Back when we were friends, we spent Saturday nights in the tunnels. This was sophomore year, the cusp of fall in California, and at midnight, I waited in my bedroom for Vijay and Jun to drive up, so I could shimmy out my bedroom window and into that ’93 Honda Civic rank with bud and body spray. At that hour, the suburbs were so quiet it was like we were the only ones alive. We drove past lonely playgrounds and dying strip malls and tract homes built in the fifties for the white people who left in the nineties when our parents arrived in America. Along the way, the railroad tracks crisscrossed our path. The freight trains ran rarely, and slowly, and eight months before, our best friend had killed herself in their path. Every time we came across them, Jun turned the other way, taking a different route to where we wanted to go.
There were multiple entrances to the tunnels, but we preferred the one at the western edge of town, where urban sprawl gave way to our version of wilderness. We parked on a side street and made our way down the long hill thicketed with soft-barked Sequoias and Redwoods. As a child, I had thought they went on forever, but at fifteen I knew that they, too, could only go so far. One of us always slipped on the way down, and another one always grabbed them up from the dark brush, quickly, like we were afraid they would fall into the forest’s mouth and disappear forever. Usually, Vijay trailed Jun and me, not because he was slower, but because that was the role he took with us: our quiet protector. Once the ground flattened, Jun whispered, “Zeenat, go!” and tapped the back of my head, the signal to race him the rest of the way, so that we always reached the tunnels breathing hard, laughing shakily, waiting for Vijay to catch up so we could finally see her again, our best friend Ligaya.
◆
It was, in fact, Jun’s older brother, Kohei, who found the tunnels. Or who showed them to Jun, at least, on a late night joy ride with a few of his friends who had driven up from Santa Cruz for the Fourth of July weekend. Nujabes on the radio, windows shut so they could hotbox, and Jun in the backseat with his brother’s friend Sanjit, the two of them taking every pothole as the chance to touch when no one was looking. He told me he had fallen asleep briefly like this, lulled by the music, grazing Sanjit’s hand, house after house blurring together in the rearview. When he woke, the car was empty. His brother was a long shadow tapping at his window. “Come on,” said Kohei. “We’re here.”
They had brought him to one of the wide concrete channels that wound the Calabazas Creek through the city, keeping it out of sight. A dull-colored trickle formed from rainfall and mountain runoff, the creek was a muted presence in our town. It was a reminder, Jun had thought, that there was a before to this place.
He had never seen this section of the channel before. His brother had beat them to the bottom and was standing at the mouth of a tunnel cut into the hill they had traveled down. The entrance yawned before them. In the dark, it didn’t even look like it would lead anywhere. All Jun could see was a path into the void. From his backpack, Kohei pulled out one of their dad’s camping lanterns and a can of spray paint, which he shook furiously before shooting hot pink mist against the concrete.
The cool smell of the forest turned dank in the tunnel. Its concrete walls curved high above as Jun walked deeper in. The walls were tagged with layers of graffiti. In the dim light, Jun tried to decipher the bleed of cartoon characters, sigils, and scrawls that declared Yay Area forever, true love forgotten, and fuck yous to teachers long gone. He was about to turn a corner when Sanjit grabbed him by the arm. The others were busy at the cave’s entrance.
“We usually don’t go farther than this,” Sanjit had said.
Jun stayed still, feeling the warmth of his grip. (The part he told me, and not Vijay, was that the night before Sanjit left for college they had parked up at Rancho San Antonio and fucked for what Jun thought was one last perfect time, and Sanjit ruined it by saying, “Sometimes I think I could fall in love with you.”)
“Why? What are you scared of?” Jun said.
Sanjit pulled his hand away. (Sometimes Jun AIMed him, sometimes Sanjit replied, but more often he didn’t. “He’s full of shit,” I told Jun. “Everyone in this town is full of shit except us.”)
“Someone got lost once,” Sanjit said.
“What happened?”
Sanjit leaned into Jun’s ear. “Just trust me, okay? It’s not safe.”
Jun turned and whispered back in Sanjit’s ear. “We could go and come back and no one would know.” He licked Sanjit’s earlobe and laughed.
“That’s not funny,” Sanjit said. “Promise me you won’t go.”
(Jun, later: “I should have asked him why he even cared. I could die and I doubt he would even notice.”
Me: “You sound just like Ligaya.”)
What Jun really said: “I promise.”
But as Sanjit turned, expecting him to follow, Jun said that he stayed where he was for a moment, looking farther into the tunnel. He was reminded of the time he saw a Redwood tree cracked open by lightning, the way its hollow interior was so devoid of light, it looked like the tree was breathing in the dark. He remembered Sanjit’s sharp exhale when he came. For a moment, the tunnel looked like it was gasping in that same way.
◆
Jun and I had to wait for Vijay because he was the one with the maps. He kept them in the back of his APUSH binder, between “Postwar Diplomacy” and “The Red Scare,” a collection of thin sheets covered in his careful scrawl. It was Vijay’s idea, in the first place, to bother exploring. I often wonder if he knew, even before Jun and I, what we would find. But now, it is too late to ask him.
The maps were because every time we went into the tunnels, they were different. The first time, we followed a tunnel straight ahead, never turning off, walking quietly as the sound of the creek ebbed. Street lamps shone in through occasional grates, reachable by thin metal ladders. Jun spotted the light up ahead and grumbled, “I knew Sanjit was fucking with me,” until we exited onto the side of 101, two miles from where we first started just a few minutes before.
Maps because even though the tunnels were unmappable, Vijay wanted to try to pin them down. That’s how he was, always too serious, too greedy for an explanation.
The second time, the walls of the tunnel snaked and shivered, winding so tight together we had to walk single-file until we found a loose grate that opened onto the parking lot behind the Ranch 99 on De Anza Boulevard. The third time, the tunnels led to vast caverns that echoed every step we took, and we spoke in whispers that ricocheted back in fragments: never saw, fucking weird, is that, look here, look here, look here.
Vijay brought new items for us every time. An old flashlight, his father’s compass which spun wildly underground, a pocket radio that hissed in the dark, and nubs of white chalk whose marks disappeared as soon as we laid them down. He was the only one of us with a cellphone, and no matter where we wandered, there was no signal.
The fourth time we took every left turn, the fifth we took every right one. Both times, we ended up at the railroad tracks, the stretches of it that the cops had strung up with yellow tape, after Ligaya, posting a watchman to ward off stray teenagers wandering through the woods alone.
The sixth time we gave up strategy in favor of feeling, taking any turn that felt right, keeping straight onward if instinct directed us there. We walked for what felt like hours, for so long that I wondered if we would make it home before dawn. That was when we first saw her.
◆
Ligaya, when she was alive: Long dark hair worn in two braids that every summer she tried lightening with lemon juice. A sharp chin, like her father, who left her family when we were ten. A round nose, like her mother, who looked right through us at the funeral. Brown eyes, blue wire glasses. A tendency to talk too much when she was nervous. An inclination towards self-romanticizing. Kind to the quiet girls in our grade. Cruel to others when she was frustrated with herself. And often oddly, worryingly silent when she was upset.
(Us: We knew she was sad but not—, I knew she was hurting herself but not—, I didn’t think—, Should we have—, I should have done something—, —done what?)
Ligaya, in the tunnels: Shadowed. Her but not her. Her face blurry in the dark. Something off about her voice, which didn’t echo the way ours did. She was two-dimensional, a poor ghost of the girl we knew. When she said our names, and reached her hand out toward us, we tried to hide our fear. But still, it was Ligaya. We would have recognized her anywhere.
Before we left, we let her touch us. She felt soft, like she was made of ash, and she left gray smudges on our hands, our clothes, our cheeks. Her hair was loose and made her look older. It had been like that in the photo at the funeral altar, too, and I remembered wanting to replace it with a different picture, so she would be remembered the way we saw her.
When we left, she made us promise to come back and Jun and I said yes. We all turned to Vijay, who was examining the marks she had left on his hand. Finally, he nodded. As we walked out of the tunnel, she followed behind us, and Jun and I turned back to smile at her.
“You look tired, Ligaya,” I teased. “Maybe you should get more sleep.”
“Yeah, Ligaya, you look like shit for a dead girl,” Jun said. He touched her shoulder to show we were joking, that we thought she looked beautiful, that we had missed her so much. She giggled, and it was a hollow, tinkling sound. This time, Vijay walked ahead, leading us out of the tunnel, and it was only when we reached the tunnel’s mouth and stepped past the edge Ligaya would not cross that he finally looked back. I could not read the expression on his face.
“Isn’t it amazing?” I said. When I looked at Jun, he wore a strange, unnerving smile that didn’t fit his face. Although it was only September, and the night air still held the dregs of August’s heat, he was shivering. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him still.
“Is it really her?” he whispered into my ear.
I didn’t want to answer. I was afraid that if I said yes, it would break the spell.
The sky was brightening at the edges, and we had to get home soon, but Vijay was still looking into the dark in wonder. “She’s gone,” he said.
He was right, she had already disappeared. If Vijay and Jun hadn’t been there too, I would have thought I imagined the whole thing. But it was her. I couldn’t stop smiling. She had been there all these months, just as I remembered her.
But the truth is that all these years later, the image I have of her in life is harder and harder to call up, and now my clearest memories are of the tunnels, winding endlessly beneath the earth.
◆
Each time we went, we brought her presents. A bag of tangerines and a pack of blue gatorade. Her iPod nano. The CLAMP comics she used to read. The latest issue of NYLON, with Karen O, her old idol, on the cover.
She smiled at each item, which we presented individually, like offerings for a shrine. But she did not reach for any of them. Jun had to flip through the magazine himself, showing her the photos inside. “There’s a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album,” he said. “Remember, we thought they would never release it? I put it on your iPod.”
She said yes yes yes, I remember. But when Jun tried to place the headphones in her ears, she flinched and said the music was too loud. That it hurt to listen to.
When he passed her a tangerine, she only held the fruit in her hand for a moment, then looked at us questioningly as if she did not understand what we wanted her to do with it. Jun frowned. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Can you eat?” Vijay asked.
Yes yes yes she nodded. But no matter how hard we tried to get her to do the things she used to, she could, or would, not do so.
She always followed us to the tunnel’s edge, never stepping any further out. At first, I lingered there, not wanting to say goodbye. But with each passing visit, it grew harder to stay too long. The air down there became colder, turning our bodies stiff. Our stays got shorter and shorter, only once we were out into the forest would the pain lift, leaving our limbs loose and free, and we would feel like ourselves again.
◆
We got better at finding her. Vijay led the way each time, holding the flashlight in his mouth as he followed a path marked in his notebook. Sometimes we would turn a corner and she would be there on the other side, looking as though she had also spent the last hour walking from the other side of the tunnels, following a path that mirrored ours.
One night, I brought a new gift: a pack of black hair bands. “I want to braid your hair,” I told her. “You’re not you without your braids.”
I hoped I hadn’t offended her by saying this, by forcing her to stay true to my image of her. But she just shrugged and sat down by me. I parted her hair and flecks of dust and ash fell to the ground. As I lifted one strand over the other, her hair crumbled in my hands. Vijay was watching closely. I felt suddenly defensive, and tried to be more careful, weaving as softly as I could. “Be careful, Zee,” Jun said. But it was no use. Her hair was breaking off too fast. The more I broke, the more frustrated I got, and the clumsier I was, until there was nothing left to braid. “I’m sorry, Ligaya,” I cried. Her hair was now a jagged bob, shorn at her chin. “I ruined it, I’m sorry.”
Ligaya stood up. She seemed taller than before. Or had I already forgotten what she was really like? She told me it was fine. It would grow back.
“But it won’t,” I said, starting to cry. “It’ll never grow back.”
“You don’t know that,” Jun said sharply.
“I do,” I said. “She’s going to stay like this forever.” Somehow, I knew this was true.
Through my tears, I could see Vijay scribbling in his notebook again.
“No, she’s not,” Jun said. His voice sounded pinched, like he was also going to cry. But Jun never cried. Even at the funeral, even when Ligaya’s mother held each of us for too long after the service, even when the three of us were finally alone in Jun’s car, he had not shed a tear. I wiped my face and watched, in shock, as his face crumpled.
I hugged him. “I’m sorry, Jun,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” repeating the words until they sounded meaningless. But he pulled away from me and reached for Ligaya’s hand instead.
“Wait—” Vijay said, but it was too late. Jun had taken the flashlight from him, and was running into the tunnels, pulling Ligaya along.
“Where are you going?” I said but Jun did not reply. Vijay tapped my shoulder and pulled the notebook under his arm. “Come on,” he said. “We have to stop him.”
It was then that I understood what Jun was trying to do. He wanted to take her out of the tunnels. Vijay and I ran after him, following the shaky path of the flashlight’s beam Jun hurried to the entrance. I could only catch glimpses of Ligaya, but every time the light flashed on her she was turning her head back to Vijay and me in fear. She did not want to go. But Jun was too fast. He always beat me to the entrance.
Jun was already outside when we caught up to them. The cold, bright light of the moon hit him in such a way that for a moment, I saw him the way he would look when he was older, his face lined and shadowed and sagged, and I felt an overwhelming surge of love for him. We had promised to be friends forever, all of us, and as I watched him drag Ligaya out of the dark, I realized that forever was almost no time at all.
Vijay lunged forward, reaching for Ligaya’s other hand, but she was already awash in moonlight. And for a moment, she stood there and I thought that maybe Jun was right all along. That this is what we should have done in the first place: pull her back into our world.
That was when the ringing started. A single, slicing sound that emerged from Ligaya’s open mouth. It made me nauseous to listen to, and the pain knocked me to the ground. I tried to reach out to grab Vijay or Jun but I felt, suddenly, like they were no longer beside me. I could sense Ligaya near me, her hand on my hand, coating my skin with her dust. I cried out for Vijay and Jun but could not hear my voice over the sudden cry of Ligaya in my ear: I went through the door, she said. I went through the door and I saw that we live on a thin layer atop the deeper interior of the earth. Do you remember when you first saw me, or saw my shadow, or saw my body, or saw the thing you thought was me? Remember when we were sitting on the blacktop in seventh grade eating lunch and Jessica Chen walked by and called us jungle Asians and you threw your whole tray, utensils and everything, at her and it cut her lip open? Remember when I failed a Chem test and my mom told me she had wasted her life raising a stupid daughter and Vijay told me that he’d always wished he was half as smart as me? Remember when I went swimming with Jun and I saw him look at the scars on my legs and he didn’t say anything, just dove in with me from the deep end? Remember when I was eleven and my mom threatened to send me to live in Vallejo with my Lola and Lolo and all three of you left her letters every day in our mailbox to say: Please don’t make Ligaya leave. We’ll miss her too much when she’s gone.
Every word pierced me.
“I remember,” I said, although I could not hear myself. “Ligaya, I remember.”
But still she cried: I remember the first time I saw each of you and each time I thought, I want to be your friend. I wanted it so bad it hurt. That’s probably not something I would have told you when I was still alive.
I felt her touch my face one last time, covering my mouth with ash until I couldn’t breathe.
I went through the door but don’t worry, I still love you. You’re still my best friends. My best best best best friends.
And then, the ringing stopped.
“Zee,” someone said. I opened my eyes and saw Jun and Vijay before me, their faces caked and gray. We were on the other side of the tunnel’s mouth. Through the trees, I could see the sun rising. Soon, our parents would be knocking on our bedroom doors, telling us to get up and begin the new day. I could hear the ringing echoing in my ears as we scrambled through the brush. At the top of the hill, I turned to look at the entrance, and for a moment, I thought I saw a figure standing there.
◆
Jun disappeared first. He was not at school on Monday, and when I messaged him on AIM that evening, he didn’t reply. It wasn’t until the next day, when I ran into Vijay during free period, that he told me Jun had gotten caught. When we finally found him in the cafeteria, he said his father noticed the car missing in the driveway and had been waiting for him when he got home. He told us that his father had grounded him. That he had tried to tell his father that we had seen Ligaya, and his father thought he was making fun of him. He started sitting on the other side of the cafeteria, with the kids he knew from debate we used to mock together. Sometimes I would join, too, but I always felt like an intruder.
Eventually, I stopped trying, and so did Vijay. Without saying so out loud, we decided to go our separate ways. I found new friends, we ate lunch together in the courtyard in the sunshine. Vijay spent most of his time alone. I often spotted him in the library, writing in his notebook. At the end of the year, winter break only a week away, I finally decided to join him. He did not seem surprised when I sat down beside him at one of the long wooden tables. I was comforted by the low light of the library, by the room’s quiet air. For a moment, before either of us said anything, I felt as though things were like they used to be. That we had planned to meet and were waiting for our friends to join us. But then Vijay pushed his notebook toward me. “Here,” he said. “You can read it.”
Every page was crowded with writing. There were logs, noting the time of day we had arrived and left, the weather, the phases of the moon. He had drawn maps that stretched across multiple pages. There were notations on Ligaya’s speech, on her moods, her reactions to various objects. On some pages, he had tried calculating her appearance at certain times or in particular areas. In the margins were notes to himself, I spotted a corner where he had just written her name: Ligaya Ligaya Ligaya.
“What is all of this?” I asked.
“It’s a map,” he said. “I figured it out. So we can always find her.”
I closed the notebook. “I don’t think we should go back.”
“We have to, she’s still there,” he was speaking quickly now, loud enough that the librarian was watching us. “We just didn’t follow the rules correctly.”
“What rules?”
“The rules,” he said impatiently, flipping open to a filled with a careful list written in block letters, each line beginning: DO NOT. I read it slowly, it was a list of everything the three of us had done.
“I don’t think there are rules,” I said slowly. “I don’t think we understand anything about what happened.”
He flinched. “You’re just afraid,” he said spitefully. “I understand everything.” And when he pulled the notebook away, zipping it into his backpack, I knew I would never get another chance to read it again.
He left me there alone in the library. I wished that I hadn’t said anything. That instead, I agreed to go back with Vijay, to convince Jun to join us. That the three of us could see her again.
Perhaps he was right. She was still there, waiting for us to return. If Vijay ever went back, if Jun ever thought to go too, they never told me. All I know is this: Ligaya’s voice is the loudest bell crying through an open door at the end of a long and winding tunnel. It is a sound that cuts through all the layers of the earth, a sound that furrows any grave. Endless and echoless, I will never forget it. Listen. Quiet. Can you hear her ringing, too?