Storm (4 page)

Finally, they heard the deep steady roar of water. As they stepped into a clearing, they saw the cascading white water, powerfully hurling down hundreds of feet of cliff.

They smiled at each other, and for the next twenty minutes under a thick umbrella of trees, everything seemed okay again. They ate a late lunch that Andrea’s mom had packed. Andrea even waded into the shallow side of the large pond beneath the falls for her mom to snap some photos—and then they decided to head back.

Easier said than done,
Andrea thought, trudging through the rain until they came to the edge
of the stream that ran across the trail. The same stream that they had crossed to get to the falls was now a lot deeper.

“We need to hurry,” her mom said suddenly, and Andrea glanced over. Her mom trudged on through the water, giving her no further explanation. She didn’t need to, Andrea thought, as she noticed the water level rising with each stream they crossed.

The last stream they hit had become a raging torrent of water. Andrea saw the beads of sweat on her mom’s brow, and she knew they were in trouble.

“Mom?”

She followed her mom’s gaze, knowing she was looking for another way across for them — and then felt a massive chill run over her as her mom stopped and studied a narrow little trail that seemed to hang over the side of the cliff.

Oh, no way!
Andrea thought just as her mom said, “Let’s try that trail.”

The narrow little goat trail did seem the way out at first, but after the second hair-pin turn, they were forced to drop down on all fours, and shortly after that, the trail hit a dead end. They both glanced behind them; the way back looked impossible to manage. The trail was too narrow to turn around on, and neither of them felt comfortable going backward.

Andrea followed her mom’s eyes as she studied what looked like another trail high above them,
and she felt whatever strength she had left whoosh out of her.

“Andrea, you stay put. I’m going to see if there’s a way out up there. If there is, then I’ll help you get up to it too.”

Andrea merely nodded, too cold and scared to argue. Instead, she plastered herself to the face of the cliff as her mom began to climb.

Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later, she heard a dribble of rock skittering down the face of the cliff and looked up to see her mom on a ledge that jutted out above her. It was getting dark— harder to see—but she was sure that her mom looked like she had been crying.

“Andrea, it’s going to take me awhile to get out of this.” Her mom said this with such a forced calmness to her voice that it scared Andrea even more. “Just hang on.”

“All right,” Andrea called out and then pressed back against the cliff.
It’s not all right, though. It’s not all right at all,
Andrea thought as tears began to course down her cheeks. She watched the sun slowly dip down, and she watched the green of the trees and brush turn a darker shade of green as the mist thickened around them.

Still too beautiful to be an accident, she thought as exhaustion began to take over. God, if you are up there, well, we could sure use your help.

“Nice
shoes!” said Holly.

“Hey, these shoes have seen a lot of hikes,” Bethany said, grinning over at Holly as they scrambled out of the van at the entrance to Hanakapiai Trail. “And look—Velcro fasteners!”

“How seventies of you.” Holly grinned back, feeling perky with her hair back to normal. “Did that dragged-behind-the-van look come with the shoes, or did you do that after you bought them?”

Bethany laughed out loud. “I’m doubling the pace on you for that, Holly! You try to tie shoes with one hand sometime.”

“No thanks! I’m having a hard enough time keeping up with your training sessions as it is!”

They both laughed and then looked upwards as a helicopter flew overhead.

“Awful early for sightseeing,” Bethany noted.

“Be careful girls, and give me a call when you want to get picked up,” Bethany’s mom called from the van as she pulled away. “Oh, and I heard
it’s been raining up in the mountains, so keep an eye out for flooding.”

Holly turned and looked up at the mountains as Bethany’s mom drove away. “Flooding? Why do I listen to you?”

“Because without me your life would be boring,” Bethany said with a grin. “Okay, are you ready?”

“Yeah—at least I hope I am!”

They started out in a light jog. In the first few hundred yards of the steep trail they easily passed out-of-shape hikers who hadn’t gotten more than a few dozen yards before stopping to catch their breath.

Bethany and Holly grinned at each other, feeling a little full of themselves. They were blowing by everyone!

As they passed the vista, the trail began to hug the edge of the cliff, zigzagging back and forth without steps, railings, or safety bars, and they both eased back on their pace—but not by much. Recent rain had created small, unavoidable puddles and they splashed through them, trying to hit the water hard enough to get each other wet.

Then the trail slipped around the side of the cliff again and Bethany felt her right shoe hit a patch of mud which sent her skidding and sliding.

Bethany flailed awkwardly, trying to regain her footing. She was suddenly hit with the weirdest sensation—a mini flashback of her dream of falling
backwards. She stumbled to the left, then caught herself just in time and glanced over at Holly shakily. For the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel so sure of her abilities.

“I had no idea it was going to be this muddy!” Bethany said when she found her voice again. “Let’s take it easy until the trail gets better.”

“Good idea,” Holly said quietly as her eyes scanned the empty trail ahead worriedly. “Last thing we need is to get hurt with no one else around to help.”

“Andrea!”

The voice sounded muffled at first … far away. Andrea frowned. She was too tired to try to figure out where the voice was coming from. Too tired to care.

She felt her stomach growl. When she did get up she was going straight for the huge fruit basket she’d spotted on the table in the entryway, maybe take a dip in the pool out back. That ought to wake her up.

“Andrea!!!” the voice persisted, and Andrea sat up groggily—then caught herself before she fell off the tiny ledge.
Oh … my … God!
She wasn’t at home in bed. She was still trapped on the side of a cliff!

“Andrea!” her mom’s terror-stricken voice called from above, and she carefully craned her
neck and looked up. Her mom’s face looked pale and … terrified.

“Mom, I’m okay! I just feel asleep,” she called out and then swallowed painfully. Her water bottle was almost empty; she took a small sip and swished it around in her mouth before swallowing it.

“Did you try your cell phone again?” she called up to her mom.

“Still no signal on the cell,” her mom answered after a moment. “But I heard a helicopter earlier, honey. I bet someone is going to find us any minute now!”

Andrea licked her cracked lips as her body began to shiver uncontrollably. She gazed out across the vast 5,000-foot-high ribbon of emerald cliffs that plunged almost straight down to the ocean.

What was beautiful yesterday was overwhelming now. Overwhelming and ugly. She squinted hard into the dawning light but could see nothing but trees and large bushes. A lot of them. It seemed so big — too big. How could anyone find her or her mom in the middle of all this?

Like finding a needle in a haystack. That was a crazy thing to hope for,
she thought dully. Who ever thought that one up? Andrea suddenly remembered her prayer from the night before, and her eyes welled up with tears.

God, if you are there, please send help!
Andrea’s mind screamed. Her plea was met with an eerie silence as her eyes desperately searched
the vast wilderness for any sign of a hiker. Even the birds were silent.

God finding her here felt a lot like finding a needle in a haystack. She had never talked to God before. She wondered if she was saying the right words. One of her friends had taken her to church before. She knew that her friend talked to God, actually felt love for God. Andrea frowned. Why would God listen to her? Thinking God could hear her was probably a crazy thing to hope for.

“Look what I found!”

Holly held the shell out for Bethany to see as they squatted in the sand by the stream. They had found the little slip of sand and stream after a precarious climb over some massive rocks and boulders. They decided to take a short break by hunting for the shells that were known to be harvested along this stretch.

Bethany felt a twinge of good-natured envy. It was a sunset shell — better than any she had in her collection at home.

“Oh my gosh! Look at the size of that shell! You totally scored!” Bethany threw her hand up in defeat, and Holly laughed delightedly. It wasn’t every day that she got one up on Bethany, and they both knew it.

The truth was, Bethany was glad for the momentary distraction. Nearly falling like she did had
shaken her up more than she cared to admit. For some reason, it had made her feel helpless—like she had felt right after the shark attack and even in that crazy dream. She didn’t like that feeling. Not one bit.

Bethany glanced toward the trail that led to the falls and felt a little bit of the fighter in her rise up. She needed to get over this nagging fear and press on — just as she had done so many times while surfing or training.

Do something big, she thought.

“Let’s go to the falls!” Bethany said suddenly.

“What? Two more miles—are you nuts?” Holly exclaimed as she shoved the shell in her pocket. “Huh-uh. I’m not doing it.” She watched Bethany knock the mud from her shoes for a moment, frowned, and then followed suit.

“I must be crazy,” she grumbled, and Bethany chuckled.

“Maybe,” Bethany said as she started over the rocks and boulders and then turned to look over her shoulder. “But it’s a
good
kind of crazy!”

High on her perch, Andrea peered into the valley and watched for hikers. When she first woke up, she had pretty much given up. But as the day wore on, she and her mom had caught glimpses of several hikers, appearing and disappearing as they followed
along the trail below. It had been her first ray of hope since the night before.

Getting their attention had been another thing altogether …

They had screamed their guts out, but it appeared that the echo of their voices had been drained away by the wind. The hikers moved on, oblivious to their predicament.

“They can’t hear us!” Andrea yelled up frantically to her mom.

“We’re going to have to shout louder!”

It was another twenty minutes before they heard the thump of a helicopter, and their hope rose again—only to be dashed as they watched the whir of blades fade off into the distance.

When she heard her mom curse above her, she felt what little hope she had begin to seep out of her, and she began to cry.

Along with the release of tears, Andrea felt a strong sense of peace came over her. She stopped thinking about the danger and noticed the warm sun and gentle wind. They felt comforting to her. She heard a strong inner voice saying
Don’t lose hope!
It was such a strong feeling, that she actually felt a surge of hope and determination. For the first time since they were stranded, she felt like she could think clearly.

“You have got to think of some way to attract attention,” her mom called down with more than
a tinge of desperation in her voice. “Nobody can see me, but they can probably see you from that spot. Keep watching for people hiking on the trail and try to find some way to get their attention.”

“I’m working on something right now!” Andrea called up to her.

Actually, she had been working on the plan since she heard the voice that whispered in her heart. For the last hour she had been slowly digging rocks and hard clumps of dirt out of the face of the cliff with one of her shoes. It seemed crazy, she thought, staring with a strange kind of satisfaction at the small pile next to her. But it seemed right too. Like the inner voice that had whispered to her, urging her to keep going and not to give up. Something about it just felt right.

Bethany felt her determination grow as they skirted around the thin valley trail. She hopped over Hanakapiai Stream each time it cut across the trail. The farther they climbed, the more she made an effort to squash the feeling of helplessness that had tried to overtake her.

“I’m a believer, help me believe,”
Holly suddenly sang at the top of her lungs, shocking Bethany from her thoughts. It was the Switchfoot song they’d been singing in the van after church ealier this week. Not really knowing why, Bethany felt compelled to join in:

“And I gave it all away and lost who I am, I threw it all away with everything to gain, and I’m taking the leap …” They both laughed and leaped over the stream.

Bethany glanced back just in time to see Holly pick up a rock and heave it into the water with enough force to splash the back of her legs.

“Hey!”

Before Bethany had time to scramble for a rock of her own, several rocks hit the water. Holly, empty-handed, gave Bethany a stunned look just as another torrent of rocks hit the water.

“Rock slide!” Holly yelled, and they both retreated away from the wall of the canyon. More rocks followed, some bouncing down the cliff and others hitting the stream. They both lifted their eyes to the top of the cliff … and that’s when they saw her. Or a fuzzy version of her. Their eyes locked on the teenager far above them as they stepped from their hiding place, and she quickly realized they saw her too. She began to wave frantically.

“What’s wrong?” Bethany called up to her.

“We’re stuck. We can’t get down!” she cried out.

Bethany turned to Holly. “Let’s go,” was all she said—all she had to say—and the two of them began to carefully work their way up the cliff side.

Bethany soon realized that the muddy slide at the beginning of the trail was nothing compared to the steep path that led to the girl’s position —
too steep to traverse without being able to use
both
hands and feet,
the mean voice of fear said as it slid through her. After going fifteen feet from the valley floor, she stopped and turned to Holly, who was following close behind.