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

revved the engine and drove straight through the gate, snapping it in half. That’s the Volvo you drive, honey Bunny. Let’s just say being a new dad was unnerving for him. That’s why they don’t have an attendant anymore, it’s just a machine.”

Upstairs, Bunny peers into the window of Billy’s hospital room, tiptoes in. He’s asleep in a white bed, his veins pumping with fluids, hair tousled, stained polo from the night of the party slung over the rail. The room is dark with gray light. The windowsills are empty, and the television blares on the wall, headlines scrolling past on the news ticker at the bottom of the screen: Iceberg Twice the Size of Washington Melts in Antarctica in a Sign of Warming (Warning!) / Budget Plan Reveals Tremendous Fraud / Virus Death Toll Passes World Record.

Bunny feels guilty for not bringing him anything. The flowers he gave her for her birthday, resting on the front hall table, are now dry and dead.

“Are there still photographers waiting outside?” Billy asks, peering out of one eye.

“I came in through the parking garage, I don’t know. I didn’t see any.”

Billy lifts his other eyelid. “Nice of you to come visit. Sorry I ruined your party.”

“You didn’t ruin my party.… I shouldn’t have bought all that molly.”

“I partied hard with Stan before we got there.”

“That’s obvious.”

Billy smiles, but it comes off as forced.

Bunny sits on the edge of his bed. She looks around at the empty room. “Where are your parents?”

“Mom’s downstairs getting coffee in the cafeteria. Not sure where my dad is, probably in meetings.… But I’ll be out by the end of the day hopefully,” he says, trying to compensate for his father’s absence, allay the impending fear that comes with his silence even though they know what’s coming.

“That’s good,” Bunny says, avoiding the topic of his father.

Billy can sense Bunny’s withholding. “So how was the birthday anyway? You’re a legal adult now, woo-hoo.”

“I mean, minus your overdose it was pretty solid. The ’rents gave me a hundred thousand dollars as a present. Guess it’s part of my inheritance.”

“Damn.” Billy lets the $100,000 sink in.

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but I don’t know. And I just feel fucked up about it now. I think I should give it away. I don’t need it. I’ll never need it. My dad has literally always told me, ‘Bun-Bun you’ll always be taken care of, you’ll never have to worry.’ So might as well do something good with it, right? Save the world. Maybe that’s what we should do.”

Billy knows that he too will always be taken care of, under the condition he goes to the academy, because there will always be conditions. But Bunny is naïve to think they’ll have a choice of what to do with it.

“Or you could give it back to them? Tell them you don’t want it,” Billy says, prodding Bunny’s hypocrisy.

“Reject Meredith and Chuck’s gift? Hah! There has to be another way other than cutting off your nose to spite your face, if you know what I mean.”

“Right,” Billy says, knowing he was right about her, but careful not to rub it in. He feels they’re much alike in a common understanding of familial circumstance and entrapment, but she’s unwilling to admit it fully.

Bunny hops off the bed, paces around the room. “I’m thinking of giving it to Anthony’s family—the man who’s going on trial for Audrey’s murder. He told me his side of the story, and I’ve been doing all this research about wrongful convictions, and I am seriously telling you that it is so fucked up—his dad got cancer from the chemical dumping of the Banks family’s business! And they didn’t pay for it, and he threatened the dad.…” Realizing this isn’t sounding so good, she turns to Billy sitting up in the bed, neither amused nor surprised. “But I swear, I don’t think he did it. It was just easy for them because they wanted to hide all of the people that are getting sick and dying from the fumes and chemicals, and he doesn’t have a fighting chance because he doesn’t come from a family like ours, and if he has the money to fight an equal fight, we can find out who murdered them, and if—”

“Bunny. Seriously, STOP.” Billy puts his forearm over his eyes, as if the sheer mention of Anthony is blinding.

“You know, for someone who’s supposed to go to West Point, you’re acting pretty weak in the violence department.”

Billy laughs, feigning shame. “Fuck you, Bunny.”

“Aren’t you interested in any kind of truth, Billy, or—I don’t know—justice?”

“Justice for who? Your fake friend or the man accused of killing her?”

“She was not a fake friend,” Bunny says, covering up that she feels scared and conflicted, all of her resentments she never got to express to Audrey, that she wasn’t brave enough to confront her that time in the car, that Bunny has been complicit.

“Oh, bullshit, you guys didn’t hang until we started dating.”

“That’s not true, we hung out when we were little—we were best friends!”

“ ’Cause this is ALLLL about you, Bunny. I forgot.”

“This is not all about me—I am trying to find out what really happened! And I think it’s more complicated than people want to assume, because everyone is so fucking scared of the truth.” Bunny stomps her heel on the floor.

“What the fuck do you know about truth and justice? You think giving a hundred thousand dollars to an alleged murderer will help you find the truth? Will bring Audrey and her parents back? Will somehow make you feel safer in this—this fucked-up world?”

“In case you didn’t know, nothing is just where we come from, Billy.” Bunny adjusts her jacket, oozing self-righteous indignation.

“You know what I think? I think you’re acting like a spoiled brat who gives zero fucks what her family has given her and instead wants to play a game of woe is me, I know I don’t deserve this, so here, I’ll swoop in and