IN THE MORNING, we were down to ten.
It didn’t make sense, the way they made the cuts. Hanna had been ranked at the bottom, and she was still here, eating cornflakes at a table by herself, chewing mechanically and staring into space. Marisol, who had done fine yesterday, was gone.
From our viewpoint, they seemed to have cut at random, not based on yesterday’s test.
Luka was number one. Kendra was number two. I was number three. After that, it was Mitsuko, Emilio, Anton, Giorgia, Pratima, Boris, and finally Hanna, at the bottom. But they weren’t finished with surprises yet—they were only getting started.
After breakfast, we were loaded onto a bus and driven out to an airstrip. Turned out we were going to ride the Vomit Comet after all.
I’d spent the night trying to do what Emilio had said: imagining switching places with Hanna. Imagining having some fatal flaw that threatened everything I’d ever wanted.
The feeling was not a good one.
After a night of claustrophobic nightmares, I made a little pact with myself: be kinder to Hanna.
Seated behind her on the bus, I watched the back of her blond head and wondered what was going on in there. She was still here—she hadn’t given up. She must know that staying meant facing her fears again and again, and maybe all for naught.
I had to respect that. And I wanted to be more like Emilio, who had a passion for life and who had genuine affection for just about everyone.
As we were getting strapped in to the specially outfitted little plane, I gave silent thanks to whatever it was that made me eat nothing but hash browns and apple juice that morning. The forty-minute parabolic flight alternating between free fall and double-g resulted in three of the ten candidates losing their breakfasts. Egg, ham, bacon, and—worst of all—cereal and globs of sour stomach-acid milk occasionally escaped the puke bags and floated into the cabin.
For the forty seconds or so that we were weightless, we were like kids on a playground, chasing one another around the padded open cabin of the plane, laughing and joyful. For forty seconds at a time, we weren’t competitors, but a bunch of kids fulfilling a dream.
Hanna looked a little green, but she managed to keep her stomach contents to herself. She hadn’t spoken to any of us since the night before. Hanna had separated from our group in a clean break, like an amputation.
I didn’t feel nauseous until the very last parabola, but by then I was having too much fun to worry about it. I didn’t think it was due to the motion sickness, but seeing other people vomit for a couple of hours eventually got to me.
Now that we were back on Earth, my nausea had faded, replaced instead by an electric energy that made sitting still incredibly difficult. I had felt zero-g. I’d seen my braid floating over my shoulder as if by magic. I’d somersaulted in midair. I’d zoomed around inside the padded cabin as easily as a fish swims through water. It was an unbelievable feeling. I felt alive. And I wanted more.
The euphoria lasted all the way until we got off the bus and headed back into the squat metal compound that was home. I had some lingering vertigo, a watery-legged feeling like you’d get coming back onto solid ground after spending hours at sea, so I plopped onto my bed to rest while Mitsuko took over the bathroom and turned on the shower. Hanna must’ve gone on to lunch without us; at least, I hadn’t seen her since getting off the bus.
I got about two minutes of shut-eye before a knock came at the door. It was a woman, blond hair pulled back into a sleek businesslike bun, wearing a blue flight suit and a stony expression, which immediately made my heart skip a beat. “Cassandra Gupta,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Please follow me.”
Numb, and still a little wobbly, I followed her out and down the hall, hesitating only briefly to glance at the bathroom door. Mitsuko would wonder where I was when she emerged from the shower and the room was empty.
But her robotic pace didn’t slow, so I jogged to catch up.
She led me out a door I’d never seen used before and into the hot afternoon sunlight. I shaded my eyes and blinked. There was a black van parked on the curb with the side door open.
“Get in,” she said.
This was off script. I didn’t know who this woman was. But she was wearing a flight suit with the JSC logo, and I wasn’t in any position to question orders. I slid inside.
“Give me your left hand.” She slapped something like a plastic medical bracelet around my wrist, sealed it like a handcuff, and closed the door.
The inside of the van was air-conditioned and smelled like leather seats. There was a dark partition behind the driver, so all I saw was a shadowy figure in the seat in front of me. The outside windows were tinted, too, so dark they might have been curtains. Pretty sure that wasn’t legal.
I twisted the bracelet around and around my wrist, but there were no clues as to its purpose, no words or identifying marks. It was light as plastic, but stronger. Some kind of material I’d never seen before. It was translucent gray, with what appeared to be a tiny gold microchip embedded in the plastic. I couldn’t slip it off if I tried, and I had a feeling that scissors wouldn’t do me any good.
They hadn’t told me to pack my things. That was the good thing.
Why had I been tagged? And how long was I supposed to wait in this van before someone told me what the hell this was all about?
Apparently not long. The door slid open again, this time revealing Luka—looking as perplexed as I felt. I slid over to accommodate him, and the door was closed again. And we were moving.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, hurriedly clicking my seat belt into place.
He just shook his head, lips pressed tight together, and buckled up.
The driver kept going. With the windows tinted, I couldn’t tell trees from streetlights, couldn’t even hear if we passed other cars. I could hardly tell if the sun was still shining.
“Can you see anything?” I asked.
Luka shook his head, but continued to watch the windows.
“Theories?” I muttered. “I’ll take anything but silence.”
“Another test,” Luka said. “It seems we’ve been paired together.”
He had on a bracelet, too. We’d compared ours, and they seemed identical: thin, gray, nondescript but for the gold chip.
Just when I was beginning to get drowsy from the constant drone of the engine, we seemed to slow.
“How long do you think it’s been?” Luka asked quietly.
“Going by my stomach, not much more than two hours,” I said.
He gave me a quizzical look.
“If it was lunchtime, I’d be hungry.”
“Is that an accurate way to tell time?”
“In the absence of anything else? I’d say yeah. My biological hunger clock is pretty consistent.”
The van eventually came to a stop. We waited only a heartbeat or two before the door flew open, the muted sunshine hurting my eyes.
“Out,” barked the stone-faced woman. Luka and I tumbled out into the humidity. The woman shoved a pack in my arms, closed the door, got back into the van, and peeled out down a dirt road.
The two of us stood, dumbfounded, in the middle of nowhere. A chorus of cicadas and frogs filled the air, as thick as the humidity, but there was a heavy quiet underneath the noise—a blanket of silence that meant we were far from any cars, roads, or civilization. The sun was on its way toward full strength, but I was already sweating, my hair and shirt sticking to my skin.
“What’d she give you?” Luka asked, redirecting my focus.
I looked down at the backpack. It was bright orange, and not nearly as heavy as I felt like it should be. I was pretty sure now what kind of test this was going to be.
Together, we knelt on the dry ruts of the dirt road and emptied the bag. Contents: two solar blankets, a length of rope, compass, iodine tablets, a serrated knife, a first-aid kit, flint and steel, two fishing hooks and line, one large metal canteen (empty), a can of bug spray, a flashlight, two MREs shrink-wrapped in foil (pasta and vegetable flavor), two packs of crackers with peanut butter, a narrow tube of SPF 45, and a flare gun with two shots.
There was also a three-by-five laminated orange index card. I read aloud: “‘Your reentry capsule has veered off course and crash-landed outside of your intended landing zone. You recovered only your standard-issue wilderness survival kit from the capsule. It will take twenty-four hours for rescue workers to reach your location. In order to pass this trial, you must use the tools from your wilderness survival kit and make it to the rendezvous point in time to be rescued.’” I flipped the card over to see a crudely photocopied hiking map. “The rendezvous point is fifteen miles north of here.”
We shared a long look.
Luka squared his jaw. “Then we’d better start walking.”
We hiked in silence.
They must’ve dropped us in some kind of wildlife preserve, because it was pristine—for what looked like a swamp better suited to Louisiana. The dirt road we’d been dropped off on led away from the rendezvous point, so we had to hike through mushy underbrush pockmarked with mud that suctioned with every step.
After weeks of being stuck inside, seeing the outside world only through a barbed-wire-topped fence, the fresh air was intoxicating. Even the heat and the mosquitoes and the rough terrain couldn’t dampen my spirits at finally being somewhere else, being free.
There were no trails. Flowing water kept appearing beside us, sometimes in thin trickles, sometimes in frantic streams, and then disappearing again. We filled the canteen in the faster-moving water, which I hoped would be a little cleaner. The iodine tablets might kill bacteria and viruses, but it wasn’t going to turn swampy river water into a clear spring.
According to the map, we were traveling alongside a wide river. I just hoped we wouldn’t have to swim across it. One knife was not going to be helpful against an alligator.
“Watch out for snakes,” I said over my shoulder, as Luka followed in my footsteps over a rotten log.
“Snakes?” Like he’d never heard of the word.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Down here in the south, we have snakes. Poisonous ones.”
He didn’t say anything. I sighed and stopped, causing him to nearly run into me. “Okay, look,” I said. “Our first-aid kit isn’t going to do any good for a snake bite. Do me a favor and watch where you step. And if you hear a weird rattling noise, let me know.”
His eyes went wide. I could’ve laughed. Pampered son of a diplomat. The poor thing had probably never had to worry about venomous snakes in his life.
I hadn’t dressed for the outdoors—I was still in the clothes I’d worn to jog in early that morning. Luka, too, was about as ill prepared in a thin white T-shirt and cargo shorts. Nothing to protect us from the elements.
He offered to carry the orange backpack. I told him we could switch off. It wasn’t heavy.
I’d burned through any residual anger at our situation by the time the sun was hitting high noon. This was the best exercise I’d gotten in weeks, and it invigorated me. Fifteen miles in twenty-four hours wasn’t even a strenuous pace. They’d paired me with Luka, which meant they wanted to know how I’d compare with him, the number-one guy. That meant it was between him and me.
This was my opportunity to stand out.
We took a little break near a fast-moving stream, taking turns sipping iodine-laced water from the backpack. “So what’s the plan?” I asked, sticking Band-Aids to the blisters that were eating through my feet in at least six distinct places. Damn cotton socks. “Hike until dark, set up camp?”
“We’ll need to eat before too long,” he said. “Do you know how to start a fire?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” I answered. “But you don’t need fire to cook MREs. Which is good, because I don’t know how we’d find anything dry enough to burn.” Everything, including the air, felt soggy. “We have enough food for only one day, so we should try to make it last.”
“Perhaps in the morning, we can fish,” Luka said. Then he cocked his head to the side. “I’m sorry. I forgot you do not eat meat.”
“I don’t really want to waste time,” I said. “I’d rather keep going as long as we can.” I didn’t remember ever discussing vegetarianism with him. How did he know I didn’t eat meat? Had he been paying closer attention to me than I’d realized? “And it’s not like I have much choice. Tofu doesn’t exactly grow on trees around here.”
He was still looking at me curiously and here I was, squatting in the mud with sweat dripping down past my eyes, swatting away gnats with dirty fingers. What did he see that was so interesting?
“I’d eat meat if I had to,” I said, knowing NASA was probably listening. “Like right now, if there’s no better protein source around and I have to spend a full day hiking. It’s more of a personal preference.”
Luka’s expression suddenly changed, entire body tensing, his gaze narrowing and shifting to something behind me.
“What is it?” I whispered, afraid to move. “Alligator?”
He shook his head and put a finger to his lips, then motioned for me to keep my head down. I crouched deeper into the reeds and slowly looked over my shoulder.
About a hundred yards up the river were two figures trudging north. I could make out an orange backpack on one of them. Snatches of conversation reached my ears, but nothing intelligible.
I turned back to Luka. “That’s Anton and Kendra,” I said quietly.
He nodded, staying low. “It seems we are still in competition.”
I gritted my teeth. “And they’re ahead of us.”
Knowing the others were out there, too, and that they were likely headed for the same place, lit a fire under Luka and me. This was another race.
We veered off from the river, neither of us wanting to get into any sort of confrontation with Anton and Kendra. Not that I was afraid of them—but it seemed safer to keep our distance. Just in case.
By the time the shadows grew dark under the mossy canopy and the breeze off the water grew cool, my energy was burned out.
I was hungry. I was cranky. I was covered in itchy mosquito bites despite a liberal application of bug spray. I was splattered, neck to shins, in dried mud. But Luka was the one who wanted to stop.
“I think we should set up camp for the night,” he said. I’d been carrying the backpack for a few hours, and Luka was taking point, helpfully clearing the path of spider webs for me.
“Already?” I stopped, looking up to gauge the position of the sun through the bare limbs of gangly trees, just a low red disc sinking into the horizon.
“We made good time today. We should get some rest and eat before it gets too dark.” His cheeks were sunburned despite the sunscreen, sweat dripping down his temples, and for once he didn’t look like he was having the easiest time of it.
“We have a flashlight. It’s cooler to travel at night.”
“They already know we can hike fifteen miles in a day. I doubt they are testing us on our physical capability.” I bristled at that, but he continued. “We will make it to the rendezvous point by tomorrow at noon.”
But will we make it there before the others?
Luka waited for me to consider the options. Should I try to be the leader, tell him he was wrong? Or was it better to act the team player and give in to his suggestion? We’d been playing nice so far, but how long would that hold out? This exercise seemed designed to test our interactions under stress more than any actual wilderness survival skills.
I swallowed hard. The grimy aftertaste of iodinated swamp water coated the back of my tongue. The only reason I was able to tamp down my frustration was the little circle of plastic on my wrist.
Because I was willing to bet my grandmother that our every move, our every word, was being recorded.
What was more important: Getting to the rendezvous point first, or surviving this without biting each other’s heads off?
Cooperation, I decided, was what this test was about.
“Okay, let’s break for the evening,” I said. “We can start fresh at sunup.”
Making camp was problematic. By the time we found a suitable place—far enough from the water that I wasn’t afraid of alligators, and dry enough for comfort—there was hardly any light left. And Luka had no idea what he was doing.
I had to show him how to prepare the MRE. “You pour the water in the bag up to this line, here, and it reacts with the chemical packets to generate heat. So then we slide the food into the sleeve, like this, see?” I demonstrated. “And then we lean it against a rock and wait twenty minutes or so.”
I’d been camping only as recreation, not out of necessity, but at least I knew the basics. He seemed to sense this and followed my directions, like the smart guy he was.
Without any stakes, and only a rope and a knife, our options for shelter were limited. I’d wanted to find higher ground, but there was nothing there—it was all flat floodplain with just a few trees in clumps. “It’s a warm night,” I said. “We can sleep under the stars.”
We settled on a nearby copse, checked the surroundings to ensure we wouldn’t disturb any snakes, and cleared an area large enough for the two of us to sleep side by side with a good two or three feet between us. We had no bedrolls, so we’d have to rough it with the solar blankets.
But by this point, I was ready to be unconscious for a very long time, and I didn’t care about the specifics. I had a guy I trusted—as much as I trusted anyone—next to me, a blanket to keep most of the bugs off me, and a pretty nice view of the sky framed by tree branches.
And then it started to rain.
I swatted at the first droplets that hit my face, thinking in my sleep that they were mosquitoes. And then they came again and again, so I buried my head under the crinkling solar blanket and groaned quietly.
It was the miserable sort of rain, where water was seeping out of the air like the wringing of a damp sponge. Made my skin crawl.
Luka shuffled around beside me. “Do you want this?” Luka asked. He was holding the orange backpack.
It took me a minute to realize he was offering it to me as a pillow. “No, thanks.” I didn’t really like the idea of resting my head on a flare gun. And we couldn’t take it out of the waterproof backpack, in case we needed it.
“At least the rain will help deter the mosquitoes.” Then, “We could drape one of the blankets over this branch. To keep the rain off.”
I wanted to groan, but didn’t have the energy. “We probably should.” It would suck to spend the next day soaked through.
Luka got up and arranged his blanket on a low-hanging branch to cover as much area over us as possible, a makeshift tent. He let me arrange myself how I wanted and then crawled back under the drape, only a little more sheltered from the rain than before.
I offered to share my own blanket for warmth, but he declined. “It’s big enough,” I said. “There’s a cool wind coming off the water. You’ll get cold.”
In the dim light of the stars, his mouth twisted with indecision. Then he nodded.
I shifted the blanket to cover us both. There was barely an inch of open air between our bodies. The only way to avoid touching him was to lie completely still. Which was fine; my body protested any movement.
Even sheltered under the blanket with him, somehow, the boy did not smell. We had been hiking in a swamp for half a day. I knew for a fact that I smelled. He, however, wafted only faintly of summer rain. The jerk.
Whatever crap may happen up there, among the stars that I couldn’t currently see—no matter how cramped and uncomfortable, whatever awful things might befall a human away from Earth, space had to be a better experience than this. At least you could see the stars, unfiltered.
“What a fun night this is going to be,” I muttered. I didn’t have to speak very loud; he was that close. “They must do this on purpose, so we are extra motivated not to crash their expensive rocket ships.”
Luka, on his back, turned his head toward me ever so slightly. Some tiny glint of light reflected off his pupils; the rest of his features were shrouded in indigo darkness. I felt his breath on my face.
He laughed—a loud, surprised sound. It was the first time I’d heard it. I felt myself smile.
“Yes. Are we not lucky to be here?” The smile was evident in his voice. Then his voice lowered to a serious pitch. “I find I don’t hate it.”
Despite the heat, despite everything, I shivered.
“Good night, Cassie.” His voice was quiet, warm, happy, and right in my ear. His slight accent held a lilt of laughter, and it was as if the entire day of stress and frustration hadn’t been that bad.
We were a good team. We could win this.
With warm food in my stomach, I was comfortable, even with the rain and the slightly alarming proximity of a boy with good bone structure.
The rain gradually fell harder, tapping against the tarp and rattling it in the branches—but for the most part, we kept dry.
I fell asleep thinking maybe Luka wasn’t so useless after all.
I crawled out of the lean-to before Luka woke, sore and stiff and completely devoid of the good feelings that had lulled me to sleep. The sky was still gray, but the insects had been up for hours. I’d scratched scabs into my arms overnight.
They must’ve bothered Luka, too, as he woke not long after.
“Here,” I said, tossing him a packet of crackers as he came to sit beside me.
He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. There was already stubble on his reddened cheeks and sleep was still heavy in his eyes. “Thank you. How long have you been awake?”
“Since dawn.”
He blinked up at the deep-gray sky. “It’s not dawn?”
“Nope.”
“Hm. Perhaps we’ll get more rain today.”
We ate our meager breakfast slowly, trying to make it last, and shared the canteen between us. “You should put some of this on,” I said, putting the SPF and insect repellant in his hand. “Your face is bright red. The clouds won’t protect you completely, you know.”
He took it, nodding.
Only an hour or two after breaking camp, the sky opened up on us.
“‘Perhaps we’ll get more rain today,’” I mimicked under my breath. “More like, What have we done to anger the rain gods?”
It was relentless, falling on us in sheets that made visibility poor and walking treacherous. We continued to trudge north, following the river to keep our fresh water close. But our progress slowed considerably.
It was too warm to worry about hypothermia, so even though my wet socks rubbed blisters into my heels, a little rain wouldn’t kill us. As much as I may have wanted it to.
The rain swelled the river, forcing us to head farther and farther away to avoid its widening banks. The swamp was more water than land, and what was dry when we first encountered it could become the bottom of the riverbed in a matter of minutes. We took a quick break, checking the map and compass for our position, but without dry kindling or more MREs we couldn’t eat. Raw fish was the last thing I wanted, so we drank lots of water and pushed on.
At some point I thought I might have seen the flash of an orange backpack deeper in the woods, but whoever it was never came closer.
“How are we doing?” I asked.
Luka was on point again, following the map and the compass. It took him a long time to find our position on the map, swiping water from his eyes often. “Should reach it within the hour.” Suddenly he stopped short, made a noise that sounded like a curse in his native language.
“What?” I caught up with him.
“The rendezvous point is just there,” he said, pointing.
And then I saw our problem.
The rain had swelled what was probably, on dry days, a shallow stream. Now, between us and our destination was an angry, turbulent creek, opaque with mud and clotted with debris. It was maybe twelve feet across, no telling how deep.
“Yeah, we aren’t crossing that,” I said.
“We could go around it?” Luka suggested.
“How long would that take?”
“I’m not sure. This is not on the map.”
I took it out of his hands. He was right; only the main river, behind us, was outlined. Not the smaller tributaries. “Damn.”
So this was our dilemma. Did we do the dangerous thing and try to ford a fast-moving body of water alone and without supplies? Did we wait here, hoping our “rescuers” would come and get us even though we were a quarter mile off from the rendezvous point? Or did we find another way around?
The problem wasn’t so much what to do—it was what did NASA want us to do?
My default response to a problem was always to seek the most straightforward solution. Shortest distance from point A to point B lay across that creek.
“We should wait here,” Luka said, just as I’d decided to go forward. “I don’t think NASA would want us to endanger ourselves further. We are close enough to the rendezvous point. They will come and get us.”
“But we’re so close. We could be the first ones there and win this thing. The others are probably right behind us. Do you want to be last, on top of everything? It’s probably not that hard to cross. We can just find a few logs, make a bridge.”
I started forward, but Luka grabbed my arm. “Cassie, no. It’s dangerous.”
I glared, and he dropped my arm like it was hot. “Going into space is dangerous. Are you going to stop me from doing that, too?”
His lips parted, as if he was going to speak but couldn’t find anything to say. Then he closed his mouth into an unhappy line. “Fine, we will do it your way.”
His accent was more pronounced when he was mad.
Just wait until we get back, I thought. Once you’re clean and dry and fed, you’ll thank me.
It wasn’t hard to find a fallen tree or two. Problem was, I overestimated how strong they’d be. Most were little more than saplings, which were useless. The biggest ones were still wetland trees and had been soaked by rain for a day or more, rotting from the inside out. We found one that was only just starting to rot, and using mostly Luka’s brute strength, plopped it across the creek.
It wasn’t long enough.
“That’s okay, we’ll just get another,” I said, having to talk a little louder because of the noise from the water. At least the rain had stopped.
Luka’s eyes told me he wasn’t too keen on this plan, but he did it anyway. The second log he tried to launch was immediately swept away and taken downstream.
“Cassie . . .” Luka’s voice held a note of warning.
I snapped at him. “This will work, okay? We just have to do it right. Maybe you can anchor the log for me while I wade across?”
His jaw was set. “We’ve barely eaten. We’ve been hiking nonstop. Look at you—your hands are shaking. Even if we can make a way across, you don’t have the strength to fight the current right now. This is not worth drowning for.”
I wanted to shoot back that if this wasn’t worth it, nothing was. But watching the log that Luka had struggled to lift get swept downstream like it was made of paper . . . maybe I didn’t want to risk it.
“You rest. I’ll find something to eat.”
“No!” I wasn’t going to let him do that to me. Make me look like the weak little girl who needed a man to feed her while I sat around because I was tired. I didn’t want to waste time fishing, then cleaning, cooking, and eating—not when the end was literally in sight. But I didn’t have any other ideas. “They’re judging us both on our survival skills, not just you. I’ll come with you.”
We continued to follow the creek, hoping to find a shallow spot to cross, or at least a slower-moving section to cast a line. My thighs burned in protest, but I did my best to ignore them.
I’d taken to muttering curses under my breath with every step. It seemed to help. But it also made me almost miss it when Luka whispered, “Look!”
Shoeprints in the wet mud ahead of us. Had to be fresh, or the rain would have washed them away.
“Should we follow?” he asked.
“I think it depends on if we’re supposed to be enemies,” I said. “Or are we supposed to be working with the other teams? You’d think they’d have told us.” But then I had a thought. “If they found a way across, maybe we can, too.”
And then I saw it. Whoever had come before us must’ve had the same idea, or better luck.
A giant log had been felled across the creek. Thin trickles of water streamed over the top, but the log held firm. A rope—very similar to the one in our own pack—had been tied to a living tree on our side of the creek, suspended over the log, and staked on the other side. A crude bridge.
“This must be how the others got across.” I turned to him, tried to read his face. “Is this safe enough for you?”
He put a hesitant foot on the log, testing its strength, and tugged experimentally on the rope. “It seems sturdy enough.” He didn’t sound thrilled. “I’ll go first. If it can hold my weight, it can hold yours.”
“No,” I said quickly. “If you slip, I might not be able to pull you back. Let me go first. Your weight might dislodge the thing and then I’d be stuck on this side.”
A corner of his mouth smirked. “You worried I’d leave you behind?”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Should I be?”
He grinned, clasping the back of my neck in his strong hand in a friendly, and very Russian, gesture. “If I left you here, you would pay me back only tenfold when we got back, no?” He released me. “Go careful and slow. I will cover you.”
I sucked in a breath, steadying myself. My hands still shook, but I gritted my teeth and took a first, balancing step onto the log. It sank an inch or two into the water, and a thin layer of creek streamed around my shoes. I held on to the taut rope with both hands and planned each footstep carefully.
I shot one last look at Luka. Far from joking now, his eyes were steely and focused on me, hands outstretched and ready to grab me if I fell.
“Wish me luck.”
He nodded once, solemnly.
I took a breath. And then I took a tiny sideways step. And then another.
As I inched my way farther toward the center of the creek, the water grew more turbulent at my feet, the rope swaying dangerously. I dared not look anywhere but at my feet. Just a little farther, I thought. Just far enough where I could swim the rest, if I had to.
I was now so far away from either bank that neither side was within reach. No chickening out now. My only option was forward.
It seemed to take forever. The log dipped farther and farther beneath my weight, but it held firm and did not roll or budge. The rope was strong enough to catch me once or twice when I nearly lost my footing. After what felt like an hour, I hopped gratefully onto solid ground on the other side.
“Okay?” Luka called.
“Yes!” I smiled and waved, flooded with relief and adrenaline. “It’s sturdier than it looks. I’ll spot you.”
Luka ventured out on the rope-and-log bridge, following my technique of moving very, very slowly. He was taller than me by a few inches, and definitely heavier, but even though the log dipped low in the center, it didn’t break.
He crossed the center of the river and was coming nearer and nearer to me. Almost home free, and we didn’t even have to build the bridge ourselves.
Then I saw what was about to happen, and I still couldn’t stop it.
Some debris in the creek passed over the log, right as Luka’s foot came down on it. His foot slipped, he jerked off balance, and the rope, which had been tied securely to a sapling on the far side, couldn’t hold his weight—the sapling tore loose, roots pulling easily from the wet earth. The rope that Luka was relying on for balance went slack, sending him flying forward into the creek.
And just like that, he was gone.
I dove for him, my torso hitting the edge of the bank hard, arms sinking into the water as far as I dared, trying to keep most of my body on land for leverage. The mud and debris in the water obscured almost everything, and for endless seconds he was lost to me.
Then his face broke the surface, just for an instant. He’d managed to fall forward, toward me and the bank, and had fought his way close enough for me to touch him. But the furious current pounded at him and he couldn’t right himself. The water took him under again and again.
I grabbed for him blindly, one hand catching a handful of his shirt, the other hand wrapped around a sapling, anchoring me to the bank.
It wasn’t enough to hold him. The water pulled his body from me, tearing the fabric out of my hand.
Not thinking, I let go of the sapling and used both hands this time. I plunged my arms into the creek until water soaked my chest, feeling blindly, scrabbling until I had enough purchase to pull him toward me.
I was flat on my stomach, holding him to the bank with force of will alone. With one hand keeping a death grip on the collar of his shirt, I grabbed for the sapling to use as leverage, twisted my body sideways, and wrenched him like a caught fish up out of the water and onto the bank beside me.
I lay on my side catching my breath as he turned and spat out rivulets of muddy river water. His head and arms were drenched with mud, his once-white shirt now brown and transparent, but he was coughing, which meant he was breathing, which meant he would live.
His coughing subsided and he rose to his knees. Only then, when I realized he was going to be okay, did I realize how fast my heart was ricocheting around my rib cage. My fingers were vibrating like someone had struck the bones with a tuning fork. The entire musculature of my back, shoulders, and arms still screamed with the strain I hadn’t even felt till now.
I put my hand on his back. I didn’t know if he realized I was there, but I wanted to offer comfort—and also to reassure myself his chest was still moving. “I’m sorry,” I said. He sat up and I let my hand fall to the ground. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t strong enough to—”
He stopped me by placing his hand over mine, both of them cold and slick and filthy. “It wasn’t,” he said, sucking air between words, “your fault.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
He nodded, held up a finger. When he’d caught his breath, he sat up and wiped water out of his eyes with the edge of his soaking-wet T-shirt. Then he took a long, unlabored breath, like a sigh of relief.
He was going to be okay.
We both went in for a hug at the same time, wrapped our arms around each other in a tight, quick embrace. “I’m so sorry,” I said again, relishing the feel of his arms around me, strong and secure. His heartbeat was thundering, and I could feel it everywhere we touched. “Are you really okay?” I let go first, studying his face.
“I’ll live.” He ran a hand through his hair, shaking off drops of water and finger-combing it away from his eyes. “Do you realize what you did?”
“What?” There was a leaf plastered to my cheek; I swiped it off with my shoulder.
“You just. Saved. My life.”
I shrugged. “Well . . . yeah.”
“You could’ve died.”
My eyes traveled back over to that dirty rushing water. Me dying hadn’t been a consideration at the time. “I wasn’t going to let that happen. To either of us.”
He stared at me like I was an undiscovered species. “I . . .”
And then, a thwack-thwack-thwacking of helicopter blades cracked the sky. We turned as one to see our salvation zoom over our heads.
The camo-green metal bird grew larger and lower in the sky, heading for the rendezvous point that we still hadn’t reached.
We climbed to our feet and ran the last quarter mile, Luka seemingly reenergized, and me with nothing fueling my body except the relief that soon this would be over. We hustled across the open expanse of mud and reeds to an open field filled with red indicator smoke. Emilio and Hanna were boarding the helicopter.
We were the last on the chopper. Everyone else was already strapped in. All of them took in our soaking-wet selves with bewildered expressions, but we were too tired to explain.
Then we were in the air.
I couldn’t even enjoy the views. As I caught my breath, I had the sinking feeling that Luka and I had come in dead last.