“Oh my God,” I said. And suddenly, I was perfectly, completely oriented.
Behind me were rocks. To my side, I could just make out the rough thick bark of a branch. There was a leaf resting on the air bag, the tips browned and starting to curl with the changing weather. I heard something creak.
“Are we over the cliff? We are, aren’t we? We’re in a tree over the goddamn cliff!” My shaking hands fumbled for the buckle as the pinpoint of panic crossed over into full-out hyperventilation.
“I told you not to panic!”
“Get me out!”
His hands gripped my arms from behind. He was pressed up against the seat, and I heard his voice through the fabric in a low plea. “Please stop moving. Please. Do not do anything to move the car.”
And if I wasn’t panicking before—I certainly was now.
I let the hair fall over my face again, and I closed my eyes, and I gritted my teeth, and I tried to think of anything, anything, other than the fact that I was hanging, suspended from a branch, over the edge of a cliff.
Jan would call this a legitimate fear. Not like a meteor crashing into our house, or getting trapped inside the freezer in the basement, or being forced to talk to Cole—all of which were so unlikely as to never happen, and were therefore irrational. But this, this was a legitimate fear: a thing that might happen. I was hanging upside down from a car stuck in the branches of a tree hanging over the edge of a cliff. The only thing holding me in was the thin strip of cloth from a seat belt.
“How do I get out?” I shouted over the whirring behind us. “How the hell am I getting out of here?”
“They’re cutting out the back windshield. Then I’ll cut the seat belt and take you with me. I have a harness.”
A harness. Oh God, we needed a harness.
“It’s just you?” I asked.
“It’s the safest plan,” he mumbled.
Ryan from my math class was possibly the last person in the world I’d want in charge of this plan. Ryan Baker, who could not remember the difference between sine and cosine. Who tattooed meaningless, intricate patterns on the inside of his forearm with pen instead of taking notes each class. My future was in the hands of someone who didn’t understand basic trigonometry. What if he got the angle wrong? Misjudged the timing? How could I trust someone who didn’t understand the geometry of a right triangle?
This seat belt was strapped across my chest at a right angle. The branches and the car and the cliff—all angles. This was a goddamn real-world application.
Fear: I might die today. I might die a minute from now.
Worse: if I moved, I’d also potentially kill Ryan Baker.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m a volunteer firefighter.”
“I want a real one,” I said, my voice high and tight.
“I am a real one.”
“A different one!”
“Trust me, I would not object. But I’m the lightest one. Least chance of making the car fall out of the tree.”
And there it was: the car could fall. They knew it, too. They had to make a plan for it. Falling, dying, was a real thing that could really happen, right now.
“You’re not even that light,” I said. He was decidedly taller than me, broad-shouldered, more lean-muscled than bulky—but definitely not light. I felt tears forming at the corners of my eyes, and I tried to pray. Please please please. But the branch still creaked below us.
“We’re going to be fine,” he said. But he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, too.
I settled on the deep breathing that Jan taught my mom, and my mom taught me.
The car lurched, and I braced my hands on the steering wheel, my stomach settling as the car stilled, and then lurching again as it tilted, dangling precipitously.
I heard Ryan’s breath catch through the fabric of the seat.
“I think maybe this would be a good time to quit,” I said.
If he responded, I couldn’t tell, because the saw or whatever they were using was cutting through the panel, and the contact of machine on metal shook my insides, vibrated my back molars. Ryan grabbed my arms—either to comfort me or to keep me still, I wasn’t sure.
I’m not paralyzed; I’m not unconscious; I’m not bleeding out; I’m not drowning.
And then the noise stopped, and Ryan’s arm draped over my shoulder, holding out a belt with a clip. “Put this around your waist. Carefully.” Our hands were both shaking, and I laughed as I grabbed the strap, bordering on delirium. Everything about this moment was ridiculous: from Ryan to the strap that would supposedly save me to the goddamn leaf curling on the air bag, parts of it still soft and green—like it didn’t realize it was already dead.
I did as he said with as little movement as possible. The strap connected in front, and there was a small metal clip where it latched. “Okay,” he said. “Here we go.” He handed me a rope with another clip attached. “Connect this.”
I did.
I saw the blade of the knife just beside my shoulder. “Okay, I’m going to cut you out, but you’re attached to me now, and I’m attached to the guardrail above, so even if you’re hanging, you’ll be okay. But we need to move.”
The car lurched, and I screamed. I had a feeling if the car fell now, I would not be okay. And neither would Ryan. Something about the force of the car being greater than the force of the rope holding us up. There was surely some math involved that he didn’t understand.
“Let’s go!” A voice of authority from outside. Older. Capable. “Out, now!”
Ryan wrapped a hand around my arm and used his other arm to slice through the fabric of the seat belt. I swung toward the middle of the seats, twisting around to face Ryan as the belt released. We were connected by a short distance of rope, clipped to the front of both of our harnesses. His hands gripped the slack between us.
“See?” he said. I swayed gently back and forth, reaching for his shoulder as he started to say something else.
Then there was a slow crunch from somewhere underneath us, and a long creak as the car tilted forward, and I saw it in Ryan’s eyes just as my hand connected with his shoulder.
A quick snap that I heard at the same time I felt the tension of the rope above us release. I fell back, losing my grip on Ryan. He reached for me, but it was pointless. We were cut loose from the guardrail.
We were falling.
I frantically reached for nothing, for anything. My fingers clawed at the fabric of the air bag as I hurtled through the open windshield—but I was still falling, my arms and legs skimming metal, a bruising pain as my elbows hooked into a groove. My body came abruptly to a stop, my legs dangling below, the chilled night air empty and endless all around me.
One second of relief, half a breath, and then I saw a body sailing by in a blur, fingers grasping for anything, nails and skin scraping on metal and me, and the impossible pressure on my hips as his weight tugged the rope connecting us, the added pressure making my elbows dislodge from their hold.
My eyes widened, and I slammed my hands down as I slid. My fingers desperately searching for a hold—and finally locking into the groove of the windshield once more.
Part of my weight was still on the hood of the car—but my legs dangled over, along with Ryan.
Don’t look. Heights had, surprisingly, never been a fear of mine. Dying, on the other hand…I stared up at my hands instead. My fingers, the grip of my knuckles, were the only thing keeping us from going over.
Ryan kept jerking the rope, swinging back and forth, and I felt the metal cutting into my fingers, my grip slipping. “Stop moving! Ryan! Don’t move!” I yelled.
He stilled, and I tried to slow my breathing. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the muscles in my hands, my arms, my shoulders.