Ascent
Page 18
Cursing with every vertical lunge, I stopped about four feet below the edge, tempted to tag this monster with the blood running down my neck. But instead I took the mountain stencil out of my pack (cheating, I know, but you have to have two free hands to do it freehand), slapped it on the wall, and filled it in with blue spray paint.
This is when the helicopter came up behind me and nearly blew me off the wall.
“You are under arrest!” an amplified voice shouted above the deafening rotors.
I looked down. Most of the mist had been swirled away by the chopper rotors, and for the first time in an hour I could see the busy street eight hundred feet below the skyscraper.
A black rope dropped down next to me, and two alarmed and angry faces leaned over the edge of the roof.
“Take the rope!”
I wasn’t about to take the rope four feet away from my goal. I started up.
“Take the rope!”
When my head reached the top of the railing they hauled me up and cuffed my wrists behind my back. They were wearing SWAT gear and NYPD baseball caps, and there were a lot of them.
One of the cops leaned close to my bloody ear. “What were you thinking?” he said, then jerked me to my feet and handed me off to a regular street cop.
“Get this moron to emergency.”
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The Shen
The snow leopard makes an impossible leap.
Twelve feet.
Maybe fifteen.
Up the sheer rockface.
Landing on a narrow shelf as if she is lighter than air.
Her two cubs stand below, yowling for her to come back down. She stretches out, her dusky white paws hanging over the ledge. Her long, thick tail flicking back and forth like a metronome.
She looks down at the cubs, yawns, wraps her tail around her body, then closes her pale green eyes.
“That’s rude!”
“They need their mommy!”
Paula and Patrice. My twin sisters—well, half sisters—the two Peas. Like two peas in a pod. Seven years old. Just. I’m the third Pea. My name is Peak. Not Pete. Peak Marcello.
The two Peas and I share the same birthday. They were born, on the day I turned eight, to my mom and my stepdad, Rolf—a good guy, but very different from me.
Paula was holding my right hand. Patrice my left. We were at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, not far from our loft on the Upper East Side.
“Maybe the snow leopard needs a little break from the kids,” I told them.
“Are you saying you need a break?” Patrice asked.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Paula said.
They look alike, they sound alike, they think alike.
“Lucky for you I wasn’t thinking that at all,” I told them.
They smiled. Same smile. Same missing teeth.
Different clothes, though. They don’t believe in dressing the same. “Twins dressing the same is goofy!” Every morning they have a little meeting and decide who will wear what. No arguments. Fashion is not their thing. Music is their thing.
Piano.
Prodigies.
Both of them.
Me? Not so much. Unless you count the ability to climb sheer rockfaces and buildings a talent. Although buildings are out now or I’ll be locked up until I’m eighteen.
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the climb.”
“What?” Paula asked.
“Nothing.” I hate it when my private thoughts come out of my mouth without me knowing it, and it had been happening a lot lately. What was that about?
“You could climb up there,” Patrice said, pointing at the mother snow leopard.
She was right. I had already figured out three routes up to the ledge. I couldn’t help myself. It’s what I do.
“Not as gracefully as the snow leopard,” I said.
“There’s no snow,” Paula pointed out.
“Not in July.” It was a sweltering ninety-two degrees in the city and was supposed to get hotter.
“It’s still a snow leopard, even without the snow,” Patrice said.
“Did you see snow leopards on the mountain?” Paula asked.
She’s asking about Everest. I was up there a couple months earlier, but standing at sea level in the sticky heat with the twins, it seemed like a century ago.
“The only animals on Everest are yaks and birds.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no food except for camp garbage.”
“Snow leopards don’t eat garbage,” Paula said.
“Birds do,” Patrice insisted.
Patrice was right. The birds also picked at the frozen corpses at the higher altitudes, but I didn’t tell them this.
“What do they call snow leopards in Tibet?” Paula asks.
I tried to remember. I hadn’t picked up much Tibetan or Nepalese on Everest, but it seemed like one of the other climbers called it . . .
The twins’ smartphones started playing Chopin’s polonaise Op. 53 in A-flat major. The only reason I knew the piece was that they had been practicing it for at least a year. I’d heard the music so many times, I thought I might be able to play it on the piano myself.
“Texts!” they shouted in unison, reaching into their pockets.
That would be one text from either my mom or stepdad. They always text all of us so no one feels left out. Somewhere my smartphone was buzzing too, or maybe not, because I hadn’t charged it in a week. In fact, I wasn’t exactly sure where I had left the phone. Probably in my bedroom, or maybe in the kitchen. Drove my parents nuts. They couldn’t threaten to take it away from me, because I didn’t want it in the first place. I understand the idea of smartphones, but I think smartphones look dumb.
Almost everyone in front of the snow leopard cage was holding a smartphone—talking, listening to music, snapping photos, thumbing texts, tweeting, whatever. I’d rather hold the twins’ hands than a smartphone.
“Mom,” Patrice said.
“She wants us to go to the bookstore,” Paula chimed in.
“Right away.”
Mom co-owns a small bookstore with a friend.
“Shen!” I shouted.
The twins’ eyes went wide. The crowd stared at me.
“Shen,” I repeated, more quietly. “That’s what they call the snow leopard in Tibet.”
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About the Author
ROLAND SMITH is the author of Peak, The Edge, and other critically acclaimed adventure novels for young readers. His works include the I,Q series, Elephant Run, Tentacles, the Storm Runners series, and Shatterproof, part of the 39 Clues series. When he isn’t writing, he’s traveling the country, speaking at schools and events. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Learn more at www.rolandsmith.com
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