All the Answers (19 page)

“They're going to tell us to keep going,” Jason said, nodding toward the tightrope. LucyAnn was halfway through the first Hula-Hoop, perched on it with one leg on each side, as if she were riding a horse and laughing as it bucked beneath her. “Why don't you go ahead and I'll wait until you're almost done before I start, okay?”

Ava nodded. It helped a little, knowing that the tightrope wasn't going to start bouncing under her feet right away. She was
taller than LucyAnn, so she managed to baby-step up to the first Hula-Hoop, hold the safety line, and carefully step through it, one quiet, unbouncy foot at a time, to the other side. She did that again and again, and it took a while, but she made it across.

LucyAnn had already set off on the next challenge—a swinging bridge with planks that got farther and farther apart the closer you got to the end. LucyAnn had to jump from plank to plank for the last few steps.

“Woohoo!” she called from the next platform. “That one was a doozy!”

A doozy. Just great
, Ava thought as she took the first step. It started off better than the tightropes, at least. But after the first dozen steps or so, there was no more baby-stepping on this bridge. The planks were far enough apart that Ava had to take big, open steps. She tried to land in the middle of each plank so it wouldn't wobble, but once she put her foot down too far to the right and the whole bridge tipped. She tightened her hands around the safety cable over her head and pulled herself up, back to center, then waited, taking shaky breaths until the bridge stopped tipping and her heart stopped trying to burst out of her body.

The last two steps were terrifying. Ava didn't have to jump like LucyAnn, but she did have to take such a big step that she panicked and lost her balance and had to pull herself up by the safety line. She stood there, legs spread in a half split high up in the air until the bridge stopped swinging and she could make herself step forward again.

“Great job!” LucyAnn said, grinning.

“All clear!” Luke shouted from the other end of the next crossing.

“Bye!” LucyAnn called, and jumped off the platform. Ava almost screamed until she realized it was one of the long zip lines. LucyAnn had already attached her pulley-thing and clipped her safety lines. Now, she was flying through the trees woohooing her way to the next platform where a thick mat wrapped around the tree waited to stop her.

“All clear!” LucyAnn hollered and waved at Ava.

Ava looked down at the pulley-thing attached to her belt. She'd been listening when Cute-Tom told everybody how to use it—she really had—but what if she did it wrong? How smart was it, really, to send a bunch of kids up in the trees to attach their own safety stuff when they could die if they did it wrong? This was exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a person who thought it was a good idea to put Hula-Hoops on a tightrope.

“Remember how to do it?” Jason asked her.

“I think so.” Ava attached her first safety line. She unclipped her pulley from her belt, clicked it into place on the wire, and attached her second line to the pulley.

“Looks good!” Cute-Tom called from below. At least the guides were paying attention.

“Ready?” Jason said. “This one looks like a blast.”

I am going to hang from this cable and fly through the trees
, Ava
thought. It did not sound like a blast. But kids from the next group were already starting to arrive on their platform.

“Dude, are you gonna go or what?” Brett Halloway asked.

“I'm going,” Ava said. But then she didn't.

She looked down at her feet on the wooden boards of the platform. LucyAnn had simply jumped. She'd tucked her feet up, let her weight fall into the harness, and let it carry her through the trees. Ava understood that was what she needed to do, too. But she couldn't make herself do it.

“You've got two lines to catch you,” Jason told her, as if she didn't know that. She'd clipped them herself. And checked them. Three times.

“I know. I'm going.” Ava swallowed hard. Her throat felt like tree bark.

“You're thinking about it too much,” Jason said. “Just go.”

Fine
, Ava thought.
I'll just go
. But she didn't.

“Come on.” Brett gave an impatient sigh.

“Dude, give her a minute,” Jason told Brett.

Ava appreciated that, but she knew she couldn't wait forever. She held the handles at the bottom of the pulley—that's what Cute-Tom said to do so your fingers didn't get caught in anything—and leaned back so it could catch her weight. It held her. It did. It felt strong.

Just go
, she thought.
Don't think. Just go
.

Go
.

Ava sucked in her breath, grimaced, and jumped.

It was fast, faster than she thought. The pulley made a high-pitched whirring, zinging noise as it flew over the cable, and the wind cooled Ava's hot face. She did not feel like Peter Pan. But she was mostly doing okay until she realized she had to land on that other platform. What if she crashed into the tree? How thick was that mat? What if she didn't make it all the way there? She'd be stuck dangling out over the middle!

But before there was more time to worry, the tree came close, and Ava lifted her feet and plopped them on the platform and grabbed the safety line to pull herself up.

“You did it! You finished the gold course!” LucyAnn was waiting at the bottom of the platform. The zip line had taken them lower, so there were just a few ladder rungs to the ground. Dirt and pine needles had never felt so good under Ava's shoes.

“Silver is next,” LucyAnn said, pointing to another rock wall, higher than the first one.

“That was all part of the
first
course? All those things we just did?”

LucyAnn nodded. “Isn't this the best?”

Ava stared at the new rock wall. Just because she'd survived the gold course didn't mean she'd survive silver and whatever awful color came next. Five courses. There were five courses, and she'd only done one.

Ava looked back toward the reception area and saw Mr. Avery sitting at a picnic table next to a couple of kids.

LucyAnn followed her gaze. “Looks like Leo and Alex decided to call it quits after gold.”

Ava's heart jumped. She could do that, too. She could be done! She looked at LucyAnn. “I think I'm going to call it a day now, too.”

“Really?” LucyAnn's mouth dropped open. She looked back up at Luke and Jason climbing down the ladder. Luke burped, and Jason cracked up. “Come on, you can't leave me with these boys.”

Ava looked at the picnic tables. Amy and Ben looked kind of bored. But they looked safe. Safe was good. “Sorry, this isn't really my thing.”

“But you did so great on the first one.”

“Yeah, but it took me forever to cross that stuff.” As soon as Ava said that, she realized she had no idea how long it had taken. It felt like forever, but when she looked at her watch, it was only 11:30.

11:30. Mom's appointment was in an hour and a half. Ava wondered if Mom was worried. Probably not. It was just a regular exam—something she did every year. But this one was going to be different. Ava's throat tightened, and she felt her breath coming quicker.

She looked back at the gold course. It had scared her but not like this. The adventure course made her a different kind of scared. A wobbly tightrope, heart in your throat, blood pumping, fresh air, and smell-of-leaves scared. This Mom-worrying scared … Ava took a shaky breath.
This
kind of scared was so big it felt like it might suffocate her if she sat down at that picnic table and let it catch up with her.

If she kept going, it couldn't do that. She'd be scared of
swinging logs and tightropes instead, and by the time it was over, her mom's appointment would be done and the pencil would have been wrong and she wouldn't have cancer after all. Not if Ava finished the course.

“Okay,” Ava said, “Let's do silver.”

Ava started up the new rock wall without looking at her watch again.

At the top, she crossed another tightrope and another hanging bridge. She inched her way across two long, skinny balance beams suspended by chains. They swung back and forth the whole time, but she kept moving until she made it to the platform on the other side.

LucyAnn was there, with her safety lines ready to go. But there was no bridge to the next platform. There was no tightrope or balance beam. Just a simple wooden swing, suspended by two ropes. It was like the one behind Anderson's general store. But there was no way they could swing high enough or far enough to get to the other side. Even if they could, what were they supposed to do? Jump and try to make it to the platform?

“How are we supposed to get over there?” Ava said.

“Luke just went and it's awesome,” LucyAnn said. “Watch!” All at once, she reached for the ropes and jumped off the platform onto the swing. “Woohoo!”

The swing flew across the clearing, zipping along a cable that Ava hadn't seen before. When LucyAnn got to the other side, she jumped off onto the platform, unhooked her safety lines, and stepped out of the way. “All clear!”

Without LucyAnn's weight on the swing, a counterweight under the platform pulled it back until it was swaying gently in front of Ava.

Ava looked at the swing.

She looked at her watch.

12:30. Her mother was probably leaving for the doctor's office now. What if the pencil was right? Would they be able to tell if the cancer had spread?

“This one looks cool,” Jason said as he stepped from the balance beam onto the platform behind her. “Want me to go first?”

“No, that's okay.” If Ava stayed, she'd think too much, and even flying through the trees on a swing of doom was better than thinking about her mom. She clipped her safety lines, stepped onto the swing, and rode it to the other side.

“On to the pink course now!” LucyAnn said after they'd both climbed down the ladder.

The pink course started with a swinging bridge, and that was okay. Then there was a tightrope and a short zip line. Ava
was starting to get the hang of those, and they were fun if you could convince yourself that flying through the trees really fast wasn't a horrible idea.

After the zip line, there was a tightrope with punching bags suspended over it every few feet. LucyAnn was edging her way across. Every time she got to one of the punching bags, she'd grab onto the safety cable and lean way back, then scoot past it and push it out of her way. When she did that, the punching bags swung and tried to knock her off the tightrope. Because Hula-Hoops made life too easy, apparently. Ava cursed the course designer again.

But she made it across with her heart pounding and felt strangely powerful when she looked back.
Take that, punching bags
, she thought.
Take that, jerky adventure course designer
. Ava followed LucyAnn through two more challenges—another balance-beam thing and a net that you had to climb through.

“One course left—here we come, red!” LucyAnn let out a war whoop and charged down the wooded path to the ladder that started the red course. At first, the course didn't seem that much harder than pink—just higher—and since Ava didn't look down, she could pretend she was just doing more practice tightropes and beams.

But the next challenge was a series of awful swinging poles that looked like pogo sticks. Every time Ava stepped onto a new pogo-stick-thing, it started swinging like crazy and she hugged it for dear life until it stopped. Then she reached out and pulled
in the next one. Over and over, until finally, there were no more poles. Ava stepped onto the platform just in time to see Lucy-Ann leap onto a skateboard and ride it across a tightrope to the next tree.

“All clear!” LucyAnn called as the riderless skateboard flew back toward Ava. She clipped her safety lines and waited for it to stop so she could get on. But it didn't make it all the way to the platform. Ava stretched her foot out a little but couldn't reach it. She scanned the ground for someone to come fix it, but Cute-Tom was nowhere in sight.

“Come on!” LucyAnn called from the far platform.

“It's broken,” Ava yelled. “I can't reach it.”

LucyAnn laughed. “It's not broken. You have to jump!”

Ava looked at the skateboard.
Sure
, she thought.
Jump
.

The skateboard was about three feet away. Ava could jump that far, but she'd never jumped that far onto a thing that was then going to fly across a tightrope.

Jason had two pogo sticks left before he got to the platform. If Ava waited, she could let him go first. She looked at her watch.

1:02.

Mom would be at the doctor's office by now, probably in one of those crinkly paper gowns. Ava's stomach tightened. The pencil
had
to be wrong. It had to be. It was wrong before, about Jason liking Sophie, wasn't it? The question gnawed at her heart until Ava did the only thing she could do to forget about it.