47 Students Remaining
There aren’t any volunteers. In fact, a silence falls over the barn. I hear someone behind me swallow. Jenna starts cracking her knuckles, each soft pop seeming to echo off the peaked ceiling.
“It’s not as impossible as it looks,” Tomo says. “You were all given physicals before being assigned to this class, so there’s no doubt that each of you is capable of making it through the gauntlet. Everything’s been perfectly calibrated to make sure no one will be injured—”
“You…you don’t honestly expect us to think that’s…
safe?” This comes from a blond girl near the front of the group, Grace Parker.
There’s murmured agreement all around me.
A few other students shout questions. Someone demands to speak to Wyatt.
I swallow, my eyes moving over the rope swing and weighted balls and concrete floor.
I feel as if I’m floating outside my body.
Blackwood, I remind myself. Remember Blackwood.
Tomo’s smile doesn’t budge. “You will be required to go through the gauntlet at least once in order to pass your test at the end of this module,” he explains. “I urge you to work the curriculum. You won’t know what Luminary can do for you until you try.”
Tomo pauses to see whether there are any other questions. Nick releases a dry, unamused laugh and asks, “How does going through that prove we understand physics?”
“Everything we’ve discussed over the past twenty-five minutes has been abstract,” Tomo explains.
“You might understand acceleration and force in theory, but it’s an entirely different thing to feel it being exerted on your body, and to experience the consequences of your physical choices.
At Luminary, we believe students reach a deeper level of comprehension through practical application.
There’s a difference between grasping a concept through logic and gaining knowledge through personal involvement. ”
“And if one of us gains a broken leg?” I ask.
“No one’s going to break their leg.” Tomo flashes me a fixed smile. “As I said, this course has been tested and optimized according to each of your physical needs. The only way to fall is by failing to trust yourself.”
I glance at the hard concrete floor, doubting that.
Tomo scans the class, waiting for someone to volunteer, but no one seems eager to test out their knowledge of physics in such a tactile way. Eventually, he releases a soft sigh and adjusts his glasses. “Very well, if we have no volunteers…”
Rani steps forward. “It’s cool,” he says. “I’ll try it out.”
And I thought he couldn’t get any hotter.
A murmur goes through the crowd as Rani steps up the ramp, head cocked. I can see the outline of his muscles through his thin Henley.
I wonder what he’s thinking. The wall’s too steep to run all the way up and too high to jump to the top.
He’ll need to run, then jump at the exact right moment.
I picture the graph Professor Aoki scrawled on the whiteboard on the other side of the barn, the one I dutifully copied onto my own tablet.
Gravity pulling down. The force of the wall pushing back.
Rani races at the ramp at a dead sprint. Halfway up, he pushes himself backward—too hard—and flies away from the wall, one hand grasping above him, fingers desperately scraping for the edge of the lip. He can’t get a good grip, and he lands on his back on the ground with a sickening thud.
Horror grips my chest. Jenna screams. Nick shouts an expletive. A few other kids gasp, audibly. Scar grabs my arm, squeezing so tightly I lose feeling in my fingers. I barely notice.
Get up, I think.
Rani lies perfectly still on the ground. Then he lifts his head, flashing a wobbly smile. “I’m okay.”
The relief in the room is audible. A few kids exhale; others applaud. When the noise dies down, Tomo asks, “Can you explain to us why you let go?”
Rani looks confused. “Well, I couldn’t grab hold of the wall…”
Tomo shakes his head. “Physically, you were perfectly capable of grabbing hold of the wall. So, what happened? When did you stop trusting yourself?”
I glance at Scar, eyebrows raised. Rani’s fingers clearly slipped. What does that have to do with trust?
But Rani scratches the back of his head, like he’s thinking this over. “I guess…well, I pushed off the wall too hard when I was running up. I thought I had to use a lot more force than I did.”
Professor Aoki nods. “That’s right.” He turns to the rest of us and explains, as if still in the middle of a lecture, “Rani miscalculated when to jump. He didn’t trust that his body was capable of making it up the wall. Anyone else want to try?”
A short, freckly kid named Daniel makes it up the ramp, grabs the top lip of the wall, and hauls himself onto the landing, but falters on the second obstacle: a long metal bar stretched across two parallel tracks.
Tomo tells us that, according to Daniel’s chart, his grip strength was strong enough to handle the force, but he got scared and let go too soon.
“Trust yourself,” he says as Daniel hauls himself off the floor. “Work the curriculum.”
A sporty girl named Kaitlyn runs up the ramp and jumps at exactly the right moment, then makes it through the tracks on the bar where Daniel fell by scooting her body forward inch by inch.
When she’s close enough to the other platform, she dangles for a moment, seeming to calculate something.
Eventually, she swings her weight backward and launches herself into the air.
She slams into the platform, and all around me, people break into applause. I cheer along with them. I can’t help it. The rush of adrenaline I felt when she hit that platform was exhilarating.
Kaitlyn falls during the next challenge, while holding on to a log as it rolls down the roller coaster–like track.
“Trust yourself!” a few kids shout from the crowd, and Kaitlyn’s actually smiling as she rejoins us.
I’m not normally someone who volunteers for things in class. But Blackwood is on the line. If I want to be one of Luminary’s final five, I’m going to have to do things I wouldn’t normally do. Like raise my hand.
“Lia Michaels!” Tomo calls. “You’re up!”
I swallow and make my way to the base of the ramp.
This seems to be the easiest obstacle, which isn’t saying much.
Just as many people have failed to make it past as have succeeded.
And I’ve never been an athlete. But I am strong.
And this sort of thing, scrambling around obstacles, it’s not so different from climbing in and out of windows and over fences.
I shake out my hands and crane my neck back so I can see all the way up to the top.
I have to race up the ramp at a dead sprint, push myself away from the wall when I’m approximately halfway up, and leap for the top lip of the incline.
And then I have to somehow keep my grip even as my body slams into the ramp. No big deal.
A knot of fear forms in my throat as I break into a run, feet slamming against the concrete, the muscles in my legs already burning. The ground begins to angle upward. I feel gravity pulling me down. I lean forward, run faster. Halfway up, I launch myself off the wall—
For a moment, I’m airborne. My heart crashes into my stomach as the ground drops away, but I don’t have a lot of time to think. I throw out my arms, grasping wildly above my head.
Thwack!
A shock of pain radiates through my palms and forearms as I slam against the top of the ramp, arms desperately clawing at the platform.
My fingers burn, but all those years of dangling out a window must’ve done something for my grip strength, because I manage to hold tight, breathing hard as I pull myself to the top.
“Good job!” Tomo calls from below. His voice may as well be white noise.
Everyone seems far away as I turn toward the next challenge.
Kaitlyn got through this one by scooting the bar to the other end with small, incremental movements, but our bodies are completely different.
I hesitate a moment, trying to remember what Tomo said about using gravity and force.
I used to love the monkey bars when I was a kid.
There was this park down the street from one of my less savory foster families, and I’d spend hours there to keep from having to go home.
I’d challenge the other kids to see who could hang from the bars the longest, but none of them could ever beat me, even when I only held on with one hand.
I think of that now as I swing my lower body behind me, using the force of my swings to jerk the bar forward.
It skids down the track and slams into the opposite side.
My hands slip from the bar as soon as it hits, and then I’m flying again, slamming into the next platform.
The speed at which I land sends me into an awkward roll that can’t look particularly graceful from below—but at least I made it.
Log roll next. It seemed simple enough when I was on the ground, but the second I climb onto the log, the world turns upside down, and I’m spinning and holding on for dear life and collapsing on the platform on the opposite side, arms and legs trembling as I push myself up to all fours. I feel like I might throw up.
I get through the rest of the course like this, taking each obstacle one move at a time. And then there’s only one obstacle standing between me and the finish line: a series of raised platforms on springs, all at different heights, spaced randomly.
This challenge appears to be about gravitational force. I have to calculate the force and trajectory needed to make each jump, and not use so much that I go careening over the opposite side. I’ve also got to take my mass into account, and the springs.
I swallow. Nothing in my delinquent foster-kid past prepared me for jumping onto bouncing platforms twenty feet above the ground.
I consider the first platform, ramp up to a slow jog, leap—
Bam. I hit the first platform just right. I sway a little, but hold out my arms and manage to catch my balance before toppling over the other side. Below, I hear a soft smattering of applause. Only a few more leaps and I could actually finish this thing.
The air around me feels soupy. It’s like moving through water, just a little bit harder, a little bit more weight pushing against my arms and legs.
I wipe the sweat from my eyes and leap through the remaining few platforms. There’s just the final platform now, the end. I lower myself to a crouch, take a deep breath, push off—
And then I’m falling. It happens that fast.
I hit the ground too hard. My leg can’t hold my weight, not with this much force. The moment my foot makes impact with the ground, I feel something roll, then release, and I rock forward, arms cartwheeling as the floor flies at my face.