“I’ll be fine,” Caro says.
And then—
she lets go.
16
ASH
CARO LET GO OFthe rope. She’s falling.
She’s scrabbling with her arms and legs, trying to catch herself, but she’s sliding; she can’t find any purchase. Caro’s tumbling, almost to the bench, and if the bench doesn’t catch her—
Ash realizes that she is screaming.
Hope grabs on to Caro, slowing her fall, and the two of them tumble, they slide, they hit the lower bench—
and Caro stops, caught by the lip at the edge—
but Hope
oh, God, Hope
is gone.
DAY FOUR
Friday
On the chalkboard outside the Sonnet resort main office
MOVIE.................................
Gravity, 2013, PG-13, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
FILM FACT.................................
The final scene of this Academy Award–winning movie was filmed near Sonnet. It is the only scene in the film that did not require a green screen.
17
CARO
THE AIR IS FULLof the smells of earth and stone, of mud and broken trees, of things torn up and changed forever. It is light enough that Caro can now make out Ash’s eyes, the pallor of her skin. It’s cold, but the rain has stopped. The sky—at least, the part of it that Caro can see—is lightening.
We made it through the night.
The two of us, anyway.
Caro thinks with a deep, gut-wrenching ache of Hope. Of Spencer, his friends, of Ed and Jean. The college students. The high school kids and their leaders. Of whoever else might have been in the canyon.
But mostly of Hope.
Caro and Ash had huddled together on a small ledge of rock. Water came down from the plateau there, too, but it didn’t take them. All night long they heard it sluicing around them as it descended from the plateau; they heard the roar of the river below. Caro doesn’t think either she or Ash slept. For a time, they called for Hope, they tried to talk, to figure out how they’re going to get out when morning came, and then they quieted down and held on.
And all the time, Caro also thought of Dan.
She might make it back to him.
