The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

my regrets and rejection, I guess,” he says, wishing Bunny could save him from this truth while knowing she’ll never be able to.

“What? Billy, come on, you have to go. This is your dream. Fuck your parents.”

“You don’t get it—”

“Of course I get it, and I say FUCK—YOUR—PARENTS.”

“But my dad—”

“You’re not your dad, Billy. I know you think you need to be, but you don’t. You just don’t.” Bunny hits where it hurts. And she knows it. She tries to backpedal. “Just accept who you are—it’s…” She kicks the heel of her boot into the brick sheepishly. “… why I love you.”

“What’s up with you? Why are you acting like you suddenly think you know everything?” Billy says defensively.

“What? What’s your problem? I’m trying to encourage you to be free of your dad’s fucking rein.”

“Who’s going to pay for it, Bunny? Who’s going to pay for NYU? My father will fucking disown me if I don’t go to the academy.”

Feeling a headache coming on, Bunny hops off the brick wall, the clock ticking before she needs to walk around the corner to make it in time to see Anthony. She checks her phone. Five minutes.

Billy feels her distance. “Hello?”

“Did you call to tell me or to fight with me?”

“Would you cut yourself off from your parents?” Billy asks. It’s a legitimate question.

Bunny starts walking briskly down the sidewalk; a branch grazes her cheek, dripping over from the graveyard, and she whisks it away, rubbing her fingers into broken skin. “I gotta go,” she says, stonewalling, unable to fathom an answer to the question, too distracted by her need to get to Anthony.

“You wouldn’t, would you,” Billy taunts. “You’re such a hypocrite.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Bunny erupts, “and neither did you! Just talk to your dad, bet you haven’t even tried! Stop being so afraid of him.” She passes a man sleeping in a car, waiting for someone, to visit, or be released.

“Whatever, Bunny, I gotta go,” Billy says.

“Yeah, I said that first.” Bunny goes to press End, but the button’s already disappeared, Billy has hung up. “Ugh,” she grunts, and drops her phone in her pocket.

Bunny sits in one of the blue plastic chairs amid mothers and wives, girlfriends, sons and daughters, pulls out a Moleskine journal and pen. The heat is broken today. A fan conspicuously spins above her head, making the experience all the more troublesome and freezing. She waits and glances at the woman in the cubby beside her, yelling something into the receiver, before Anthony appears on-screen wearing an orange jumpsuit, hunched over, his left hand resting in between his knees. Bunny turns her attention to the screen, focused. She wants to tell him the truth about herself, that her name isn’t Grace, that she isn’t a reporter, that she was friends with Audrey Banks, knew her parents, knew the housekeeper, knows how they died, knew that Audrey was entitled and could be mean, but so could Bunny.… She’s afraid to tell. She can’t. Not now, and maybe not ever, as long as they’re being watched and listened to.

“Why’d you come back?” Anthony asks.

“Because I do care and I… question a lot of what’s been written about, or what hasn’t been written about, and I want to understand,” Bunny says, her palms sweating over her journal.

Anthony welcomes her moxie for such a white, privileged little thing. “You ever visited a jail before you met me, Grace?”

“… Yes,” Bunny says, trying not to blush from her shame (liar), staring down at her blank notebook. She swallows. Looks up. “How about you? Had you ever been arrested before this?”

“Would it matter?” he says.

Anthony’s response catching her off guard, Bunny wonders if it’s because her question affirms racist assumptions or is irrelevant given what she’s learned from the Black Lives Matter movement, which in hindsight makes her regret asking. She tries to think quickly, shamefully unsticking the question from herself: “To some it might.”

Anthony swivels, distracted by commotion in the background again, yelling, pushing, a body slammed against the wall before two correctional officers restrain the inmates. He ducks back toward the screen when it’s clear and safe to do so. Bunny watches in distress, relieved when he spins back to her. “Is it like that all the time in there?” she asks.

“Oh, you wanna find out?” Anthony asks like it’s a dare.

“Why’d you show up for the visit again if you aren’t sure about me?” Bunny asks, challenging him, her fragile ego unable to help from making it about herself.

“Why do you think?” he asks.

Bunny tilts her head, puts down her pen. “Because I imagine given the accusations you probably don’t have any visitors.”

Anthony chuckles at all that Bunny doesn’t know, undeserving of his vulnerability. “Nah, that’s not why.…”

“Then why?” she asks, more interested and surprised by having not hit him where she assumed it would hurt.

“You look like you have money.” He tilts his chin up.

Bunny laughs, uncomfortable. “Excuse me?”

“Your shiny long hair. Fancy jacket. I see you: you’re moneyed up. Like a catalogue behind that pen and paper.”

In a panic, anything to prevent her from already feeling fraudulent, there’s nothing to do but take his side, take his side and get him to trust you. Bunny nods, accepting the reality of how she looks against the backdrop of the jail’s visiting center. “Yep, that’s right,” she admits, admitting the thing she’s starting to wish she didn’t have, realizing in these moments with him that it’s better to shut up and listen.

Anthony leans back in his chair, more relaxed, surprised Bunny didn’t try to defend herself. Doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, so you’re right, except it’s my parents’ money, not mine,” she says, her immaturity and lack of adulthood rearing its ugly head. Her eyes dart around the room, a spike of paranoia hitting her.

“Same thing,” Anthony says.

She’s irked, Billy’s question lingering in her head: Would you cut your parents off? Hypocrite. “What about your parents?” Bunny asks. Suddenly realizing he has parents, must’ve had parents, or