that I tried to follow her, but I lost her and nearly lost my way back to the nail salon. I got into trouble for wandering off but was promised that Bethany would be in more trouble.

That was a week ago. They never found her. I even went by to find the hole again, but the heavy rainstorm over the weekend had ensure that it closed in and swallowed whatever was in. Oddly enough, while I was there, it was almost like I could hear Bethany crying and calling my name, still.