Brian McKinney

Chapter 1

It was going so good. Me and her. David and Jalama; ‘Most Improved’ seniors at Humalivuu High and, I hoped, wished, fantasized — a lot more. #Da&Ja@HH. Jalama was not a ‘hot’ girl in most of my friends’ eyes; she wasn’t close to Malibu Barbie thin, and her face was maybe overcome by swelling cheekbones and a slightly thick nose, almost like a cougar’s, but there was something about her smile that hypnotized me; maybe it was her eyes. Or, not to overthink it, maybe it was what we had in common that made me feel like I wanted to be very close to her; to show her my hard-earned self control without being too obvious about it.

    “So, Mr. science student of the year, what can you show me about this canyon my people don’t know?” she asked, referring to her Chumash roots.“

    Probably nothing. Just a cave with some of your ancestors.”

    “Is that all?”she asked, a slight rise in her eyebrows giving her smile a mysterious quality, a sense that she was up for exploring. Or down with it, as my best friend Edgy would say.

    With that introduction to our adventure we had climbed up an awesome gorge offering postcard views of Malibu’s famous surfing beach and the row of multimillion dollar movie star beach houses called the Colony. After the easy walking part of the trail, and the narrower, steeper part, we reached what had appeared to me to be end of the trail for as long as I had been hiking in the gorge as part of my therapist’s experimental treatment. That Friday, four days before, I looked up and saw a pattern of indentations I had never noticed; in the late afternoon light I saw what Jalama saw now: that these hardly noticeable indentations in the crumbly cliff’s stone wall could be an ancient ‘path’ leading up the steep cliff.

    I started to show her how to lean in and pull up and find the next handhold when she pushed me aside and went up as fast or faster than I had on Friday. I stood, shocked, feeling dumb, time passing until I recovered, leaned in and told myself again not to look down as I pulled and pushed with my hands and feet against the level part of each ‘step’, my eyes welded to the hardly discernible break in the pastel-colored patterns of sandstone above me as I tried not to process the fact that I was already blowing it. When I pulled myself onto the ledge, she was gone. In two minutes. Max.

    Having enjoyed the way she said, “Is that all?” down below, and having enjoyed dreaming how my familiarity with the terrain would make this a successful ‘discovery date’, I was not liking what had just happened, noticing the little red flag I had seen Friday but sensing it was a sign of something else I didn’t want to distract me from the mission. But now Jalama, who like me had worked through some ‘issues’ earlier in her life, had entered the cave without me! When I put my head inside the angled darkness and said her name she didn’t reply. Leaving my backpack on the other side of a boulder resting on the ledge, I lay stomach up and pulled myself backwards through the narrow, angled cave entrance.

    A scream echoed from the darkest depths as soon as I was inside, changing everything. Her cry was faint; enough to tell me there was a lot more to this cave than I thought when I first dared myself to crawl inside it, little red flag and all. Getting on my feet, I rushed toward the scream, finding another even slimmer opening that was invisible until you were standing at the end, maybe thirty feet or so from the slanted slash of daylight streaming through the cave’s entrance. The walls were covered with pictographs that might have been painted there deliberately to disguise the gap in the giant boulders. Wedging my six foot tall self into this second, more narrow opening was not my idea of a good time. I wiggled and pushed and grunted through, my heart pounding, stomach flipping.

    “Jalama?” I shouted, hearing only my voice echoing echoing echoing; then silence.‘I can handle this,’ I told myself, wishing she hadn’t been so brave.

    I couldn’t let my fear stop me; everything was on the line. The walls closed in on me, scratched me; I began to sweat, and the increasing darkness ahead offered no relief, no destination, no Jalama. When I was considering backing out, thinking maybe I had gone the wrong way, the walls suddenly let go of me; the sandy floor widened. Barely glancing at the thicket of pictographs scratched and painted into the cave’s walls, my ears searching for a sound from her, I put one foot in front of the other, hoping I hadn’t missed another disguised entrance in the increasing darkness. Was she lured along by these designs, put here by her Chumash ancestors, and then freaked out by a giant lizard, a deadly rattler, a poisonous scorpion, or something worse? That made me laugh, gratefully, just thinking of the humor of it, like there could be something worse.

    My laughing and my smile faded as the narrow path grew narrower, my heart drumming again as I squeezed my chest and hips through another gritty, tight set of slanting sandstone surfaces. The tattooed walls angled to the right and then thankfully widened out into a larger space, uphill from where I stood. A needle-thin shaft of sunlight pinpointed something white, which made me blink. Stopping in my tracks, surprised by the light, I proceeded to move upward along the steeply slanting cave floor, curious and scared at the same time: what was on the other side of that mound? As I rose, walking bent over to the left of the mound, my eyes adjusting to the dim light in the bedroom-sized chamber, I heard her breathing. My eyes, now totally adjusted, fighting past the distracting beam filled with swirling dust, located her; bent over, gasping, three or four yards away, on my right, on the other side of the mound. She seemed okay, straightening up a little, in balance, except she was still breathing very deliberately. Looking past the dark mass between us, I started to say something to soothe her when I was shocked by a skull staring up at me, connected to a strangely stretched out skeleton. My knees folded; the electricity stabbing through me, taking my breath away.

    Still dazed but fighting back, knowing why she screamed, I pulled out my penlight, part of my cave diving equipment, and slid the switch to bright. My act of illumination didn’t calm me; my heart beat faster as the skull seemed to be laughing at me, mocking my lack of preparation and the way everything had changed. The skeleton, bright white wherever I shined the circle of light, floated a foot or two above the cave floor, like it was on a bed, which I suddenly realized must have added to my astonishment: a skull leaning awkwardly towards me, as if it were turning to see who was disturbing its sleep! Trying to adjust, act like a scientist, develop a hypothesis, investigate, or at least observe, I kept the light on the skeleton.

    “Dave, isn’t that enough?” Jalama rasped from the other side of the cave chamber, her pleading tone a powerful sign of her negative feelings, but still, I told myself, ‘be brave, act like you’re curious’. I kept the beam on the skeleton, moving the circle of light down the whole body, whose leg bones crossed neatly, one on top of the other. Walking around the feet of the skeleton, I brought the cone of light up, past the skull, then followed the arm out to the hand on the left. Was it something else that made her scream?

    “No, no!” she uttered , almost like she was denying what she was looking at and begging me to turn off the light. I shone it downward, at our boots, at the dull rocky sand-covered floor; in the middle of where she and I now stood, seeking—I don’t know, a rest, a breather, a second wind? Over the shock of finding a skeleton, feeling doubt, more, an unnamed premonition, I brought the light up again, found the skull and followed the arm out to the right: a patch of rust on the white bones in the middle of the hand!

    “Oh!” she gasped. Now I got it, like a punch to my solar plexis! I bent where I dropped the cylindrical metal penlight and picked it up, trembling, pointing the light under the outstretched arms, revealing what was holding the skeleton up off of the cave floor; a fact I hoped I wouldn’t face but felt was inevitable the moment I grasped it: two thick tree branches, perpendicular to each other, bound together by dusty leather strips, the longer branch holding the length of the body and the head, the shorter supporting the stretched-out arms. I knew then what Jalama had confronted in the dim reflected light, what she was breathlessly waiting for me to comprehend. I was thrown back in time, felt the horror, saw it happening, heard the hammering, the screams of pain, the poor victim’s shrieking disbelief—stark terror, even wondered in an instant how I might have felt if it were happening to me. I couldn’t speak its name.

    I wanted to take my eyes off of the bones of the small feet and the strange square rusty nail holding them in place. I wanted to take my eyes off of the remains of somebody cruelly deserted, maybe blinded by the same streaming pinpoint of sunlight that now illuminated the skull, lolling incongruously atop the brittle, fleshless remains of a soul waiting for a savior who never came; someone who probably struggled mightily, schemed a million ways fate might bring release, life, freedom; then eventually gave up and just begged for hunger and thirst to finally end it all, probably deliriously fearing but desiring the teeth and claws of the carnivorous creatures who often took over the terrain’s caves, maybe until the last moment of consciousness. I could almost hear the voice, speaking a Hokan dialect, the language of the Chumash, or, on second thought, considering this awful practice, this torture, more probably Spanish, shouting ‘Ayudame!’;—Help me!— begging for mercy from the people who did it.

    Trying to catch my breath, eyes watering, stomach pushing up cafeteria lunch, my knees weak again, I stumbled, fell, and then threw up on the tears streaming down my face, stuttering “No,No,No,No! just before I knocked Jalama down.

    I stayed down, supporting her arm and leg with my clean hand as she pulled herself up.

    “Sorry, sorry.” I said, “For everything.” I stood up slowly, like a baby learning to walk. My face felt hot.

    “I don’t believe it . . . so cruel.” was all she managed, pain slicing through the last word.

    “The mindset?” I asked, stalling, numb, staring at the way the nails still held the skeleton prisoner, wondering if she meant how cruel it was or how cruel I was for bringing her here. My hand wiped the puke and tears off my chin.

    “Isn’t this . . .religion. . .?” she asked disjointedly, her voice pointed away from the bones of the imprisoned skeleton.

    “Died for our sins?” I asked, praying she blamed the skeleton and not me for the shock and the deep sadness in her voice. The silence was shrill, broken only by our trembling breaths.

    “What is this, this skeleton, doing here? Who would do this? Who would. . .do this. . .?” I repeated numbly, filling the void, the word for this continuing to escape me, my heart still racing. I flicked the puke off my T-shirt without looking, knowing there was a word for what someone did to this person, but I couldn’t remember it. If pretending being brave was imitating grace under pressure, I flunked. Memory is grace. One of Grandpa’s favorite sayings. My face was hot again. Why did I even think of him? Because he was dead too?

    “Did you. . .oh, no, you didn’t, right?” she asked.

    “Didn’t . . .?” I was stuck, not sure what she meant, still wondering why my face felt hot; surprised at her cooler tone.

    “You didn’t know about this, right? You’re not acting, this is not some prank, some joke you and Edgy are playing, right? This is real, right? This isn’t one of those plastic skeletons, right?” she said the last part like she was trying to reassure herself, and I got it. She was building an alternative world, and her premise fit; me and Edgy were well known among the seniors at Humalivuu High for pranks.

    “I’ve never been this far inside. I found the cave Friday, like I told you. Believe me, this is real.”

    “Who did this? Why?”

    “Totally.” I said, at a loss. Jalama, like me, stood with hands on her thighs, trying to return to normal breathing. I spoke, the sounds of our panicked respiration begging for relief.

    “It looks, uh, looks old, huh?” I said, moving back gingerly along the cave’s angled floor to see the skeleton from the feet up again, the action soothing me, filling me with hope that everything between us had not changed forever.

    Unintentionally blocking the shaft of sunlight with my head, I moved aside, turning to look at where the light was coming from, realizing that without it she would probably have tripped over the skull and the branch under it. Looking away from the crime scene, I tried to follow the beam through the giant rockslide stretching ten or fifteen feet into the extreme darkness, finally giving up as I noticed the giant boulders were covered with a black soot.

    “I think there was a fire.” I said, swiping my hand over a section of the cave wall’s hieroglyphs and showing Jalama my black palm. I smelled smoke.

    “Aren’t you scared?” she asked, me hearing, ‘Aren’t you sorry?’.

    “Yeah; but. . .” I trailed off.

    “What?” she asked as I wiped my blackened hand on my shorts.

    “Well, this isn’t from the Chumash, your ancestors. This is from the Spanish, the Europeans. The Romans and the Christians. Right on top of ancient bones, like the ones from the other room, the baskets, uh, what used to be baskets. . .”

     “The Chumash experts in Santa Barbara say we never buried our dead in caves. Baskets, yes; caves, no.” she said quickly, in rhythm, like she was fighting her own battle, wanting to say something brutal, maybe to do to me what she felt I had done to her, but instead finding a way to hold back, to give me the benefit of the doubt, as grandpa used to say. I sensed in myself the amazement that she had possessed the courage to wiggle past the same narrow claustro openings, through the same darkness, confronting this horror alone, and now, kindly, generously not somehow taking it out on me, actually being so fair to me, not blaming me, but I couldn’t find a way, feel a way to say it, and there were other things surfing around in my brain, probably not as much to the point but feeling a lot easier to bring up.

    “I thought of something. You know, just sketching.” I said.

    “Huh?”

    “This could be a big deal. A mystery. And two Malibu teenagers, finding it? What happen to us afterwards, you know?”

    “What happens to us afterwards? That’s a creepy thing to say.”

    “Oh, yeah, but see, my parents are. . .”

    “Your parents?” she interrupted, “What do they have to do with any of this?”

   “This? No. No. But, w-w-well, look, I . . .p-p-promise you’ll never tell?” I heard myself but didn’t believe it.

    “What? Yes, I promise.”

    “Ever hear of a series of adventure b-b-books. . .?” a sound, a rustling, interrupted me, scaring both of us. We jumped, and leaned away from the slithering sounds’ direction, holding our breath, hearing a set of tiny swishing noises. I could see by my jittery hand directing the penlight’s narrow beam that it was a large lizard wiggling away, disappearing somewhere under a rock, which was a surprising relief because for a deranged moment I thought the skeleton was coming to life!!

    “What were you saying, something about some books?” she asked, looking away from the deathly remains, sounding calm, like a psych-school librarian forgiving the emotionally illiterate.

    “Books? Oh, yeah, books. The world is an open book.” I replied, repeating another of my grandfather’s ‘wise’ sayings mindlessly, wondering why he butted in again, pushing aside the story that was writing itself. With the unanswerable but needling questions of who this skeleton was and why this happened dancing in the background of my brain, I was surprisingly more concerned with the truth I had almost revealed to Jalama: I had spilled half the beans, as grandpa would say. Now desperately searching for a cover story in place of the truth about my life, I grasped that I could tell her any other secret, like how I cured myself, or what my brother did, just not what my parents did.

SYNOPSIS: Rare Earth

Recovering behaviorally disordered High school seniors David Cunard and Jamala Anacapa accidentally discover a crucified skeleton in a cave above Malibu creek. Within weeks afterward each of them barely survives an attack by a vicious gang from outside Malibu, both saved by fellow Tokens, a group of outlier nerds at celebrity-rich Humalivuu High.

    Struggling with Jalama’s rejection of him, and his own relapse into stuttering and repeating his grandfather’s favorite sayings inappropriately, David and Jalama, with the rest of  the Tokens, learn about a real estate development headed by a Russian named Gold that threatens to double the population of Malibu, but David turns down his fellow Token’s request to fight the development, fearing failure due to the loss of his self control. Meanwhile David’s favorite teacher Mr. Starr tells him to stay away from the cave. A week later Starr is rumored killed in Vera Cruz Mexico by a giant squid.

    Buoyed by Jalama’s positive attentions, challenging himself amidst a mounting sense of danger, David revisits the cave to retrieve his forgotten backpack from the cave’s ledge, going inside in a burst of bravery to get a sample of bone from the ancient skeletal remains and from the crucified skeleton, afterwards discovering that the cave opening might have been watched.

    With the cave drama fading in their minds, a less-stuttering, more confident David convinces the Tokens to infiltrate Malibu Mansions. Later, recalling seeing something under the skeleton when he took the bone samples, David talks his best friend Edgy into going to the cave to investigate. While inside they suffer injury when an explosion closes the cave entrance. David carries Edgy’s limp body out a back way that he discovers, summoning super-human strength to pull his unconscious friend out and maneuver him down the treacherous trail. Feeling responsible for Edgy’s injuries, he digs deeper into all the loose ends, finding evidence suggesting Malibu Mansions is more than it pretends to be. Fearing corrupted deputies, David runs away on his trusty bike, eventually seeking food from a restaurant run by Malibu Mansions, where he is attacked and thrown to the sharks.  Edgy, in a coma, dies, and David is accused of his murder by sheriff’s deputies. Hiding from the law, David enlists Jalama’s help to retrieve what the explosion denied him and Edgy: under the skeleton, inside withered saddle bags they discover a diary, which reveals that the skeleton belonged to a Chumash girl who was crucified to keep a fortune in silver mines within the Topia family. On a surfing safari, seeking a reconciliation with his estranged brother Steve, a partner in Malibu Mansions, David reveals all of his suspicions, an incriminating story naming names. Steve tries to stop him, informing him that his whole life has been a lie;  that he never had Tourette’s Syndrome: it was something his YA writing parents invented to help him explain his guilt that he couldn’t save his grandfather from the fire that he accidentally started. David is confused. Steve is shot dead, David guessing that they were electronically witnessed. David is kidnapped, and before he can process anything he’s buried alive by Gold’s Russian gang. Faced with his own death, and his new understanding that he got everything wrong, that his writer parents didn’t steal from his life but saved him from himself, and sensing that Jalama is also in danger, he fights to free himself, suffering  for all the mistakes he made, fighting back with his memory, working out the connections as he gets back to the surface, emerging wounded but wiser, feeling his grandfather and his parents would forgive him his errors. Securing Jalama’s safety, they devise a way with their Token friends to ‘comic book’ the dangerous Russian oligarch and his gang. Working with the legitimate sheriff he and Jalama and friends reveal Gold’s real goal: to possess the land with the abandoned silver mines because the tailings constitute a precious compound, a rare earth, convertible into solar panels, worth billions. David uses his inherited writing skills to produce a treatment which snares Gold and an adventure movie star’s commitment, guaranteeing the end of Malibu Mansions. He and Jalama are more than friends now, ready to follow their college careers, knowing that their little piece of rare earth is safe, at least for a while.