IT’S A FREAK THING, how it happens. Innocuous. It doesn’t look like much until suddenly it’s the Worst Possible Thing.
Kyla’s almost at the end of the ledge. She’s got her confidence back, moving faster. Maybe she’s still crying, but she’s laugh-crying, looking at Warden as he crouches down to meet her, saying something funny and encouraging and beckoning her forward.
We’re all in this together. The whole gang’s going to make it. Everything’s right in the world.
Kyla gets overconfident. She gets sick of crawling. She’s a couple of feet from safety when she stands up, suddenly and without warning, like she’s getting off this freaking ledge on her feet, damn it.
Only problem is, nobody told Amber. And Amber’s right behind Kyla, guiding her, encouraging her, and so when Kyla bolts upright like it’s the hundred-yard dash, she brushes against Amber. She knocks Amber off-balance.
Time goes in slow motion.
Amber just seems to sway there. She sways there forever. And if it weren’t for how her face goes ghost white, you might not think there was anything wrong.
Ahead of Amber, Warden reaches out and grabs Kyla, pulls her to safety. Wraps her in a hug, and they’re all too happy to notice how Amber’s reaching behind her for the wall, trying to find an edge or a lip or a crack or something, anything, to find purchase and keep herself from falling.
But her hands only find smooth rock, and then it’s too late. She looks straight at Dawn as she goes over the edge, and there’s this look on her face and it’s straight unfiltered fear. And then she’s gone.
She doesn’t scream, or if she does, it disappears into the wind.
She pinwheels in the air. Somersaults, her arms and legs flailing.
She drops fast.
She clears fifty feet in a blink, hits the steep slope at the base of the cliff, hits it awkward and sends up a huge cloud of dust and keeps falling, tumbling over sharp, bruising, body-breaking rock.
By now, Dawn is screaming. Kyla is screaming. Lucas is swearing very loudly. Warden is holding on to Kyla, trying to wrestle her into some kind of calm.
Christian looks ashen.
Amber keeps falling. Keeps rolling over rock, down, down, down toward the snow and the lake far below. She doesn’t make it all the way, though. She slams into a boulder like halfway down, and just lies there.
She’s too far away to tell if she’s moving. She’s just a green Gore-Tex speck against all that jagged gray. You can’t see her face, or even really how she’s situated. But it’s obvious that she’s probably dead.
The wind keeps roaring in Dawn’s ears.
She keeps seeing Amber’s face, right before she fell.
For a long time, that’s all she can see.
It’s Lucas who snaps Dawn out of it.
“We gotta get across,” he says, shaking Dawn by the shoulders. “What if she’s still alive? We gotta get her some help!”
She’s not alive, Dawn thinks. Weren’t you paying attention? She fell like a mile, and she bounced.
But Lucas isn’t waiting for an answer. As Dawn watches, he crosses the narrow ledge quick and lithe, like a cat. Makes the other side with no problem and turns back and looks at her like he’s surprised she hasn’t moved yet.
Even Brielle’s on the other side already. Everyone is waiting for Dawn.
Shit.
The rest of the Pack stands on the other side of the ledge and yells at Dawn to hurry up and get across, while at the same time they’re stealing glances down the north side of the Raven’s Claw, searching the snow and the rock for where Amber lies, broken.
Dawn tries not to look to her left.
(Don’t look down.)
She tries to ignore her heartbeat and just focus on Warden and Lucas and Alex on the other side.
She closes her eyes and just runs.
And she makes it.