“The easy way?” Brandon says. “You said this was the easy way.”
Christian huffs. “I meant the standard way.” He looks at the Pack, one at a time.
(Even Kyla.)
“We’ll take it slow, guys,” he says. “Nice and easy. Don’t look down, and it’s like walking on a sidewalk.” Then, before anyone can mount another counterargument, he turns and starts walking.
Lucas gasps.
“Goddamn stupid idiot,” Kyla mutters.
Amber reaches for Christian, but he’s too far gone already. He hugs the rock on his right side, leans into it and presses his palms against the face, searching for cracks and handholds. Slowly, carefully, he makes his way across.
And then he’s on the other side, arms raised, like ta-da, a big shit-eating grin on his face. “See?” he calls over. “Nothing to it.”
“My ass,” Kyla says. “I’m still not doing it.”
But you know how guys are. As soon as Christian proves he can make it across, Warden and Brandon and Evan—and even Lucas and Alex—get this look on their faces like their manhood’s in jeopardy if they don’t also, you know, send the traverse.
So they do.
Warden goes first, obviously, and he looks better doing it than Christian by a mile, objectively and subjectively.
He makes the other side and there’s no fanfare, no showing off. He just looks at Christian, hard, and then turns to look back across the ledge and shoots a cocky grin at Brandon and Evan.
“Come on over, ladies,” he says—
(which is, ugh, not attractive, but w/e)
“Don’t go soft on me now.”
Brandon and Evan look at each other. They’re practically shoving each other out of the way for the chance to go next, even though they’re both obviously scared shitless and probably going to die.
Brandon wins, or loses, or whatever. He goes next. He goes slow. He hugs the wall tight, and his legs are shaking, and at one point he slips and kicks pebbles over the edge and Dawn hears them fall and thinks he’s going next, like she’s about to straight-up witness someone dying, but Brandon regains his balance and pauses to collect himself, and then he finishes the traverse like as fast as humanly possible.
Warden’s waiting on the other side and he gives Brandon a pat on the back and a bro hug, and that’s all Evan needs to go beetling across himself.
Alex takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes and psychs himself up. Then, calm and steady, he sends the traverse like a champ. Hits the other side and turns and looks back and smiles, kind of sheepish, at Dawn and the others.
Lucas looks at Kyla and Dawn and Brielle. “Uh, ladies first?”
The ladies all kind of look at each other.
On the other side, Warden and Brandon and Evan and Alex all yell encouragement.
(So does Christian, but nobody’s listening to him.)
Dawn doesn’t want to go next. She doesn’t want to go at all, but that’s probably not an option. But she’s not ready yet.
Eventually, Brielle straightens. “I’ll go,” she says.
But Kyla either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t give a shit. She’s shaking her head, muttering, positioning herself at the start of the ledge.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“O-kay,” she says, shaking her head. “O-kay, this is crazy. This is really freaking insane.” She looks ashen and shaky. Scared out of her mind.
But slowly—inch by inch—Kyla starts across.
DAWN SNEAKS A LOOK at Amber.
She’s expecting/hoping Amber will have some words of encouragement, something to tell Kyla and the rest of them that will make this whole ordeal go by easier.
But Amber’s just pale.
Amber can barely watch.
Amber’s got a look on her face like she just knows this is not going to end well.
And the shitty thing is…
Amber’s right.
KYLA HANDLES THE TRAVERSE like Wile E. Coyote handled running off cliffs in those old cartoons.
Which is to say, she gets like ten feet out and she’s fine, and then she looks down and she’s toast.
Unlike Wile E., though, she doesn’t fall to her death.
She just, like, has a breakdown.
First, she freezes in place. Hugs the wall and tries not to look down again and looks down anyway, and then it’s like in slow motion, she kind of collapses. She presses up against the wall and sinks down to her hands and knees, and Dawn can’t see Kyla’s face but she can tell she’s sobbing.
Her whole body is shaking. Her head’s down between her shoulders. She twists and tries to look back toward where Dawn and Amber et al. are watching, tries to maybe shuffle backward on her hands and knees, but it doesn’t work so well. She shuffles a handful of loose stones right off the edge, and her left leg nearly slips off after them, and she screams and freezes in place again and just stays there, crying and shaking and refusing to move.
It’s no bueno.
* * *
Warden is the first to react, on the opposite side. Smooth as can be, he picks his way to where the ledge begins, hunches down into a squat and looks like he’s preparing to crawl out there to Kyla and get her.
“It’s all good,” he calls out to her, his voice barely audible over the wind. “You’re all good, babe. I’m coming for you.”
But he isn’t, though. Because before he can make a move, Christian’s behind him, his hands on Warden’s shoulders, pulling him back, even as Warden tries to fight him off.
An argument ensues. Dawn can’t make out what Christian is saying, but the gist is that Warden’s not going back out there.
(You can imagine how Warden takes this news.)
Warden tries to push past Christian, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, the guys are wrestling at the top of the cliff, and Brandon and Evan are watching, real close and edging closer like hyenas to a fresh kill, and Alex is trying to get between them and play peacemaker, and Dawn closes her eyes and looks away, thinking this can only end in disaster—and praying Warden isn’t the one who dies.
But Warden doesn’t die.
Neither does Christian.
Before the two guys can do anything really stupid, Amber blows the whistle on them. Like, literally. Somewhere in her safety kit she has a whistle and she digs it out and blows it like the world’s highest-altitude referee, the piercing shriek even scaring the wind into momentary silence.
Christian and Warden stop cliff-wrestling. They kind of shove each other a little bit as they retreat to their corners, like guys do when they really want the other guy to know they’re the alpha.
But they retreat anyway, and look across the chasm at Amber—who stares back, looking furious—and at Kyla, who is still frozen solid on that two-foot-wide ledge.
“You assholes just calm down!” Amber hollers across the void, and like the whistle before it, her words seem to mute even the wind. “Stay there and don’t move. I’ll go to Kyla.”
Christian and Warden don’t look at each other, but they nod.
(Nobody’s messing with Amber right now.)
“Kyla, honey, you just stay put, too,” Amber continues. “I’ll come to you and we’ll do this together, kay?”
Kyla shouts something back, but she doesn’t have wind-silencing abilities at this juncture. Whatever she says, nobody can hear it.
Amber gives Dawn a reassuring smile as she turns back to the ledge. “Never trust a boy to do a woman’s job,” she says, winking.
Despite herself, Dawn smiles back. And then Amber’s edging out along the ledge toward Kyla, saving the day yet again.
(Except this time, it doesn’t work out that way.)
The whole Pack stops and stares as Amber inches out along the ledge toward where Kyla’s still crouched on her hand
s and knees, trying not to have a total meltdown. Even Christian and Warden forget their beef and just watch. The wind picks up again, and Amber’s words aren’t loud enough for anyone but Kyla to hear, but Dawn can guess what the counselor is saying.
Just stay calm, honey. We got this. We’ll get through it together.
Kyla’s still shaking as Amber comes up behind her. Still crouched against the cliff face. Still kicking pebbles over the edge now and then; they bounce off the rocks beneath and scatter a hundred feet down in little clouds of dust.
It’s just not a good scene.
Slowly, carefully, Amber makes her way to where Kyla’s stalled, about fifteen feet from either end of the ledge. Amber doesn’t look scared. Her face is drawn tight like she’s concentrating hard, but she’s only lightly touching the wall beside her for balance, and she moves smoothly, her knees bent but her head high, eyes always facing forward, never down.
(Amber is a freaking machine.)
(Dawn, on the other hand, is terrified for her.)
Amber reaches Kyla. She leans down and taps Kyla, lightly, on the back. Well, it’s basically Kyla’s butt, but nobody’s raising a fuss about that now. Amber says something to Kyla. Kyla replies, shaking her head. No. Amber listens. Amber tries again.
The wind howls.
Amber and Kyla are out there for a long time. And every minute they’re out there, the odds of a disaster happening get bigger and bigger. But Amber doesn’t quit. She never looks nervous or anxious. She keeps talking to Kyla, coaching her, comforting her. And, eventually, she convinces Kyla to move a little bit forward.
Kyla moves, sobbing, an inch or two at most. But she doesn’t fall. And from the look on Amber’s face, you’d have thought Kyla just climbed Everest.
Amber keeps encouraging her. You got this, girl. Take it slow.
Kyla womans up and handles her business, little by little, one step at a time. She digs deep within herself and finds that inner courage and conquers the mountain and triumphs over fear and if this was a movie it’s the part where the soundtrack would be soaring and everyone would be crying and even freaking Christian and Warden would hug it out because how could they not, right, when confronted with such a stirring victory of the human spirit?
If this was a movie, Amber wouldn’t fall.
But it’s not a movie.
IT’S A FREAK THING, how it happens. Innocuous. It doesn’t look like much until suddenly it’s the Worst Possible Thing.
Kyla’s almost at the end of the ledge. She’s got her confidence back, moving faster. Maybe she’s still crying, but she’s laugh-crying, looking at Warden as he crouches down to meet her, saying something funny and encouraging and beckoning her forward.
We’re all in this together. The whole gang’s going to make it. Everything’s right in the world.
Kyla gets overconfident. She gets sick of crawling. She’s a couple of feet from safety when she stands up, suddenly and without warning, like she’s getting off this freaking ledge on her feet, damn it.
Only problem is, nobody told Amber. And Amber’s right behind Kyla, guiding her, encouraging her, and so when Kyla bolts upright like it’s the hundred-yard dash, she brushes against Amber. She knocks Amber off-balance.
Time goes in slow motion.
Amber just seems to sway there. She sways there forever. And if it weren’t for how her face goes ghost white, you might not think there was anything wrong.
Ahead of Amber, Warden reaches out and grabs Kyla, pulls her to safety. Wraps her in a hug, and they’re all too happy to notice how Amber’s reaching behind her for the wall, trying to find an edge or a lip or a crack or something, anything, to find purchase and keep herself from falling.
But her hands only find smooth rock, and then it’s too late. She looks straight at Dawn as she goes over the edge, and there’s this look on her face and it’s straight unfiltered fear. And then she’s gone.
She doesn’t scream, or if she does, it disappears into the wind.
She pinwheels in the air. Somersaults, her arms and legs flailing.
She drops fast.
She clears fifty feet in a blink, hits the steep slope at the base of the cliff, hits it awkward and sends up a huge cloud of dust and keeps falling, tumbling over sharp, bruising, body-breaking rock.
By now, Dawn is screaming. Kyla is screaming. Lucas is swearing very loudly. Warden is holding on to Kyla, trying to wrestle her into some kind of calm.
Christian looks ashen.
Amber keeps falling. Keeps rolling over rock, down, down, down toward the snow and the lake far below. She doesn’t make it all the way, though. She slams into a boulder like halfway down, and just lies there.
She’s too far away to tell if she’s moving. She’s just a green Gore-Tex speck against all that jagged gray. You can’t see her face, or even really how she’s situated. But it’s obvious that she’s probably dead.
The wind keeps roaring in Dawn’s ears.
She keeps seeing Amber’s face, right before she fell.
For a long time, that’s all she can see.
* * *
It’s Lucas who snaps Dawn out of it.
“We gotta get across,” he says, shaking Dawn by the shoulders. “What if she’s still alive? We gotta get her some help!”
She’s not alive, Dawn thinks. Weren’t you paying attention? She fell like a mile, and she bounced.
But Lucas isn’t waiting for an answer. As Dawn watches, he crosses the narrow ledge quick and lithe, like a cat. Makes the other side with no problem and turns back and looks at her like he’s surprised she hasn’t moved yet.
Even Brielle’s on the other side already. Everyone is waiting for Dawn.
Shit.
The rest of the Pack stands on the other side of the ledge and yells at Dawn to hurry up and get across, while at the same time they’re stealing glances down the north side of the Raven’s Claw, searching the snow and the rock for where Amber lies, broken.
Dawn tries not to look to her left.
(Don’t look down.)
She tries to ignore her heartbeat and just focus on Warden and Lucas and Alex on the other side.
She closes her eyes and just runs.
And she makes it.
NOW, THE WHOLE GROUP is together again.
And most of them crowd around Christian.
“What do we do?” Dawn asks the counselor. “You need to call for a rescue, right? You need to call back to headquarters now.”
Lucas and Alex and Brielle and Kyla are more or less saying the same thing. Brandon and Evan don’t seem to give a shit; they’re peering over the ledge toward Amber and kind of nudging each other and giggling about something.
Warden watches Christian like he’s waiting to see what the counselor wants to do.
“Break out the radio, man,” Lucas is saying. “Make the call.”
Christian looks terrified. Like he’s shitting bricks, like he’s realizing Amber is dead and he’s out of a job. And he’s probably going to get sued.
He sets down his daypack and starts rooting inside.
Then he stops.
“Amber has the radio.” He gestures over the edge. “It’s down there.”
* * *
Dawn wants to cry. The Pack’s only competent counselor just fell, probably to her death, and she took the radio with her, and now they’re all lost on top of this stupid mountain with no way to contact headquarters for help.
They’re fucked.
They’re so fucked that all Dawn wants to do is curl up in a little ball and cry until someone else solves the problem.
(And she almost does.)
But then she remembers.
“The rescue beacon,” she tells Christian. “Where is it? Amber said you guys have the radio and a beacon. So where’s the beacon?”
Christian blinks, like he’s just waking up. He looks in his daypack again. The rest of the Pack watches him, waits.
Then Christian sighs.
“It’s down at the tarn,” he tells her. “I left— I forgot it. In my tent.”
Dawn wants to shove him off the edge of the cliff. But there’s no time. She turns to Lucas and Alex, about to enlist them to help her run down and find the beacon.
Call in the rescue helicopter.
Save the day.
But it’s at exactly that moment that Dawn hears Alex gasp. He’s staring down at the north slope toward Amber.
Pointing.
“Holy shit, guys,” he tells the Pack. “She’s alive.”
SHE’S ALIVE.
“She moved,” Alex is saying, excited. “I swear to God, I saw her moving.”
Dawn strains her eyes to stare down the north slope of the Raven’s Claw to where Amber lies on that big boulder, a couple of hundred feet below. She fixes her stare on Amber’s green Gore-Tex and tries to make out if Alex is telling the truth.
Dawn’s eyesight is okay but it’s not superhuman. She can still barely tell it’s Amber down there. She’s thinking Alex didn’t see what he thought he did. Like, maybe the new guy got overexcited.
She’s thinking there’s no way Amber could survive that fall.
But then, as she’s watching…Amber moves. It’s not much, but it’s unmistakable. Amber’s green jacket shifts slightly. She raises one arm above her head and waves, just a little bit.
Just for a second or two.
Then her arm falls to her side again.
She stops moving.
* * *
There’s no time to waste.
Lucas is already starting up the trail to the summit. “We gotta get down to camp,” he tells the others. “Hit that beacon and hope they can send a chopper by nightfall.”
The Wild Page 9
