Page 38 of The Midseason Fakeout

“I hope you were serious about wanting to tick things off your freedom list.”

She looks at me cautiously. I can’t blame her. I’m not sure if anything I said to her on the ride over here actually made any sense.

“Are you excited?” I ask.

“I mean, I was, but you took care of that. Remember?”

I shake my head at her. The playful smile on her face makes me heave a huge sigh of relief. “Good one.” I shut the engine off and open the car door. She scrambles out after me, peering around like I’m about to lure her into the forest and leave her for dead. Ahead of us, the headlights illuminate the berm that hides the tiny trail to the top of the chasm. However, if you weren’t aware that existed, it just looks like we’re in the middle of a moonlit thicket of trees. Luckily, with the moon high overhead, there’s just enough light to make this only somewhat dangerous.

She meets me at the front of the car. “Aidan, what are we doing?”

Her hand brushes mine, and I grab it, leading her away. “Your list said something about cliff diving?”

Her mouth drops. “You’re serious?”

I tug on her hand to get her to walk behind me up the narrow path. The brush scrapes my arms as we follow the twists and turns. “Something about high school graduation?” I prompt.

“Yeah.” Excitement bleeds through her words. “After graduation, everyone goes to the Three Mile Cliffs and jumps off.”

“And why didn’t you go?”

“You know why,” she says, voice dropping.

I walk faster. We’re almost at the top now, and my stomach squeezes with a mix of thrill and trepidation. As cliff diving goes, the chasm is one of the safest places to do it. Warner residents have been jumping from here for years. Kids, teens from the local high school. All the rookies are made to come up here and dive. Of course, we don’t tell them how safe it is before they do it.

I push the last branch away and reveal the nearly twenty feet of flat, vegetation-free ground that leads to a three-story drop into the widest part of the river. Here, the river is loud, more like an echoing roar since the falls are just up the bank. The current, too, is easily manageable, even on a bad day. Basically, it’s the perfect spot to jump for a beginner.

Bailey smiles. Moving past me, she reaches out to touch the bench that overlooks the cliff face. “This is beautiful. Even at night. See the way the moon casts a glow?” She points to the other side of the chasm where the rocks hold a golden hue. Ever so tentatively, she steps closer to the cliff edge, leaning over to peer down the sheer drop.

“It’s completely safe,” I assure her. “I’ve seen young kids make the jump.”

Peering back, she bites her lower lip. “It’s really high.”

“Higher than the one you missed on graduation?”

She throws her hand out. “Well, I don’t know, do I?” Glancing over the edge again, she says, “It looks like it ends in a black hole of nothingness.”

I follow her and peer down, too. I see what she’s saying. Directly below us, the river is pitch black. The moonlight hits sporadically across the rocks of the chasm. Clear glimpses here and there, but the water itself looks like a shadowy pit. “But you hear the water, don’t you?”

She rolls her eyes.

“So, you know it’s there.”

Timid eyes peer over the edge and then back at me. I move behind her, placing my hands first on her shoulders, then lower, hovering just below her collarbone. Beneath my palms, her heart beats like crazy. “Do you remember why you wanted to do it in the first place?”

Her shoulders lift with a deep breath. “Because I’m sick of always being left out. Because I want to do more things and be free from my cage.”

I let her sit in that thought for a bit, but mostly because her words hit home for me too, in a way that’s more difficult to explain. I’ve spent my entire life from five years old until now trying to break free from this thought that I’m not good enough. A kid his birth mom didn’t even want. My parents could give me everything in the world, and they have, but some days, I’ll still only be that orphan boy in my head.

I take a deep breath of my own. Bails just wants what I want. To be free from the thing that’s been holding her back. “What do you think? Are you up for it?”

“Yes,” she states confidently. Then her shoulders drop. “No. I don’t know.”

I laugh, tracing my hands back up to her shoulders where I give her a quick squeeze. There’s no way I’m going to let her get away with not doing this now.

“Should we even be doing this?” she asks. “Don’t you have practice tomorrow? I don’t want to keep you out too late.”

“Now you’re just making excuses.”

---