Cross Country Hearts

by Suzanne August

  “Jasper will be down there soon,” Ren points out like that’s supposed to persuade me. “He’ll be waiting for us.”

  I feel the sudden urge to burst into tears. Why did Jasper leave me alone with his friends? They’re three people I’ve never even heard of until twenty-four hours ago. They’re strangers. The anxiety floods in my stomach, seeping up and squeezing my chest. It’s almost panic.

  “June.” Suddenly, Thomas is standing in front of me, blocking out Lila and Ren entirely from view. He waits until my gaze meets his own. “It’s okay. It’s safe.”

  I don’t immediately respond, and when I don’t, Thomas speaks again, his tone gentle and soft. “Jasper told us this was a spontaneous road trip, but what’s the point if you won’t be spontaneous now?”

  My hands clench. “Are you trying to goad me?”

  He doesn’t answer that. “Watch Lila do it. Then decide.”

  I press my lips together and don’t answer. What else can I do? Lila can jump to her death if she wants to. I don’t know her. She can do what she likes.

  Thomas steps back, and when he does, Lila comes back into full view. She’s grinning at me. “All right! Watch closely, June. This is going to be amazing.”

  She’s acting as if I said yes to this when I didn’t. If anything, the annoyance fights off the anxiousness coiling in my stomach. Despite that, I watch Lila closely. I almost feel like I should remember her as best as I can before she jumps to her death.

  Lila zips up her backpack and drops it to the ground beside her, handing off my pipe and clip to Ren because I obviously wasn’t going to take it.

  She smiles in my direction one more time before attaching her clip to the cable. Lila pulls back and down with the pipe briefly—to make sure the rope is secure, perhaps—and then, without any warning or any other preparation, she’s gone.

  I’m afraid to watch. Thomas’s hand lands on my shoulder, and it’s the only thing keeping me from tearing my gaze away. I think I hear her scream—no, it’s laughter. She flies down the cable, and in seconds she’s halfway down. I guess she won’t have enough time to jump and that she’s going too fast. Then she lets go of her pipe.

  She falls so fast, letting go and dropping like a dead weight, that it takes me a moment to process. She crashes into the water feet first.

  “I don’t see her,” I say frantically. “Where is she?”

  “Relax,” Thomas says. “She’s fine.”

  And he’s right. Lila resurfaces. She brings her hands up to push away hair from her face. She swims to the other side of the canyon, crawling onto the beach they call Sandy Place. She stands once the ground meets her feet and yells up at us, waving her hands. I can’t see it, but I know she must be smiling.

  “How deep is it?” I ask.

  “Probably twenty feet,” Ren responds. “I’m not exactly sure.”

  I swallow.

  “Your turn,” Thomas says. “Think you can do it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to do it anyway?”

  I give him a sharp look. “I don’t have a change of clothes. No one told me to bring any.”

  I only wear shorts and a tank top. It’s not a big deal if they get wet, but still.

  Ren actually laughs. “Have you looked inside your backpack? Lila put in some of her sister’s clothes. There’s also a bathing suit. Sorry. Should’ve told you to put it on earlier.”

  I’m incredulous, to say the least, and I wonder what Jasper has told them about me, besides that I’m a city girl. Do they think I’m some spoiled, thinks-she-knows-everything girl like Jasper thinks I am?

  I’m overthinking this. I know I am, but I don’t want to prove them right. I don’t want them to think they know me. I glance at the cable. My hands tighten around my backpack straps.

  “I’ll help you with your pipe and clip,” Ren says.

  “I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

  Ren shrugs.

  I peer at Thomas, but he’s not even paying attention to me anymore. He’s walked over to the edge and is watching Lila.

  I take a deep breath. I will the anxiousness to stay away and take another breath. Okay, I think. I slide my bag over my shoulders and drop it to the ground. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  Thomas turns, wearing a small smile. Ren raises a triumphant fist. “Great!”

  He helps me with the pipe and clip. As he watches to make sure I do it right, I secure the clip to the pipe and the cable. My nerves rattle, but I will them back and try to tell myself that the cable is strong. Didn’t Ren say earlier that they change it every few years? Still, images of me losing my grip too early or too late flash before me.

  “Has… has anyone ever gotten hurt?”

  “Not one of us,” Ren says gleefully.

  Thomas’s grin grows, but it’s less encouraging and more impish than I would like. “Don’t worry too much. You really can’t fall too early or late. There aren’t any shallow parts on this side, and on the other side, you’re too low to the ground to fall too far and break something.”

  “It’s a blast,” Ren adds. “Don’t overthink it. Just let go when Lila tells you to.”

  “Trust,” Thomas adds. “That’s the key.”

  Then, probably because she’s impatient, we hear Lila yell, “I’m ready!”

  I take another deep breath and then pull down on the cable with the pipe, testing it as Lila did. I can do this. I can prove to Jasper’s friends that they’re wrong about me. I’m spontaneous. I’m not a spoiled city girl.

  “Okay,” I say, but even I don’t believe what I hear. “I’m ready.”

  Ren gives me a few more pointers and suggestions. “Hold on tightly. Don’t worry about missing Lila’s signal. She’s just gonna scream it, and when you hear her, let go. That’s it—let go.”

  “You never asked me if I could swim.”

  His head jerks up. “You can’t swim?”

  “Of course, I can swim!”

  “It’s her nerves,” Thomas says behind us, and I hear the laughter in his voice. It annoys me into keeping my mouth shut.

  Ren steps back. “When you’re ready, June.”

  When I’m ready.

  I grip the pipe in both hands and crouch as low and far back as the cable will allow. I suddenly know, without a doubt, that I can’t overthink this. I have to do it. I have to do it now.

  No more thoughts—I push off.

  It’s fast. Too fast. I glide down the cable. It’s a speed that hurdles me to the other side of the canyon. I almost let go out of fear, but I’m too scared to let my hands slip. I can’t scream. My heart pounds furiously against my chest. My feet dangle below me. The water looms, cascading closer in view instead of away. I’ll crash into it. I’ll crash into land. I’ll break bones.

  Then—screaming. I hear a high pitch, wild scream. I think it’s me. It’s not. It’s Lila.

  I let go.

  I crash into cold water, forgetting to hold my breath. Kicking out at the water, I feel something akin to fear pounding through my blood and squeezing just below my chest. I bring my arms down hard, kicking out again, and more controlled this time. I propel myself upwards.

  It’s too far up. I think the surface will never come. But despite slow passing seconds, my head breaks free, and I take a gulping breath of air. I hear laughter somewhere near me and laughter somewhere further away and higher. When I open my eyes, Lila’s standing in the water, waist-deep. Her grin is so wide I see all her teeth from where I am, yards away.

  “Swim over!” she yells.

  I push my hair away from my eyes and crane my neck to peer up at Ren and Thomas. They wave at me. I paddle the water, taking deep, fast breaths. I recognize that what I thought was fear pounding in my veins when I crashed into the water wasn’t fear at all. It was adrenalin.

  And as the adrenalin fades away, I think about how amazing that was.

  Fourteen

  “Wanna see something cool?”

  Ren comes down next
, taking his shirt off before he takes his turn. Thomas attaches the backpacks to the rope and lets gravity pull them down to the other side. While everyone is waiting for him to come down, I climb over the cliff—which is only five feet high on this side of the canyon—and grab the bags from the tree the cable attaches to.

  When I’m back, all three are on Sandy Place.

  “Can we do it again?” I ask.

  Lila laughs. “It takes about ten minutes to climb back up there. One of us will show you how to do it soon.”

  This clearing on the bottom of the canyon, where the river doesn’t overflow, is like a crude beach. It’s not great sand. It’s muddy, dark, and almost gravely, but it’s a flat area large enough that people have turned it into a hang-out spot. Someone managed to bring down a barbecue for general use, and there are three weather-worn folding chairs. Spanning the area on this side of the canyon is the same dense forest.

  “So, City Girl,” Ren says. He pulls a can of soda from his bag that must be warm by now. He opens it anyway. “How was that for you?”

  It was like going on a roller coaster. It was the same feeling, but the adrenaline was more intense because I had control over what was going to happen and when I would drop.

  “I like it,” I say, being honest. “Hand me a soda?”

  Lila pulls one from her bag and throws it my way. “You loved it, June. I saw it all over your face.”

  I catch the soda and can’t deny her words, so I don’t try. While Thomas fiddles with the barbecue and Lila fiddles with the old chairs, Ren waves me over. I don’t know when, but he’s taken out a camera. It’s not a cheap one. It’s bulky and professional. I remember Lila mentioning this morning that he’s a photographer.

  “Wanna see something cool?” Ren asks.

  “Sure.”

  I don’t know when Ren had the time to whip out his camera because he wasn’t holding it before I jumped off the cliff, but he scrolls through photos of me on the screen. The first one is of me getting ready to jump to my ‘death.’ Then he scrolls through a dozen more of them, taken in rapid succession. Some of them aren’t that great—would’ve been hard if he was waiting until I turned my back on him—but some of them… they’re breathtaking. When he passes one, I have to tell him to go back so I can get a better look.

  It’s right after I’ve let go of the pipe, about halfway down the cable line. My arms are stretched above my head, my right hand still loosely holding onto the iron bar. My hair has fallen out of its bun and is radiating around me. My knees bend, my head tilted up. I vaguely remember looking to the sky before crashing into the water. In the unfocused distance, I see Lila’s form, her hands cupped around her mouth. The environment around us is stone and green, river water, and muddy sand. It’s a beautiful photo.

  “This is a nice camera,” I tell Ren.

  “It’s old,” he laments, sounding sorrowful, but when I look at him, he’s still wearing that lopsided smile. “My parents bought some new ones, and they gave me this last Christmas.”

  “Your parents are photographers?”

  “They work mostly for National Geographic. They go all over the world. It’s amazing.”

  It sounds amazing.

  “Can you send these to me?” I ask. Ren fiddles with his camera. He turns it off and puts the lens cap on before replacing it in its bag. “Of course. Give me your number.”

  “Smooth move!” Lila calls.

  He laughs, the skin in the corner of his eyes crinkling. He hands me his phone. “I think Jasper beat me to it.”

  “Jasper and I barely like each other,” I say, not unkindly. I type my number into his phone and hand it back. “We didn’t even talk to each other before this trip.”

  That lopsided smile widens. “He saw you first; therefore, he has dibs. Unless, of course,” and here Ren winks at me, “you say otherwise.”

  I laugh.

  As promised, Lila shows me how to climb the cliff. There’s a shallow part of the river where the rocks are half submerged. It’s about a five-minute walk northward. She leads me across, feet smooth and sure, going with a patient speed as I follow behind her, slipping often and almost falling into the river. One side is the calm pond we jumped into, while the other is rippling and crashing together. The cliff she leads me to slants up, with parts jutting out that Lila instructs me to use as hand and foot holds as we climb. It’s not so dangerous, but it makes me nervous, nonetheless. Although, there is a narrow, flat area ten feet up that we can stand on, and the rest of the way is easy. Ten minutes only, indeed.

  This time I see that Ren is holding the camera, ready for us to jump. Thomas is still by the barbecue, but he’s turned around to watch us. I’ve already jumped and swum to the other side, heart-pounding, and Lila about to take her turn when Jasper appears.

  It’s the thump of a backpack landing in the sand behind us that alerts everyone to his presence. Thomas and I turn around—Ren focuses on Lila with the camera—as Jasper jumps down the five-foot cliff.

  “Took you long enough,” Thomas says. “What took so long?”

  “I would’ve thought five feet would be too much for you,” I say.

  He shoots me an annoyed glance. I grin wide, and for a moment, he looks so thrown off that he doesn’t immediately answer Thomas’s question.

  “It’s been a while,” Jasper says slowly, eyes lingering on me before turning his full attention to Thomas. “I took a wrong turn at Turnip Creek.”

  I almost frown. What? Is there mud on my face? I lift a hand to my cheek, but I don’t think there’s anything there.

  “Well,” Thomas begins, and behind us, we hear a splash as Lila lands in the water from the cliff above, “you’re just on time. I’m about ready to make the hot dogs.”

  And just like that, the cook pulls out two dozen hot dogs and a bag of buns, and how he managed to carry those in his backpack without complaining or crushing the buns, I’ll have to ask.

  Jasper picks up his pack and shoulders it, returning his attention to me. He looks composed now, but his hand fiddles around the edge of his pocket where I know his Camel cigarettes must be, and he asks me, “So, how was it?”

  “Amazing,” I say. “It’s better than a roller coaster. Scarier, but better.”

  “Exactly why I don’t do it.”

  “Jasper!” There’s a whirlwind of an Indian boy passing me, and the next thing I know, Ren is tackling Jasper into a bear hug. Then Lila reaches the beach, and she wastes no time in joining the fiasco.

  “Ren, get off me! Lila, you’re soaking wet!”

  I wander over to Thomas. “So, how did you manage to carry all that without crushing the bread?”

  Not looking at me but instead concentrating on his cooking, Thomas picks up a long, plastic container with an odd, blue-colored substance on the sides—a cool pack. “Keeps the hot dogs cold inside but also means the bread is cold. Cold, but not crushed.”

  “Must’ve been awkward in a backpack.”

  “Definitely was.”

  Jasper has managed to break free of the Ren-Lila prison and stomps toward one of the chairs. Ren stays behind to mess with his camera, but Lila is trailing behind him, trying to explain that she’s excited because she hasn’t seen him in so long.

  “It hasn’t even been two hours!”

  Lila snorts. “Try a whole year. You didn’t even come for winter break!”

  “How come you like to cook?” I ask Thomas.

  He shrugs. “You could say it’s a calling. I’ve always liked it, but I started getting into it when I was, I don’t know, twelve years old. That’s when Ren’s parents started leaving him at home to go on short-term trips. It was like an experiment for us to see what crazy things we could come up with.”

  “Ren’s good at cooking too?”

  Thomas laughs. “No! He’s horrible at it.”

  “So, you’re the cook, and he’s the photographer,” I say. Lila wasn’t kidding when she told me who everyone was this morning.

 
“Yeah.” He nods, rolls over some of the hot dogs. “You got something you’re good at?”

  “I’m good at soccer,” I say. “And I’m a fast runner.”

  “Captain of the team?”

  I slide my gaze uneasily away from his. “This fall, I will be.”

  “That a bad thing?”

  “No, not really.” But my voice comes out flat, and I know it’s because Melanie would say it’s a bad thing. She had wanted to be one of the captains too, and I feel bad for her when I know I shouldn’t.

  “Hey!” Lila shouts, and I jump. She’s only a foot behind us. “June, come over here. I’ve got something to show you.”

  What she has to show me is the area she’s created for us. Jasper has claimed one of the three chairs. Her pack is in one of the other chairs, and all three are angled towards a fire pit in the middle. She’s laid out two blankets on the other side. There’s a bucket between them, though there’s nothing in it yet.

  “How long are we planning to stay here?” I ask.

  Lila flashes a smile. “Maybe ‘till midnight.”

  Jasper rolls his eyes. “Your parents will be furious.”

  She still has her attention on me, but she slaps Jasper in the back of the head. “Rachel’s home. She’ll come up with something for me. Sit down, June. You can have one of the chairs as our guest of honor.”

  As I do as she instructs, she yells for Ren to sit on one of the blankets. She joins him as he shows her the pictures he took. Soon after, Thomas comes over, hot dogs in tow, and we have a feast for a late afternoon lunch.

  Like breakfast, I try to sit in my chair and eat as silently as possible, but I’m warming up to Jasper’s friends fast. They’re hilarious, but more than that, they’re so welcoming. I learn more about the mischievous pranks they’ve pulled, including the ones from when Jasper still lived in Maryland. I don’t know how they haven’t landed in jail for the night—excluding that one time Lila spent three hours there—and I don’t know how they haven’t broken any bones. Also excluding, of course, that one time Ren broke his big toe running into a door as they ran from Lila’s mother. They have a lot of fun telling me these stories, and they show their remorse when Jasper moved up North.