You decide not to drop. There isn’t another hold directly above you, so you have to pull yourself sideways a little. This is when your foot first slips. Your stomach lurches, and you’re sure you’re done for, but then it catches again, and you manage to pull yourself to the side. Your friends are shouting things below, but you can’t hear them. All you can hear now is your own heartbeat.
You looked down and saw me crying. And then you told me that I could do it if I just went slow and held on really tight to the links.
The next grip is easier, and there’s a sizable shelf to put your feet on. It’s over halfway, but it’s also too high to allow you to jump down. You have to finish it now, or there’s no good way to get to safety. You look up, and you know the plane is going to appear any minute.
I started climbing, just a rung at a time, like you said, wedging my shoes in the links. I made it halfway up, and then I just froze.
Some shouting from below cuts through your fugue. You wonder if it means that the plane has finally appeared. You don’t look, though. Instead you stop for a second to get a breath.
I was going to die. It felt like I was leaving my body. And I knew suddenly that things were going to be harder for me. I had my eyes closed, and you told me to open them. When I did, I saw you next to me.
“You can’t go down,” you said.
You can’t go down.
“You have to go up and over.”
You reach up for the next hold. It’s so small that only your fingertips can grip it. But you grab on anyway, and you pull yourfoot almost as high as your hand. You use all your remaining strength to push off with your foot. When you launch up, you don’t stop. You grab the next edge, and with one more pull, your hand reaches the top of the cliff.
You pull yourself all the way up just as the thrumming of the engine is at its loudest. Miraculously, the plane hasn’t passed directly over you yet. So you take out the whisk and hold it to your eye.
You locate the reflection.
You fiddle with the handle until you see the reflection bouncing off your shoe.
You aim toward your target.
The plane will be over you in seconds, but you know you need to create the signal before that happens, so you tilt the handle up, and you see the light hit the top of a tree. You keep tilting, and then, you have no idea where it is, or if it’s going to meet the eye of the person who doesn’t know they are your last chance at help. The only thing you can do is let the light hit you and try, however briefly, to throw a little of it back.
For a moment, it was just you and me at the top of the fence. There were people below, but they seemed so far away.
Below, at the bottom of the small cliff, your friends are cheering for you. They don’t know if it worked, just like you don’t. But they know you made it in time to try, and for a few seconds, that’s enough. The plane dumps another massive amount of water on what you assume is a fire still raging. You watch it. And when it turns around, it looks so close you could touch it. You try the signal again, watching it inch through the sky. You can’t hear anything but its engine. Your friends have gone silent.
“See you on the other side,” you said to me, just before you dropped.
You all watch as the plane starts its journey back for more water, moving in a straight line toward whatever lake is supplying it. Then you continue to watch as it turns slightly off its route, just a little, then a little more, until, gradually, you see it turning back toward the fire.
Back toward you.
“See you,” I said.
FORTY-SIX
Everything that happens next doesn’t quite seem real.
First, a propeller plane lands on a lake, its fuselage skimming across the surface like a water strider. Next, it comes to a stop near the shore and a door flies open to reveal a tall, strong woman in a green flight suit, gray-blond hair spilling out of a tight black stocking cap. For a second, she just stares at you like you’re ghosts. Then, suddenly, she seems to understand that you’re alive and she starts moving very quickly. She hops back in the plane and drives it like a boat, as close as she can get to the shore. Finally, she comes running out with supplies, sloshing through knee-deep water.
“Oh my god!” she says. “Oh my god. What on earth are you kids doing out here?”
Before you can answer, she radios in that she’s found you, and a far-off, staticky voice sounds just as stunned that people are still standing in the wake of this fire. Then the pilot has blankets. They look like they’re made of tinfoil, and she hands them out, unfolding them and draping them over you, asking you rapid questions about your hypothermic symptoms.
“Look at me!” she says. “Are you slurring your speech? Do you have memory loss? Do you feel drowsy?”
She’s talking so fast that you can barely understand her. By the time you’ve formed a response to one question, another onehas popped up. Finally, you get space to tell her about Troy, and her face goes slack. She hands you each a drink. Then she sprints back to the plane.
You immediately open what you recognize is a warm bottle of Gatorade, fruit-punch flavor, and when you take a sip, it is undoubtably the best drink you have ever had in your life. For five seconds or so, you are wholly transported. You nearly fall to your knees. It activates taste buds you didn’t even know you had, and you can’t help yourself: You moan with pleasure.
But this pleasure is short-lived. Because immediately, the pilot, who tells you to call her Maddy, needs your help carrying something called a backboard. You and Will take the front, and Maddy takes the back, and in this way, you head to the place where you left Troy. On the way there, she finally asks what happened to you guys, and Diana tells her some details in a shaky voice.
