Gifted

Chapter Twenty-nine

|Thursday|

Ellen

“Come on, Susan, just do it.”

“I can’t!”

I sigh, taking my foot off of the foothold, and stare at her. Around us, afternoon gym-goes crawl slowly up the giant rock walls with auto-belay systems which allow each person to be her own team, and one that is ready to catch her if she falls. So I just don’t get why Susan always gets so freaked over this. It's totally safe.

“Ellen, I can’t!” Susan protests again, biting her lip as she stares up at the ceiling soaring sixty feet above our heads. Me, I am ready to do this; I want to finally get to the top and say that I did it. Susan’s never let us go above twenty feet.

“Susan,” I reason with her gently. “Look down at your waist. See that harness? It won’t let us fall. Even if this whole thing were to fail, the belay system would automatically clamp the cable and we still wouldn’t fall, so we’d hang there, safely, until someone could get us down.”

Susan’s expression tells me she isn’t exactly reassured by the thought of hanging sixty feet in the air, either. Oops. Wrong thing to say.

Susan takes a deep breath. “Ok, but I’m keeping my eyes shut,” she says.

“Susan, you’ll need your eyes open to see what you’re doing,” I remind her.

Susan hesitates and then nods, reaching up for a handhold. Slowly we begin to climb and Susan keeps her eyes focused on the ceiling, not on the shrinking ground.

“Don’t look down, Susie, just don’t look down...”I say quietly as we slowly climb higher and higher. Susan nods, reaching for the next molded-ceramic rock.

So far, so good, I think in relief. We may actually do this.

“Almost there,” Susan whispers as we near the top, seeming to need to psyche herself up for the final ten feet.

Grinning at Susan, I grab the final handhold, and then reach up for the bell to signal a successful climb. Success never sounded so good!

“How do we get down?” Susan asks, risking a glance down at the far-away floor.

“We rappel down, basically walking backward,” I explain. Susan frowns. “It’ll be ok,” I assure her.

I take a moment to hug her. “You did good, Susie,” I tell her. She smiles.

Slowly we begin to walk backward down the wall, and Susan actually grins.

“That was kind of fun,” she admits.

When we reach the ground again and have returned our harness equipment, we walk outside, ready to go home. I’ve got homework to do from English. Blech.

As we are turning onto Laker Drive, our street, Susan points.

“Hey, look, Ellen! Look what she’s doing!”

A woman stands surrounded by a group of people on the sidewalk ahead. Her hands, palms out, are held in front of her, beams of bluish light shooting from her hands. The light traces along the pavement, smoking, scorching a black line.

“That’s so cool...” Susan says quietly, a touch of longing in her eyes.

Suddenly, we hear sirens; turning we see a police car barreling down the street towards us. It screeches to a stop at the curb near the woman and her group, and two officers jump out. They have their guns drawn. Black metal gleams.

Is she on the run from the police?

“Pensacola Police! Stop what you’re doing!” they yell at the same time.