“Do you remember the night on the line before we fled from my friends? How you ran to me?” he calls out.
I nod. Something is wrong. Maybe there is someone on the plateau.
“Come on!” He waves me over, standing so calmly yet still as white as a sheet on the line that I can hardly breathe.
“Come on, Tucks, come on. Everything is okay.”
Why is he talking to me like I’m an injured wild animal? I take a tentative small step and then another. He smiles, but his eyes are full of fear. Only now do I realize that he’s standing very close to the edge. Did he run backward?
“Do you remember how to catch the line if you fall?”
“Yes,” I whisper tonelessly, nodding slightly.
“Good!” He balances for both of us, holding the line steady. My knees are soft as butter. I’m dying. I’m falling. I can’t hold on. Panic rises in me, and everything blurs.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“Tucks, breathe! Please! Please concentrate!”
However, I can’t. For seconds, I forget what’s up and what’s down, left and right.
“Don’t stop! Keep moving! Don’t stop!”
I don’t even know if I’m moving anymore. All I can feel is the racing pulse in my ears and the pounding of my heart. Scarlet panic flutters before my eyes like the wind.
“Come on. Yes. That’s good.”
And then, somehow, somewhere, I feel a hand grabbing mine. We’re almost at the end of the slackline, near the edge in front of Lost Arrow Spire.
“Tucks, I’m with you. Everything’s fine.”
I take a deep breath as if I haven’t breathed in a decade. Only now do I see that River is standing on the mesh of bands. He has much more support than I do.
“You’re crazy. Completely crazy!” The fear in his eyes turns to anger. Nevertheless, he leans forward and kisses me. The touch is so familiar and what I have longed for, that I want to cry. In this moment, despite his anger, he is River again—my River, who taught me how to build a bridge from my silence out into the world, no one else. I love him so greatly that it hurts me so much that I want to die when he does.
“Your leash... you didn’t tie the knots properly again. It wouldn’t have held you,” he says now.
As if numb, I stare at my safety line and let River untie the first figure eight.
“You shouldn’t have come.” His rough voice trembles. The crane and the swan dance on my wrists. Am I shaking so much, or is it the wind? For a moment, he stares down. “I’m sorry, Kentucky, but I have to go through this alone.” Suddenly, he looks so infinitely lost, as lost as I felt at the beginning of the summer.
“You don’t have to go through anything,” I reply firmly, even though the depths beneath me are still so threatening.
“You promised that I could count on you when the time came.” He swallows and pauses for a moment. “I never meant that you should jump with me, just that you wouldn’t stop me when the time came. Although, it would be more appealing together.” He looks at me meaningfully. “Do you remember what I told you about Tolstoy?”
It’s easier to die together. I nod almost imperceptibly. “I’m so sorry, Tucks,” River murmurs. He pulls the leash out of my safety belt so that I’m suddenly completely unsecured. A new, terrible fear grips me—a fear that I don’t even want to finish thinking about. “What are you doing?” I whisper, horrified. The wind is suddenly so cold. On my legs, on my arms, everywhere.
“Breathe into your stomach. We’re going to do something that will make it easier for you.”
Make what easier?
He leans toward me and kisses me tenderly, with just as much suppressed desire as when he kissed me on the bank when I was still mute. I can’t move anymore. If he wanted to, he could take me with him now, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Blurry images of the fall swirl through my mind. Paralyzed, I wait for the moment he yanks me to the side and we fall, clinging to each other, but nothing happens.
Except that kiss.
And with the kiss, a longing awakens that rises like fire from within me, a longing for so much more. For River, for our love. For moonlit nights on the blue-green river, fluttering white swans, black ash on Craters of the Moon, chaos in the supermarket, baking brownies with Arizona, and watching green industrial lights at the oil refinery with James. For a real hug from Dad. For life.
We are not safe. We could die. Here and now. In this second. Yet we’re kissing. Up here, unsecured on a highline a thousand feet up, and for the first time, I truly understand the meaning of life. How few things there really are that I have to be afraid of—except dying. Except losing someone I love.
