Leverage (27 page)

“But yuh-yuh-you guys are luh-luh-little. You kuh-kuh-kuh-can't buh-buh-belay me.” Kurt's stutter intensifies, I notice. As he fights to speak, his eyelids fold down and his big shoulders ride up against his ears and it suddenly feels like we're all ganging up on him. I'm about to explain the pulley system of belaying that Coach Nelson taught us that allows a person to anchor someone much larger with not much effort, but Fisher opens his yapper first.

“Look, big dude, it's not a problem,” Fisher says. “Besides, worst-case scenario is you fall and land in the water. You know how to swim, right?” Fisher doesn't wait for an answer. “You swim over to the rock path and walk back up here, no problem.”

“Wuh-wuh-what iffffff I fuh-fuh-fuh-fall at the tuh-tuhtop?”

“Then just make sure you hit the water straight, feetfirst, legs tight together, arms tight by your sides.”

“And if I duh-duh-don't . . .”

“Okay, well, that's a
worst
worst-case scenario. I suppose, hypothetically speaking, if you hit the water from up high and landed on your back or side or stomach, you'd die. Water feels like concrete then.”

Kurt backs away from us. His lips twist and his nostrils flare with the scent of a betrayal. It's the same face he wore the day he walked in on Ronnie's attack.

“That ain't going to happen,” Bruce says, shoving Fisher out of the way. Bruce moves right up to Kurt just like the day he tried to stare down Jankowski in the locker room. “I guarantee you won't fall or hurt yourself, not even once, today. I swear it to you.” Bruce says this and his voice shakes. “Danny and I invited you up here. Our arms'll rip off before we'd let you slip in the ropes. That's a promise. Right, Danny?

“Yeah,” I say, my throat dry.

“You understand what I'm saying?” Bruce asks Kurt, not taking his eyes off him. Kurt nods yes. The strength of our promise is backed by the weight of our debt—something understood only if it's known who stopped the attack on Ronnie. Bruce hammers things right in a way I can only imagine. Makes me proud of him. Also makes me think I've got a long way to go before I'll ever be captain material.

“Can I get that same guarantee?” Gradley asks, and the other guys snicker.

“Bruce is kinda freaking me out.” Paul titters.

“Hey, man,” Fisher tells Kurt. “We don't invite just anyone up here. You've got to be U.S. Grade-A athlete. Not just a big fat ass in shoulder pads like Jankowski.”

Even though it's a joke, the mention of Tom sweeps through the air like a whiff of dead pig. Bruce turns away and starts uncoiling one of the ropes. Kurt steps over to the quarry pit ledge, sizing it up.

“Okay,” Kurt says after a minute of study and a long breath. “I guh-guh-guh-got this.” And just like that, we are unstuck. Bruce tells Paul to go pull the cooler and hibachi grill out of the van. I scout trees to tie ropes around.

Global warming pushes back against autumn for the day. The high noon sun bakes the granite wall while the surrounding forest blocks any breeze from cooling things off. It feels good, reminding me of the way things used to be, just a few weeks earlier, before everything changed. Most of us expected a chillier day and have dressed in layers: waffle long johns, sweatpants, T-shirts, jeans, and long-sleeve flannel. Within the hour, most of us have stripped down to long johns and T-shirts.

The hardest part about dropping down the side of a cliff in a rope, if you've never done it, is taking that first backward step of faith over the edge. You have to trust both the rope and the person securing it. That first step is also the best, the one that sends tingles of thrill and fear up your legs when gravity suddenly warps a little and the world tips ninety degrees and you're walking the cliff face like a gecko. Kurt, wearing a frown of worry, keeps tugging on the rope, testing its tension and resistance, as we all crowd around him, urging him over. He's already watched all of us go down and come back up a half-dozen times until he trusts that it's not all a trick. With his back to the quarry pit, the heels of his sneakers kiss the edge of the cliff.

“Okay, here guh-guh-goes,” he says, still tugging on the rope. He takes the teensiest step backward, leaning his butt into the rope harness, trying not to actually go over the ledge until—he does! Bruce has him tight and Kurt, adjusting his legs, suddenly stands sideways to the earth, eighty feet above water smooth and black as obsidian. He takes another dainty step, letting out a little rope between his hands. His face, stone-serious with concentration, suddenly splinters along his mouth line. He takes another step, playing out more rope. As his head slowly sinks below the edge, me and the other guys step forward to watch his progress.

“That's it.”

“Good job, man.”

“You got it, big guy.”

Kurt hops back in inches and then, as he gets the hang of it, pushes farther off the cliff, swinging out and lowering a few feet at a time. About twenty feet from the top, he tips his face up to us, wearing a big smile.

“You know suh-suh-something?” he asks. All of us are leaning over the edge, monitoring his descent. “Thuh-thuh-this is all right.” And with that his legs thrust from the cliff face and he arcs out about eight feet, letting the rope slip steadily through the carabiner so he drops about ten feet before touching the cliff again.

Kurt howls and his voice bounces around the bowl of the quarry. We howl back, giddy for him. The first time rappelling over a cliff is a sensation you never forget. As soon as you finish, you want to do it again. It's as cool as doing a double-flip re-grasp on the high bar but it doesn't take years to learn.
We gave him this,
I think.

Over the next few hours, we set up several more rope trails along the cliff for guys to descend and then test themselves by climbing back up to the top. By late afternoon everyone is hot and tired. Guys stuff themselves on chips and soda waiting for the burgers and franks to cook over the hibachi grill. There's also a mini-bonfire roaring, supposedly for s'mores, but, mainly, because fire's fun to make. No one's paying attention when I come out of Fisher's van wearing old cutoff jeans and beater sneakers and nothing else.

“Hey, Kurt,” I say as I walk toward the cliff, making sure I have his attention. He stops in midchew of a granola bar as I get nearer the edge. “This is the next step,” I say. “Now you'll know we were never putting you in any danger.” I need him to understand Bruce and I would never invite him up here to betray him. That we only ever wanted to thank him.

Kurt freezes while the other guys scramble over to watch the show. Bruce stays back by the hibachi to tend the burgers and franks. I catch his eye, though. His look says he's going to be really pissed if I kill myself.

The only way to jump off a cliff is to not think about how stupid it is.

I jump.

Air.

Sky.

SPEED!!!!

My stomach rockets into my throat as the updraft tries to peel off my face and ears. Falling for three seconds might as well be thirty seconds, might as well be thirty light-years for how fast it rushes past you, overloading your senses.

A cold blackness slaps me in midscream, jolts my heart, jacks up my body. Arctic liquid jets into my nostrils, ears, mouth, eyelids. Numbing dark sucks me down, down, down and ... slowly ... slowly stalls. I'm deep under, hovering at the level of the dead before I'm released, allowed to gradually float upward. Seconds tick as I kick hard toward the light.

Surface.

Sucking for wind and air and sun and light.

“God!” I scream through chattering teeth. I swim fast as possible to the edge to get out of the water and get warm, move, run like a conqueror.

Poomph
.

I hear the hit and twist around, wait for a few seconds, and see Fisher pop his head up like a seal, then sling his hair out of his face with one quick head snap.

Fisher punches the sky. “That's for Ronnie!” he shouts, and everyone hears it and for the first time in two weeks hearing that name doesn't make me want to bow in shame. My teeth clack hard and, out of the water, I fold my hands under my armpits as I climb the steep trail of switchbacks fast as possible to get back to the top and warm up over the fire and put on dry clothes. When I reach the top, only half the team is there. The others have followed me over the edge or are about to. Kurt stands near the edge, watching us go over, craning his neck and guarding against the cliff somehow reaching up and snatching him over it.

He whistles as Pete jumps off.

“You going?” I ask, shivering, hopping from foot to foot and practically standing in the little bonfire.

“Naw,” he says, shaking his head. “But muh-muh-maybe next time.”

“Deal.”

F
irst, you create a soothing place in your mind,” Ms. Jinkle, the speech therapist, tells me. “Thinking about it should bring you only positive feelings and good energy. This will be your home base, your starting point as you try and relax. When you relax, you breathe slower and your tongue relaxes. Get to the soothing place first before attempting the word list I gave you. Remembering the breathing exercises we worked on, you'll focus on the soothing place, then record yourself speaking these words. Listen to yourself. Then repeat the list again. Five times every day, okay?”

“I duh-duh-don't have a ruh-recorder.”

“You do now,” Ms. Jinkle says, handing over an orange sheet of paper with my name filled onto it. It's a library loan request for a digital recorder. “Go get it now so you can start tonight, no excuses. They'll show you how to use it. Now, make sure you come up with a good soothing place,” she says. “Okay, see you same time next week.”

The meeting with Ms. Jinkle ends halfway through fourth period, so I'm walking empty halls toward the library and trying to come up with a good soothing place when my mind wanders back to the quarry.

I remember waking up in Fisher's van and staring out at a forest wrapped in leaves the color of cherry, banana, and apricots. And then walking up to the lip of the pit with all that blue sky, pink rock, and black water dizzying my head; trusting that itty-bitty rope and harness to hold me. Whole thing felt crazy at first, letting Bruce and Danny talk me into rappelling down that cliff. But once I took that first backward step over the edge—one of the scariest steps ever, just backing up over nothing, praying everything would hold—well, then, the world changed. All of a sudden, in one step, I'm kind of floating, like one of those hawks that sits on a draft, never even flapping its wings, but just hanging out, searching for mice or whatever. Eighty feet of air between me and the water and only my old sneaks touching the side of that massive stone slab. These monkeys poking their heads over the top edge, staring down at me, eyes big, grins bigger, chattering at my progress. Danny's grin the biggest of them all.

Tippy-toeing along the rock turns into steps and then hops and then I really start shoving off the wall. I swing out from the cliff face and swing back in while the rope sings through my hands. My legs dance over the granite in slow motion. I'm graceful in a way that's impossible in football pads and helmet. It's like being in a dream where you figure out the secret to breaking gravity. Everyone else is stuck on the ground, stuck in the gears, but you get to float above it, float wherever you want.

And then Danny, leaping without the ropes! I feel the corners of my mouth turn up, now, remembering Danny stepping off the cliff like it's nothing. Never seen anything like that. Couldn't believe how far he fell, just kept going until his tiny speck smacked the water and plunged beneath, trailing a stream of white bubbles. Felt like a whole minute before he surfaced. When his head
did
finally pop out, his high whoop bounced off the quarry walls, climbing the sky back up to us. Then the other guys racing to see who's next over the cliff.
Shwiff, shwiff, shwiff
. They go over the edge like teenage superheroes, laughing at something that would kill a normal person. Daredevil Danny jogs the trail up top, hugging himself and shivering, lips purple, teeth chattering, and water drops coating his lashes. He's wrapped in goose pimples, hopping foot-to-foot around the bonfire, and I half expect him to just step into the flames to get warm, since, if he can survive that jump, why not a little fire?

Sun was setting over the far edge of the quarry before we finish gobbling up the last of the hot dogs and burgers, then get the ropes, harnesses, and coolers packed back into the van. The whole time I'm thinking I'm on the wrong team, that I should've let the hooting tribe of superhero monkeys adopt me instead.

“Can I help you?” the librarian asks, shaking me from the daydream. I nod slowly, trying to remember why I'm standing in front of her. The tip of the librarian's nose points down at my hands while she peers at me over her reading glasses. When I pass her the orange sheet, her lips move like she's sucking lunch out of her teeth. She squints at Ms. Jinkle's handwriting and, after a minute, she hands the note back to me and points at a door along the wall.

“That's the AVT room,” she says. “Tina's in there now. She can help you.”

I go where I've been pointed. On the door of the AVT room hangs a printed poster, a mushroom cloud in psychedelic rainbow colors with the words AUDIO VISUAL TECHNOLOGY CLUB IS A BLAST! A sheet of paper Scotch-taped to the bottom of the poster welcomes students to sign up for the AVT club. The sheet is empty. As I walk into the room, I discover that the Tina the librarian mentions is the little goth Tina from Meadow's House.