All the Answers (18 page)

Ava looked at her watch. It was 9:08. Her mom would be leaving for the doctor's office in a few hours. Not long after that, she'd find out she had cancer.

“Hi, everybody, and welcome to Adirondack Adventure!” a guy boomed out from the far side of the porch. He smiled and his dimples announced his identity before he said, “My name is Tom, and I'm going to help you with your equipment. Safety comes first out here. We want to make sure everyone has a great time.”

His appearance caused a flurry of whispering among the girls. Ava snuck a glance at Sophie, who was standing next to Bethany Bridges. They whispered and laughed. Probably about the dimples, Ava thought. Sophie loved dimples.

“Let's get started.” Cute-Tom showed them how to step into their harnesses and tighten the straps. Then he took them to a little practice course to go over the rules. It was pretty simple. There were two safety straps with clips attached to your harness. You always had to keep at least one of them hooked into something when you were up in the trees. That way, if you fell, you'd have one to catch yourself. So when you moved from one platform to another, you'd unhook one clip and hook it onto the new safety line, then go back and unhook the second one and move that. Always attached.

“You'll go through a safety demo now and show me that you were listening,” Cute-Tom said. A few of the girls near him giggled—they'd obviously been looking more than listening—but they lined up at the edge of the course.

Ava got in line, too. When it was her turn to get her equipment checked and demonstrate her clipping and unclipping skills on the practice course, Cute-Tom tugged on her safety lines and nodded. “All right. Try out this tightrope and show me you'll be able to do this safely up in the trees. Remember, you're on your own up there.”

Ava looked at him. “Aren't there guides on the platforms with us?”

Cute-Tom shook his head. “We don't have guides for every platform, so we spread out on the ground and keep a close eye on everyone from there. That's why you practice before you go up. Don't worry—we'll holler if we see you're forgetting something. Ready?”

Ava climbed the ladder, clipping and unclipping and clipping herself in, all the way up. Jason Marzigliano and Becca Case were already at the top, attached to a safety line over the wooden platform.

Jason went first, sauntering across the tightrope as if it were a foot wide instead of half an inch. Cute-Tom had said it was fine to grab the red safety line that ran over the rope, since it was good to use for balance, but Jason barely touched it.

“You make it look too easy,” Becca said, laughing. She started out more slowly.

“Go ahead!” Cute-Tom called up to the platform where Ava was waiting.

Ava's stomach dropped out from under her. Go on the tightrope at the same time as somebody else? What if Becca jiggled it?

Ava unclipped one safety line and moved it ahead. Then she moved the second line. She put a tentative foot on the rope but kept her weight on the wooden platform. She could feel the line vibrating with every step Becca took.

“Come on.” Eli Henderson was waiting behind her.

Ava took a deep breath, grabbed the safety line overhead, and shifted her weight onto the tightrope. It bowed underneath her, and her stomach felt as if it might drop right down to the pine-needled ground below, but she didn't fall.
Just keep going
, she thought. Keep going and there's a solid platform on the other side.

Ava took some more baby steps. She kept her eyes on the back of Becca's ponytail.

Hold on tight
.

Tiny step
.

Hands creep up
.

Hold on tight
.

Tiny step
.

Hands creep up
.

On some level, Ava understood that she wouldn't reach the end of the rope until next Tuesday at this rate, but she couldn't make herself move faster.

She took another tiny step, and the whole wire sank under her foot, then bounced a little. “Oh!” Ava's hands tightened on the safety line, and she looked back. Eli had stepped out onto the line and was moving fast—step, step, step—toward her.

“Woohoo!” he shouted, as the cable boinged up and down. Ava was pretty sure he was bouncing on purpose. Why would anyone
want
to feel like this?

“Hey, take it easy,” Cute-Tom said from the ground, and thankfully, the bouncing settled to a gentler shake. “While you guys are up there, I want to demonstrate something, okay? Somebody fall for me.”

Fall? Ava was already shaking. Even the thought of falling made her cling to the safety line for all she was worth. When she did that, the safety line dipped from her weight, and she lost her balance. She panicked and kicked at the tightrope to try to catch herself, and then it was gone, and she was dangling by her arms, kicking in the cool fall air. Ava would have screamed if she'd
been able, but her heart was thumping so wildly she couldn't even suck in a breath.

“Great, now just let go,” Cute-Tom called.

No way was Ava letting go. Her fingers tightened around the safety line, but it was cutting into her hands, cutting off her circulation, and the weight of her body dragged her down.

Her fingers were slipping. She couldn't breathe. She was starting to see spots—purple and green and black spots in front of her eyes—and the next thing she knew, the safety line slipped from her sweaty hands, and she fell.

But before she even had time to think “
No!
” she felt a tug around her middle and her legs. The harness had caught her. She was dangling in midair.

“Perfect,” Cute-Tom said, pointing to her. “See how the harness catches you?”

“It's like those little-kid swings at the park,” Becca said from the safety of her wooden platform.

It was, Ava realized. She was just starting to breathe again, now that she understood she wasn't dead or bleeding. Just hanging. Swinging by the harness strapped around her hips.

“Okay,” Cute-Tom said, stepping up to Ava. “If you were out on the real course now, you'd need to pull yourself back up to keep going. But that tires out your arms, and since you helped me out with my demonstration, you get to cheat a little.” He pulled over a small step-ladder and helped Ava find her footing. “Climb back up to the line now and you can finish.”

Ava didn't want to climb anywhere, but there wasn't much else she could do with everyone staring at her. They all thought she'd fallen on purpose, as a volunteer. So she climbed back up onto the awful rope and clung to the safety line as she baby-stepped her way to the platform and ladder on the other side.

“See?” said Cute-Tom as Ava unclipped and clipped her safety lines all the way back down to the ground. “Nothing to it. Now you guys can head out on the real course.”

He pointed down a trail that led into the woods. It ended at a rock wall beneath a platform at least three times as high as the one on the training course. Ava's stomach twisted. She thought she might throw up on Cute-Tom's hiking boots.

She looked at her watch—9:34—and headed for the rock wall of doom.

“You want to go next?” Jason Marzigliano looked at Ava.

She looked up the rock wall and caught a glimpse of the bottom of Luke Varnway's sneakers before he pulled himself up onto the platform. “No. Not even a little.”

“I'll go.” LucyAnn Ward clipped her safety lines and started climbing. Very slowly, Ava noticed. That was good. LucyAnn wasn't all that athletic. She was short and what Gram would call pleasantly plump. When their class ran the mile on the track, LucyAnn was the last person to finish but the only one still smiling at the end.

“Whoop!” LucyAnn's foot slipped off a rock, and she thumped into the wall when her harness caught her. “Wow, this is kinda hard,” she said and started pulling herself up again.

Jason scuffed the dirt with his sneaker and turned to Ava. “So what's up with Sophie?”

“What do you mean, what's up?”

“Well, you guys are kinda friends, right?”

“Yeah.” Jason didn't need to know that Sophie hadn't spoken to her since she threw herself at Jason because of the pencil.

“Do you know if she still likes me?”

Ava stared at him. Boys really must be from another planet where all the rules were totally different. “Aren't you going out with Jessica?”

He shrugged. “She broke up with me.”

“Keep the line moving,” one of the guides called from the walkway.

“I'll go next,” Ava said, clipping herself onto the safety hooks. Even the rock wall of doom was better than talking to Jason about Sophie.

Don't look down. Don't look down
, Ava thought as she climbed.

“Great job!” a voice called from below, and Ava looked down—
stupid!
—to see Cute-Tom giving her a thumbs-up. His thumb looked tiny. In fact, his whole body looked tiny. He was a long way down there. She was already pretty far up.

“Keep coming.” Ava turned back to the wall and saw Lucy-Ann leaning over to look down at her. “It's easier at the top,” LucyAnn said. “The rocks get closer together, see?” She pointed, and Ava saw she was right. It was doable as long as she kept breathing, but that was turning into a challenge. “You can do it. And it's really pretty up here,” LucyAnn added.

Ava glanced down again. Jason had already started climbing
up behind her, so at this point, climbing down would mean climbing right onto his head, and that wasn't an option.

Hand. Hand. Foot. Foot
. Ava made her body listen, and after what felt like an hour of clipping and unclipping her safety lines, she crawled onto the wooden platform and stood up. Her heart was pounding but she was here.

LucyAnn smiled at her, all red-faced and sweaty. “The first challenge is a tightrope like the one that Wallenda guy crossed over the Grand Canyon! Only, you know, this one's twenty feet up instead of a zillion. Plus we have harnesses.”

“That is a very good thing,” Ava said. She watched Luke walk along the tightrope. It wasn't that different from the practice line she'd crossed. This one was actually bouncing a little less. It led to a platform near the top of another tree.

“I'm pretty sure that next platform leads to a rope ladder. And my cousin whose class came last week says then there are Hula-Hoops you have to climb through.”

“Wait …” Ava stared as Luke inched his way toward the platform at the other end of the tightrope. “I thought it was just one challenge at a time. Can't we get down in between?”

“Nope! It's one after another.” LucyAnn stepped out onto the tightrope as Jason hoisted himself onto the platform next to Ava.

“So,” he said, “Did she say anything to you?”

“Who?” Ava said, even though she knew he meant Sophie.

“You can go on!” Cute-Tom yelled from the ground, motioning for Ava to start on the tightrope.

“She's not done,” Ava called down.

“That's okay,” Cute-Tom said, motioning her out again. “The bridge-type challenges can take several people at a time. Go ahead!”

So Ava clipped herself in, reached up to the safety line to steady herself, and took a tiny step out. At least it was a tiny step away from Jason and his questions. If she slid her hands forward on the safety line over her head, she never really had to let go, and somehow, that made the narrow, wobbly cable under her feet less awful.

Hands forward. Baby step. Hands forward. Baby step
.

She was doing okay until the tightrope dipped under her feet.

“Whoa!” Ava gripped the safety line and held on for dear life while the cable bounced under her.

“Sorry!” Jason called from the edge of the platform.

“Can you wait until I'm done? Please?” If he didn't stop bouncing the cable all over, Ava was sure she'd throw up. And that was going to make holding onto the line and keeping her balance a million times harder.

“Keep going, you're okay!” Cute-Tom's voice drifted up to her, and Ava looked down. He was right below her, nodding encouragingly and completely unaware that he was quite possibly about to be puked on.

Ava peered over her shoulder at Jason. “Just give me a few steps, all right?” she whispered.

He nodded and thankfully stayed still until she had
hands-forward-baby-stepped herself all the way to the next platform. Ava let out a great rush of breath.

“You made it!” LucyAnn had dark spots of sweat on her T-shirt, but her eyes were full of can't-wait excitement. “And look what's next!”

Hula-Hoops. The Hula-Hoops were next. It was a tightrope like the last one, only in the middle of it, every few feet, was a Hula-Hoop that you had to climb through in order to keep going.

“Isn't this the best?” LucyAnn said, clipping herself onto the safety line.

Ava didn't answer. She wondered what kind of a horrible person had thought this was a good idea. Gram prayed for almost everybody while she watched CNN, but she always said there was a special hot place in the afterlife for certain kinds of criminals. Ava decided adventure course designers should be added to that list and have a special place there, too. Preferably one where they had to climb through flaming Hula-Hoops on a tightrope. Blindfolded.