The Safest Lies Read online

  A minute. The air bags were in my face, and I felt the first pinprick of panic—that I would suffocate here, or that the car would explode between this moment and the next. I grasped for the reassurance of Ryan’s words—you’re okay—but it was too late. The thought had already planted itself in my head. An explosion. A fire. All the ways I could die, flipping through my mind in rapid succession.

  “Cut me out now.”

  “No, that’s not a good idea.”

  Illogical fears, that’s what my mother’s therapist, Jan, would say. Not something that would actually happen. Remember the difference. I could move the air bags aside and I’d be fine. Ryan from my math class would cut my seat belt and I’d be out, and then I’d find my phone and call my mother and she’d list off the things that were okay before she got to the fact that I’d ruined the car.

  I pressed down on the inflated air bags, pushing them lower, away from my face, to prove it to myself.

  “Wait, Kelsey. Don’t.”

  But his words were too late—I’d already gotten a glimpse of precisely what he didn’t want me seeing, and all the air drained from my body.

  There was absolutely nothing fine about it.

  The windshield was gone. And there was nothing below me. No pavement, no rocks, no grass or tilted view down the road. There was nothing. I was hanging toward air. Air and distant rock and fog—

  “Oh my God,” I said. And suddenly, I was perfectly, completely oriented.

  Behind me were rocks. To my side, I could just make out the rough thick bark of a branch. There was a leaf resting on the air bag, the tips browned and starting to curl with the changing weather. I heard something creak.

  “Are we over the cliff? We are, aren’t we? We’re in a tree over the goddamn cliff!” My shaking hands fumbled for the buckle as the pinpoint of panic crossed over into full-out hyperventilation.

  “I told you not to panic!”

  “Get me out!”

  His hands gripped my arms from behind. He was pressed up against the seat, and I heard his voice through the fabric in a low plea. “Please stop moving. Please. Do not do anything to move the car.”

  And if I wasn’t panicking before—I certainly was now.

  I let the hair fall over my face again, and I closed my eyes, and I gritted my teeth, and I tried to think of anything, anything, other than the fact that I was hanging, suspended from a branch, over the edge of a cliff.

  Jan would call this a legitimate fear. Not like a meteor crashing into our house, or getting trapped inside the freezer in the basement, or being forced to talk to Cole—all of which were so unlikely as to never happen, and were therefore irrational. But this, this was a legitimate fear: a thing that might happen. I was hanging upside down from a car stuck in the branches of a tree hanging over the edge of a cliff. The only thing holding me in was the thin strip of cloth from a seat belt.

  “How do I get out?” I shouted over the whirring behind us. “How the hell am I getting out of here?”

  “They’re cutting out the back windshield. Then I’ll cut the seat belt and take you with me. I have a harness.”

  A harness. Oh God, we needed a harness.

  “It’s just you?” I asked.

  “It’s the safest plan,” he mumbled.

  Ryan from my math class was possibly the last person in the world I’d want in charge of this plan. Ryan Baker, who could not remember the difference between sine and cosine. Who tattooed meaningless, intricate patterns on the inside of his forearm with pen instead of taking notes each class. My future was in the hands of someone who didn’t understand basic trigonometry. What if he got the angle wrong? Misjudged the timing? How could I trust someone who didn’t understand the geometry of a right triangle?

  This seat belt was strapped across my chest at a right angle. The branches and the car and the cliff—all angles. This was a goddamn real-world application.

  Fear: I might die today. I might die a minute from now.

  Worse: if I moved, I’d also potentially kill Ryan Baker.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m a volunteer firefighter.”

  “I want a real one,” I said, my voice high and tight.

  “I am a real one.”

  “A different one!”

  “Trust me, I would not object. But I’m the lightest one. Least chance of making the car fall out of the tree.”

  And there it was: the car could fall. They knew it, too. They had to make a plan for it. Falling, dying, was a real thing that could really happen, right now.

  “You’re not even that light,” I said. He was decidedly taller than me, broad-shouldered, more lean-muscled than bulky—but definitely not light. I felt tears forming at the corners of my eyes, and I tried to pray. Please please please. But the branch still creaked below us.

  “We’re going to be fine,” he said. But he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, too.

  I settled on the deep breathing that Jan taught my mom, and my mom taught me.

  The car lurched, and I braced my hands on the steering wheel, my stomach settling as the car stilled, and then lurching again as it tilted, dangling precipitously.

  I heard Ryan’s breath catch through the fabric of the seat.

  “I think maybe this would be a good time to quit,” I said.

  If he responded, I couldn’t tell, because the saw or whatever they were using was cutting through the panel, and the contact of machine on metal shook my insides, vibrated my back molars. Ryan grabbed my arms—either to comfort me or to keep me still, I wasn’t sure.

  I’m not paralyzed; I’m not unconscious; I’m not bleeding out; I’m not drowning.

  And then the noise stopped, and Ryan’s arm draped over my shoulder, holding out a belt with a clip. “Put this around your waist. Carefully.” Our hands were both shaking, and I laughed as I grabbed the strap, bordering on delirium. Everything about this moment was ridiculous: from Ryan to the strap that would supposedly save me to the goddamn leaf curling on the air bag, parts of it still soft and green—like it didn’t realize it was already dead.

  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’r
e 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.

  The 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.