Green Mountain Academy, page 9
Some rescuer I was. I’d wanted to save people, but I’d made every mistake in the book and now I was trapped.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” I shouted.
Instead of scared, I felt embarrassed. Ridiculous to be embarrassed at a time like this, but I could picture the real rescuers, trained search and rescue people, probably four or five of them at least, with their gear and their dogs coming through the woods, shining their headlamps down on me, reassuring me with soft words and little jokes.
Suddenly, a light did appear at the hole overhead and a voice said, “Franny?”
I was so startled, I couldn’t answer at first.
“Franny, is that you?”
It was a soft singsong voice. There was something familiar about it.
“Yes, yes it’s me. I’m here. I fell down this hole. Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better, to be honest. I think my arm is broken. I can see you now. You gave me a real scare. I thought you were a ghost. And then you disappeared on me.”
“This whole area is full of caves made by the rocks. You have to be really careful walking and I—well, I wasn’t careful enough.”
“You left your flashlight for me anyway. That was nice of you!”
I laughed in spite of the situation I was in.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I saw a glow. Believe me, it took all the guts I had to go toward it. I didn’t know what it was! Am I glad to see you, Franny.”
I didn’t correct her. I liked that she called me Franny.
“Who were you calling? Who was in the plane with you?”
“I was calling my brother, John-Lee. I don’t know where he is. My seat got thrown out of the plane when we crashed and ended up right-side-up in a tree. Still in my seatbelt, if you can believe it! I’m a little sore and I’ll have some nasty bruises, but I think they’re mostly from trying to get down out of the tree. I fell partway. I took one pretty bad tumble back there on the rocks, too. My tailbone feels like I’ve been on one epic bike trip…”
John-Lee. Something was adding up in my mind.
“Are you—what’s your name?” I called up to her.
“I’m Diamond.”
“Diamond Lee?”
“Yes, Diamond Lee.”
“I…wow! I—”
“Now this is no time to get tongue-tied, Franny. We’ve got a problem to solve. We’ve got to get you out of this hole. Then you can explain how you came to be wandering in this godforsaken place in the middle of the night in the middle of a snowstorm.”
She was right. But Diamond Lee! The other girls would be amazed. Diamond Lee’s plane had crashed in the woods behind our school and I’d found her.
“‘Catch Me’ is our song to do indoor chores by,” I shouted up to her.
She laughed a little. “You can tell me about it when we get you out of there. How are we going to do that?”
I realized what I’d said probably made little sense to her. She didn’t know who or what I was talking about. And it made me sound like a kid. I needed to focus. Forget the fact that I’d come across the crashed plane of one of the biggest singers of the twenty-first century. I was supposed to be the rescuer here. I needed to act like one.
The rope Danny and I used to lower ourselves into the caves was somewhere under the snow out there, wrapped in a garbage bag. I didn’t want to send Diamond off hunting for it, since even I didn’t know how close we were to it. Besides, even if she did find it, which was highly unlikely, I had no idea if she knew how to tie the proper knot. No, I needed to find a safer way out.
My pine cone candle was sputtering out. I had another, but it wouldn’t burn long and we’d need it to get a fire going. Also, I couldn’t hold it to move around the cave.
“I need a light so I can check out this cave. There might be a way out.”
“Do you have a light?”
“I’m going to need the one you’re holding.”
“Okay, Franny. I’m going to try to drop it down to you without breaking it. Franny?”
“Yeah?”
“Catch it!” she sang.
I watched as she put her arm through the hole as far as she could get it, up to her shoulder. Reaching up with both hands, I could almost touch it.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“You’re ready?”
“Yes.”
She let it go and I caught it.
“Good job,” she said. “Now I’ll just wait here. In the dark. And the cold. It’s very cold.”
“Try to keep moving,” I called. “But carefully.”
“Okay, Franny. I’m counting on you.”
With the light I could see that the cave was only about ten feet deep. And it was narrow, like a hallway. I moved to one end of it, but it was completely closed off by another huge boulder. I made my way along the side and found where two boulders joined. There was a very small opening, only about two feet wide by maybe a foot high. It would be tight to get through it, and where would it lead to?
I clambered up the rock and shone the flashlight through the hole. On the other side was another cave, larger than this one. I could see an opening to the outside; snow sifted through it, caught in the beam of my light. For a moment I thought how beautiful it looked. To get to that exit though, I’d have to scale a fairly steep rockface. I stuck my head and shoulders farther through the hole to get a better look.
It looked doable, as Danny would say. Except near the top where the rock bulged out. I had an inkling, and then it dawned on me. This was my cave and my rockface—the one I had tried and failed to climb so many times.
I scrambled back down and hurried to where Diamond was waiting.
“Diamond!” I called. (I couldn’t believe I was calling Diamond by her first name. Should I call her Ms. Lee?) I called her again. And again. There was no answer. I shone the light on the hole. She wasn’t there.
chapter twelve
This was not good. This was bad. In every possible way, it was bad. She had sounded suddenly tired, I thought, when she said she’d wait for me. Tired and cold. She’d said she was cold. Signs of shock, and why wouldn’t she be in shock? She’d fallen out of an airplane and landed right-side-up in a tree. She’d come across a ghost-girl in the snowy forest. I’d been surprised she had seemed so calm in the first place.
I needed to get out of the cave and I needed to find her. People die of shock. I had come this far and I couldn’t let her down. In my brain, I felt determined. But deep in my gut, doubt scrabbled like a mouse looking for a toehold. I had failed at this repeatedly. But I couldn’t fail this time.
I called Diamond one more time. When all that came back was the whine of the wind and the shush of sifting snow, I took my pack and went back to the cramped gap in the side of the cave.
I wouldn’t be able to crawl through with my pack on my back. The gap was too small. I could shove the pack through first, but what if I couldn’t fit through after it? Then I’d have lost the pack on top of my other problems. But I couldn’t go without it either. Carefully, I twisted my body to get my head through. I had to twist some more to get my shoulders through. This would be tricky, but for once, being eighty-five pounds soaking wet was an advantage.
I reversed back out of the hole and made my decision. Matches and knife were in my pocket. Those were the absolute essentials. I took the compass and stuck it in my pocket, too. That was it. If I lost everything else, I’d just have to manage. I shoved the pack through, holding onto it for just a few seconds as doubt rose. Then I let it go. It dropped into the dark of the cave and I heard it land.
Suddenly my legs and arms felt like jelly. I had to do this. I had to get it right the first time. I jammed the flashlight into my pocket too and zipped it closed. Then I closed my eyes and took five deep breaths in and out to calm myself. A vision of Danny’s hand came into my mind, reaching down to pull me through the hole.
“Thanks, Dan,” I said out loud. And I felt a little steadier.
Once again, I twisted my head and shoulders this way, then that way, and wriggled through the gap as far as my waist. There was nothing to hold onto. I had to let my body drop forward and down to drape over the boulder. That meant my head pointed down to the ground where my pack had dropped. I couldn’t see how far that was, and I couldn’t get my flashlight out to check.
Feet-first was an option, but I’d be even blinder that way. No, I’d just have to hang on as long as I could with my feet and hope it wasn’t too far to the ground. I slithered forward a couple more inches. Again, doubt stopped me. How did I know it wasn’t a ten-foot drop? How did I know I wouldn’t be landing headfirst on a rock?
I should have checked that carefully with my light before I committed to this, but I’d been in a hurry. Besides, I knew that cave pretty well, I thought. It was long and loaf-shaped inside. No, I had never noticed this gap, but I knew that both ends of the cave were low. There would not be a ten-foot drop. I was almost sure of it.
I shoved my body through another inch. Stopped. My hands clung to the cold rock. Another inch and that was the point of no return. My hands scraped the rock, I tried to tuck my head, my hips tumbled forward.
My landing was surprisingly soft. I sat up and fished out my flashlight. My hands had probably been only about six inches from the ground when I fell. Lucky. But there could be no more luck saving me from my decisions. I had to know the facts and act on them. No real rescuer crosses her fingers and hopes for the best.
I carried my pack to the middle of the cave where the snow poured in like flour into a bowl. Shining the light, I listened, hoping to hear Diamond’s voice calling me. There was a sound: a spooky, ghostlike moaning. But that was only the wind rushing and echoing through the caves. Wasn’t it? I remembered what Danny had said about the sasquatch noises.
Fear, like a creek in spring flood, suddenly poured through my veins full force. I had to get out of here. I was the one who needed rescuing now. Yes, I’d ended up in this predicament because of my own bad choices, but I’d almost succeeded. I’d been right about the plane and where it would be. If only Danny would realize where I was. If only she’d wake up and notice me missing.
But Danny had a trait I knew well from sharing a room with her. She slept like a log. No. She slept like the dead. Ravens outside our window, crashing thunderstorms, even an alarm clock wouldn’t budge her. Nights when I woke to the lonely cries of coyotes in the hills, I wished she’d be awake too, so that my thoughts wouldn’t go again and again to Dad, in my mind still walking through the dripping rain in the Oregon woods. I would help him set up the tent and I would get a fire going with one match. I’d wrap a sleeping bag around his shivering body and bring him a steaming cup of hot chocolate, just like he’d promised to bring me that misty morning when he set out to find help. Sometimes I whispered in the dark to try and wake Danny or even spoke her name in a soft shout. But unless I actually got up and shook her by the shoulder, she wouldn’t stir.
I had two difficulties, besides the obvious one of scaling a rockface I’d failed at repeatedly. I shook my head. That was a story I had to stop telling myself. I could look at it a different way—that I had learned something. I was getting better at it. And that was true. I’d almost made it last time Danny and I were here. My problem was finding another handhold on the bulge of the rock so that I could get my left leg up.
Playing the light over the rock, I studied it. The usual trickle of water over its face had frozen in a sheen of ice. Holding onto anything was going to be hard. Then I saw it. It was so simple, I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it before. What I needed to do was to get both feet on the same toehold. That would allow me to get just that tiny bit higher so I could get both hands on the bulge of the rock. Then my right foot would go where my right hand had been and I’d be home free. At least in theory. It would be a big stretch.
And I still had the two difficulties I’d started to think about: my backpack and my feet. Or more precisely, the fact that I had someone else’s too-big shoe on one foot and a clunky boot on the other. There was no way I could climb in either of those. Especially if I needed to get both feet on the tiny foothold. But climbing barefoot on icy rock would be painful.
The sasquatch moans grew louder and sent a shiver up my spine. That was enough for me—I sat and began untying my boot. Danny had said sasquatches could sound almost human. This moaning sounded almost human, too. The roots of my hair tingled with fear as the moaning seemed to form into a word. Where was it coming from? It echoed around the roof of the cave so it felt like it was everywhere, like I was surrounded.
But what if it was human? What if it was Diamond? Hastily, I retied my boot and stood. I moved toward the gap I’d just climbed through, but the sound became more distant. Slowly, I walked along the long wall of the cave, listening. Yes, it got louder as I moved to the other end, the opposite end of the “loaf,” the way I’d crawled in when Danny and I had been here. The opening at this end was low to the ground and I’d have to slither on my stomach to get through to the next cave. I crouched and put my ear to the opening.
Then I heard groans, close to screams.
“Where are you?” I shouted.
The noise stopped for a minute, then a short, sharp shout came again.
“I hear you. Can you hear me?”
I beamed the flashlight into the opening.
Whoever it was, they were probably not in the next cave and they couldn’t quite hear me, I thought. But I was pretty sure the cry wasn’t Diamond’s. If it was human, it had to be John-Lee, her brother.
What should I do? Even if I crawled through and found him, I couldn’t get him out by myself. And what about Diamond? If she didn’t get warmed up and into shelter, she would die.
The answer was obvious. I needed to climb out of this cave and go get help.
chapter thirteen
As my bare toes touched icy rock, a shock wave shot through my legs, up my spine and into my forehead. Don’t do this, my body screamed. I’d stuffed the shoe, my boot and socks into my backpack. The pack itself was bulkier than I wanted it to be, and I tried hard to ignore the weight of it tugging my shoulders away from the rockface. I had tucked the flashlight into the zipper of my pack so that it cast a bit of light upward, where I was climbing. It didn’t do much good. I should have my headlamp. But I’d left it at the school. That’s what came of rushing things.
I had to do this in one try. There was no room for mistakes, no do-overs. If I took too long, my hands and feet would stiffen up in the cold and I’d lose my grip. Getting warm again in these conditions would be nearly impossible. Snow landed on my head, trickling down my collar.
Keep your body close to the rockface, I reminded myself. Hang off your arms, use your legs to push up instead of trying to pull with your arms. In my head, I ran through what Ming had taught us.
Time to climb.
My fingers found the first good handhold and I swung myself up, hips close to the wall.
“This is doable,” I said out loud.
The next move was a little trickier. There was only one foothold and my left leg had to swing behind my right so I could keep my balance. I also had to push off with my right hand while finding the handhold for the left.
I pictured myself doing it and then I did it. I gave myself an inner fist bump and readied myself for the next move. Already my fingers and toes were stiffening. I pushed the pain to the back of my mind and thrust myself up. For one sketchy moment I felt myself teeter as my backpack shifted and knocked me off balance. But I pressed my cheek and chest against the rockface and held on till I steadied and my heartbeat calmed.
Don’t rest too long, I remembered. A blast of snow slammed me full in my face and I gasped and shook it from my hair and shoulders. I was at what’s called “the crux” of my climb—the hardest part on the wall—the part I’d failed at so many times before.
I mean, the part I’d tried enough times to finally figure out.
My feet felt like blocks of ice. Actually, they barely felt like anything anymore. My fingers were worse. I flexed them, then shook out each hand in turn.
Time to move. Diamond was counting on me.
With a mighty push, my right foot found the toehold. My palms clung to the cold rock like a lizard. My fingertips moved right, left, up, down, and finally found the tiniest of swells to clamp down on. My right leg muscle burned as I powered into it and brought the left leg up to meet it.
I was on the bulge. Barely. Only my toes crammed on this slight ledge held me there. No time to rest. Just do it. I brought the right foot up and into the spot where my hand had been.
I could feel my foot slipping on the icy rock. At the same moment, my flashlight slipped farther into my pack, blocking almost all my light.
In the blurry darkness, my hand found the swell of rock I was looking for. I swung my other hand up to it. Then both feet slipped off the rock and only my arms held me, hanging above the emptiness.
One second, two seconds, three seconds. My toes touched the rock again and found footing.
I drew into myself for a final push; then, like a spider in a drain, I scrabbled up and out of the hole. The world came back to me in a rush, with the full force of the snowstorm and howling wind bearing down on me. My hands and feet were beyond cold. I couldn’t feel them anymore.
Socks. One on one foot, two on the other. With my blocky hands, even that simple action took too much time.
Shoes next. Boot on one foot, running shoe on the other. Tying the laces was out of the question. My fingers would not be able to do that.
Gloves. I wished I had mittens; wiggling the frozen sticks that were my fingers into each hole took forever.
