“Have a seat.” Salix patted the rope beside her. “It’s like sitting in a hammock chair with half the rope gone.”
“I c-c-can’t believe that I’m up here.” I arranged myself on the trembling ropes. “Corbin will be so impressed.”
“Feel the fear and do it anyway, right?”
“Oversimplification, but sure.”
“Look, though.” She pointed. The sun was easing down behind the high-rises and tower cranes, pink and purple cotton-candy clouds strung along the horizon above the ocean.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. And I meant it. “It’s really beautiful.”
“Here.” Salix filled the wineglasses from the thermos and handed me one. “A mocha for you. From Continental. The whipped cream melted, but it’ll still be good.” She shimmied closer. The entire rope pyramid shook. My heart took off, pounding angrily.
“Whoa.” I gripped the rope with my free hand. Don’t look down, Maeve. Do not look down. And then I did look down, and it was a huge mistake.
The ground rushed up with dizzying speed. I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened my eyes, the ground had dropped away again, and I felt suspended in midair, as if there were no ropes, no pole, no Salix.
A person could die, falling from that height. I could land on my head or snap my back. Or I could break an arm. A leg. Or both. If Salix fell, she might break her wrist, and then Juilliard would be over. All because she tried to romance a neurotic girl who would never be good enough for her—who was I kidding?—and then I would forever be the girl who ruined Salix’s dreams of being a professional musician. The skyline slanted to one side; then it tipped to the other.
“I have to get down.” I set the flamingo glass on the ledge, but I missed and it fell off. I heard a crack when it landed a million feet below. “And you do too. Right now. Or you’ll never go to Juilliard. And it will be my fault.”
“What? Wait. Wait, Maeve!” Salix grabbed my wrist as I started climbing down. “It’s okay. It’s really okay. We’re in a kids’ playground. There are cedar chips on the ground. The ropes would break your fall unless you took a swan dive off from the top. You’re not drunk or stoned or stupid. You’re just afraid of heights.”
I nodded, my throat too dry to speak.
“Do you really want to get down? Really and truly?”
“No,” I squeaked. I wanted to be on top of the world with Salix; of course I did. With cheese and crackers and tacky plastic flamingo glasses.
“It’s okay to freak out. Go ahead. Freak out.” Salix wasn’t letting go. “Have a full-on freak-out, and then it’ll all be good.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. And I didn’t want her to know.
“Go through it. It won’t last forever. It’s like nerves before I play for an audience. Every single time I want to throw up. And I do, sometimes. One time I threw up onstage.”
“You did?”
“I did. But I see the fear, and then I go through the fear, and then I get to the other side of the fear. I go through it.”
I let Salix help me back up. “Don’t look down. Look around. Tell me ten things that you can see from here.”
“You.” My heart still galloped. My knuckles ached from holding the rope so hard.
“That’s one.”
The streetlights popped on along the Drive.
“The streetlights. The patio at Havana’s. That bus.” I relaxed my grip, just a little. “A woman coming out of the corner store. The cenotaph. The bathrooms at the top of the park. A guy, his shopping cart, and he’s got a dog.”
“You’re counting the guy as one and his shopping cart as another?” Salix counted off her fingers. “And his dog?”
“That’s ten.” My heart started to slow. “But if you want more, there are”—I counted—“nine hippies with drums getting ready to make a really terrible racket. And more coming across the grass.”
“They should get the dying-goose man to play with them.”
“We can hear the drummers from our place,” I said. “Sometimes the boys come and join them. If they’re still awake.”
“Better now?” Salix let go of my wrist.
“A bit, yeah.” I glanced at the one plastic flamingo glass still perched on the platform. “Sorry about the other flamingo.”
“We can share mine.” Salix handed it to me, and I took a sip. “We can get down. Now, I mean. I just didn’t want you climbing down when you were freaking out.”
“Smart.”
The drummers started. There were about fifteen of them now, banging their djembes while a few dogs wrestled in a heap in the middle. Pot smoke wafted over, skunky and thick.
The last of the sun disappeared over the water, and darkness stretched out behind them to the east. The drummers fumbled together until they found their rhythm, and then they didn’t sound so bad. Not from up there, in the dark.
“Thank you.” I gave the glass back. “For getting me up here. And keeping me up here. I don’t usually do things that scare me.”
“Remember at Continental? When you ran off?”
“Etched forever in my mind.”
“I was thinking back to that first date, which is why I invited you here.”
The word date lifted up, available for the taking. So, with shaking hands, I took it. “Kind of a messy first date,” I whispered.
“Still,” Salix said softly. “This dumb idea, to bring you up here—”
“Not dumb.”
“I wanted somewhere special to ask you if this was. I mean, I was going to ask you if we’re, you know. If you thought maybe we could. If we are.”
“If we are—?”
“If we are,” Salix said. “If we’re dating. If this is a date. If all these times have been dates.”
I was so glad that I hadn’t climbed down when I’d wanted to. I was glad that I’d gone through the fear. I was so glad that I’d stayed long enough to watch Salix stumble sweetly over her words in the dark. Salix, who never stumbled. Salix, who always knew the right thing to say.
“Are you going through it?” I said with a smile.
“That is exactly what I’m doing.” Salix exhaled loudly. “Help me out here, would you?”
“We are.” My cheeks suddenly burned, and my heart sped up again, but for all good reasons this time. “We are.”
“I thought so.” Salix smiled. “So that time at Continental was our first date.”
“I’m sorry I was so weird.”
“I like that you’re weird.”
Salix leaned forward. She was going to kiss me. This was the kiss that would push the terrible one away. I closed my eyes. Our lips were just about to meet. But then the whole web started to shake. Salix pulled away, and we looked down. Three boys were scrambling up the ropes.
“They don’t even look like they’re ten years old,” I said. “They should be in bed.”
“It’s all good.” Salix quickly packed everything up. She pried one of my hands off the rope and kept hold of it as she coached me down. “Put your left foot here. Exactly, yes. Now your other foot too.”
“Lesbos!” One of the boys pointed. “Lesbo dykes!”
Salix glared down at them. “Watch your mouth, kid.”
The boys bounced and bounced, shaking the ropes.
“You’re okay, Maeve,” Salix said. “Almost there.”
“Faggots!”
“Wrong gender, shithead.” Salix kept a hand on my back, steadying me.