There was now every possibility in the world that it was.
It made her almost stop, about half a mile in, and call out to Seth’s plaid-shirt-clad back,is there such a thing as a shadow creature?Then only hesitated because she realized that he did not seem perturbed in the slightest. He just strolled along like nothing was going on. So probably nothing was. It was just that her mind had broken, a little bit.
And for very understandable reasons that just kept coming.
“Oh shit, I forgot that the bridge is out,” he called back to her abruptly, as she emerged from the trees into the clearing where he stood. And then she saw the cliff edge—which lay about three feet beyond him—and below it the gorge and river, and on either side the battered remnants of the decades-old footbridge.
Like something out of Indiana fucking Jones.
“What do you mean, youforgot? When was the last time you were here?” she hissed, and to his credit he appeared to consider her question.
“I think it was, like, last Wednesday. Or maybe Tuesday. Wait, let me think.”
“You don’t have to think about what day it was; that’s not the important part.”
“Then what is?”
She flung a hand at it. “How you got across it, Seth. How you got across.”
“Well, you know. I kind of. Just maybe sort of… jump.”
She’d known it was coming. Of course she had—there was no other possible explanation for his blasé attitude toward the missing bridge. Yet still, that one word knocked the breath out of her. She found herself looking over the huge chasm in a wondering sort of way. Then up at him, with one eyebrow so far raised it felt like it had lifted off her forehead.
Though, naturally, he did not accept her incredulity.
“Don’t look at me like that. I told you my reflexes are different now.”
“Yeah, and I thought you meant you can catch a cup when I knock it off the table. I didn’t think you meant that you are now Superman, and can apparently leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
He gave her a withering look. “Okay, this ishardlyleaping tall buildings.”
“No, honestly it’s better. That has gotta be a hundred feet wide.”
“Gimme a break, it’s not ahundred,” he scoffed. But then she could see him eyeing it, and the scoff buckled into something that looked a lot more like the clenched-teeth emoji. “Give or take. Hardly anything.”
“You’re really thinking now about how nuts it is that you can do this, right?”
“Look, it just sounds different when somebody else freaks out about it.”
“I’m not freaked out.”
“You will be when I make my next suggestion,” he said, and all she could think about wasThe Incredibles.The Incredibles, when Mr. Incredible hurls Mrs. Incredible hundreds of feet up into the air so she can catch their baby.
“I swear to god, Seth, if you say you want to throw me across.”
“No, god no, I’m not going tothrowyou.”
“Well, thank fuck for that.”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m just gonnacarryyou.”
He said it like a kindergarten teacher telling their class that they were super going to enjoy playing on the swings today. All bright and eager and peppy, she thought. Even though he had to know his idea was completely deranged.
And if he didn’t, well. She was going to tell him.
“Oh fuck off. Fuck you. Fuck all of this. I’m out,” she blew out.
She stormed back toward the trees, intent on doing just that.
