She missed Ama and Jo. She couldn't help it. She had gone a long time without them. So long that she feared she was losing the knack of having friends or being one. Ama and Jo always knew her best and helped her know herself. They knew the shape of who she was, and helped keep her in it. Without them she felt like she drifted and lost her outlines.
It was painful to think of ninth grade without being close to them, but she had forced herself to do it. The e-mail from Jo had given her hope, but she was afraid to hope very much. It was probably good for her to practice being alone.
Jo couldn't fall asleep that night. She walked downstairs, enjoying the shafts of moonlight sliding in through the glass on either side of the big front door. In her T-shirt and boxer shorts she floated into the living room and sat on the couch. It was nicer in here with her dad's stuff all around it. She hated coasters. It was nicer in here with the heady, green summer air.
It gave her an aching nostalgia, the smell of summer in this room. In the old days, when Finn -was still alive, her mom had left the windows open. Jo could remember the feeling of it.
It made her -wonder about this house, how her mom had kept it so perfect, with Mona, the housekeeper, under strict orders to clean up your stuff practically before you'd even left it anywhere. Her mom lavished money and attention on the house, just the way she lavished it on her body and her face and her hair, her “upkeep,” as she called it. Jo had always believed that her mom -wanted to make everything perfect for her family. But now she -wondered. What -was it really for?
It -was strange to see her dad's stuff. She -wasn't used to seeing the books and papers he -was reading, the cross-word half done, and a Sudoku puzzle -with a penciled number in every square. Who knew her dad liked Sudoku?
It -was strange to think of her dad teaching himself how to cook this summer, alone in the kitchen, -when he hardly even came home for dinner.
She'd thought that -when he -was free of her mom, he -would stay at the office or the hospital day and night and leave only to go to parties with cute female residents or nurses. But there was no evidence of that. Just the opposite. When he was free of her mom, he came home.
Jo began to get a feeling, faraway but powerful, of just how unhappy they had been, how much had been sacrificed because of it.
After Finn had died, her dad had gone to -work. Jo knew that. He'd pushed himself harder and harder. She'd sensed, even -when she was younger, that he was driven by the desire for distraction and forgetting. “You try to feel in control of something,” he'd said to the therapist in one of the few family grief sessions her mother had been able to tolerate.
Jo thought of her mother's immaculate house and immaculate appearance and her endless badgering about -where you put your glass down. Jo now wondered if her mother -was trying to control some things too. It hadn't always been like that.
Jo's stomach grumbled and she realized she was hungry again. She walked into the kitchen and piled leftovers of everything into a jumble on her plate. When she went into the freezer to get ice for her -water, she saw the three boxes of peas, covered in -white frost.
Her dad might never be able to talk to her honestly about -what had happened -with her mother. He -would probably always be a little awkward -with her and afraid to ask her questions. Maybe he would never know her cell phone number.
But there were peas where there hadn't been peas in a long time. Love didn't necessarily look the way you expected it to.
Early in the morning Ama sat at the edge of the world, wondering -why she was so -willing to fall off it.
“Jonathan goes and then it's your turn,” Maureen called to her.
“But I thought I got to go last,” Ama said squeakily.
“You are last,” Maureen said affectionately. Maureen hadn't said much about it, but Ama knew how relieved and happy she -was that Ama had chosen to stay.
Ama -watched in bewilderment as Jonathan practically leapt off the cliff-when his turn came. He didn't even check his ropes. He didn't even make the proper signal to his be-layer. He looked like he -would have jumped off as eagerly -with or -without ropes.
“He's crazy,” Ama commented.
“He is. And stupid,” Jared said.
Ama considered that. “So if I'm petrified, does that mean I'm smart?”
“Absolutely,” Jared said. He looked over the edge, watching Jonathan make his swift descent. “All right, he's down.” Jared shook his head. “Crikey. I don't think he could have done it any faster if he'd fallen.”
Ama hoisted herself doubtfully to her feet. “I guess that means it's my turn.” She was so trussed up with ropes and gear she could barely move.
“Yes, it does.”
“Am I really going to do this?”
“Yes!” he and Maureen both answered.
Ama teetered closer to the edge. She couldn't even look. If she couldn't look over it, how could she go over it?
Maureen -was her belayer. Jared helped Ama clip herself in. Ama checked her ropes and her connections about fifteen times.
“I think you're good,” Jared said. He smiled at her.
“You think?” she asked earnestly.
“Yep.”
“Go get em, honey,” Maureen said.
Ama crept closer to the abyss. Her hands were soaked with sweat.
Two more feet and her eyes met with a view that astonished her Oh, my. Down below was a cobalt river snaking through a green valley with fields of flowers. Beyond she could see pine trees etched against towering blue mountains. It really was just like in the poster.
She drew in a deep breath, one of her first of the summer. She looked out across the lovely landscape and up at the cloudless, seamless sky. She had become well acquainted -with roots and dirt and bugs this summer, she realized. Before that she had spent a lot of time in the classroom and the library and in her bedroom at her desk. But she hadn't spent much time looking at the sky.
She remembered the old days when she and Jo and Polly would lie on the grass in Jo's backyard on summer nights and look at the stars. The world had seemed much bigger then, like it contained more possibilities, more ways to be.
“You ready?” Jared asked.
“I think so,” she breathed.
How were you supposed to get over the edge? Everyone else had made it look so effortless she hadn't even noticed how they'd done it. She got down on all fours and backed up, like a horse backing into her stall. Her helmet fell over her eyes. She felt like her one talent in life was for making things effortful.
“On belay!” Maureen called, starting Ama on her official descent.
“Climbing,” Ama responded in a strangled voice.
She put one knee over the edge. Her foot found nothing but air. She looked over her shoulder. Oh, my God. She saw all the tiny figures of her group looking up at her. She thought she saw the miniature plane of Noah's hand, turned up in a wave. It didn't look like 350 feet down. It looked like at least a thousand. Who had done the measuring here? This is nothing like Pony Hill, she felt like saying to Polly.
Her foot dangled against nothing. She shifted her second knee over the edge. Both feet dangled against nothing. She was stuck in her awkward position.
Jared bent down and adjusted her helmet. He took both of her hands in his. He must have noticed they were soaking. He gave her another encouraging smile. “You know, Ama, you're a lot more courageous than Jonathan,” he said.
Ama squinted one eye against the sun. “Are you joking?”
“Courage is the conquest of fear, right? He had no fear. You have a lot.”
“I have a lot,” she echoed. She wasn't going to pretend otherwise. Who was she kidding?
He lifted her by her two hands as she wriggled back over the edge. At last her feet found purchase against the rock.
“Okay. You've got to lean back,” Jared instructed her.
“No … I don't. … Really?”
“Yes, you do.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned a f
ew inches. “Like this.”
“Yes!”
“Don't let go!” she screamed at him. The wind was blowing harder out here over the edge. She felt herself swinging slightly. “Ahhhhhhh!”
“It's okay. I won't let go. I've got you.”
Ama looked back over her shoulder again. Her heart was thumping so powerfully she was amazed it hadn't launched itself right out of her body and into the sky.
“Keep going,” Jared told her.
“I'm going,” she said. She moved about another millimeter.
“Trust the rope, Ama.”
She felt another gust of -wind. She clutched Jared's hands for all she was worth.
She looked up at him and noticed he was -wincing in pain. “I think I may have to get all my fingers amputated after this,” he said, but he managed to smile through it.
“Sorry,” she murmured. She remembered his handshake on the first day at the airport. She tried to loosen her death grip a little.
Ama glanced over her shoulder again. She looked at the rock in front of her. For some reason she thought of the first day of third grade, the day she'd met Jo and Polly and they'd escaped from school together. She remembered so vividly looking at the doors of school, wanting to go back in, but wanting to go with them even more. You can do it, Jo had said to her. And she had. It had been her greatest thrill, the start of her life's best adventure.
Ama looked back over her shoulder at the tiny people standing on hard ground below. You can do it, she said to herself, missing Jo and Polly and herself, the way she used to be. And if not, then you'll die and so who cares.
Ama took one more big breath before she let go. She half expected it to be her last. She half expected to hurtle down to the ground in a heap. But she didn't.
“Open your eyes,” Jared told her.
Oh. She'd forgotten about that. She opened them and saw that the rope held her fast. She was slightly surprised that Jared was still there. She imagined he might be small and far above her, but there he was, big as before, massaging his fingers.
She took a step backward down the cliff. A tiny, quivering one. She took another.
“Lean back. Trust the rope,” he told her.
She looked so hard at the rope in front of her, her eyes crossed. Could she trust it? She imagined Maureen on the other end. She was happy that it was Maureen.
She took more steps. Jared was getting smaller.
A hard gust shook her. She grabbed the rope with both hands and tried to take charge of her-weight by pulling her body vertical.
She immediately lost her footing, screamed, scratched madly at the rock face, and nearly -went into cardiac arrest.
“Falling!” she cried to her belayer.
But then the wind calmed and when she made herself stop flailing she discovered that she was just hanging there, just dangling by the rope like a spider at the end of her thread.
I can't really mess this up, she thought with dawning jubi lation.
Once again she planted her feet against the rock and began to lean back. She understood now that you couldn't keep your footing if you weren't -willing to lean out and give up your -weight. It -was like many other things in camping and hiking: the -worse and more terrifying and more counterintuitive it -was, the more it -was the thing you -were supposed to do.
She leaned back even farther, so that her back -was nearly parallel -with the ground, assuming the ground -was somewhere down there. The steps -were easier this -way. Her feet really stuck to the rock.
She bent her knees and made a tiny, brave jump from the rock. She heard cheering from below, and from Jared and even Maureen above. She smiled to herself.
She took a moment to look around her, at the quiet valley, at the streams of condensation in the sky, at the curling roots of the trees determinedly making a home in the cliff. Behind her the world laid itself out in a patchwork so vast she felt like she could see all the way to Bethesda and to Pony Hill. She imagined that if she tried she could see all the way across the ocean to the little house in Kumasi and her mango tree. Polly was more right than she even knew. This was a view not to be missed.
Ama picked up her pace. She walked and even pushed off and bounced now and then. The next time she looked around her she realized that Jared was now smaller than Dan and Noah and Carly and the rest of the group below her. Unbelievable.
Jared waved. He knew she had it now.
I'm in the air, she thought. She waved her arms around a little to feel it was just air. She really had it now.
With bigger and braver bounces she made it all the way to the bottom. The whole group cheered and clapped as she put one shaky foot and then the other on the ground.
Dan unclipped her from the rope and gave her a hug. Noah gave her a hug. A nice long one. She couldn't stop smiling.
“Off belay!” she screamed up to Maureen, and pulled the rope twice.
Away from the group Ama made a jump of pure joy. It was an unprecedented joy full of opposing properties and opposing parts that for Ama, in that moment, fit together effortlessly: the joy of leaning back, the joy of letting go, the joy of her feet sticking, the joy of pulling them off the rock, the joy of hanging, the joy of not falling, the joy of the past and of the future, the joy of the sky and the mountains and the valley, the joy of having made it, and the joy of not having to do it again.
Jo was woken by the ring of her cell phone at eleven o'clock the next morning.
“Hello?”
“Jo, it's me.”
“Who's me?” Jo asked groggily.
“Bryn!” Bryn squawked, as though she was Jo's best friend and it had never been any other -way.
The memories of the previous night came back to Jo in stages, starting -with the tacos and moving backward.
“You should come over here right away,” Bryn said excitedly.
“Where?”
“To the restaurant!”
“Why?”
“Because I think Richard wants to talk to you.”
Oh, please. The restaurant suddenly seemed so far away to her. “Bryn, I'm not coming over there. I'm not even at the beach. I'm back home in D.C.”
“Can you get back here?”
“No! Bryn, I got fired, remember? Why does Richard want to talk to me?”
“Because he found out what happened.”
Jo leaned back on her pillow. She kicked off her covers and crossed one knee over the other. “So what happened?” she asked at the end of a pause.
“Megan saw everything. After you left, Megan told Richard that Effie pushed you into the table and made you smash all that stuff. Carlos said he saw it too.”
Jo sat up straight now. This was getting interesting. “Really?”
“Yes. So Effie got fired too. And it was a lot uglier -with her.”
Jo couldn't help enjoying the idea of that. “Really. Whoa.”
“Yeah. She got really mad at Megan. She screamed at everyone. Even a couple of customers.”
“No way.”
“Seriously. You should have seen it. Richard said he was going to call the police if she didn't leave quietly.”
Jo shook her head. This was almost too much.
“Unbelievable, right?”
“Unbelievable,” Jo concurred.
“Today, we've all been sitting around saying how bad we feel about you getting blamed and everything,” Bryn said cheerfully.
Jo realized that Bryn -would be on any side of a fight, just so she felt like she was part of the action.
“And also, guess what?”
Jo couldn't guess.
“Zach is here. He's the one who said I should call you.”
Jo put the phone down for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut. She picked it back up and put it to her other ear. “Oh, really.”
“Yes. He really wants to see you. You should come back, Jo. Seriously. I know it's almost the end of summer, but Richard would probably give you your job back. He said, and I quote, that you were ‘a first- rate
bus girl.’ “
Jo couldn't help laughing. “He said that?”
“Yeah. Everybody feels really bad about what happened. It's so unfair. I said I would tell you that. They totally want to invite you to come out tonight. We would have so much fun.”
Jo nodded. She smelled something cooking downstairs. Was it bacon?
“So are you gonna come back?” Bryn asked.
Jo didn't answer at first.
“Come on, Jo. Think how cool it will be. Because then when -we start school, you and me, we'll be, like, the cool girls hanging -with all these upperclassmen.”
That had sounded thrilling to Jo at the beginning of the summer, but it didn't now. She knew exactly how much Bryn's friendship -was worth.
Jo thought she smelled eggs, too. And maybe even toast. She pictured her dad and the mess shaping up in the kitchen. “No,” she said to Bryn. “I think I'm going to stay here.”
“You will spend the first day in -wardrobe and fashion, the second day in hair and makeup, the morning of the third day in catwalking and media. The final afternoon you'll put it all together for the competition.”
The speaker at the front of the room -was a former model named Karen, as thin as a pin in black leather pants. Polly was awed by the length of her legs and the bowed distance between her two thighs. Some of the girls claimed to recognize her from old ads and magazines, but Polly didn't.
Between camp and this place Polly was meeting quite a few former models this summer. Now she knew where models went when they weren't models anymore—to places where they could make more models.
“We'll send each of you down the runway with lights and music and professional photographers snapping your picture. The first seven rows of the audience will be talent scouts from all the agencies, big and small. You'll each get four tickets for parents, relatives, friends. How does that sound?”
There was excited chatter among the audience in the ballroom of the Grand Regent Hotel and some bursts of applause. Polly tipped around on the metal legs of her chair.