Gravity Girl

The zip-line stretched across the canyon like a metal scream, and somewhere inside my cargo shorts, my phone buzzed. Probably the group chat. Probably Jake posting memes about whoever chickened out first.

"You're up, Marcus," the counselor called out, and my palms turned into slip-n-slides. Great. Just great.

I'd spent all morning trying to play it cool around Maya, even though she'd spent last summer literally scaling cliffs in Colorado and I'd spent mine memorizing cool facts to say if I ever got stuck in an elevator with her. My baseball cap stayed pulled low because eye contact was basically impossible when someone was that pretty and that unimpressed by everything.

"Remember," the counselor said, clipping my carabiner to the cable, "gravity's just a suggestion up there."

That was definitely not how physics worked, but whatever.

I launched off the platform and holy SHIT the world dropped out beneath me. The cable hummed against the pulley, this metallic vibration that buzzed through my whole skeleton. The canyon floor was way too far away, a jagged smile of rocks and river that would absolutely ruin my entire life if I somehow became the first person to ever fall out of a harness.

Then my harness got stuck halfway across.

Of course it did. Of COURSE it did. I was dangling there in the most uncool way possible, swinging slightly in the wind, while Maya waited at the other platform. Not looking. Just waiting. Probably thinking about how I was That Guy Who Got Stuck.

And that's when I remembered the good-luck bear tucked in my backpack.

My little sister had shoved it in there this morning—Mr. Cuddles, this ancient, matted thing from when I was six, missing one eye and somehow still radiating pure kindergarten energy. I'd threatened to throw it out, she'd cried, Mom had given me The Look, and now here I was, sixteen years old, suspended above certain death, with a rescue mission pending.

The counselor had to hike out with a secondary line. The whole camp watched. Maya watched. I wanted to dissolve into pure embarrassment, become a cloud, just float away into the atmosphere.

But then Maya caught my eye as they dragged me onto the platform.

"Mr. Cuddles?" she asked, pointing at the bear ear that had somehow escaped my backpack during the rescue.

"My sister's," I said, my face basically on fire. "I was supposed to throw it out before—"

"That's honestly kind of sweet," she said, and for some reason, she wasn't being sarcastic. "My brother still sleeps with this messed-up dinosaur from when he was five. Won't admit it, but I know he does."

We sat on the edge of the platform while everyone else finished the course. The wind whipped my hair, Maya's hoodie, the trees below. I told her about my sister's obsession with Mr. Cuddles' backstory (he was apparently a retired astronaut now). She told me about cliff-climbing in Colorado, which sounded fake until she showed me a scar on her elbow.

"Next time," she said, bumping my shoulder with hers, "let's get stuck on purpose. The view's better when you're not rushing through it."

My palms didn't sweat anymore. The cable behind us gleamed in the afternoon sun, just a line in the sky, and the group chat could wait.