44

I waited on the wind, standing for a long time, looking directly at the ledge some seven to eight feet below me. When the wind shifted, I didn’t hesitate. I began to run, veering off with each step toward the edge. I took the last step and pushed off into the open air. For a moment the wind seemed to hold me up and I floated, poised like a wingless angel over the ravine. While I was there, I felt a cold regret snaking under my skin, rippling it with gooseflesh. And then I fell.

There was just enough time to realize I had indeed misjudged the distance across the gorge. I stretched my body to its limits, swimming madly through the air toward the outcrop. My hands hit first, followed by elbows, and then my midsection. My legs dangled below me as I tried desperately to pull my full weight up and onto the safety of the narrow ridge. My hands and elbows were raw and I cried out with pain as I used them to hang on. With a great effort, I scuttled onto the ledge, collapsing face first and closing my eyes.

I was exhausted and hurting. For a long time, I didn’t move.

The sun was on my back, and then I felt it shift, and more shadows crept over the ravine. I rolled over and looked up into a dark-blue sky. A large, black cloud hung over the waterfall and appeared in no hurry to do anything but linger. I looked at my hands and elbows first. They were shredded. My palms were raw with blisterlike wounds, and three nails were broken from trying to use them to gain purchase on the rocks. My elbows weren’t much better. They were less skinned up, but my right one ached every time I straightened it. How had I misjudged the leap so badly? Was it simply an optical illusion that had fooled me? Or perhaps the wind had shifted, pushing back against momentum?

Either way, I’d dodged a bullet. If I’d jumped even a few inches less, I’d be dead right now, crushed on the rocks below.

Speaking of which, now that I felt steady on my feet, I looked over the ledge and saw nothing but a long fall beneath me. There wasn’t another outcropping or ledge in sight, just the two sides of the ravine, smooth and hard, and the spray of water as it spilled over the lip of the gap, boiling endlessly.

What had I done?

I turned my attention to the rock wall behind me. It looked more promising than the first ledge I’d been on, which wasn’t saying a lot. The first ledge had presented nothing I could grab onto or use to push my toes into for balance. On this side, there were a few fissures in the rock face, but most of them were oddly slanted, running almost vertically up toward the tree-lined bluff above me.

After looking around a bit, I noticed another smaller outcropping about ten or twelve feet above me. If I could somehow make it up to that—

I froze. Voices filtered into the gorge, quavering beneath the sound of the falls. I melted into the wall, pressing my body flat. I looked across the gorge to the bluff where Heath had hit me with the rock.

Squinting against the sun and the blinding white of the water spray, I could just make out Randy Harden and Dr. Blevins. Their words were garbled, but I was pretty sure I heard Blevins say the word, “Sister.”

Neither one of the men glanced in my direction. Instead, they peered straight down into the ravine, as if trying to read the lay of the river or to glean the location of my bones, which they clearly assumed were smashed against the rocks below.

I didn’t move. In fact, I barely even took a breath while they stood there. As long as they believed I was dead, I held an intrinsic advantage over them. All it would take to disabuse them of that notion was a quick glance in my direction. There was nowhere for me to hide. I was a sitting duck, but so far at least, I was a duck neither of them had noticed.

Harden said something and put a hand on Blevins’s shoulder before turning and walking away from the edge of the bluff. That left Blevins on the rock, still staring down into the abyss, where by all rights, I should have been lying dead. There was something breathtaking and profoundly strange about seeing him standing there, looking out into the deep gorge, so sure I was dead. For a second I felt like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead at once. Maybe, I allowed, I had fallen to the bottom. Maybe this was the afterlife and I’d be forced to climb among these rocks, jumping back and forth from narrow ledge to narrower ledge, trying to find my way out of this purgatory.

Blevins looked up, and his eyes fell right on me. For a second I believed he’d seen me, but if he had, he gave no indication. Then, he turned and walked away.

I was truly alone now. Just the ravine, the falls, and the spirits of those who’d come before me, those souls who’d found this place as a beacon to their pain, or perhaps their escape from it. Or maybe, for some of them, it had been the place they made a new start. Endings and beginnings were always tied together intrinsically, like two strands of rope spliced into a single cord.

The dark clouds worried me. Rain looked inevitable, and a thunderstorm was a real possibility. I’d be exposed to the elements out here on this tiny ledge. Not to mention that a good wind could make things difficult for me.

I needed to get moving before the storm blew in. I faced the wall, running my hands across its maddeningly smooth surface, searching for a tiny nook or fissure that would accommodate my fingers. There was nothing.

I stepped back for a wider view. There, over to the right, I spotted an almost invisible niche in the rock. If I could reach it, I could use it to pull myself up to what looked like a small ledge about seven or eight feet above where I stood. The problem was, the niche I needed to get a hold of was a good three feet from the right side of the ledge. I was long enough to reach it, but I’d have to lean out over the gorge to do so. It I didn’t grab it properly, if my fingers slipped or the rock crumbled under my weight, I’d fall to my death.

I pulled out my phone again and considered calling for help. The problem was anyone who came to help me would inevitably alert Harden and Blevins to the fact I’d survived the fall, jeopardizing everything I’d worked so hard for. That was part of the reason I didn’t call, but I swear there was something else too, a feeling, an urgency I found hard to put into words.

Being inside the gorge, trapped between the two rock walls, was like being in a different world, one simultaneously less real and more real than the one I’d always known. What happened here happened on two levels, both moving me forward in the real world and somehow instructing me and readying me for my return to it.

I was ready. I stretched as far as I could stretch, leaning sideways out over the gorge. I couldn’t quite reach the handhold. Standing on my tiptoes still wasn’t enough. I tried leaving one foot on the ground and lifting the other toward the wall, digging the toe of my boot into the rock and finding just the tiniest bit of purchase. I pushed myself up, straining and reaching with everything I had. The fingers on my right hand found the small divot, and I held on for all I was worth as I continued to haul my weight upward along the rocky face. It felt almost as if I’d performed some kind of magic trick. I might have believed I was levitating if not for the way my entire body trembled, each muscle stretched to its limit.

Sweat poured from my forehead down over my eyes, burning them. I tried to blink away the sharp sting, but it only made it worse. I closed my eyes and reached with my other hand.

I felt nothing. The ledge I’d been heading for seemed to have disappeared.

Worse yet, I heard the first low rumble of thunder in the distance and lightning somewhere in the direction of the school.