The thunder was directly overhead, making each of them flinch. They could see one another shivering in the flashes of lightning, before they fell to shadows again. Some were huddled together, others were spread along the wide rock ledge.
But it wasn’t the thunder that Amaya was worried about. It was the sound of the river, growing louder, closer. It was the water she could see lapping over the ledge, anytime the sky lit up.
It was no longer the same river they’d crawled out of. Its boundaries were expanding, the water consuming everything in its path.
Amaya knew what to do. She knew what she had to do then. It was a trait instilled in her from a young age, a belief that extended beyond herself. A responsibility.
The members of the Andrews family were overachievers, they were leaders, doers. Amaya had been bilingual since she could speak—her mother, an artist who had fled Cuba as a teen; her father, generations deep into North Carolina law—and she was well on her way to mastering a third. She was a triple threat: student-athlete-artist. She would attend Duke, just as her father and her grandfather had before. Great things were ahead.
But she understood too, more than the rest of her classmates, that risk was not a thing that could be calculated in math class or fully reconciled by history. That it was often tied to some element of loss. She had witnessed that dichotomy in her mother’s expression as she told the stories of her past, triumph mixed with regret.
The Andrewses made their own fate, as her dad was fond of saying—but it was her mother who had truly embodied that motto, and she was a García. She pictured her mother now, stepping into a boat in the dark, keeping her face turned toward the open sea, heading into the unknown.
She knew what she had to do.
This trip had been Amaya’s idea, as head of the Volunteer Club. She’d set it up, joining a Habitat for Humanity project where a string of tornadoes had ravaged a stretch of three entire towns in Tennessee. The mess they were now in was her responsibility.
The vans were gone. Both of them, washed away down the surging river. Washed away with—
Don’t think it. Don’t.
Her mother said Amaya was good at compartmentalizing, and she didn’t realize that was a compliment until just that moment:
The bent metal, the shattered glass, the rush of water—in a box.
The two teachers and the classmates beyond saving—in a box.
The ones that were still missing—don’t name them, don’t think of them—in a box.
Amaya stared at the darkness, the rising water, the steep walls surrounding them, the people scattered on the rocks, shadows in the night. And it was like only she could see it. Something steadily coming for them, in the sound of the rushing river.
No one was looking for any of them. They’d left the highway miles before the accident, an ill-advised detour. Most likely, no one would notice their absence until the morning, at best. But Amaya was sure of one thing if they remained still, waiting:
They were trapped. And if they didn’t move, they were going to die.
It was already too late for some of them.
Don’t look at them. The ones pulled from the back of her van that they’d left huddled together, against the cliff wall.
There was nothing she could do for them now.
“Listen, we need to—” she began, but no one was looking at her or listening.
Only that one girl—Cassidy—who she’d never spoken to before. She could see the whites of her eyes shining in her direction, waiting. Like she knew exactly what Amaya had been about to say.
The promise of adulthood, the freedom to make the decisions—no one had told her the weight of it.
“We have to go,” Amaya said. Softly at first. So that the only person who heard her was the one staring at her. It didn’t matter that they weren’t friends, that they knew nothing about one another except for their names. The night had stripped away everything else. A matter of hours, and relationships didn’t matter. Pasts didn’t matter. Only this, right now.
And now Cassidy was looking at her, wide-eyed.
Amaya stared back at her, like she was asking a question, or for permission, an acknowledgment that the decision was right.
Cassidy nodded.
“We have to move!” Amaya shouted now, hands cupped around her mouth, more sure of herself.
“How?” Brody asked, as the others pulled into a circle. They had already traced the perimeter. The cliff walls slick with rain on one side, the surging water on the other. And the river was too fast, too risky. They knew that now.
“Up,” Amaya said. “We have to climb.” There were ledges and grooves, at least as far as she could feel. They couldn’t know more until they tried. And they had to try.
“We can’t,” Clara said, her words like a plea. “We can’t just leave…” She looked behind her, but Amaya knew better. She’d looked once, and that was enough.
Amaya instead looked to Cassidy, hoping. Waiting.
Cassidy cleared her throat. “We have to try.”
Ian was at Cassidy’s side, had been that way since they arrived on the rocks, even though Amaya didn’t think they’d known each other before tonight. It was like he was bound to her by some invisible force, or whatever had happened in the other van.
Ian was injured, his arm held close to his side. “Okay,” he said, or she thought he said, his words swallowed up by another round of thunder.
Amaya knew there was power in numbers, and now she had three. Four, if she counted Brody, who hadn’t answered either way, but she knew he would’ve argued if he didn’t agree. And Brody would bring Hollis. Five.
Oliver, who had been standing behind her, was suddenly beside her. “Let’s go, then,” he said, as if it had been his plan all along. Joshua, standing on the outskirts of the group, said nothing, but he would come, too. She’d known him long enough to know he didn’t make decisions, barely followed the path laid out before him unless he was guided along the way.
Grace stood behind Clara, arms around her shoulders, talking to her. “Grace,” Amaya called, pulling her attention from Clara. “We’re going,” she said, decision made.
Clara’s entire body was shaking. “No, we have to wait,” she said.
“We can’t wait,” Amaya said. That time was gone.
“We have to wait with them.” Clara gestured behind her.
“Clara,” she said, eyes closed, “we’ll send someone back for them. It’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way,” Grace echoed.
But Clara pulled away from Grace, disappearing into the shadows along the rocks. Amaya couldn’t watch her, speaking with the dead. Grace hadn’t moved. She looked over her shoulder at Clara, and then back at Amaya.
“Grace,” Amaya said, “get her.” Grace and Clara had been inseparable since middle school. They would stay or go as one.
Grace listened, slipping into the darkness. When she returned, she was dragging Clara with her, and then Brody had to help.
“Please,” Clara begged, arms on Grace’s, as if only she would understand.
But Grace pulled her closer. “Don’t look back,” she said, making the decision for her. And then she pushed her ahead.
“We have to get out now!” Amaya yelled. The words echoed through the group, a command, a force.
Amaya welcomed the rain, the thunder, focusing on that noise alone. And not the arguing, the crying. She put a foot on the first ledge, and pulled herself up. Oliver stepped up beside her, and quickly moved ahead. It wasn’t as steep as she thought. Once they made it to the next level, there was enough room to lie down, to reach for the others, to help them along the way.
And then, with a sudden rush, Amaya heard the water rising, barreling toward them. Like some dam had been opened.
“Go!” she shouted, as she pulled Clara up. “Go, go, go!”
The next level was a rocky path, and they walked it like a tightrope in the dark, one hand on the arm in front of them, another on the rock wall. Amaya heard the river, coming even closer. Look forward. Keep moving.
She lost her footing only once in a frantic scramble, but Cassidy, who was behind her, had her under the shoulders before she could fall. “Keep going,” Cassidy said, once she had her feet planted firmly again.
Amaya couldn’t worry about the others, could only hope they were as lucky as she was, with Oliver in front and Cassidy behind her.
They came to the end of a path, with another rocky incline, slippery in the rain, and worked slowly, as a team. Joshua and Brody boosting all the rest, before getting pulled up themselves.
They kept ascending. In the dark, it was the only thing she was sure of. They were moving upward, putting more distance between them and the rising water. Somewhere tucked into the cliffside, they stumbled onto a trail. A path. A scramble of roots on their hands and knees.
And then: trees. Their hands on branches and trunks, pulling themselves up the incline. A frantic desperation. Finally: hope. She started to run, felt the others following. Branches catching on her face, her arms. Until suddenly the branches were gone, and she felt pavement under her feet. And they stood that way. Stood there together, waiting, in the pouring rain, lightning piercing the sky, thunder cracking overhead.
Until finally, a light appeared around the curve. They started screaming, arms waving in the air. A truck, brakes screeching, coming to a stop.
“Help! Help us!” Amaya yelled, the scream tightening her throat.
She ran toward the truck as the door swung open and a man jumped down, racing toward them, phone in his hand.
Amaya was shaking, with the cold, with adrenaline, with something unnamed, slowly clawing its way forward—
“See,” she said, turning back to the others. See, she wanted to tell them. Look where I have led you. Look what we did.
We lived.
She waited for the relief to come, like elation. No one would meet her eyes.
“We made it,” Oliver said, his body hunching. Then Grace began crying, loud, gasping sobs. Brody had Hollis under one arm, and reached out for Grace with the other. Cassidy kept a hand on Ian’s shirt, soaked through, as if she thought he might still disappear.
As the man called 911, he counted them in the beam of the headlights. “Seven, eight, nine kids—”
“We have to go back,” Clara sobbed. “There are—” But Joshua pulled her tighter, so tight, her cries were muffled into his shoulder.
“Shh,” Josh said, close to her ear.
They’d all heard the violence of the river. The crash of the water flooding through the gorge, close at their heels. They knew there was no surviving it.
Amaya saw it all, a montage: the people they had left behind—injured, huddled along the base of the cliffs. The haunting look in their eyes. It was too late for them, she knew. She’d known it from the start.
It was then the boxes finally opened. There would be no going back—not ever. Anyone left behind was gone.
Amaya pictured her mother on a boat. Her bravery. And she tried to find the same feeling—defiance, strength. The inevitable choices that were required in desperate moments. Instead, Amaya saw their faces, yearbook shiny. She could smell Morgan’s shampoo still, from where she rested her head on the seat beside hers; feel Ben’s first kiss her freshman year, the way her heart had fluttered; hear Trinity screaming after them all as they walked away: Don’t leave us, don’t you dare leave us—
And Clara yelling over her shoulder: We’ll come right back! The most generous of them, even with her lies.
Until the screams turned into something else, and then fell to nothing at all.
Standing in the road, under the rain, in the headlights of the truck, Amaya felt no relief. Only a crushing darkness.