by Gail Nall
“Down,” I tell Shiver.
She looks over the side. And then back at me. “Are you crazy? You want to walk in the river?”
“Not in the river. Along the river.” I peek over again and point at the little spot of mud where the water almost meets the canyon wall. Well, maybe it’s less a little spot of mud than some shallow water over the mud.
“Along the . . .” Shiver widens her eyes. “No. Just, no.”
I prop my hands on my hips. “Then what, huh? Should we just give up, go sit by the road, and wait for someone to find us? Well, you can do that, but I’m going to walk down there.” Sure, she’s been helpful, but who says I can’t do this on my own? I grab hold of the tree again and sit, my legs hanging over the edge.
“Hand me my bike once I’m down there,” I tell her.
“Wait,” she says. “How about we go to the other side? There’s room to walk over there.” She points across the river to a nice wide ledge. “We can make a bridge. See that big tree limb?”
Sure enough, there’s a huge limb standing upright against the ledge. Where exactly that came from, I have no idea. It’s not like there are trees tossing off limbs left and right around here. We drop our backpacks and bikes and go to haul up the limb, which isn’t as heavy as it looks.
“I’m not going backward. You’ll push me into the river,” Shiver says as we heft up opposite ends of the limb.
“Why would I push you into the river?”
She stands there and heaves a huge sigh.
“Fine, whatever. I’ll go backward.” I stumble over rocks and little bits of sagebrush as I back toward the pine tree.
“How are we getting it across?” Shiver asks.
“We’ll have to stand it on end.” My voice is all breathy. I’ve had more exercise today than I’ve had in my whole life. “And then let it fall.”
Shiver immediately drops her end.
The limb slips out of my hands and lands on my toes. “Ow! What did you do that for?”
“Sorry,” Shiver says. But she’s not very convincing.
“You totally did that on purpose.”
“Oh, right. I don’t have any friends, so I don’t know how to help someone carry a tree limb to a scary river in the middle of Nowhere Mountain.” She crosses her arms.
Bug would totally correct her—it’s a canyon between the mountains, not an actual mountain. “I said I was sorry. And I meant it. It was a stupid thing to say. I was trying to figure out why you wanted to go to Cody so bad. Which you still haven’t told me, by the way.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Come on, please? I need your help. We have to get that limb into place so we can go across and get to town already. Then you can call my parents to pick you up.” I move around to her end of the limb and start to lift it up.
She finally moves forward. “Sorry I keep bringing it up.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it, but the words sound so heavy that I know it took a lot for her to say them.
Shiver’s got a good three or four inches on me in height, so together we’re able to push the limb up straight so it can fall over and across the river. It crashes into the brush when it meets the far side. For a second, I’m scared it will snap in half and we’ll have to start all over again. But it holds, and now we have a little bridge.
“Thank you,” I say as I wipe my dirty hands on my even dirtier jeans. Seriously, I cannot wait to get to Kenzie’s house to take a shower and put on clean clothes. “I guess we’ll have to leave the bikes behind. You can tell Mom and Dad where they are once I’m gone. They should be okay here.” I gesture at the tree bridge. “You want to go first?”
“No way. What if that thing breaks when I’m halfway across? You go first.”
“Wow, thanks.” I test the limb with the toe of my shoe. It bounces a little, and my heart drops, kind of like it did whenever Kenzie dragged me onto a roller coaster with her at Dollywood. The limb is just barely wide enough to walk on.
“I’ll throw your bag over to you once you’re across,” Shiver says.
“Here goes nothing.” I step onto the limb. It bounces again, so I crouch and hold on with my hands. I scoot forward, gripping the bark so hard I’m sure I’ll have tree imprints on my palms. The whole thing wobbles every time I move.
All I really want to do is crawl back off, climb over the hill, and take my chances along the road. But I can’t, because then we’ll definitely get caught and I can hang up any thought of making it home. I’ve already come this far. I’m not giving up my dream just because a silly tree limb bounces when I move. And I know Mom’s super worried by now. The sooner I get on that bus, the sooner I can let her know I’m okay.
I swallow hard and keep my eyes fixed on the other side. I’m almost there. Just don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
I look down.
Chapter 25
3 days until Dueling Duets auditions
“Aghhhhh!” A strangled sound erupts from my throat, and I leap off the limb toward the ledge on the far side of the river. I land hard on my stomach.
I lie there, facedown in the dirt and sage and gravel. But I don’t care. I made it! I crossed that river on a teeny, tiny tree limb and I’m still alive!
“Maya? You okay?” Shiver’s voice calls across the canyon.
I turn over and jump up. “I’m fine! I’m more than fine. I’m fantastic! Woo-hoo!” My whole body is tingly and ready to go. I spring up and down. “What are you waiting for?”
“You’re insane. Here, catch your bag.” Shiver winds up and tosses my backpack across the river. I catch it squarely against my chest. Shiver throws her bag across next, and I pretend that the jar of peanut butter and can of cat food and who knows what else she’s got in there don’t hurt when they collide with my sternum.
Also, I’m dying to pull the zipper back and peek inside.
“Don’t you dare open it!” she yells.
It’s like she’s reading my mind. I drop her backpack next to mine. “Then get over here already.”
She crouches down on the limb and starts scooting across, sideways, like a crab. “Um, Maya. This thing isn’t very sturdy.” Her voice is a little shaky.
“It’ll hold, don’t worry. Just keep moving.”
She inches one big black boot forward, but stops when the limb wobbles again. “I . . . I don’t think I can do this.”
I kneel at the edge of the ledge. “Yes, you can. Move your other foot.”
She slides her hands down the limb, and very, very slowly, moves her other foot across.
“See?” I say. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“Yes, it was. This is crazy. Why are we doing this? Why don’t we just go back and ride on the road?” Her face is super pale. It makes her hair look even more blue.
“Because we’d be seen! And I’m already across. You’re halfway here. Just keep going.”
She shifts her weight and the limb bounces again. She freezes.
Now what?
I reach over and drag her backpack across the ground. It’s the one thing I know will get her across. “You’d better keep moving, or I’m going to open your bag.”
“Don’t touch that!”
I grab the zipper and pull just an inch. Not wide enough to see inside at all.
“Maya, you creep! That’s my stuff.” She reaches out an arm, like she’s going to swipe the bag away from me. But she’s too far away, and all that does is make the limb bounce even more. “I hate you. I’m going to die up here and all you care about is looking through my things.”
“Then you better hurry up and get over here and stop me.” I move the zipper just a little bit more.
“You’re gonna pay for that!” She scoots sideways on the limb.
“Let’s see, what’ve we got here?” I’ve got the bag unzipped just far enough to get a couple of fingers in. I snag a wire and pull out her phone and earbuds. “Hey, look! I’m going to read your texts if you don’t stop me.”
“I
swear, you’ll regret it if you do.” She’s practically seething, which is kind of funny since she’s clinging on to that skinny piece of tree for dear life. She inches down a little more. She’s close enough now that she could reach over and grab on to the ground.
I push the power button on her phone, but all I get is a prompt for a password. I toss it to the side. “Oh well, let’s see what else is in this bag.” I unzip it just a little more. “Could it be love letters? Dear Secret Hot Guy Shiver Has a Crush On, you make my heart go pitter-patter. I love the way your teeth glisten when you smile. I love—”
Shiver swipes the bag out of my hands as she lurches onto the ground from the tree limb. “Don’t ever touch my backpack again,” she says as she crawls away.
I stand up and give her a hand. She slaps it away and clambers up by herself.
“It got you over here, didn’t it?” I scoop up my own backpack and wait for her thanks.
She looks back across the tree limb, like she’s just realizing this. “Just don’t mess with my stuff. Can we go now?”
With one last look at my bike lying on the far side of the river, I lead the way forward. After a while, I see something completely unexpected on the other side of the river.
A house.
“It’s an actual house,” Shiver says. “Like a place with bathrooms. Where people live.”
We stand there and gape at it for a moment as if we’ve never seen a house before.
“That probably means we’re really close to town!” I say.
It’s not too much farther when we run into another house. This one has a little footbridge that stretches across the water, which we use to cross the river again. I take a picture of it too, because it’s something Mom and Dad would love.
On the other side, I realize exactly how low the sun has gotten. I pull out my phone. 7:18. And I start walking faster, ignoring my achy legs, right past Shiver.
“Hold up! Why are you walking so fast?”
“Time!” I call back over my shoulder. “It’s already seven eighteen.”
“But we have to get there by eight!”
“I know.” Well, I have to be there by eight. I guess she’s just really wanting to make sure I get on that bus.
We hurry along until the trees on our right open up.
“This has to be the place where we can cut through into town,” I say.
Shiver nods.
I scan the brown rocky dirt and the little bits of green sagebrush that dot the land here and there. There aren’t a whole lot of trees up ahead. It’s mostly flat, but off to the right is a crease that looks like a giant drop-off. I really hope we don’t have to go that way. “So, um . . . how do we know which way to go? Maybe we should just follow the river instead, like Sick Stu said.”
Shiver scrunches up her mouth. “Straight,” she says. “At least, that’s how it looked on the map. If we go by the river, we’ll never get there in time.”
I motion for her to go first. She shakes her head.
“Fine,” I say as I tromp forward. “I’ll make sure we don’t step on any rattlesnakes. Or tarantulas. Or whatever’s lurking out here.” I pick my way through the nature-y stuff on the ground as Shiver trails behind me.
We walk and walk and walk, until we can’t see the river anymore. I can’t see much of anything else, either. Just trees and rocks and endless mounds of sagebrush, all casting long shadows. What happened to the houses, like we saw along the river?
Just as we pass this really cool-looking stack of rocks with yellow flowers growing out from the bottom, Shiver says, “Hey, slow—agghh!” I turn around just in time to see her fall forward into the brush.
“Shiver?” I ask.
“Owwww . . .” She curls up and pulls her right knee to her chest.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” I squat beside her, searching for gushing blood or bones sticking out or horrible twisted limbs.
“Caught my foot in . . . oww!”
“Here, grab my shoulder. See if you can get to these rocks.” I take her arm and wrap it around my shoulders. She leans about half her weight onto me, and I stumble sideways just a little.
“Ow!”
“Sorry,” I mumble. I drop her, kind of ungracefully, onto the stack of rocks.
Shiver peers down at her ankle. “I think I sprained it.”
“So it’s not broken?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like a doctor?” She prods at her ankle, which is starting to swell up.
“Bug gave me a first aid kit. Maybe there’s a wrap in there or something.” I rip open my bag and pull out the white plastic box with the little red cross on it. Inside, there are Band-Aids, bug bite ointment, goo to clean out cuts with, and . . . a little space where an Ace bandage used to be. “Um . . . no wrap. I think this is the one we had when Dad tripped over his grill last summer. Sorry.”
Shiver sighs. Then she stretches out her leg and opens her backpack.
“So, what, you’re going to just sit here?” It comes out ruder than I meant it to.
“Yes. I need to think. And I can’t exactly walk right now, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“But the sun is setting and then you’ll be sitting out here in the dark.” And no way am I hanging around out here in the dark, creepy nowhereness, especially when there’s a bus leaving from Cody really, really soon.
She pulls out a mess of holey white cloth covered in colorful thread.
“What in the world is that?” Except I know exactly what it is, since I spent the better part of my eight-year-old summer with it.
“Cross-stitch. Go ahead and laugh, I don’t care.” Shiver picks up the tiny silver needle with bright pink thread looped through the end. She stabs the white cloth and pulls the needle through the back.
I let out a single “ha.” Not because I’m laughing at her cross-stitch. But because Shiver is doing cross-stitch.
Blue-haired, music-addict, grouchy Shiver is cross-stitching. This is what she’s been hiding in that backpack. I stare as she pushes the needle through one of the millions of tiny holes in the white cloth to create an x. All the colorful x’s on the cloth run together to make a bunch of flowers. I can picture the thing covering a pillow on Grandma’s floral sofa. My heart feels weird and warm as I realize that Shiver had a secret too.
“Quit staring already,” she grumbles.
“Sorry. It’s just that . . . I can’t believe you have such a weird hobby.” Once the words are out of my mouth, I know they didn’t come out like I meant.
She stabs the cloth with her needle and then glares at me. “Do you even know how rude you are?”
“That’s not what I—”
But she doesn’t give me the chance to explain. “Just go. You think you’re so smart, you go the rest of the way by yourself. Keep being stupid and get eaten by wolves for all I care.”
I squish my lips shut. No way am I telling her about my country music dreams now.
Shiver stabs away at her x-flowers and doesn’t look at me.
I stand there for a few seconds. “So you’re going to . . . what? Sit on this rock and sew?”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” But in a weird way, it actually does. I always sing when I have to think hard about something. Although this is a really strange time to want to sit and think. Even if you do have a sprained ankle.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re here in the middle of nothingness.” Stab, stab. Hot pink thread races through the cloth. “And when you get hurt in the middle of nothingness, you have to think about how to get where you’re going with a messed-up ankle.” Stab, stab. “Or you’ll just hurt yourself worse and never get to the . . . bus station.” Stab, stab.
Shiver doesn’t say anything else. She just sews, stabbing over and over and over, as the sun sets off to the left.
The sunset. Great.
“Fine,” I say. “Stay here. I don’t have time to sit and think. I’m going to find my way out of here
. I have an audition to get to.” I fling my backpack over my shoulder, hoping this will maybe at least make her try to walk.
Shiver puts her cross-stitch back inside her bag. She doesn’t look up at me as she swipes at her eyes. Is she crying?
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I reach into my backpack and pull out half of the remaining granola bars and all of the jerky and trail mix Remy gave me. “Here,” I say as I add them to her bag. She doesn’t yell at me for opening it this time. “In case you get hungry.”
“What are you doing? You can’t leave me here.”
“I have to. That bus will leave without me. I promise I’ll call Mom or the police or someone once I’m on the bus. I’ll tell them exactly where you are. You won’t be here very long.” I zip up her backpack and put it next to the stack of rocks she’s sitting on.
“I said no.” Shiver pushes herself up, takes one step forward, and catches her breath.
I chew on my lip as I try not to smile. I knew this plan would work—no way would she let me leave her behind, even if she’d broken her leg.
“I have to get to town before eight o’clock,” she says as she balances against the rocks.
Okay, I totally missed something. “No, I have to get there by eight. Unless you want to go to Nashville with me.”
“How are you so clueless?”
All right. That’s it. She’s been hinting at something since early this morning, and it’s starting to drive me crazy.
I put my hands on my hips and face her. “Will you just tell me already? I’m kind of getting sick of the ‘oh, I need to go to Cody but won’t tell you why’ thing.”
She rolls her eyes and plops back down on the rocks. “I need to get to the hospital there, before it’s closed to visitors at eight. I didn’t think my grandmother would be that easy for you to forget.”
Ohhhhhh.
“Then again,” she goes on, “you’re so wrapped up in your own woe-is-me drama, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Hey!” But even as I say it, I know she’s right. I’ve barely thought about Gert since we left her in the hospital. And that makes me feel like the worst person on earth.
“All you care about is getting away from your family as fast as you can for some reality show. My only family almost died, and I want to go see her. And nothing is going to stop me.”
