List the things I am not. Go: I’m not falling yet; I’m not dead yet.
I risked a look to the side, noticed a wheel well to my left, and strained my leg toward it, until I could place some of my weight on the tire. I hooked my foot around it for leverage, dragging myself closer until my other leg could reach. With our weight supported, I started to move, sliding my fingers along the edge of the empty windshield, until both feet were firmly on the tire, though the harness on my waist, and Ryan’s weight below, made every movement painful and strained. I wedged my elbows back into the groove of the windshield. “Okay,” I called. “Can you make it?”
He didn’t speak, but I felt the tug of the rope, over and over, as he must’ve been pulling himself up, hand over hand, until he could use the car for leverage. Finally he stood on the wheel, an arm around my back, one side of his face resting on the hood of the car and the other turned toward me. His breathing was labored and his eyes were wide, and we stared at each other in silence until the voice of another fireman cut through the night. “Baker! You guys okay, man?”
“Okay!” he called back.
They lowered another line down the outside of the car, which Ryan then hooked into his harness again. He wrapped both arms around me, and I did the same to him, and he called, “All set!”
I felt his muscles trembling from his shoulders down to his fingers. His eyes never left mine as they pulled us up to safety.
—
Ryan was shaking even worse than I was. Another firefighter clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice work, kid. Take a breather.”
“Kelsey,” Ryan said, “you can let go now.”
I had my arms hooked around his shoulders, my body pressed tight to his own, even as I felt the ground solid and stable beneath us.
“Right, okay,” I said. His eyes were gray and staring directly into mine as I backed away. He was dressed like the rest of his team—oversized pants and a blue T-shirt under suspenders. But surrounded by the rest of them now, he looked younger, as if he were playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes, and I felt the urge to smooth the messy brown hair back from his forehead.
“Hey, we’re not dead,” I said, which was by far the stupidest thing I could’ve said out loud.
The side of his mouth tipped up, and then his whole face broke into a smile. “No, we’re not,” he said.
“Come on.” A woman in uniform gestured to the ambulance. “Let’s get you checked out.”
I scanned the surroundings—the cars stopped on both sides, people with their phones out, police keeping everyone back. “Where’s the other car?” I asked. “Is everyone okay?”
She tilted her head, a hand on my back, pushing me along. “There’s no other car,” she said.
The heat kicked in, a flash of headlights, and I cut the wheel—
“No, there was,” I said.
She stopped for a moment, peering closely into each of my eyes, leaning so close I could see myself reflected in her pupils. “There isn’t,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I thought of the high mountain walls, the steep drop-off of the cliffs.
“We’re sure,” she said.
As I walked away, I heard the second firefighter ask Ryan, “You know that girl?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s in my math class.”
—
Okay, so.
Before Ryan Baker was Ryan from my math class, he was the guy I worked with at the Lodge during the summer, where we’d trade off manning the register or checking people in or running equipment back and forth. We had developed a code—a tap on the shoulder to switch jobs, a wave goodbye, turning around simultaneously to stifle the laughter over the guy in ski pants in July. And a routine when our boss left—Ryan would sit on the counter and talk and ask me questions and laugh, and it was my favorite thing of the summer, the thing I looked forward to every day on the way to work.
And then at the end of the summer, on our last day, he’d said, “Hey, do you want to do something sometime?”
Yes, I thought. “Yes,” I said.
“Okay.” His face broke into a smile, and I heard someone whistle. Leo and AJ and Mark were nearby, clustered near the front door.
And I wasn’t sure what I’d just agreed to, so I said, “Wait. What does that mean?”
And then Ryan looked over his shoulder, where we could both see his friends waiting for him, and said, “What do you want it to mean?”
“Is this a trick question?”
It felt like a trick question.
“No. Uh.” Leo said something indecipherable behind him. “Look,” Ryan said, his face unreadable. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And just like that, he left. No exchange of numbers, no plans for later. And when school started up the next week and I found myself assigned to the seat beside him in math, both of us just pretended it hadn’t happened.
There were probably some social cues I wasn’t aware of, some high school mating-ritual dance I’d never learned—or maybe do something sometime meant meet me in the back closet after work.
I bet he had not expected do something sometime would mean rappelling into my dangling car and cutting me out of my seat belt, then hanging from a harness attached to my waist instead of falling to his death.
Hey, remember that time we did something? Good times.
“I just want to go home. I need to see my mom,” I told the woman looking me over. She didn’t look much older than me, to be honest. God, where were the adults in charge?
“You were unconscious, Kelsey. We need to check that out at the hospital. Your mom can meet us there.”
“No, she can’t.” She couldn’t. “I need to call her. I need my phone.”
The lights were too bright from all the cars on the road, headlights shining directly at us, and I squinted, feeling a headache brewing.
Ryan weaved through the cluster of cars and emergency vehicles haphazardly parked around the site, holding his arm limply in front of him, apparently also needing to get checked out in the ambulance. He paused, handed me his phone with his good arm. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t think yours made it.” I took it from his outstretched hand and dialed home while he shifted foot to foot, pretending not to pay attention. I had to try twice before I got the right numbers with the tremble in my hands, which I’m sure he noticed.
It rang four times, like I knew it would, before the automated voice of the answering machine instructed me in a robotic tone to please leave a message.
I lowered my voice. “Mom, it’s just me. Pick up.”
“Kelsey?” I could hear her brain working overtime: Daughter calls from phone that’s not hers. Where’s the danger?
“Hey, I’m okay, but I had a car accident, I’m so sorry, but they’re making me go to the hospital to be sure. But I’m totally fine, I promise.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’ll call Jan.”
“No,” I said. “I’m really fine. I just need a ride home. I’ll call the car service when I’m ready. Oh, and I think I lost my phone.”
I heard her exhale slowly, could picture her closing her eyes, doing that breathing thing, picturing me alive, and safe, and home. “You’re fine,” she said. “And you’re with the doctors. And you’ll be home soon.” The good before the bad.
“Sorry about the car.”
“It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re not talking about the car again.” A pause. “But I think I have to call Jan.”
I handed Ryan back his phone, and the too-young-to-be-in-charge medic ushered me into the back of the ambulance.
“Hey, hold on,” Ryan said.
I held on. My grip on the door handle, my feet on the metal loading dock, so I towered over him. He looked like he had a thousand things he wanted to say to me. I had things I wanted to say to him, too. But where to start? Where to even start?
“You need a ride home from the hospital?”
“I can call someone.” The car service was one of the first numbers I’d memorized when I was younger.
“I’ll be there anyway. So.”
So. Communication: not our strength.