All the Answers (20 page)

She jumped.

The skateboard nearly flew out from under her when she landed, but she flailed her arms and leaned forward. It wasn't slowing down as it approached the next tree, not at all. She was going to have to jump again, onto the platform, but before she could make her legs move, the skateboard banged into the platform and threw Ava forward.

The mat wrapped around the tree would have stopped her, but she fell hard onto her knees on the platform instead. When she reached out to stop herself from hitting her head, her hands scraped over the boards, too.

“Are you okay?” Jason yelled from across the clearing.

“Yeah!” Ava called, even though she was only kind of okay. When she caught her breath enough to stand up, her hands were scratched, and both knees were bleeding. She unclipped her safety lines and moved to the other side of the platform. “All clear!” she called.

While Jason attached his safety lines, Ava took a deep, shaky breath. She wasn't ready to keep going. She wasn't ready for anything.

She looked at her watch.

1:05

When Ava got home, it would be done. Mom would know. Maybe she'd even know what percentage of people with her kind of cancer survived. They talked about that on
Boston Med
all the time. A forty percent survival rate, or a twenty percent
survival rate. Sometimes worse. What had the pencil said about the kind of cancer her mom had? And who knew if it was even true?

Ava sat down on the platform and tucked her scraped-up knees to her chest. She was tired. Her arms hurt and her hands burned and her scraped knees were throbbing, and her pounding, racing heart couldn't keep it up much longer. Maybe the pencil would be wrong. Maybe her mom didn't have cancer at all. It was wrong before. About Jason liking Sophie. Wasn't it?

Jason jumped from the skateboard just before it hit the platform. That was apparently how it was supposed to work.

Ava stared at him.
Had
the pencil been wrong?

“Whoa!” Jason looked at Ava's bloody knees. “They probably have a first aid kit at the reception area. There's only one more obstacle and then we're done.”

What if the pencil hadn't been wrong at all?

“Did you used to like Sophie?” Ava asked.

“Huh?”

“Did you used to like Sophie?”

Jason tipped his head and looked down at Ava. “I do like Sophie. That's why I asked you if she was still into me.”

“But you were going out with Jessica. Before that, like two days before, did you like Sophie?”

“Well, yeah. I've had a crush on Sophie since I moved here. But then Brady told me Jessica liked me and she's pretty cute,
so …” He shrugged. “We broke up, though, so if Sophie likes me, that would be great.”

Ava wanted to scream. She wanted to shove Jason off the platform.

The pencil hadn't been wrong. The pencil was never wrong.

Mom had cancer. If she didn't know for sure already, she was about to find out.

“Let's get moving,” Cute-Tom called up. “This is the final challenge for you die-hards. Everybody else is wrapped up, and the buses are getting ready to take you back to school.”

Ava took a deep breath and stood up.

Cute-Tom's eyes went wide when he saw her knees. “Whoa, you okay?”

Ava didn't look at him. She just started hooking her safety lines. “I'm fine.”

She wasn't. It didn't matter. Her bleeding knees could keep on bleeding and her hands could keep on burning and none of it mattered because when she got home, her mother was still going to have cancer and she was going to have to walk into the house and hear about it, and she'd never be fine again. She just wanted to get off this course and curl up into a ball and pretend none of it was real.

Ava looked at the last crossing. It started with another swing.

No, not a swing. A log hanging from two ropes. There wasn't even a flat surface to step on. And then, about a foot away, there was another hanging log, longer than the first one and perpendicular to it, so you'd have to walk along it like a balance beam. And then another small log-swing … another balance-beam log … four … five more before the next platform.

Ava let out a sharp sigh and stepped onto the first log.

It swung forward as if it were a living creature that wanted her off, a bucking bronco in some nightmare tree rodeo. Ava lost her balance and had to grip the ropes to keep from falling. She held on so tight that the rope fibers felt like a thousand little needles poking into the raw scratches on her hands. Her knees were shaking so much the swing wouldn't stop moving. Finally, it slowed down enough that Ava could breathe.

Ava looked at the next log. There was no way she could do this eight more times.

She looked back at the platform, where Jason stood. He gave her a thumbs-up, but he looked just as terrified as she felt.

Ava looked down at Cute-Tom, and tears burned her eyes. Tears for her stinging hands and the pencil that was always right and her mom, who knew the truth by now—and no amount of running away or tightrope walking was going to keep it from being real. “I want to get down.”

“But you're doing great!” Cute-Tom called up.

“I'm done. I want to get down.”

“Come on, Ava! You can totally do this!” LucyAnn looked up at her from the ground. “Only eight people made it all the way to the end so far, and if you and Jason both make it, you'll be nine and ten!”

“What?” Ava was so surprised she forgot for a second that she was standing on a swing a million miles up in the air. She looked out at the clearing by the reception area, where pretty much everybody else was hanging out drinking water and eating granola bars. Ava had noticed that things had gotten quieter on the course, but she figured it was because everybody else was faster. “None of those people finished the course?”

“Like I said, there were eight. James Marino, Tyler Choe, Ivy Ordway, Marissa Powers, Annika Rock, and the Mason twins. And me.” LucyAnn grinned up at Ava. She wore the dirt on her face like a badge of honor.

“Did everybody else have to get rescued?”

“Some did. The rest just decided they were done after the pink course.” LucyAnn took a swig from her water bottle. “That was the one with the punching bags.”

Before Ava could finish processing all that information, Sophie came jogging up to Cute-Tom in the clearing. “Mr. Avery sent me to see how many people were still out so we can tell the bus drivers when—Ohmygosh, Ava!” Sophie's mouth dropped open when she saw Ava on the swing. “You're doing
red
?”

“Yeah,” Ava said. How had she missed the fact that people
were bailing out after the pink course and that was just fine? She could have skipped the skateboard of doom and she wouldn't be stuck on this swing if only she'd paid attention.

“That's awesome!” Sophie looked up at her as if she were levitating, as if Sophie couldn't believe it was Ava—nervous, scared-of-everything Ava—here on the red course. And almost done, too.

“Thanks.” Ava couldn't quite believe it either. But there she was. And Sophie's name hadn't been on LucyAnn's list of finishers. “Did you quit after pink?”

Sophie shook her head. “I got knocked off that one with the punching bags and didn't have enough arm strength to pull myself back up, so I had to get rescued. But even that was kinda fun.” She tipped her head toward Cute-Tom and smiled like crazy. “Anyway, you totally have to finish now. You're almost there!”

“Yeah!” LucyAnn called up. “You can do it, Ava!”

Ava looked at them. She looked out at the clearing, at all the people who hadn't finished. She'd made it farther than any of them. And her mom … her mom would be so proud if Ava could do it. Ava swallowed hard. Her mom probably needed that today.

“Go, Ava, go!” Sophie started chanting, but Ava shook her head.

“You can't do that. It'll freak me out. Just … be quiet, okay?”

Ava could feel everyone's eyes on her. She took a deep breath and then another one. Then she lifted one foot slowly from the swinging log and stretched it out toward the next one.

It didn't reach.

Ava pulled her foot back. She needed that log closer.

But she couldn't pull it closer without letting go of the ropes that were keeping her from falling off the log of doom. And she couldn't do that.

She tried holding the rope in the crook of her right elbow so she could get the next one with her hand. But her arm was all cramped and tucked in and it didn't go far enough either.

She stretched out her foot again.

It still didn't reach.

She pulled it back.

She started to reach out with her hand, but as soon as she let go of the first rope and felt the air on her scratched-up palm, she panicked and grabbed the rope again.

She looked down.

“You can do it,” Sophie said quietly. She nodded up at Ava. “You so can do this.”

“I can't reach,” Ava said. She'd tried everything. “I want to get down.”

“You can. It's not that far,” Cute-Tom said, matter-of-factly. “But you have to let go of that rope to get the next one.”

Ava stared down at him. “Let go?” She couldn't let go. If she let go, she was going to freak out and then lose her balance and flail all over the place and the log would fly out from under her and she'd fall and then—and then what? And then the harness would catch her. Like it had on the practice course. That was
pretty much the worst thing that would happen. And with everything else going on, all of a sudden, it seemed like that might be survivable.

“Go on. Let go,” Cute-Tom said. “You have to let go before you can reach.”

Ava took a deep breath and made her right hand unclench. She held it close to the rope for a few seconds, feeling the breeze cool the scratches on her sweaty palm.

And then she reached.

She reached out for the next rope, and before she could even think about it, she was stepping onto the balance-beam log and bringing her other hand forward. The log started swinging like crazy and made Ava's stomach do flips. She held on so tight she thought the ropes might burn right through her hands, but she didn't let go.

She waited.

Little by little, the swinging log stopped jerking back and forth and just swayed a little bit, and then a little bit less.

Ava baby-stepped forward to the end of the log.

She let go of the rope.

And reached.

She pulled the next log in and stepped onto it and held her breath, hanging on until the awful swinging stopped.

Now do it again
, she told herself.
Let go. And reach
.

She did. Again. And again. And again.

On the second-to-last log, Ava stepped too far forward and
her foot slipped off the front of the log, but she caught herself and used the ropes to pull herself back up. She didn't fall. She didn't need the harness.

She let go one last time, reached for the safety line, and stepped onto the platform. Everybody below her burst out cheering and clapping. Ava had forgotten they were there. For a while—how long? Two minutes? Five minutes? Ten? It didn't matter. For a while, it had been just her and the swinging logs.

Ava looked back at them, still swaying in the breeze. Her heart wouldn't stop pounding. What if she'd slipped? What if the cable hadn't held her? What if she'd fallen all that way to the rocky ground?

But none of those things had happened, Ava thought, as she climbed down the last ladder.

She'd done it.

She'd let go. And reached. And made it across.

And she was fine. Better than fine. She felt like she could tackle anything.

She looked at her watch.

2:05.

Maybe she'd even be able to handle the news she knew would be waiting when she got home.

Ava sat with Sophie on the bus ride back to school.

“So things are a lot better because I saw Jessica at lunch, and I told her that somebody told me that Jason liked me—I didn't tell her it was a pencil because how weird is that—but I told her I had no idea they were going out or I totally wouldn't have gone near him. And she said that was okay because she broke up with Jason anyway because she found out Brady Tremont wants to go out with her. And he's cuter and an eighth grader. So then right after you finished that thing with the logs, I went up and said hi to Jason and he asked if he could call me later, and I said yes, so it looks like we might get together anyway.”