I dig my fingers into the soil, and I test the sapling I’m holding. It’s sturdy enough. I brace and then pull myself—
My hand slides on the sapling. It’s only a small slip, but my other hand digs in for traction and doesn’t find it and . . . And I’m not sure what happens next, it’s so fast. Maybe when the one hand loses traction, the other loosens just enough to slide off the sapling. All I know is that I slip. I really slip, both hands hitting the ravine side with a thump, fingers digging in, dirt flying up, hands sliding, feet scrabbling for that rock just below. One foot finds it. The other does not. And the one that does slides off, and I fall.
I fall.
Except it’s not a clean drop. It’s a scrabble, hands and feet feeling dirt and rock and grabbing wildly, my brain trapped between I’m falling! and No, you’re just sliding, relax.
The latter is false hope, though. It’s that part of my brain that feels earth under my hands and says I must be fine. I’m not fine. I’m falling, sliding too fast to do more than notice rock under my hands and then it’s gone, and I try to stay calm, to say yes, just slide down to the bottom, just keep—
I hit a rock. A huge one. My hands manage to grab something and my feet try, but they’re dangling, nothing beneath them, kicking wildly, and why can’t I feel anything beneath them?
I’ve stopped. Both hands clutch rock—a shelf with just enough accumulated dirt for my fingers to dig in and find purchase. There. I’m fine.
No, you’re not. Where are your legs?
I’m fine.
Look down.
I don’t want to. I know what’s happened, and I’ve decided to pretend I don’t.
See, I stopped falling. No problem. I’ve totally got this.
I look down. And I see exactly what I feared. I am holding on to a ledge. Dangling from a rock thirty feet over the water. No, over a thin stream and more rock.
The wind is howling, and I think, That’s just want I need. But the air is still, and I realize I’m hearing Storm.
Newfoundlands have an odd howl, one that makes them sound like a cross between a dinosaur and Chewbacca. It’s a mournful, haunting sound that has scared the crap out of every Rockton resident. It’s been known to wake me with a start when she begins howling with the wolves.
“I’m okay!” I call up to her. “Storm? I’m fine.”
Even if she understood me, she’d call bullshit, and rightly so. I am not fine. I’m dangling by my fingertips over a rocky gorge.
I flex my arms, as if I might be able to vault back onto that ledge. My fingertips slide, and my heart stops, and I freeze, completely freeze. My left hand finds a rocky nub on the ledge. I grip that and dig in the fingers of my right hand until they touch rock below the dirt.
Then I breathe. Just breathe.
I glance over my shoulder. Even that movement is enough for my brain to scream for me to stop, don’t take the chance, stay still. But I do look, as much as I can without loosening my grip.
It’s a drop. There is no denying that, no chance I could just slide down. I will fall. At best, I will break both legs, and even as I think that, I know that is extreme optimism. Death or paralysis are the real options here.
I’m going to die.
If I don’t die, if I’m only paralyzed, I won’t be able to stay in Rockton, and when I think that, it feels the same as death. I want to tell myself I’m being overdramatic, but I know I’m not. Leaving this place would be death for me, returning to that state of suspended animation. I don’t think I could ever return to that. I’ve had better. So much better. If I can’t stay here . . .
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Breathe. Just breathe.
My arms are starting to ache. One triceps quivers. I strained it last week in the weight room with Anders, twisting mid-extension as he made a joke. Now it’s quivering when it should be fine.
It is fine. It will be fine.
Breathe.
I don’t breathe. I can’t. That quivering triceps becomes a voice, whispering that even holding on is foolish. I can’t hold on forever, and there’s no other way to go but down.
The triceps is quaking now, and my right hand slips. I grip tighter. The rock edge digs into my forearms. Blood drips down my arm.
I look left and then right. Maybe that’s the way to go. Perpendicular. Get to a safer spot and then slide. I can see one possibility, maybe ten feet to my left. Between here and there, though, the rock is smooth, and I’m not sure I could find hand grips.
Well, you’re going to have to try, aren’t you?
My left hand has a good hold on this rocky nub. I release my right a little and begin inching it left. It’s slow going. Millimeter by millimeter it seems, excruciatingly slow as my dog howls above.
I’m almost there. Get my right hand wrapped around that nub and then—
My right hits rock. Solid, slick rock. My fingers slide. I try to dig in, but there’s nothing to grasp, and my nails scrape rock and there’s a jolt, excruciating pain shooting through my left arm and . . .
33
I’m dangling by one arm. My left hand still clutches that jutting rock, but that’s the only thing keeping me on the rock face, and the pain, holy shit, the pain.
I grit my teeth and focus on the fact that I’m still holding on. Not how barely I’m holding, or how much that jolt hurt. I’m still okay.
Well, relatively speaking.
I make a noise at that. It’s supposed to be a chuckle, but it sounds like a whimper.
Still hanging on. Still alive.
I need to find purchase. Whether it’s my right hand or right foot or left foot . . . Just find purchase somewhere. Being slightly lower means I have fresh places to check.
Optimism. Awesome.
I start with my right hand. Reach up and . . .
All I can do from this angle is scratch the edge of that rock ledge, and my nails are already torn. I reach down instead. There’s a rock there, a nub that I can at least grip to brace myself and take some of the pressure off my left arm. I do that, and then I try with my legs, but of course, that would be too much to hope for.
I’m still hanging off a ledge, my dangling legs nowhere near the cliffside.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
Two fingers on my right hand twitch. I’m holding them in an awkward position trying to keep some semblance of a grip, and they have had enough. Two fingers twitch. Then a third joins in.
No, no—
My right hand slips. That jolt again, my left shoulder screaming as my right hand clamps tighter and—
“Casey? Casey!”
I am hearing that, right? Not hallucinating?
Fresh pain stabs through my arm.
“Casey!”
The voice comes from right above me, and I peer up to see Dalton on his hands and knees, looking over the side, his face stark white. He pulls back, and I want to scream, No, don’t leave me.
I remember my nightmares after finding Nicole in the cave, nightmares where I’m in the hole and everyone leaves me, and Dalton stays the longest but eventually he, too, gives up on me.
I’m hallucinating. He’s not really here. It’s the pain and the shock and that memory finding a fresh variation to torture me with.
Even Storm has gone silent above.
Pebbles fall, pelting my face. “Are you crazy, boy?” a voice bellows. “Get your ass back . . .”
The words trail off, and I see a foot over the edge. A boot. Dalton’s boot. Vanishing as Cypher hauls him up.
“You want to knock her down into that gorge?”
Dalton reappears, looking over the edge. “Casey? Can you hear me?”
“Course she can,” Cypher says. “The whole damned mountain can. Now stop panicking and get back from that edge. Your girl is fine.”
Dalton snarls something at him. Cypher’s bearded face appears over the edge.
“Hey, kitten,” he says. “How are you doing?”
He gets a string of obscenities from Dalton for that, but I say, “I’ve been better,” and Cypher laughs.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m going to ask you to try something for me. Take your right hand and bring it up on the other side of your left. You need to reach maybe four inches to the left of it.”