Cliff-Hanger (7 page)

“Does Maria live around here?” Jack asked.

“No. Far, far away. Why?”

“You must have had a lot of quarters for the pay phone.”

Without the slightest hesitation, Lucky answered, “Oh, I called collect. Maria doesn't care.” Then, giving him one of her brilliant smiles, she added, “You know what, Jack? It feels good to talk about it with someone. I get so tired of secrets. Anyway, Maria said she's OK, but she told me to stay away. It's still too dangerous.”

Woodenly, he asked, “Why did you lie about going for a walk?”

She stopped and looked up at him. “I had to make sure Maria was all right, Jack. That's not wrong, is it? Caring about your friends is good.”

“Is that watch really from your mom?”

Lucky's face looked pinched. “Why do you want to know? Besides, I thought we were talking about Maria. What's the big deal about my watch?”

From the start, Jack had known Ashley was right about the watch. There were no pager wristwatches eight years ago. It was a brand-new technology; the magazine ad had said so.

“You told me your mom died when you were five.” Jack felt sourness in his throat, but he pushed it down and kept going. It was better to get it out in the open and hear the real story, no matter what it turned out to be. “Look, I want you to tell me the truth. It's important to me.”

“OK. You want the truth about my watch? The truth is, the pager watch is something I got just a couple of weeks ago, which means my mother, who really, truly is dead, did not give it to me. There, I told you.”

Jack shook his head and said, “I don't get it. Why did you tell Ashley that watch was from your mom? Why would you even want to say something like that?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged. “It might make her think before she goes through my stuff again. It's a better story—lots of reasons. I'm sorry if that bothers you. I guess you never bend things around, or twist the facts, just a little?”

“No.”

“That's good.” Lucky nodded, almost as though she were talking to herself. “I guess I've always known that some people were really honest, but, it's not like there's any of that in my life. Maybe you can teach me how.”

Jack gazed down at her. What kind of life must she have lived to think that being honest was somehow unique? He was glad she trusted him. It made him want to pull her away from the harsh parts of the world.

They walked the rest of the way to the round house with Lucky hanging on to his arm, apologizing, “These sandals don't work so well on a rocky path.” She was small and fine boned; the top of her head came no higher than Jack's ear.

They stopped behind the house. A yellow square marked the upstairs bedroom where Lucky and Ashley had slept last night, although the rest of the house was dark. Ashley must still be awake, and his parents must still be gone.

“It's so nice out here,” Lucky said softly. “I don't think I want to go in.”

“We'd better, before my dad and mom come back and yell because there's a crazy cougar on the loose, even if it is half a park away. I don't want you to get into trouble.”

“What does it matter? Won't Ashley tell on me?”

“I'll ask her not to.”

“Wouldn't that be a lie?” Lucky gave a tinkling laugh that sounded like bells.

“OK. You're right. I'll tell the truth and hang you out to dry.” He began to move toward the house, but she held him back.

“Wait, before we go inside, I want to look around. You can see everything with this full moon. I mean, it's like a great big headlight's been stuck in the sky. It's lighting up the whole world!”

“Yeah,” he said. “Like you can really see this house. It's interesting how they built it with the stones all rough and uneven so they'd look like the old dwellings on the cliffs.”

“Uh-huh. But that's not what—”

“I wonder why they made the new part lower than the tower. They could have made it the same height and had a second bedroom,” he said, not that he cared. But this moonlit situation was moving in a direction he might not want to follow. A rush of words would hold it back.

“Jack! Forget the house. I wanted to tell you something.” Lucky moved closer to him. “It's about me. And you.”

He would have loved to hear her say that an hour earlier, but things had changed. Now he felt uneasy about this beautiful but mysterious girl who lied for no reason at all. What stories could she make up if she really had a reason to deceive?

“I don't want you to think that I'm a bad person, because I'm not.”

“I…I don't think you're bad.”

“Don't lie, Jack, you don't know how. Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is that even if I stretch the truth sometimes, what I'm going to tell you right now is true.” Raising her eyes to his, she said, “I really like you. A lot. I've never met anybody like you before, not in my whole life, and you've made me think about…things. No matter what happens, you can believe that.”

She turned her face up to him; later, he would wonder what might have happened if he hadn't, at that moment, heard his parents coming.

“…meeting in an uproar,” his mom was saying. From the muted sound of her voice, they were still far down the path. “…screaming for the death of all cougars,” she continued. “Of course, they wouldn't listen when I told them this kind of situation was extremely rare. Did you hear them yell at me? They said I should tell that to the latest victim.”

“The attack on that woman was not your fault, Olivia.”

“Maybe it was!” her voice sounded anguished. “I'm supposed to be the expert. What if I'd advised them to close the park? But that seems like such a huge step….”

Steven answered, “You know that just isn't done, Olivia. When those two women were killed by grizzlies at Glacier National Park, that park wasn't closed. People die in the thermal pools at Yellowstone, and they don't close Yellowstone. Things…happen. It's risky to be in wild places. Visitors accept that because the trade-off is so great—the beauty, the chance to see nature untamed, including the wild animals.”

Olivia and Steven were so close now that their words carried clearly in the still night. “Hurry, Jack,” Lucky whispered. “We can beat them inside. If we're quick, they won't know we were gone.”

Like shadows, they crept into the house through the back door. Silently, they slipped upstairs before the front door rattled open. They'd made it without getting caught.

Jack was learning to break rules. Just like Lucky.

I
t must be awkward for Ashley, Jack thought, having to share a bed with someone who'd ragged on her, who'd accused her of being nasty and spiteful. Because the tiny closet Jack slept in was uncomfortably stuffy, he'd left the door slightly ajar; if any words had been spoken between the two girls, he would have heard them. Instead, the silence in the round tower bedroom hung heavy with tension.

Ashley hadn't ratted on them to his parents, which was good. It made him almost want to forgive her. But if he did, then what did he really feel about Lucky?

He tried to convince himself that Lucky had told only two real lies—one, about the watch coming from her mother; two, about going for a walk when she really went to make a phone call. But other doubts plagued him, dancing around his head in the dark like tiny grinning goblins.

So only two
real
lies. Then he thought, what about her mother being killed by a white tiger? Another fantasy? Sounded like it. Or could it possibly be true? No, she'd probably invented it because, like she said that evening, it made a good story.

Through his sea of doubts, one stark fact swam up slowly, finally pushing to the surface of his consciousness: When he'd asked Lucky if Maria lived nearby, Lucky had answered that she lived far, far away. But Jack remembered those numbers on the face of the pager watch: three digits, then a dash, then four more digits. No area code! That meant it had to be a local number. Lucky had called someone who was pretty close to the park.

So, lie number three. What about liking him? Was that lie number four, or did she really mean it? Suddenly, he heard her voice. “Ashley,” she said softly, “are you awake?”

“Yes, I'm awake,” Ashley answered in her normal voice. “How about you, Jack? Can you hear me from your closet?”

“Uh-huh, I can. What time is it?”

“Must be about midnight. Are you wearing your watch, Lucky?” Ashley asked her.

“Don't start about the watch…” Lucky spat out.

“I'm not! I just—forget it.”

Jack could hear the springs squeak as Ashley turned on her side, away from Lucky. Right then he felt sorry for himself and sorry for Ashley, too. He'd been unfair to her.

“I can't sleep,” he called out. “Tell us a story, Ashley.”

“A story! You mean like a bedtime story?” It was Lucky's voice, sounding scornful.

“My sister's a great storyteller,” Jack said. “She knows legends and folktales from all over the world. She reads things and remembers them.”

Ashley spoke out, “I have a good one, and it's not from all over the world, it's from right here. Remember when you were mad at me, Jack—”

Which time? he wondered grimly.

“And I walked up the path from Spruce Tree House with Nancy Lomayaktewa? She told me brothers and sisters always get into little squabbles, but it doesn't mean anything because big brothers really love their sisters and try to protect them. Then she told me this story:

In one village on the mesa nothing remained except the beauty—of the sky, of the dwellings set against the cliffs, of the sunrise. Each morning the sun soared up in all its majesty, but when it continued across the heavens, it beat down on the mesa without mercy. There was no rain. Summer after summer, no rain. Without rain no corn could grow for the people to eat. Finally, all the people went away. They fled in many directions, hoping to find a place where there might be food.

In the panic of the great departure, two small children—a brother and a sister—were left behind. They thought surely their parents would come back for them, but one day followed another, and the parents did not return.

The brother searched everywhere for the tiniest morsel of food to give his sister. He found nothing—not a kernel of corn, not a seed from a squash, not even an acorn. At last, to take his sister's mind away from the ache of hunger, he made her a toy. Trimming a dried stalk of sunflower, he cut it into the shape of a hummingbird.

“Spider Woman made all the birds of the air out of clay, and they came to life,” he told his sister. “If you toss this toy bird into the air, the breeze will carry it high, and you can pretend it's real.”

The girl was delighted with the toy hummingbird. When her brother left to search for food, she threw the little bird into the air again and again. Then, one time it didn't fall back to earth.

Puzzled, the girl watched the bird. It no longer looked like the dried pith of a sunflower stalk. It had feathers that gleamed in the sunlight. Its wings beat so fast they could hardly be seen.

“Spider Woman has made you live!” the girl cried happily. And then, the little bird flew away.

When the brother returned without having found anything to eat, the little girl sat crying. “My bird flew away,” she told him. “It came to life, and it flew up to the sky and didn't come back.”

The brother thought she must have lost the toy he'd made her and had invented that story as an excuse. But just then, the little hummingbird fluttered back into sight.

“Oh, did you see him, Brother?” the girl cried. “Did you see him? He has flown into that small space between two stones in our wall. Please bring him back to me.”

When the brother stretched his hand inside the niche in the wall, he found not the bird but an ear of ripe corn. It was the first food he'd seen in many days. He hurried to share it with his sister.

Day after day the hummingbird flew away in the morning, flew back at night, and left ripe corn inside the crevice in the stone wall. The brother and sister now had food in abundance.

“Hummingbird, when you fly into the sky each day,” the brother begged, “could you search for our parents? If you find them, please bring them back to us.” The hummingbird did find the children's mother and father, but they were so weak from hunger they could not make the journey to the village. Heeding the children's pleas, the hummingbird began to take food, each day, to the parents as well as to the children. Soon the mother and father regained their strength, and the family was united once again.

Then the gods allowed the rains to fall. The corn grew green and strong, so that once more there was enough to eat. Before long, the villagers returned to the dwellings set against the cliffs, to the beauty of the sky, the sun, and the mesa.

“And the brother was always kind to his sister, and he didn't get mad at her and yell at her all the time,” Ashley added with a tremor in her voice.

“I'm sorry,” Jack said softly. Lucky said nothing.

Maybe because he'd made peace with Ashley, Jack was finally able to fall asleep, although his dreams were disturbing. In one of them Ashley was pounding his shoulder, hitting his face, yelling his name—and he woke up to find her shaking him, trying to wake him.

“What?” he asked, groggy.

“She's gone!”

“Who's gone?” But even half awake, he knew it was Lucky. Clumsily pulling his long legs out of the sleeping bag, he asked, “Where'd she go?”

“Through the window. We've got to tell Mom and Dad.”

“No!” He grabbed her hand. “First we'll try to find her ourselves. That way we can talk her back without getting her into trouble.”

“I don't know….”

“Please, Ashley! We can do this.” As he pulled on jeans and shoes, he thought that Lucky couldn't get very far very fast in those open sandals—
if
that's what she had on.

Ashley grabbed Jack's flannel shirt to throw over her sleep shirt, then turned back to rummage for something else. That let Jack get to the window first. It was a short reach from the window ledge to the square roof below. Even for someone like Lucky who was afraid of heights, it wouldn't have seemed at all scary. Jack eased through the window and dropped as silently as he could, hoping that if his parents heard the noise, they'd think it was squirrels skittering around on the roof. Then he turned and helped Ashley.

“You've got my camera!” he whispered. “Why?”

“No one ever believed me when I said things about Lucky. This time I'm going to take pictures. For proof.”

“No, you're not.” Jack pulled the camera from her hand. “This is mine, and no one else uses it.”

It was no time for an argument, standing there on the roof in the moonlight. “Come on,” Jack said. “Over the ledge. It'll be easy.”

“Right. Piece of cake.”

A small wooden ledge projected beyond the stone wall; Jack hung from it by his hands, then dropped, feet first, the short distance to the ground. Ashley dug the toes of her tennis shoes into the spaces between the stones, climbing down the cracks like they were toe holes.

They ran to the parking lot, a wide expanse of now empty asphalt. Not too far in the distance, Jack saw a moving flash of white. “There she is!” he cried. “Heading for Spruce Tree House.”

“Spruce Tree—?”

“Who knows why? Just get moving before we lose her.” They were already catching only the briefest glimpses of Lucky's white shirt as she moved behind the trees.

“She won't be able to get in there, Jack,” Ashley said from right behind him. “There's a gate on that path, and it's locked at night. She can't climb over it 'cause it's got barbed wire.”

“Lucky probably doesn't know that. We can catch up while she's figuring out what to do,” Jack said.

But when they reached the gate, they didn't find Lucky. Instead, they found a thick blanket draped over the barbed wire that topped the gate and the adjoining fence.

“Look how she made it over!” Ashley exclaimed, shaking her head in admiration. “She must have had it all planned out. Well, if she got over that way, we can too.”

“Wait, Ashley, this is getting serious,” Jack protested softly. “If we scale the gate, we'll be breaking in. Maybe we really should get Dad.”

“No! If we go back now, she'll be gone. We don't have time!”

Reluctantly, Jack agreed. They were violating park rules, maybe even the law, but this was bigger than rules. It took him only a moment to decide: “I'll go first, then I'll help you over.”

The chain link rattled when Jack climbed it, bending under his weight as he swung his leg over the top. Thick and rough, the blanket completely protected him from the barbed-wire stingers that edged the top of the fence. Where had Lucky found that blanket? Jack wondered. He hadn't seen anything like that at the round house.

“Okay, Ashley, give me your hand—”

He needn't have offered. Light and nimble, she scaled the fence like a cat and dropped next to him on the asphalt path.

“I don't get it. Why is she coming in here?” Ashley whispered.

“I don't know.”

“If she's running away, you'd think she'd walk on the road. Why Spruce Tree House in the middle of the night?”

“I
said
I don't know!”

“This is crazy.”

It was harder now to see. The mountain walls blocked out the moonlight, and the trees dripped deep pools of shadow along the path, black on black. All seemed altered in the half darkness; Jack's footsteps scraped the path like sandpaper while his camera, hanging on its strap, slapped his chest in a hollow drumbeat. “Wait!” he whispered. Holding up his hand, he stopped, listening for any human sound. There was a rustling from a group of scrub oaks to his left. Suddenly, one of the shadows broke free and stood in front of him, blocking his way. Lucky.

“Get—out—of—here!”
She bit off every word. It wasn't light enough to make out Lucky's eyes, but Jack didn't need to. He could feel the heat in them, could hear the fury in her voice.

“Lucky—” Jack began.

“Go away!”

Now it was Jack's turn to sound fierce. “Not without you!”

“Forget it!”

“You can't make us leave,” Ashley declared. “You might as well come back with us, and then Mom and Dad can—”

“No! Why can't you just
leave me alone?”

Jack stepped close. Lucky's duffel bag had been slung over her back, like a knapsack. Her hands clutched the straps circling beneath her arms so that her fingers gleamed white.

“Were you going to disappear, just like that, without telling me why? I thought we were friends.”

“I'm not going back!
I can't!”

“Then you've got a problem,” he said evenly. “You won't come with us, and we won't leave. I guess you've got company.”

Lucky cursed softly, but Jack held his ground. He had questions for this girl, and he wanted answers. Who was she, anyway? It seemed as though Lucky's personality could change from water into steam and then to ice and right back to liquid in an instant. Which one of those natures was real?

He tried again. “You can run, or you can deal with whatever the problem is. It's your choice.”

Seconds ticked by before Lucky answered. “You do what you have to do, and I'll do what I have to. Good-bye, Jack.” Turning, she began to walk down the path, but Jack burst ahead and grabbed her arm. Whirling her around, he looked into her face. He could see enough of it to know her calm voice had been a lie. She was crying.

“Lucky, don't do this. You don't have to run away. Is it the gang? Are you afraid? Stay with us, and we'll work it out.”

“Don't you get it, Jack?” It was Ashley. “Lucky's not here alone. You're meeting someone, right, Lucky? Someone else put the blanket on the fence so you wouldn't get shredded. Isn't that right?” When Lucky didn't answer, Ashley pressed, “So who's here? And don't tell me it's somebody from a gang, 'cause I won't believe you.”

Still, no answer.

“Tell me the truth, Lucky,” Jack said gently. “I told you before that the truth is really important to me. Is someone waiting for you?”