One and Only(12)

For no reason at all, she suddenly remembered a time she tried to have some friends over after school in fourth grade. This was before Wendy had started at Jane’s school, back when Jane was…not an outcast really, but struggling to find a place to fit in. Of course, she had fixated, the way kids do, on the pretty, popular girls, thinking that befriending them would make her life so much easier.

So much happier.

Part of her knew, even then, that it was a mistake to invite them over. Having people over was usually too much of a risk, given that she never knew what state her father was going to be in. But she’d talked herself into it. She had told Daddy, coached him, begged him even. Explained the stakes. Promises were made.

But of course she knew the minute she opened the door and he greeted them with a high-pitched “Hi, girls!” that she had been naive to think he could lay off the drinking for even one afternoon. She’d learned her lesson that day: taking risks was usually not worth it.

“Hey.”

She inhaled sharply, startled out of her memories. But the shame was still there. She just didn’t know if it was the same old packed-down crud or a fresh new layer.

“So I’m thinking maybe we should just hit the observation deck and call it a day?” Cameron said gently, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“What about the EdgeWalk?” she asked.

“I can do it another time. And I’m sure they’ll give you your money back. People must change their minds all the time. We can just call off the bet.”

What went unspoken was that he recognized her for the chickenshit she was. And that he was being so nice about it was worse somehow than if he’d whipped out his usual jerky banter.

She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes until their assigned start time. She thought of those girls who had never come back to her house but had later been over-the-top with expressions of sympathy when her father died. “Nope, let’s do it.”





Cam felt like a dick. Which wasn’t all that unusual, really, but this time he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. There was no way this could end well. And it felt like his fault. Which was ridiculous. Yeah, he hadn’t initially grasped exactly how much of a scaredy-cat she was, but as soon as he’d realized that the glass floor alone was making her start to come unhinged, he’d tried to pull the plug on the whole thing.

But no. Jane was fronting with false bravado. She was all blustery determination, pasted-on-smiles, and overly loud small talk with their fellow adventurers as everyone lined up to be fitted into their harnesses.

She was also awfully cute in her orange jumpsuit. The same jumpsuit that made the rest of them look like awkward rejects from a Ghostbusters casting call somehow hugged her curves just right.

They were all being strapped into harnesses that had cables in the front and the back that fastened to a track in the ceiling that ran the length of the room and then continued on outside. The guides who would make the walk with them were fastened onto a parallel, outer track.

“The platform outside is five feet wide,” the main guide said. “That’s about as wide as your average sidewalk. Have you ever fallen off a sidewalk?”

That got a mixture of genuine and nervous laughter. Cam eyed Jane. He shouldn’t know her well enough to be able to tell, but underneath her breeziness, she was terrified. He understood. He himself was feeling that same zingy anticipation that always preceded a dangerous task on tour. It was human nature. Even though here, unlike in the Middle East, you knew you were perfectly safe, some reptilian part of your mind whose job was self-preservation was screaming, “danger!” It was like the glass floor, but more.

Which was why he was worried. He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You okay?”

She nodded, too vigorously. He rested his hand on the small of her back.

“Okay, here we go!” shouted the guide as he threw open the doors and the wind, which was something fierce coming off the lake, whipped in. Several among their group started squealing. In fact, pretty much everyone had some kind of audible reaction as they stepped outside.

They were toward the back of the line, and Jane was shaking. He could feel it through her jumpsuit. He consoled himself that even if the worst happened and she went hysterical, or passed out or something, the setup was such that they could tow her back inside using the track and cable system.

Unlike at the glass floor, and unlike nearly everyone else in the group, she was totally silent as she stepped onto the grate that was the floor of the outside platform. He’d thought going behind her made the most sense, so he could steady her if need be, but he saw now that the better choice would have been to go first, so he could watch her face. He was tempted to ask her to turn around so he could see her eyes, but if she was actually okay, in some kind of Zen zone, he didn’t want to puncture it.

She was gripping the cable running up the front of her harness with both hands, but so were most of the people ahead of them. Hell, it had been his first impulse, too, as he stepped out. But he reached for her again, and the moment his hand made contact with her back, she let go of her cable with one hand and wrenched his arm around until she was holding his hand with a pretty damned impressive death grip. Now that they were out on the walkway that circled the tower, they were side by side, so he could see her face. Yep, she was scared shitless.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, looking out over the lake, his own heart pounding. “No glass, no walls, just us and the sky.” As cliché as it sounded, when you were up high like this, it gave you a kind of perspective on life. Let you rise above all the bullshit. Hence his affinity for towers and observation decks.

Jane was taking deep, shaky breaths, but at least she was breathing. After they shuffled partway around the deck, the guide began walking the participants, one by one, through an exercise where they turned their backs to the view and leaned back, putting their bodies at a sixty-degree angle relative to the tower, making them look a little like they were frozen in place while skydiving.

“Jane!” said the guide, a young outdoorsy dude who had somehow managed to learn everyone’s names. “You’re up!”

“You don’t have to do this,” Cam whispered. Indeed, there had been a woman ahead of them who had refused and was currently plastered against the inner wall of the tower hugging herself with her eyes closed. “We’ll consider the dare fulfilled.” Why he added that, he had no idea. Win or lose, she would never know what—or who—he did after they parted ways.

She shook her head as she turned and followed the guide’s instructions to bend her knees and inch backward until her heels came to the edge. When she was crouched in the ready position, she looked up at him and echoed what he’d said to her downstairs.

“Sometimes you have to open your eyes and jump, right?”

And she fell backward and screamed.

God, she was gorgeous. She was laughing even as she screamed, and the super-saturated bright blue of the sky and lake behind her made everything about her pop. Her wide eyes were jades, her hair, much of which had escaped her ponytail and was flapping around in the wind, mahogany fire. How had he ever thought to describe any aspect of her as muddy? She was a goddess, frozen in place as she plummeted to Earth, like the universe had stopped her before she could fall all the way and sully herself by mixing with the mortals below.

“Your turn,” the guide said to Cam.

He followed the guy’s instructions, turned, and fell. It was his turn to laugh-scream. It was the fear of falling, the relief of not falling, the cold silent sky blanketing the city below them. It was Jane, turning her head to look at him with her mouth hanging open as she hooted and grinned. It was all those sensations swirling as if they were being churned together by the wind that whipped around them.

Unlike most of the others, Jane wasn’t holding on to her cable. She had her arms spread wide, like in that stupid Titanic movie. So he mimicked her pose, spreading his arms, too.

Their fingertips brushed. Maybe it was the adrenaline of being out here, but he felt it as a spark, an extra jolt to his already hyper-alert system.

All too soon the guide had them bringing themselves back to standing on the platform.

His hand sought her back again almost of its own accord, though she clearly didn’t need the reassurance anymore.

As if to hammer home the point, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes shining, and said, “That. Was. Awesome.”





Back in the regular old non-outdoor, non-glass-floored observation deck, Jane felt like a rock star. She couldn’t stop exclaiming over the EdgeWalk. Yes, it had been terrifying, but underneath the fear there had also been a whole lot of other stuff. Exhilaration. Wonder at how strange and beautiful the world was from such a radically different vantage point. Then, utter astonishment when she was hit with a revelation that took her breath away: this was how Stephanie, the protagonist of the Clouded Cave series, felt when she first realized the cave was more than a cave.

They were in the Skypod, the tower’s highest observation deck. It was higher than the EdgeWalk level, so when they looked down, they could see another group of people inching their way around the outdoor platform. She studied the commemorative photo they’d given her, of the group extended out over the void. It was hard to believe she had really done that. “You were right,” she said, still buzzing from their adventure. “Sometimes you do have to open your eyes and jump.” She’d been thinking about that phrase. Most people would have said close your eyes and jump. But not Cameron. He did things with his eyes open.