Page 62 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“All right, then. Follow me.”

She scurried to keep up as he charged away from the hard-packed trail and slipped under a boulder as big as a house. She followed him through a progression of caves, the bright sun blinking in and out of focus as they zoomed forward. Twenty minutes, three broken nails, and a jammed pinky toe later, they stopped.

“Here we are.” Thor hoisted himself onto a sun-streaked chockstone sandwiched between two massive towers of rock. He reached down and offered Mandy a hand.

“The back entrance to Surprise Valley.”

Mandy looked doubtfully at the narrow sliver of sun that shot through the rocky crevasse. The light traced the outline of Thor’s athletic body, illuminating the tiny hairs on his arms. Beyond him, little was visible. The travertine towers flared on either side of him, twisting the narrow space above him into a slender ribbon of air.

Thor unzipped his pack and pulled out a length of bright green rope. He uncoiled it with confident hands, lifting his T-shirt away from his taut stomach and winding the rope around his waist. He tied one quick knot after another. Then he unfurled the rest of the cord, adding a hand-sized loop at the end.

“We’ll be able to walk and scramble the first half. Then it gets tight, and we’ll have to climb up and traverse. It doesn’t take any specialized skills. Just a willingness to press your feet against one side and shimmy your butt against the other.”

“This will get us closer to Deer Creek?”

“We’ll pop out in Surprise Valley, just above the spring that feeds Deer Creek. Should shave a solid hour off the hike.”

She peered again into the dark slot. It didn’t look like much of a shortcut. But it did look like one heck of an adventure.

“What’s so surprising about Surprise Valley?”

“Guess we better find out.”

He turned and grinned at her. The skin splintered at the outside edges of his sunglasses, making her wonder for a moment how old he was, and how it would feel to run her fingers along the lines on his sunbaked face.

Mandy pulled her eyes from his and looked one more time at the narrow entrance to the crevasse in the rock and took a deep breath. The longer Mandy was separated from Liv and the rest of the group, the more alone she felt. But the only way back was through. She clutched the small loop at the end of Thor’s rope.

“If you get stuck or need a boost,” he said, “just give it a little tug.”

He winked, then turned back to the slot, which was looming taller by the minute. “You’re in for a real treat.”

It was like following the Minotaur into his labyrinth. At first, they were just walking in the cool sand, Mandy trailing her fingertips against the smooth limestone walls that flared out and up to a broken window of sky. After about twenty yards, the gap between the walls grew so narrow they had to turn their shoulders and walk sideways to proceed. Another twenty yards, and Mandy was sucking in her stomach, praying she could squeeze through.

Then it got so tight she couldn’t even take a step.

“There’s only one way forward now,” Thor said. “Ready for your Spider-Man audition?”

Mandy craned her neck up at the slick limestone walls, which widened to a comfortable span fifteen feet above their heads.

“You bet,” she said, projecting a level of confidence she absolutely did not feel. “I AM Spider-Man.”

Thor demonstrated the technique, pressing his feet against one wall, his back to the other, inching himself up until he was wedged in the flare, his body floating fifteen feet above her. The travertine was cool and buttery, which was a blessing, considering she was wearing hiking boots, a sarong, and a bikini. For the first time, she wished she had a pair of her sister’s ugly cargo pants. She’d be lucky if the rock didn’t rub the turtles right off her sarong.

“We have to drop the rope here,” Thor told her. “Too dangerous. But I’ll be right ahead of you as we traverse across.”

Mandy pushed herself back into the limestone wall until she felt the tiny pockmarks and perturbations engrave themselves into her skin. She placed one foot against the wall across from her, then the other.

She looked up to where the slot widened. She was a human cannonball, aimed at the sky.

One deep breath. Two. Mandy shoved her palms into the wall in front of her and launched. As she rose, she stretched one leg back, so she was standing with one foot against the front wall, one pressed to the rock behind her, her torso floating in the growing gap between them. She was walking on air.

“THIS IS AMAZING!” she yelled up into the void.

Her words rattled in the slot, the echo sonorous and chaotic.

She felt powerful. She felt dangerous. She started moving up and laterally until she was more than twenty feet off the ground. She followed Thor’s path, advancing with just her feet and the lightest kiss of her back against the rock, using the palms of her hands to balance and draw herself forward. She looked up. She looked ahead. She was flying.

And then, all of a sudden, there was no more path. Just darkness.