Edge of Flight (9 page)

I shine my flashlight down the Chimney but can't see Rusty and Jeb. It's not a straight route but a twisty, dodgy course through the spaces between fallen boulders and rock walls. Three tugs signal it's time to get to work again. I tighten the rope and haul in. Another few inches gained. Slowly, the stretcher jerks upward. We're making good progress. Any moment, I expect to see the poles of the stretcher peek over the rock ledge. But then everything stalls. I yank on the rope. It won't budge. Maybe Rusty's resting again. But the rope is taut, not slack. It doesn't feel like a rest stop. I shine my flashlight down the Chimney again but see only gray boulders, jagged rock slabs and shadows. No glimpse of Rusty and Jeb.

“Vanisha?”

It's startling to hear Rusty's voice after we'd agreed to work in silence.

“Rusty?”

“Come down. It's stuck.”

Stuck? I glance nervously upward, wishing I could see the campsite. But there's nothing but the black silhouettes of trees against the sky. Carefully, I ease my grip on the rope. The GRIGRI clamps shut, holding it tight. I lay my flashlight on the rock ledge and lower myself halfway over the edge, feeling for footholds.

If I jam one foot on the wall behind me, I can push the other against the wall in front of me—positioned like a runner clearing a hurdle. There's a good handhold on the underside of the ledge. I fumble around with my left hand until I find the scooped-out pocket. I grab the flashlight from the ledge. Then, hanging on to my underhanded grip, I walk my feet down the Chimney's walls.

Three feet below me, another boulder forms a safe spot to land. I let go and jump. The beam of the flashlight bobbles, lighting up random bumps and cracks in the rock. The boulder is smooth and round. It rests on the large rock ledge that almost blocks the entire Chimney. Lying on my stomach, I slither down the boulder, sliding and scraping until my feet touch the ledge. I shine the flashlight around, looking for the hole that leads farther down the Chimney. “Rusty?”

“Down here.”

I follow his voice to the hole in the rock ledge, where one stretcher pole sticks up through the gap. I crouch and shine my beam down. Jeb's face looks ghastly pale. Below him, Rusty's face peers up at me, strained and worried. The stretcher lies on the diagonal slab that leads up to the hole. Obviously, Rusty was trying to push Jeb up the slab. But one of the stretcher poles got wedged into a corner beneath the rock ledge.

“I see it, Rusty. It's the pole on this side.”

Laying the flashlight on the ledge, I reach into the hole and grab the stretcher pole. My face hovers so close to Jeb's that I can feel his heat, hear his rapid, shallow breaths. He's muttering something about a forty-yard pass.

“Interception!” he mumbles.

“Have you got it, Vanisha?” Rusty calls up.

“It's jammed in really tight. Can you pull from your end?”

We tug and pull. The pole budges a bit, then a little bit more, scraping against the underside of the rock ledge.
This is stupid. It's got to come
. I take a firmer grip, brace my feet and yank hard. The pole jerks free, and I whiplash backward, whacking my head against the rock wall. My knee bangs the flashlight, and it rolls over the edge, its beam disappearing down the gap in the rock.

“Rusty?” I blink in the dimness. The hole in the ledge glows with the light of Rusty's headlamp.

“Vanisha, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm okay. Where's the flashlight?”

“Jeb's got it.”

“Jeb's got it? Jeb isn't even conscious.”

“It's laying on him. Reach down.”

I crawl to the edge of the opening. “Jeb. Come on, Jeb. Pass me the flashlight.”

It's useless. He can't hear me. Or if he can, he can't make sense of what I'm saying. I lie on my belly and reach down over his sweating-hot chest. I feel a rapid heartbeat but don't know if it's his or mine. At last my fingers hook the flashlight. By its light, I adjust the poles, make sure they're pointing straight up through the gap in the ledge. I check the knots on the rope. Everything's fine now.

“Good work,” Rusty says.

“I'll give you the signal when I'm back on belay.”

Retracing my steps to the belay station on the ledge, I realize I'm shaking. Even the easy moves require an effort that seems almost too much. How much longer can this night go on? How much strength have I got left? I reach the ledge and start to haul on the rope. Inch by inch, the stretcher rises until at last we haul Jeb onto the ledge.

Rusty squeezes my hand. “We're nearly there, Vanisha.”

Nearly, but not quite. “How do you want to do this?” I look up the Chimney. It's eight feet to the top.

“You go first,” says Rusty. “Once you get to the top, I'll pull Jeb up with the rope. If you can grab the poles and get his head above ground, I'll push the rest of the stretcher up from the bottom.”

I nod. “Sounds good.”

I place my back against one wall of the Chimney and my feet against the other. My thighs shake.
Focus. Straighten my legs. Push my back up the wall. Walk my legs up until my knees are bent. Straighten my legs again. Push my back up the wall. Walk my legs up.

At last I reach the top, grab the slings wrapped around the trees and haul myself over the edge.

I turn to call down to Rusty.

But a hand grabs my arm in an iron-hard grip.

chapter nineteen

I scream.

The hand yanks me to my feet. Another hand clamps my mouth shut. I can't see the man holding me from behind, but I know he's big, strong. His brawny arms are covered in tattoos.
Blade.

Part of me knows I can't escape. Yet my instincts tell me to fight. I kick wildly, aiming my blows backward against his shins. I squirm and thrash and dig my fingernails into his arms.

He laughs, his breath hot in my ear, and drags me toward the campsite. I shoot out an arm and grab the closest thing in sight—the skinny trunk of a young tree. I kick my legs and wrap them around it too. His hand slips off my mouth as he tries to rip me off the tree, and I scream again.

Rusty comes out of the Chimney like a cougar leaping from its cave. He jumps on Blade, grabs him by the neck and hauls him backward. The iron-hard hands release me as Blade stumbles back. But he regains his footing and, with a grunt, flips Rusty to the ground.

I spring forward to attack him. He grabs me again, twists my arm behind my back and pulls a gun from his belt. The cold metal barrel presses against my temple.

“One move from you, punk, and your girlfriend's dead.”

Rusty looks up. I see helpless anger in his face. Blade lets out a hard nasty laugh. His grip tightens on my arm. I want to scream, but the gun pressed to my head stops me.

“Let her go, Blade,” comes a voice from the woods. “Let her go right now, and no one gets hurt.”

Loretta steps out of the shadows. She's pointing a hunting rifle straight at Blade's head.

Blade grips me tighter. “What're you doin' here, sweetheart?” he growls.

“Don't ‘sweetheart' me,” says Loretta. “Let her go.”

“You friends with these punks?”

“I just want to get 'em home safe to their mommas,” she says. “Now I ain't got time to stand here chitty-chattin'. You let her go, and these kids'll be on their way.”

Blade twists my arm harder. “I don't take orders from no waitress,” he says.

Loretta cracks a smile. “Oh yes, you do. Because unlike your gun, mine has got bullets in it.”

Blade says nothing. I can feel his hesitation.

“I took 'em out while y'all were sleepin',” Loretta says. “You don't think I'm fool enough to hang out in the woods with a bunch of boys who've got loaded guns, now do you?”

“You're bluffing,” he growls.

“Wanna bet?”

Suddenly, he shoves the gun barrel harder against my temple. I close my eyes and think of everyone I'd want to say goodbye to: Rusty, Jeb, my mom.

Click.

That's all.

An empty click.

The gun falls away from my head.

My breath comes out in a rush, half sob, half laughter.

“I wasn't bluffin' then. And I ain't bluffin' now,” says Loretta. “You let her go, or there is going to be one very unfortunate hunting accident in about three seconds. One…two…”

She takes a step forward. The grip on my arm releases. I spring away from Blade and hurry to Rusty. He scrambles to his feet, winded but not hurt.

“You kids get your friend outta that hole and into my truck. I'll keep my eye on Hotshot here,” says Loretta.

“What about the others?” I ask.

“Still passed out. I checked. Now y'all git goin' before they wake up.”

“Yes, ma'am,” says Rusty. “Right away.”

It takes a few minutes to hoist Jeb out of the Chimney and carry the stretcher through the woods to Loretta's truck. We lay him in the flatbed with a blanket underneath him and another one thrown on top. Rusty sits in the back with Jeb. Loretta hands him the rifle.

“I can't use this while I'm drivin',” she says. “You keep an eye out behind us.”

She climbs into the cab, and I climb in beside her. “I reckon I'm gonna have to find a new job,” she says as she puts the truck in gear. “Them biker boys were my best tippers.”

It takes her two hours to drive us home to Fayetteville, the nearest city with a hospital. While Rusty sits in the back with Jeb, I call our parents on Loretta's cell phone. I try to tell them what's happening without upsetting them.

My mom's voice is hoarse with sleep and anxiety. “Are you sure you're okay, honey? Are you sure?” she says.

“I'm fine,” I say, though I still feel shaky and I'm ready to drop with exhaustion. The hardest call is to Jeb's mom, who starts freaking out. “I need to talk to him! Right now! Put him on the phone!” she yells. The pitch of her voice rises higher and higher.

“He's sleeping right now,” I sort of lie. “Meet us at the hospital, okay? We're almost there.”

The sun is rising when Loretta finally pulls up in front of the Emergency doors. A couple of paramedics hurry over to unload Jeb onto a proper stretcher. He doesn't seem any better, but he doesn't seem any worse either. He's still sweating and mumbling. As the paramedics wheel the stretcher into the hospital, Jeb's parents rush over, half crazed with worry. A nurse leads them away while the stretcher is whisked into the operating room.

I get choked up when I see my mom. She's wearing a necklace of wooden beads, a long, purple paisley dress and Birkenstocks. It's a look that's embarrassed me all year, here in the land of Southern belles and sorority girls. But suddenly, I don't care. I don't care if she starts quoting poetry in the hospital waiting room and all the nurses and ambulance attendants look at her like she's a complete nutso. All I care about is how glad I am to see her again. Her hug is warm, soft and fierce. Suddenly, I find myself crying on her shoulder.

Loretta calls the state troopers and hands over her video of the deputy and the bikers. We each give statements to the police while the doctors operate on Jeb. They pump him full of antibiotics, remove the bullet and sew up the damage to his insides.

The trooper who interviews me can barely believe I hiked all the way into Mount Judea alone.

“You've got a very brave young woman there,” he says to my mom.

“Yes, she is.” Mom puts her arm around me. “And I hope she never has to prove it again.”

chapter twenty

I hit the sack later that afternoon and sleep until the next morning. When I come down for breakfast, Mom's in her housecoat sitting on a packing box, making notes on an article she's submitting to a poetry journal.

She stands up to hug me. “Hi, sleepyhead.”

I burrow my face into the shoulder of her soft terrycloth housecoat and hug her longer than usual. “Morning, Mom.”

She sits down again and scribbles something in the margin of her article. The article's about a writer named John Donne who's been dead since the seventeenth century. Her forehead is crinkled, as though whatever tiny word she's changing is a matter of earth-shattering importance. Better her than me, I think. The familiar knot tightens in my stomach. The knot I've been feeling whenever I think about starting university. This will be me, I realize. Sitting in my housecoat, writing essays about dead poets, studying to be…what? A professor, like my mom?

I love my mom. But I don't want her life.

I glance up to where our kitchen clock used to be. But it's already disappeared into a packing box.

“What time is it?”

“About eleven.”

“When do we have to get going?”

“The moving truck's not coming till this evening.”

“Do we have anything for breakfast?”

“Sorry, honey. Everything's packed.” She fishes in her pocket and hands me some cash. “Why don't you go and get yourself something? And bring me back a coffee.”

“Sure.”

I throw on some clothes and walk down the street to the coffee shop. The world feels surreal. I can hardly believe I'm back in Fayetteville, surrounded by cars and stores and houses, when less than twenty-four hours ago, I was fighting for survival in a cave in the woods.

You'd think that, af ter all that happened last night, I'd never want to set foot in the woods again. But in fact, the opposite is true. In town, I feel strange and disconnected. Last night in the woods, I felt focused. I knew my purpose.

I had a task to do, and I did it. I pulled Edge of Flight. I hiked into town alone. I helped rescue Jeb from the cave. I'm not saying I saved him single-handedly. Far from it. But that's not the point. I don't want to be a lone hero. What I want is to be part of a team that accomplishes something worthwhile. Like the team that saved Jeb's life.

I think about what Rusty said when I stood at the base of Edge of Flight, doubting if I could pull the crux.
Commit, Vanisha. You can do it. You've just got to commit.