Lauren Oliver - Panic

“Welcome to the second challenge,” Diggin boomed out.

“Suck it, Rodgers,” a guy yelled, and there were whoops and scattered laughs. Someone else said, “Shhh.”

Diggin pretended he hadn’t heard: “This is a test of bravery and balance—”

“And sobriety!”

“Dude, I’m gonna fall.”

More laughter. Heather couldn’t even smile. Next to her, Natalie was fidgeting—turning to the right and left, touching her hip bones. Heather couldn’t even ask what she was doing.

Diggin kept plowing on: “A test of speed, too, since all the contestants will be timed—”

“Jesus Christ, get on with it.”

Diggin finally lost it. He wrenched the megaphone from his mouth. “Shut the hell up , Lee.”

This provoked a new round of laughter. To Heather it all felt off, like she was watching a movie and the sound was a few seconds too late. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up now—at that single beam, a few bare inches of wood, stretched fifty feet above the ground. The Jump was a tradition, more for fun than for anything else, a plunge into water. This would be a plunge to hard earth, packed ground. No chance of surviving it.

There was a momentary stutter when the truck engine gave out, and everything went dark. There were shouts of protest; and when, a few seconds later, the engine gunned on again, Heather saw Matt: standing in the beam of the headlights, laughing, one hand in the back of Delaney’s jeans.

Her stomach rolled over. Weirdly, it was that fact—the way he had his hand shoved up against her butt—more than even seeing them together, that made her sick. He had never once touched her in that way, had even complained that couples who stood like that, hand-to-butt, should be shot.

Maybe he’d thought she wasn’t cute enough. Maybe he’d been embarrassed by her.

Maybe he had just been lying then, to spare her feelings.

Maybe she’d never really known him.

This thought struck her with terror. If she didn’t know Matt Hepley—the boy who’d once applauded after she burped the alphabet, who’d even, once, noticed that she had a little period blood on the outside of her white shorts and not made a big deal of it, and pretended not to be grossed out—then she couldn’t count on knowing any of these people, or what they were capable of.

Suddenly she was aware of a stillness, a pause in the flow of laughter and conversation, as though everyone had drawn a breath at once. And she realized that Kim Hollister was inching out onto the plank, high above their heads, her face stark-white and terrified, and that the challenge had started.

It took Kim forty-seven seconds to inch her way across, shuffling, keeping her right foot always in front of her left. When she reached the second water tower safely, she briefly embraced it with both arms, and the crowd exhaled as one.

Then came Felix Harte: he made it even faster, taking the short, clipped steps of a tightrope walker. And then Merl Tracey. Even before he’d crossed to safety, Diggin lifted the megaphone and trumpeted the next name.

“Heather Nill! Heather Nill, to the stage!”

“Good luck, Heathbar,” Natalie said. “Don’t look down.”

“Thanks,” Heather said automatically, even as she registered it as ridiculous advice. When you’re fifty feet in the air, where else do you look but down?

She felt as though she were moving in silence, although she knew, too, that that was unlikely—Diggin couldn’t keep his mouth off that stupid megaphone for anything. It was just because she was afraid; afraid and still thinking, stupidly, miserably, about Matt, and wondering whether he was watching her with his hand still shoved down the back of Delaney’s pants.

As she began to climb the ladder that ran up one leg of the eastern water tower, her fingers numb on the cold, slick metal, it occurred to her that he’d be staring at her butt, and feeling Delaney’s butt, and that was really sick.

Then it occurred to her that everyone could see her butt, and she had a brief moment of panic, wondering if her underwear lines were visible through her jeans, since she just couldn’t stomach thongs and didn’t understand girls who could.

She was already halfway up the ladder by then, and it further occurred to her that if she was stressing so hard about underwear lines, she couldn’t truly be afraid of the height. For the first time, she began to feel more confident.

But the rain was a problem. It made the rungs of the ladder slick under her fingers. It blurred her vision and made the treads of her sneakers slip. When she finally reached the small metal ledge that ran along the circumference of the water tank and hauled herself to her feet, the fear came swinging back. There was nothing to hold on to, only smooth, wet metal behind her back, and air everywhere. Only a few inches’ difference between being alive and not.

A tingle worked its way from her feet to her legs and up into her palms, and for a second she was afraid not of falling but of jumping, leaping out into the dark air.

She shuffled sideways toward the wooden beam, pressing her back as hard as she could against the tank, praying that from below she didn’t look as frightened as she felt.

Crying out, hesitating—it would all be counted against her.

“Time!” Diggin’s voice boomed out from below. Heather knew she had to move if she wanted to stay in the game.

Heather forced herself away from the tank and inched forward onto the wooden plank, which had been barely secured to the ledge by means of several twisted screws. She had a sudden image of wood snapping under her weight, a wild hurtle through space. But the wood held.

She raised her arms unconsciously for balance, no longer thinking of Matt or Delaney or Bishop staring up at her, or anything other than all that thin air, the horrible prickling in her feet and legs, an itch to jump.

She could move faster if she paced normally, one foot in front of the other, but she couldn’t bring herself to break contact with the board; if she lifted a foot, a heel, a toe, she would collapse, she would swing to one side and die. She was conscious of a deep silence, a quiet so heavy she could hear the fizz of the rain, could hear her own breathing, shallow and quick.

Beneath her was blinding light, the kind of light you’d see just before you died. All the people had merged with shadow, and for a second she was afraid she had died, that she was all alone on a tiny, bare surface, with an endless fall into the dark on either side of her.

Inch by inch, going as fast as she could without lifting her feet.

And then, all at once, she was done—she had reached the second water tower and found herself hugging the tank, like Kim had done, pressing flat against it, letting her sweatshirt get soaked. A cheer went up, even as another name was announced: Ray Hanrahan.

Her head was ringing, and her mouth tasted like metal. Over. It was over. Her arms felt suddenly useless, her muscles weak with relief, as she made her way clumsily down the ladder, dropping the last few feet and taking two stumbling steps before righting herself. People reached out, squeezed her shoulders, patted her on the back. She didn’t know if she smiled or not.

“You were amazing!” Nat barreled to her through the crowd. Heather barely registered the feel of Nat’s arms around her neck. “Is it scary? Were you freaked?”

Heather shook her head, conscious of people still watching her. “It went quick,” she said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt better. It was over. She was standing in the middle of a crowd: the air smelled like damp fleece and cigarette smoke. Solid. Real.

“Forty-two seconds,” Nat said proudly. Heather hadn’t even heard her time be announced.