The Safest Lies (3 page)

I did as he said with as little movement as possible. The strap connected in front, and there was a small metal clip where it latched. “Okay,” he said. “Here we go.” He handed me a rope with another clip attached. “Connect this.”

I did.

I saw the blade of the knife just beside my shoulder. “Okay, I’m going to cut you out, but you’re attached to me now, and I’m attached to the guardrail above, so even if you’re hanging, you’ll be okay. But we need to
move.
”

The car lurched, and I screamed. I had a feeling if the car fell now, I would
not
be okay. And neither would Ryan. Something about the force of the car being greater than the force of the rope holding us up. There was surely some math involved that he didn’t understand.

“Let’s go!” A voice of authority from outside. Older. Capable. “Out, now!”

Ryan wrapped a hand around my arm and used his other arm to slice through the fabric of the seat belt. I swung toward the middle of the seats, twisting around to face Ryan as the belt released. We were connected by a short distance of rope, clipped to the front of both of our harnesses. His hands gripped the slack between us.

“See?” he said. I swayed gently back and forth, reaching for his shoulder as he started to say something else.

Then there was a slow crunch from somewhere underneath us, and a long creak as the car tilted forward, and I saw it in Ryan’s eyes just as my hand connected with his shoulder.

A quick snap that I heard at the same time I felt the tension of the rope above us release. I fell back, losing my grip on Ryan. He reached for me, but it was pointless. We were cut loose from the guardrail.

We were
falling.

I
frantically reached for nothing, for
anything.
My fingers clawed at the fabric of the air bag as I hurtled through the open windshield—but I was still falling, my arms and legs skimming metal, a bruising pain as my elbows hooked into a groove. My body came abruptly to a stop, my legs dangling below, the chilled night air empty and endless all around me.

One second of relief, half a breath, and then I saw a body sailing by in a blur, fingers grasping for anything, nails and skin scraping on metal and
me,
and the impossible pressure on my hips as his weight tugged the rope connecting us, the added pressure making my elbows dislodge from their hold.

My eyes widened, and I slammed my hands down as I slid. My fingers desperately searching for a hold—and finally locking into the groove of the windshield once more.

Part of my weight was still on the hood of the car—but my legs dangled over, along with Ryan.

Don’t look.
Heights had, surprisingly, never been a fear of mine. Dying, on the other hand…I stared up at my hands instead. My fingers, the grip of my knuckles, were the only thing keeping us from going over.

Ryan kept jerking the rope, swinging back and forth, and I felt the metal cutting into my fingers, my grip slipping. “Stop moving! Ryan! Don’t move!” I yelled.

He stilled, and I tried to slow my breathing. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the muscles in my hands, my arms, my shoulders.

List the things I am not. Go:
I’m not falling yet; I’m not dead yet.

I risked a look to the side, noticed a wheel well to my left, and strained my leg toward it, until I could place some of my weight on the tire. I hooked my foot around it for leverage, dragging myself closer until my other leg could reach. With our weight supported, I started to move, sliding my fingers along the edge of the empty windshield, until both feet were firmly on the tire, though the harness on my waist, and Ryan’s weight below, made every movement painful and strained. I wedged my elbows back into the groove of the windshield. “Okay,” I called. “Can you make it?”

He didn’t speak, but I felt the tug of the rope, over and over, as he must’ve been pulling himself up, hand over hand, until he could use the car for leverage. Finally he stood on the wheel, an arm around my back, one side of his face resting on the hood of the car and the other turned toward me. His breathing was labored and his eyes were wide, and we stared at each other in silence until the voice of another fireman cut through the night. “Baker! You guys okay, man?”

“Okay!” he called back.

They lowered another line down the outside of the car, which Ryan then hooked into his harness again. He wrapped both arms around me, and I did the same to him, and he called, “All set!”

I felt his muscles trembling from his shoulders down to his fingers. His eyes never left mine as they pulled us up to safety.

—

Ryan was shaking even worse than I was. Another firefighter clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice work, kid. Take a breather.”

“Kelsey,” Ryan said, “you can let go now.”

I had my arms hooked around his shoulders, my body pressed tight to his own, even as I felt the ground solid and stable beneath us.

“Right, okay,” I said. His eyes were gray and staring directly into mine as I backed away. He was dressed like the rest of his team—oversized pants and a blue T-shirt under suspenders. But surrounded by the rest of them now, he looked younger, as if he were playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes, and I felt the urge to smooth the messy brown hair back from his forehead.

“Hey, we’re not dead,” I said, which was by far the stupidest thing I could’ve said out loud.

The side of his mouth tipped up, and then his whole face broke into a smile. “No, we’re not,” he said.

“Come on.” A woman in uniform gestured to the ambulance. “Let’s get you checked out.”

I scanned the surroundings—the cars stopped on both sides, people with their phones out, police keeping everyone back. “Where’s the other car?” I asked. “Is everyone okay?”

She tilted her head, a hand on my back, pushing me along. “There’s no other car,” she said.

The heat kicked in, a flash of headlights, and I cut the wheel—

“No, there was,” I said.

She stopped for a moment, peering closely into each of my eyes, leaning so close I could see myself reflected in her pupils. “There isn’t,” she said.

“Are you
sure
?” I thought of the high mountain walls, the steep drop-off of the cliffs.

“We’re sure,” she said.

As I walked away, I heard the second firefighter ask Ryan, “You know that girl?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s in my math class.”

—

Okay, so.

Before Ryan Baker was Ryan from my math class, he was the guy I worked with at the Lodge during the summer, where we’d trade off manning the register or checking people in or running equipment back and forth. We had developed a code—a tap on the shoulder to switch jobs, a wave goodbye, turning around simultaneously to stifle the laughter over the guy in ski pants in July. And a routine when our boss left—Ryan would sit on the counter and talk and ask me questions and laugh, and it was my favorite thing of the summer, the thing I looked forward to every day on the way to work.

And then at the end of the summer, on our last day, he’d said, “Hey, do you want to do something sometime?”

Yes,
I thought. “Yes,” I said.

“Okay.” His face broke into a smile, and I heard someone whistle. Leo and AJ and Mark were nearby, clustered near the front door.

And I wasn’t sure what I’d just agreed to, so I said, “Wait. What does that mean?”

And then Ryan looked over his shoulder, where we could both see his friends waiting for him, and said, “What do you want it to mean?”

“Is this a trick question?”

It felt like a trick question.

“No. Uh.” Leo said something indecipherable behind him. “Look,” Ryan said, his face unreadable. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Oh. Okay.”

And just like that, he left. No exchange of numbers, no plans for later. And when school started up the next week and I found myself assigned to the seat beside him in math, both of us just pretended it hadn’t happened.

There were probably some social cues I wasn’t aware of, some high school mating-ritual dance I’d never learned—or maybe
do something sometime
meant
meet me in the back closet after work.

I bet he had not expected
do something sometime
would mean rappelling into my dangling car and cutting me out of my seat belt, then hanging from a harness attached to my waist instead of falling to his death.

Hey, remember that time we did something? Good times.

“I just want to go home. I need to see my mom,” I told the woman looking me over. She didn’t look much older than me, to be honest. God, where were the adults in charge?

“You were unconscious, Kelsey. We need to check that out at the hospital. Your mom can meet us there.”

“No, she can’t.” She
couldn’t.
“I need to call her. I need my phone.”

The lights were too bright from all the cars on the road, headlights shining directly at us, and I squinted, feeling a headache brewing.

Ryan weaved through the cluster of cars and emergency vehicles haphazardly parked around the site, holding his arm limply in front of him, apparently also needing to get checked out in the ambulance. He paused, handed me his phone with his good arm. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t think yours made it.” I took it from his outstretched hand and dialed home while he shifted foot to foot, pretending not to pay attention. I had to try twice before I got the right numbers with the tremble in my hands, which I’m sure he noticed.

It rang four times, like I knew it would, before the automated voice of the answering machine instructed me in a robotic tone to
please leave a message.

I lowered my voice. “Mom, it’s just me. Pick up.”

“Kelsey?” I could hear her brain working overtime:
Daughter calls from phone that’s not hers. Where’s the danger?

“Hey, I’m okay, but I had a car accident, I’m so sorry, but they’re making me go to the hospital to be sure. But I’m totally fine, I promise.”

She sucked in a breath. “I’ll call Jan.”

“No,” I said. “I’m really fine. I just need a ride home. I’ll call the car service when I’m ready. Oh, and I think I lost my phone.”

I heard her exhale slowly, could picture her closing her eyes, doing that breathing thing, picturing me alive, and safe, and home. “You’re fine,” she said. “And you’re with the doctors. And you’ll be home soon.” The good before the bad.

“Sorry about the car.”

“It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re not talking about the car again.” A pause. “But I think I have to call Jan.”

I handed Ryan back his phone, and the too-young-to-be-in-charge medic ushered me into the back of the ambulance.

“Hey, hold on,” Ryan said.

I held on. My grip on the door handle, my feet on the metal loading dock, so I towered over him. He looked like he had a thousand things he wanted to say to me. I had things I wanted to say to him, too. But where to start? Where to even start?

“You need a ride home from the hospital?”

“I can call someone.” The car service was one of the first numbers I’d memorized when I was younger.

“I’ll be there anyway. So.”

So. Communication: not our strength.

“Okay. If I see you there…”

He nodded. “I’ll find you when I’m done.”

As the ambulance drove off, I saw him through the back windows, talking to the other firefighters. But the image that stuck in my head was his face, the moment I’d reached for him. The moment he knew we were going to fall.

Don’t be afraid,
he’d said in a whisper, before he knew I was alive, or conscious.

You’re okay,
he’d said, before he knew whether that was true.

I’d clung to those words, made them into something I could believe in. But in hindsight, I wondered if maybe he’d only been talking to himself.

T
he emergency room of Covington City Hospital had pictures of Vermont’s Green Mountains on the walls—which I guess were supposed to be comforting. If only I hadn’t just plummeted off the edge of those same mountains. And the landscapes were interspersed with health notices to
Please Wear a Mask
if you were feeling ill.