The Immortal Game (book 1) (5 page)

At half span he stopped and turned to her. His eyes were bright. “This is it.”

She felt her heart pulse through her body. She looked around, trying hard not to look down, trying not to see that between the ties was sheer nothing.

“What?”

He let go of her hand and she tottered without him to hold onto. She watched him bend to the defunct railroad tracks and pull out a large black bundle, a duffel bag that had been secured beneath the ties.

He didn’t look at her but began to unpack the bag near her feet. First he took out a metal ring with several large carabiners attached, then a rope as thick as her arm and covered in shiny black material. He held part of the rope up to her. “Ever been?”

She shook her head, still confused. “Ever been what?”

“Good.” He smiled a lopsided, knowing grin. “You’ll never forget your first time.”

She felt her cheeks get warm. “My first what?”

“Your first jump.”

Ruby’s eyes darted around, below Ash, down to the riverbed. “What?” she whispered.

“Your first bungee. You’ll never forget it.” He pulled foot after foot of the black cord from the bag.

“I can’t bungee jump.” Her eyes searched the empty space around them. The cool breeze chilled the sweat gathering on her brow.

He stopped untangling the cord and looked at her again. “Why not?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I’ve never even thought about it.”

“Don’t worry.” He laughed. “You don’t have to think.”

He couldn’t possibly expect her to really jump off a bridge, could he? Wasn’t it what her father always warned her about?
Don’t jump off a bridge because a cute guy tells you to
.

“The first time’s the best.” He stood up and began to untangle the cord he held in his hands. “You’re lucky you live now.”

Her wide eyes met his. “What do you mean?”

He looked down at the rope as he let loop after loop fall below the level of the bridge and hang down into the empty void beneath them. “I mean we’re lucky. That we live now. You know? A hundred years ago there was no such thing as bungee jumping.”

He secured the other end of the cord to the railroad tracks with metal carabiners and locked them in place by spinning a case up around their openings. He stood. “You’re first,” he said.

She swallowed. Her mind raced. She looked down into the gorge. The river below was a thin line of green and white water. “Is it safe?” she asked, breathless.

“Usually,” he said.

Her face fell and she looked into his eyes. He wasn’t going to lie to her now. He wasn’t going to tell her it was safe when maybe it wasn’t.

“I’ll go first if you want,” he said.

She felt like her heart might burst with fear and excitement.
Why do such a thing?
a voice said in her head.
You could be killed.

Or maybe I’ll live
, she countered.

She shook her head and chased the voices away. Ash’s words came back to her:
All you have is right now. This minute.
The words filled her with certainty.

“No …” She looked down into the gorge. Her eyes snapped back up. She took a breath, though she doubted any oxygen was getting to her brain. “I’ll go first.”

He nodded.

Her heart pounded loud in her ears.

Ash bent back to his bag and pulled out a set of red straps connected together. He untangled them, adjusted the buckles, and bent down to her feet. “Here, step into the harness.”

She hesitated and looked down at him, trying to focus on him, and not the abyss beyond. She shook her head. “I’m not very brave.”

He sat on his heels and looked up at her. “It’s okay to be afraid, but you can’t let fear stop you.”

Her legs shook as she stepped into the harness. He pulled the straps up along her calves and thighs and sent chills over her already tingling body.

He stood up close to her. When the metal buckle was just above her hips he cinched it tight and pulled her close to him. She looked up into his glowing, smiling face, only inches from her own. He paused. She thought he might kiss her. She wanted him to. But he only looked back to the harness and finished adjusting the straps.

Her disappointment was soon replaced by raging nerves as he bent to attach the black bungee cord through yet another strap, with more carabiners, around her ankles.

“Okay.” He stood and looked at her. “You’re ready.”

She bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. Her heart pounded as she turned toward the edge, determined to not look down. He was behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck, raising goose bumps.

He breathed out a single word. “Jump.”

And she did.

The free fall was terror, exhilaration, and freedom, all at once. The boulders at the bottom of the gorge rushed up at her. The mountain before her was unchanging as she accelerated down and down at breakneck speed. Her thudding heart felt like it would break free from her body with each beat.

It went on until she was sure that the bungee had snapped and that she was plummeting to her death. But when the stretchy cord caught, it threw her back up into space. At the top she felt her body pause, floating, for a split second, and then free falling once more.

Each bounce was a little shorter than the last until finally they were just little rebounds and she was hanging upside down by her feet with the white-water spray reaching up to splash her from below. It was then that she heard herself screaming, loud, above the sound of the rushing water beneath her.

She heard Ash too, distant, from the railroad bridge so far above. “Whoo!”

Her screams turned into frenzied laughter. She tried to do a sit-up to look at Ash, but he was busying himself with something on the tracks. She couldn’t hold the position.

She relaxed and looked at the banks of the river from her upside-down vantage point. Fear, or adrenaline, or both, had sharpened her senses. She could see every needle on every pine tree, every drop of water coming up off the river. She smelled the pine, not just the needles, not just that Christmasy smell, but the trees themselves, the bark, the xylem, the phloem, the earth itself.

Each hair on her skin stood on end, stiff in the breeze that skimmed her body. A slight metallic taste had replaced the moisture in her mouth.

A rope slid past her. “Grab it,” Ash yelled down to her, “I’ll pull you up.” She reached for the nylon rope, solid, not stretchy, and soon she was upright again. Ash pulled her with a strong steady rhythm.

“Incredible!” She beamed as he pulled her over the side of the bridge and back onto the railroad tracks, which now felt as steady and stable as any flat ground.

He smiled at her, his eyes a luminescent blue. She stared back, wanting to kiss him more now than she had before. He pointed to her hips, and she felt her already flushed face become hot. Then she realized that he was waiting for her to take the harness off so he could have a turn.

He deftly adjusted the harness and the bungee to his size and weight. He winked at her and turned to the abyss. There was no scream from him, only the sound of a single breath leaving his lungs as he pushed off into nothing.

He fell gracefully away from her and then flew back up on his own rebounds. She remembered that feeling in the core of her being. Terror and joy and relief. Relief that it wasn’t the day she would die.

She smiled and screamed for him.

…

The thin fabric of Ruby’s curtains did little to keep out the bright morning sunshine. She pulled her pillow over her head and then pushed it away again, caught in a half-conscious battle between wanting darkness and needing oxygen.

She thought of the day before, bungee jumping, and grinned into her pillow. She tried to picture Ash and found it almost too easy. Too easy to see the exact way sunlight lit up the crest of his dark curls, too easy to see how his bright eyes stood out against the backdrop of the blue sky, too easy to see how his red lips flattened into a wide smile.

She thought of the sensation of his hand on hers, the way the conversation flowed, and the disappointment of watching him walk away from her in the muted twilight when he suggested they go to Athenaeum and she said that she needed to study—really, this time.

Then a dark, half-remembered dream floated into her thoughts. Someone warning her away from something. Something she wanted. Something she
needed
. She winced and tried to think of Ash again, hoping to regain the feel of him. Instead doubt crowded in and blotted out everything else.

What is he doing even talking to me?

She thought of the women who swarmed around him at Athenaeum, hoping he would notice them, though he never seemed to.
What is he playing at?

Her hold on the blankets slackened. She hadn’t made it to the study group and she had found it nearly impossible to concentrate on chemistry after a day of bungee jumping.

She
had
to do well on the test.

Her eyes flew open. She glanced to the alarm clock, suspiciously silent in the bright morning light. Seven-fifty! She hadn’t set it? A flash of a memory shot through her: brushing her teeth, getting ready for bed, and thinking of
him.

Dr. Reed did not admit latecomers to exams.

“
Stupid!” She said to no one. She glanced at the pictures of her mother and her father on her nightstand. Their chance to make a difference in the world was gone. Ruby couldn’t throw hers away. She gave her muddled head a quick shake. She looked at the clock again: seven-fifty-one. Nine minutes.

She threw off the covers and grabbed a pair of crumpled jeans from the lavender-colored carpet. She pulled the jeans up over the boy shorts she had slept in, grabbed a shirt from one of the many piles, and sniffed at the green fabric—clean enough. She pulled it on over the cami-tank she was already wearing as she ran down the stairs.

Her messenger bag sat by the door, still fully packed, evidence of her neglect. She grabbed it and looked at her bike, but ran out the front door instead.

The sidewalk near campus was nearly empty, allowing her the room she needed to run and reminding her of how late she truly was. As she approached Hawthorne she paused. In one direction was campus, the test, her future. In the other was Athenaeum. She wanted a coffee, an Ambrosia Bar, and…

She shook her head and ran on.

She sprinted across campus and saw the last stragglers arrive in the science quad. Once the door to Dr. Reed’s classroom closed that would be it. She would get a zero on the exam. She could not recover from that.

The thought propelled her even faster. She ran into the large glass entranceway of Mendeleev Hall and down the long corridor. She got a whiff of the microbiology lab and caught a glimpse of a tartan jacket sleeve as it pulled the door to the chemistry lecture hall closed.

“Wait!” she shouted.

Luckily, thankfully, blessedly, he did. She ran into the room, out of breath, and took the heavy test packet from him as she passed. She sat in the first open seat she came to, half-blind with adrenaline.

She placed the exam facedown and waited for the signal to begin. Someone a few seats over leaned in close to her. She glanced up and saw that it was Mark. He had a look on his face that was somewhere between relief and bewilderment.

“Where were you yesterday?” he whispered.

“Uh …” she huffed, still out of breath. “Sorry … There were road blocks and … I ran into a friend.” She busied herself with taking pencils out of her bag. “I hope you guys didn’t wait for me.”

“You should have been there. Sarah had a bunch of old
tests
.” Mark said the last word with the same inflection a prospector would have when finally striking gold. “Even last year’s.”

“The questions will be different,” she shot back, hoping it wasn’t as big a deal as he was making it out to be.

“No. But the same ideas.” He still leaned toward her, but his eyes were on Dr. Reed, who now stood at the podium in the front of the room.

Ruby closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. She would fail. She would fail this test because—

“Begin,” Dr. Reed interrupted her self-castigations.

The sound of a hundred test packets being turned over filled the room. Ruby blinked and turned hers over just a beat behind everyone else.

She read the first question: “Draw all isomers of 1,2-dichlorocyclobutane.”

She couldn’t think. She didn’t know where to begin. Her heart was still pumping hard from running.

She glanced over to Mark, who was writing furiously, already moving on to the second question. She squeezed her hand painfully around her pencil and tried to dissect the complicated chemical name down into its more manageable parts. She tried to picture the molecule in her mind.

Instead she saw Ash.

At first she pushed his image away, more frustrated than ever, but she found that if she concentrated she could feel the sensation of touching him.

Her muscles relaxed.

Her breathing slowed.

Her heart became steady.

She put her pencil to the paper.

FIVE

Ruby walked down the sidewalk in a daze, distracted by the exam she had just taken, distracted by the thought that—maybe—she had done well. She remembered how easily Ash had come to her mind during the test and how calm and focused she felt. The questions seemed obvious after that and their answers easy. She wanted to celebrate, but she kept her emotions in check. She couldn’t assume anything.

Ash was more and more of an enigma to her. She still had all those unanswered questions about his healed injuries and the Battle of Hastings, though his knowledge of the battle no longer seemed so odd. Of course he could have learned about it in books.

She knew she should ride the wave of clarity and go home to study for other classes but her feet headed toward Athenaeum instead.

When she walked in she only glanced in the direction of the chess table. Ash was there, playing a pretty blond with legs long enough to match his. He might have looked up, but she pretended not to notice. She didn’t want him to think she made too much of the afternoon they had spent together.