Jace took hold of the tree and scampered up it with the ease of a monkey, then made his way to the branch, where he stood freely and easily.
“Now,” he called down to the group, “I look at the ground. I choose my landing site. Remember—protect the head. If there’s any way to break momentum, any other surface you can use to lessen the length of the fall, use it—unless it’s dangerous. Don’t aim for sharp rocks or branches that could pierce or break you. Bend the knees. Keep relaxed. If your hands take the impact, be sure to make contact with the entire palm, but avoid this. Feet down, then roll. Keep that momentum going. Spread out the force of the impact. Like so . . .”
Jace delicately stepped off the branch and dropped to the ground, striking with a subdued thud. He instantly rolled and was up on his feet again in a moment.
“Like that.”
He gave his hair a little shake. Simon watched several people flush as he did so. Marisol had to cover her face with her hands for a moment.
“Excellent,” said Scarsbury. “That’s what you will do. Jace will assist.”
Jace took this as his cue to climb the tree again. He made it look so simple, so elegant—just hand over hand, feet firmly gripped the entire way up. At the top, he took a casual seat in the nook of the branch and swung his legs.
“Who’s first?”
There was no movement for a moment.
“Might as well get it over with,” George said in a low voice, before holding up his hand and stepping forward.
Though George was not as nimble as Jace, he did make it up the tree. He used a lot of clutching, and his feet slipped several times. Some of the phrases he used were lost to the wind, but Simon was pretty sure they were obscene. Once George reached the branch, Jace leaned back dangerously to make room. George considered the branch for a moment—the lone, unsupported beam stretching over the ground.
“Come on, Lovelace!” Scarsbury shouted.
Simon saw Jace lean in and offer a few words of advice to George, who was still gripping the trunk of the tree. Then, with Jace nodding, George released the tree and took a few careful steps out onto the branch. He hesitated again, teetering a bit in the wind. Then he looked down, and with a pained expression, he stepped off the branch and fell heavily to the ground. The thud he made was much louder than Jace’s, but he did roll and manage to get back on his feet.
“Not bad,” Scarsbury said as George hobbled back to Simon. He was rubbing his arm.
“You do not want to do that,” he said to Simon as he approached.
Simon had already worked that out. The confirmation didn’t help his spirits.
Simon watched his classmates go up the tree one by one. For some, that took up to ten minutes of grunting and clawing and occasionally falling off halfway up. This got a loud “I told you, not on your back” from Scarsbury. Jace stayed in the tree the entire time, like some kind of rakish bird, at points smiling at the students below. Sometimes he looked elegantly bored and walked up and down the branch for fun.
When there was simply no avoiding it anymore, Simon approached for his turn. Jace smiled at him from above.
“It’s easy,” Jace said. “You probably did it all the time as a child. Just do that.”
“I’m from Brooklyn,” Simon replied. “We don’t climb trees.”
Jace shrugged, suggesting that these things were not to be helped.
The first thing Simon learned about the tree was that while it appeared to lean to the side, it was really just straight up. And while the bark was rough and cut into the meat of the hands, it was also slippery, so every time he tried to get a foothold, he lost it. He tried to do it the way he’d seen Jace and George do it—they seemed to grip the tree very lightly. Simon tried this, realized it was futile, and grabbed the tree in a hug so intimate, he wondered if they were now dating. Using this awkward clutching method and some froglike leg pushes, he managed to get up the trunk, scraping his face along the way. About three-quarters of the way up, he felt his palms slick with sweat and he started to lose his grip. The falling feeling filled him with a sudden panic and he gripped harder.
“You’re doing fine,” Jace said in a voice that suggested Simon was not doing fine, but that was the kind of thing Jace was supposed to say.
Simon made it to the branch using a few desperate moves he knew looked very bad from below. There was almost definitely a moment or two when his butt must have been on display in a less-than-flattering manner. But he made it. Standing up was the next trick, which he accomplished with more fevered gripping of the trunk.
“Good,” Jace said, giving a quirky little smile. “Now just walk to me.”
Jace walked backward down the branch. Backward.
Now that Simon was on the branch, it didn’t look like it was fifteen feet off the ground. It looked like it was in the sky. It was round and uneven and slippery as ever and it wasn’t meant to be walked on, especially not in the sneakers Simon had chosen to wear that morning.
But he’d gotten this far and he wasn’t going to let Jace just do his magic backward walk while he clung to the trunk. He had gotten up there. Climbing down was a bad prospect, so there was really just the one option, and at least it was quick.
Simon took his first step. His body immediately began to shake.
“Look up,” Jace said sharply. “Look at me.”
“I need to see—”
“You need to look up to keep your balance. Look at me.”
Jace had stopped smirking. Simon looked at him.
“Now step again. Don’t look down. Your feet will find the branch. Arms out for balance. Don’t worry about down yet. Eyes on me.”
Somehow, this worked. Simon made it six steps out onto the branch and was amazed to find himself standing there, arms rigid and out like airplane wings, the wind blowing hard. Just out on a tree branch with Jace.
“Now turn to face the Academy. Keep looking out. Use it as a horizon. That’s how you stay balanced—you choose a fixed point to concentrate on. Keep your weight forward—you don’t want to go over backward.”
No. Simon really didn’t want to do that. He moved one foot to meet the other, and then he was standing facing the pile of rocks that formed the Academy, and his fellow students below, all looking up. Most did not look impressed, but George gave him a thumbs-up.
“Now,” Jace said, “bend a bit at the knees. And then I want you to just step off in one large stepping motion. Don’t jump with both feet. Just step. And as you go down, bring your legs together and keep yourself relaxed.”
This should not have been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Simon knew he’d done more. He knew he’d fought demons and come back from the dead. Jumping out of a tree should not have felt this terrifying.