Keystone (30 page)

The ball shakes as Zaneen and Robin jump into the other harnesses. Through the open barn door, the Fury is only a couple yards away and coming at us like a storm cloud. All I can do is hang here, listening to Robin shout to Zane, as Zane and Garrett shout to each other, against the white-noise of the alarms and the Fury’s feet, pounding the ground. Garrett’s harness still hangs empty.

Please…
I beg in my head.
Please, let this work!

The podium scrapes across the dirt floor and then Zane and Garrett knock it over
,
kicking it in. The wood crunches and splinters fly up in the air. Through the open door, I can almost make out which are the Fury men and which are the women. In seconds, I can distinguish stuff like hair color and clothes and curled fists.

“They’re coming!” Deeta shrieks and I scream Garrett’s name.

“Go!” Zane yells over all of it. “Once I nail this, we’re gone!”

Garrett speeds toward me from the podium. Behind him, Zane brings his foot down on whatever it is that will make us gone.

Then my eyes are jerked shut in their sockets as the roof explodes like toothpicks. We shoot into the sky and my stomach goes
whooooooooooooooooooooop.

The air is so cold as we rocket up that it feels like it’s cutting my face open. I hear Garrett…I hear him, but he doesn’t sound right. I open my eyes. His harness is still empty. He’s hanging near my feet with his arms laced through the Free Ball’s structure.

I shriek his name. Garrett’s hair is blown back as he looks up, struggling to hang on. Every muscle and bone seems right on the surface of his face, straining. It’s taking everything he’s got to hang on.

Then he looks down and I follow his legs to his ankles. I nearly choke. Dangling in the air, over the tiny dot of the barn we left on the ground, is Zane, clutching Garrett’s left ankle. The wild force of air
,
as we continue to zoom upward
,
flaps Zane around like a t-shirt on a laundry line.

And I see what the problem is. Garrett can’t let go of the ball to grab Zane or he could lose his grip all together. And Zane is too far below the Free Ball to get a hold of it himself.

“Hang on!” I shout and I feel around for the buckles that Garrett fastened around me. All at once, Deeta and Garrett are shouting
No! Don’t! Stop!
It’s not like I want to wiggle out of the harness, but I know Zane won’t be able to hold on forever.

My field orbs around me, but my body doesn’t move on its own. I guess I’m not wired to automatically protect my fellow Contego while dangling off a Free Ball, but it doesn’t mean I can’t move myself. Because, while it may be true that I’m probably a lot more coward than warrior, this isn’t about bravery.

It’s about looking Zane in the eyes as he flounders at Garrett’s ankle and seeing how neither of them can do anything about this on their own. This is about living the rest of my life knowing I might’ve been able to help
,
but didn’t even try. So, it’s not bravery that steadies my fingers enough to unfasten the final buckle. It’s being too big of a coward to face the guilt.

The wind grabs me like it was waiting for that last buckle to come free and yanks me upside down by the ankles. I grab the pipes of the Free Ball and dig my feet through the holes before the wind can drag me away. I cling to the Ball as it continues to sail up into the sky, trying to come up with any kind of plan that will end with all three of us back in our harnesses.

I creep down the ball until I am cheeks to chins with Garrett. His face is white as the clouds. We’re still shooting upward and the air claws at me, trying to tear me off the Ball, but I hang on.

“Don’t do this!” Garrett shouts to me. The wind clips his words. I nod as if I’ll do what he says, but my arms already ache with the truth. I don’t know how I’m going to get a hold of Zane. I’ve never even been able to do one chin-up in gym class. But when I glance down at Zane, I know I’ve got to try.

“What are you going to do?” Garrett shouts as I inch away from him. I can hardly hear him at all as I climb down lower, but there’s no point in trying to explain that I’ve got to figure it out when I get there, so I look up and wink. Whether or not he gets it or believes me, he clenches his jaw as he wiggles to renew his grasp. It’s taking all his strength to hang on with Zane, and the g-force of the still-upward-climbing Ball both weighing him down.

Then my plan comes to me. The only way for me to get at Zane is to get inside the Ball and work my way down to the base, at the very bottom. So that’s what I do. I get my hands on a bar inside the Ball and slide in. The Ball wobbles every time I move and Zaneen starts shouting on the other side. Even focusing, it’s hard to siphon her message out of the wind.

“Keep it balanced! There’s too many of you on that side!”

There’s nothing I can do about that now. I get a good grip on the frame and slowly slide my legs out of the hole they’re in and pull myself further inside the thing. The inside of the Free Ball is a bunch of bare pipes that break some of the force of the wind blowing through it. It’s a little easier to hang on, but there’s no time to feel relieved.

I need to land on the solid base at the bottom of the ball. If I fall right on it, I’ll be fine, but if I miss, I’ll go right through one of the holes. Or maybe the wind will shoot me up to the top of the ball. Hard to tell. I don’t let go. I creep my way downward, toward the round, solid disk at the bottom
,
as fast as I can. But when I get within a couple feet of it, the ball does a hard jerk. I scream and realize I can hear myself do it.

The wind isn’t whistling anymore. The air isn’t slicing across my face. We’re finally floating and everything’s gone so silent, I wonder if the wind’s made me deaf. I make it onto the base and the ball evens out a little more, even though it’s still tipped slightly to one side.

“URGH!” Zane groans from below.

“I’m coming!” I call to him. “Hang on!”

I loop an arm over either side of the hole nearest me and let my legs fall through. I dangle there a second and then slide myself down until I’m hanging by my armpits.

“Swing!” Zane shouts and I kick out toward his legs. The ball shakes and I almost lose my grip. I squeeze my upper arms around the bars and try again.

I swing out, harder this time
,
and I knock right into him. The ball sways as I wrap my legs around Zane like a Venus Fly Trap.

“Ready?” he hollers.

“Yes!” I shout back. My armpits already ache. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hang onto him once he lets go of Garrett, but Zane doesn’t give me a long time to think about it
.

“Here I come!” he shouts as he lets go of Garrett’s ankle. I’m tugged down hard through the hole and the ball tips. I groan, but I hang on as the bars chew into my armpits. My chin is over one of the pipes and Zane’s weight bashes my trachea against the frame.

“Somebody’s got to balance the friggin’ ball!” Robin hollers. Garrett scales around the side of the ball until it’s stable again. He clings there, shouting down through one of the holes, “Are you okay, Nalena?”

I can’t answer him. I feel like a piranha’s chewing on me as Zane climbs up around my waist. My limbs stretch from my sockets with his weight. Every movement shakes the ball and pulls me a little further down through the hole
.

“Hurry up!” I yell. “I can’t hang on!”

And then one of Zane’s hands appears over the side of my bar, grasping it. His head pops through the hole and we both heave ourselves up, groaning, until our torsos are lying across the inner pipes. We dangle there, breathing hard, our legs still hanging out the bottom.

“I knew one day my prince would come.” Zane puffs in a really weak, girly voice. He bats his eyes at me.

“You guys okay?” Garrett shouts from overhead. Deeta and Zaneen and Robin are all shouting at Garrett to tell them what’s going on, since they can’t twist enough in their harnesses to see us
.

Zane gives Garrett an exaggerated smile with a thumbs up.

“You need help?” Garrett calls down, but Zane frowns and shakes his head and gives Garrett a thumbs down.

“Of course we need help, you idiot.” Zane mumbles through his grin to me. “Trouble is, Gare’s been hanging around with a Zane-weight tied to his ankle. His biceps are probably mustard as it is. Not gonna do us much good. It’s all on us, Nali Girl.”

I make the mistake of looking down and seeing water and land, way, way, way down below my dangling feet. The panic wells up in me but the adrenaline, now that Zane’s hanging here with me, is totally gone.

I’m a coward again, but I don’t have a choice besides trying to get back up in my harness. I look down again and gulp.

“Don’t do that.” Zane says. “Don’t look down there. Look at me. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pull ourselves up and we’re going to climb back up to our harnesses, so keep it balanced
.
”

“Alright,” I say as smoothly as I can, even though I feel the exact opposite of all right.

Zane hoots. “No fear now, Nali Girl? Impressive! But if you lose your nerve, just see yourself climbing up, getting into the harness. That’s it. Nothing else. Got me?”

I just nod. There really isn’t any other choice besides falling.

I climb, my arms numb and shaky, back toward the harness. Garrett stays put near his own, which steadies the ball. He tries to hold out his hand out to me once, but the ball rocks and Robin and Zane both shout that he’s got to stay put. I have to do this all on my own.

I can’t help but look down again and when I do, on the road below us, the Fury’s cars speed away from the Middleditch farm and after us. As the Free Ball floats sideways, the cars change direction, but the roads are way more awkward to navigate than the sky. We drift miles away from them in minutes. I reach my harness and slide in, doing the best I can to fasten the buckles and hang on at the same time. Garrett climbs back into his own and from around the side of the ball, Zane shouts, “Everybody in?”

“How do we get down?” I ask. Garrett shrugs, with a faint smile.

“No idea,” he says and then he turns his head and shouts, “Zane-o!”

Zane laughs from around the ball, “Don’t ask me how we’re getting down, brother. Just don’t.”

“Got to.” Garrett laughs back and Deeta starts giggling so hard on the other side of me that I think she might throw up.

“We just have to wait until the gases evaporate.” Zane says.

“How much did you put in it last time?” Zaneen asks.

“About a buck fifty,” he says and the silence that follows makes me squirm in my harness.

“What does that mean?” I ask Garrett. He’s pressing the back of his head against the ball and looking up at the sky.

“It means,” he says, in a voice so low I almost can’t hear him. “We have an hour and fifty minutes until we crash.”

Chapter 13

“SO WHO’S GOT A WATCH?” Zane says.

But the not-me’s and I-usually-use-my-phone-clock’s churn around the outside of the Free Ball. Even Garrett, who usually wears a watch, is watch-less today.

“Who cares when it’s going to crash?” Zaneen shouts. “It’s not like we’re going to make a rope ladder out of our hair in the next two hours!”

“No, but the Ulbrich’s pond is about an hour and a half away from the farm,” Robin says. “If we go over the top of it, we can drop right in.”

“That’s more like two hours away,” Zane says.

“But there’s wind,” Deeta squeaks.

“What wind?” Zaneen asks sourly from her side. “Besides, if we’re low and we
do
get a big gust, then we could smack into the ground. Or the Ulbrich’s deck. Or their little cement boat launch. That’d be great.”

“Let’s get inside the Ball,” Garrett suggests. “Like Nali did.”

“When it touches down, it’ll shake us out,” Robin says, but she doesn’t exactly sound like she’s disagreeing.

“Better than having it roll on top of us,” Zane says. “Without the controls, it might not set down on the base, ya know. This thing’s gonna roll like a chunky six-year-old, barreling downhill on a busted scooter.”

“I see the pond!” Deeta shouts and at the same time, the Free Ball drops a few feet, but jerks to a stop in mid air like a yo yo on the end of its string.

“Whaddya know?” Zane laughs. “You’re right, Robs. The Ulbrich’s are only an hour and a half off.”

“But we’re not far enough away from The Fury either,” Zaneen shouts from her side of the Ball. “They’re cutting through the fields.”

From my side, I can see the tip of the pond Deeta’s talking about, but it’s pretty far off. I can’t see the road or the fields from my side at all.

The ball jerks and drops again and this time, Deeta shrieks, “Is it supposed to keep doing that?”

“Uh, no?” Zane answers. “Busting out of the barn probably poked a hole in it.”

The ball drops again.