Under Zenith

by Shannen Crane Camp

  But something told me that wasn’t going to happen.

  As if on cue, the front door swung open and Hayden swaggered in, looking like his normal smug self, and not giving any signs that last night had even happened.

  “You’re still in bed. Perfect,” he said, and even without looking at him, I could hear the implied eye roll there.

  I didn’t want to deal with this. Instead of being an adult, I rolled over onto my side so that I faced the wall and all Hayden had, was a view of my back. Take that Mr. I’m-too-dark-and-brooding-to-ever-have-feelings-for-anyone-other-than-myself-and-my-own-twisty-darkness.

  “Are you giving up now that we’re on the last task? Because so help me, I will march you through that maze at gunpoint if I have to,” he threatened, taking a few steps closer to me and pulling the quilt off of the bed in one swift movement.

  “While I have no doubt that you’ll live up to your threat, I don’t feel like getting up right now,” I protested, still keeping my back to him. “I’m not sure I even want to reach my Destination yet.”

  “Fantastic,” he deadpanned, before sliding his arms under me and lifting me off the bed.

  He held me like a baby as he carried me from the cabin, bringing me across a brick floor.

  “Let me go, Hayden! You can’t force me to do the task!” I shouted, pounding his chest with my fists.

  “On the contrary. You’re kind of small and puny, while I am much bigger than you and completely capable of forcing you to do whatever I want,” he said matter-of-factly, coming to a stop at the top of a large brick staircase that looked out over the biggest brick maze I had ever seen.

  It was a whole lot of bricks, that was for sure.

  He dumped me unceremoniously onto the ground and I couldn’t help but feel like not only were we ignoring the kiss last night, we had also regressed back to the way we treated each other the very first day we’d met. That wasn’t exactly a good thing. It meant a lot more bruises for me and a lot more frustration for Hayden.

  I rubbed my backside as I stood up and glared at my Guide angrily.

  “I don’t know how many times I can tell you this, but you’re the worst human being I’ve ever met,” I told him.

  “That’s great. Now get a good look at the maze, because this is the only time you’ll get to see it,” he said, completely unfazed by my statement. “Task six: Memory.”

  “Memory…as in how well I can use my memory while being chased by some terrible monster? Or just…memory?”

  “No chasing. No potential dismemberment. Just try to remember where that little marker in the middle of the maze is and how to get there or we’re going to be stuck together for a long time today. And trust me, love, I don’t really fancy that at the moment.”

  Oh yeah, he was definitely not the cuddly boyfriend type.

  Mustering the pieces of my completely shredded pride, I stuck my chin out and tried to look like I didn’t care about how mean Hayden was being, all the while taking in the maze below me. If he wanted to get away from me that was just fine. I could complete the task quickly, finally reach my Destination, and be done with him. Talk about good motivation for going to the Other Side. Hayden’s repellant personality was better than any zombie.

  “Piece of cake,” I said confidently.

  No way was I going to play the wounded cast off girlfriend role.

  “Glad you’re so confident and everything, but do try to take this task seriously. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  I huffed at Hayden, but took his advice, really trying to memorize the maze in front of me. The entire thing was made from bright red bricks that formed a giant circular maze with a brick marker in the middle. It was actually pretty intimidating from where I stood.

  I tried to memorize directions in my mind, but after a while my “first right, second left, next left,” directions became too complicated. It was just a maze, I was sure I could figure it out.

  “Ready?” Hayden asked, looking over at me with absolutely no faith.

  I narrowed my eyes at him then proceeded to walk down the stairs, leaving him in my wake.

  A large wooden door marked the entrance to the labyrinth and I took a deep breath before opening it, hoping Hayden hadn’t been lying about the ‘no monsters’ clause of this task. I could easily see him getting great joy out of casting me as the unsuspecting prey of some mythological maze-guarding Minotaur.

  The door closed behind Hayden and me once we entered the maze, casting us into relative silence. The brick walls and floors mixed with the foggy air made the entire place a bit cold and dreary, but I resisted the urge to shiver, and simply turned right to begin my journey.

  The soft skin of my fingers traced the rough brick wall as I walked, remembering at least the first few turns I was supposed to make before my memory completely failed me.

  A memory test was probably the hardest task I could have encountered. I had an awful memory when I was alive, and something told me now that I was dead it was probably even worse.

  Head trauma had a tendency to do that.

  After about thirty minutes of walking blindly through the maze and backtracking a few times, Hayden looked over at me with a satisfied grin and said, “Lost?”

  “I’m not lost,” I protested, trying to think of a better way to say I had no idea where I was going. “I’m just…” I let my words trail off.

  “Lost?” Hayden offered again, wrinkling his nose up in a move that would have been lethally cute if it wasn’t so frustrating.

  “Ugh. I hate you so much,” I said for the millionth time since I’d met him. “And I’m not lost.”

  “Right,” he said, not buying it for a second. “I suppose you wanted to walk down this path that leads to a dead end.”

  I didn’t want to believe that he was right, but glancing around the corner and coming into contact with yet another brick wall, I let out a frustrated sigh and turned on my heel to backtrack.

  “After you,” he said, placing his hand gently on my lower back as he ushered me away from the dead end.

  I gave him an odd look, wondering why he was touching me at all, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  We continued on like that for quite some time: exchanging snaky remarks, not really getting anywhere, and Hayden finding little reasons to put his hand on my arm or my back. It was completely confusing since he was blatantly refusing to talk about our kiss at all, yet here he was, sending me mixed signals.

  I tried to ignore the knot in my stomach over my mysterious Destination, hoping the phrase ‘final destination’ was a lot less sinister than it sounded. No matter how I justified it, however, I couldn’t help but feel that it was unwise of me to so willingly go to this Destination on the word of a crazy man.

  “Not quite,” Hayden said as we rounded another corner and found yet another dead end.

  I didn’t say anything to his triumphant exclamation this time; instead I rolled my eyes silently and walked in the other direction with Hayden, yet again, placing his hand on my back.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” I finally asked him, fed up with all of the mysteries in my life.

  “It’s fun to see that little vein stand out on your forehead when I make you mad,” he replied with a sideways smile.

  “Not that,” I said, nodding over my shoulder to the dead end where he’d made fun of me. “Why do you keep touching me?”

  At my words his smile instantly vanished and he quickly dropped his hand from my back. It was almost as if he hadn’t realized he was touching me and bringing it to his attention had embarrassed him.

  “I’m not touching you,” he said automatically, even though it was incredibly obvious that he’d dropped his hand away from me.

  “Okay,” I said mockingly.

  I shook my head as I walked through the brick maze, unable to remember if I’d already gone this way or not. Hayden had hung back for a moment and now jogged to catch up to me.

  “Why do you think I’ve been touching you?”
he asked, and for a moment it sounded like he was asking what I thought his intention was.

  It didn’t take long for me to realize he was asking why I was imagining that he had been touching me. Like I was making the whole thing up.

  Frustrated, I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.

  “All day you’ve been touching my elbow,” I said, grabbing his elbow in demonstration. “Or putting your hand on my back.” Again I demonstrated this by placing my other hand on his lower back, trying to make a point by making him as uncomfortable as his weird physical contact had made me. “Why do you keep doing that?” I practically shouted.

  “You’re nuts,” he said, pulling away from me and looking like he pitied me. “Maybe I’ve been trying to help you today. Why is that such a big deal?”

  I knew I wasn’t the one who was crazy. Hayden hadn’t ever touched me before, and now that we’d kissed he suddenly found any excuse to be close. This wouldn’t have been weird if he would have just acknowledged our kiss from the night before. The fact that he was completely against bringing it up at all just made this entire exchange uncomfortable.

  “Just forget it,” I said, making my way through the maze once more, completely lost and now just hoping I’d accidentally find the marker in the middle. “I wish I had some lipstick.”

  “Lipstick?” Hayden asked warily.

  “So I could mark which way I’ve already gone,” I explained. “I saw it in a movie once.”

  “And it’s always a safe bet to get your strategies from movies,” he said sarcastically.

  “You know what? I wasn’t asking you for your permission or advice, I was just mentioning something. You don’t have to weigh in on every little thing I say because honestly, I don’t really care what you think,” I snapped irritably.

  The silence that followed my little outburst seemed to last forever and all I could hear was my own ragged breathing. How did this man make me so mad all the time?

  “Are you finished now?” he asked in a bored tone. “Because we really should be getting on with things.”

  I widened my eyes at his lack of tact and went on with the task, trying to ignore my ill-titled Guide altogether.

  When I’d been standing over the maze, scoping the whole thing out, it hadn’t looked quite as big as it did now, and the longer we walked, the more tired I became. I remembered being amazed during the first task that I didn’t get fatigued as the zombie chased me through the woods. Now, I was simply walking through a brick maze and it seemed to be too much for me.

  I wanted to ask Hayden what the explanation for this little anomaly was, but didn’t want to break my vow of silence toward him. He needed to know that he couldn’t be terrible and rude all the time without consequences.

  “Are you being so weird today because of what happened last night?” Hayden asked, completely surprising me.

  I hadn’t expected him to be the one to breach the subject. Not in a million years.

  “No,” I lied, still walking and trying to ignore how tired I was.

  “Because that was just…a moment of poor judgment,” he said, showing an even more stunning lack of tact than I thought possible from him.

  And that was saying something.

  “Agreed,” I said shortly, refusing to look at him.

  “So we should probably just forget about the whole thing,” he went on, quite unnecessarily.

  “I said agreed. Would you just stop talking?”

  It was incredible that he could make an already bad and awkward situation so much worse in just a few seconds. Now, not only was I mad at him for ignoring the kiss, I was furious that when he did acknowledge it, he made it sound like a mistake he regretted.

  Wonderful. Some ‘special moment’ we had shared.

  “I’m just saying, I’m your Guide and it doesn’t look great if there appears to be something going on between us,” he went on, not listening to my request to be quiet.

  “Good thing there’s absolutely nothing going on, huh?” I asked, unable to hide the irritation in my voice.

  “Exactly,” he said, though his heart wasn’t in it.

  He was all about giving me mixed signals.

  “Actually…Isla,” Hayden began, though I quickly cut him off.

  “There it is!” I exclaimed, running over to the tall brick pillar at the center of the maze.

  My feet splashed through a small puddle of water right in front of the pillar and Hayden’s strong grip wrapped around my upper arm as he pulled me backward; a habit he couldn’t seem to break.

  “Ouch!” I yelled, yanking my arm out of his iron grip.

  “Stop whining, I just saved you,” he said in annoyance, pointing to the puddle I had been running through.

  At the center of the water was a dark, square hole, as if a chimney had been submerged under a pond.

  “What is that thing?” I asked, suddenly glad that Hayden had so forcefully pulled me away.

  “That’s for you,” he said, actually sounding very worried and not at all like he was happy I had another impossible task in front of me. “How long can you hold your breath?”

  Chapter 20

  “What?” I asked.

  This seemed to be how a lot of our conversations went. Hayden would tell me something I didn’t want to hear, I would question him, and then I’d end up doing whatever it was anyway because I either wanted to get away from Hayden or get to him. Today I still hadn’t quite made up my mind on which motivation I was utilizing.

  “This is the last part of the task before you reach your Destination,” he explained, looking like he didn’t even want to tell me what I had to do.

  He had gone from saying he didn’t want anything to do with me, to worrying about me in about five seconds. I was starting to worry he might have multiple personalities.

  “And what exactly is that?” I asked.

  “Underwater here, there’s a tunnel that leads to a grate. On the other side of the grate is your Destination.”

  “And I have to swim there?” I guessed, looking at the chimney-like structure underwater and thinking there was no way I could swim through that space.

  Really, there wouldn’t even be enough room for me to paddle underwater, I’d just have to propel myself down the tunnel using my hands on the walls. The idea gave me goose bumps…and not the good kind.

  “You’ll probably want to get into the water head first, that way you can see where you’re going since the space is too small to turn your body around once inside,” he said mechanically.

  “I can’t go in there,” I said, suddenly feeling claustrophobic at the thought of the dark tunnel filled with water.

  Not only would I have to go in head first, I’d have to swim straight down, away from the air at the surface of the tunnel. That didn’t bode well when you were swimming away from the air.

  “What if I run out of oxygen?” I asked, feeling utterly panicked at the idea of completing this task.

  I wished Hayden would have told me about this task before I’d completed the other ones. I would have just stayed back on the floating islands forever, happy as could be.

  “I suggest you move quickly,” he said. “Once you’re completely submerged, a grate will close off the entrance of the tunnel so you can’t backtrack even if you want to.”

  “Wait. So not only will I be moving through a small water filled tunnel with no air, but I can’t come back to get air if I run out? I only have one shot to do this?”

  My knees began to shake and suddenly I needed to sit down. I let myself fall onto the hard brick floor, my boots beginning to soak through where my feet touched the dark water.

  “Once you get to the end of the tunnel, you just have to open the grate and swim through, and then you’ll reach your Destination,” he went on, acting like he was unfazed by this task though I could see that he didn’t want me to do it.

  “How far away from the entrance is the grate?” I asked, looking up at Hayden and feeling a few involuntary
tears streak my cheeks.

  I could deal with monsters, and cliffs, and rogue arrows, but I wasn’t sure I could deal with a cold, dark, space where I was likely to drown with no hope for escape.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  And in his defense, he actually sounded like he was.

  “Hayden, please don’t make me do this,” I pleaded, not caring that I looked weak and he’d probably make fun of me. “Please. I’ll do something else. Some other task.”

  He shook his head, but didn’t look at me. Instead he stared at a spot on the floor, clenching his jaw and shifting his weight. Something was making him uncomfortable. Maybe having actual human feelings when faced with a weeping girl?

  “I’ll fight some kind of monster or complete another puzzle. Just please don’t make me go in there. I can’t do the small-spaces-and-no-air thing.”

  “It’s not up to me,” he said, now looking down at me apologetically.

  At least in my last moments, I got to be with sort-of-nice-Hayden, rather than the normal grouchy version of himself he portrayed so flawlessly.

  “Hayden, I’m scared. I can’t do this.”

  It sounded like I was begging him to fix it for me, and really, I kind of was. At this point I wasn’t too proud to beg.

  Tapping his thumb against his leg he came to some sort of decision, extending his hand and pulling me back onto my feet. He grabbed me by both arms, holding me at a distance and looking at me intently as if trying to get his message across.

  “Isla, I’m going to be straight with you,” he began. “When I first met you, I was really mad that we’d been paired up because I really didn’t want another failure on my hands.”

  I wasn’t sure what part of this speech was supposed to make me feel better, but I let him continue, not wanting to cut him off.

  “I was convinced that you were weak, spoiled, and completely unmotivated. I was positive you wouldn’t make it past the first task, so I didn’t let myself get too invested in you.” His words were hard to hear, no matter how true they were. “But then you made it past the first task. And then the second. And then the third, until finally, you had gotten through all of them and you were at the last task.