Chapter 5
“Tess?” Allie shouted from above. “What happened?”
She didn’t know.
“Tess.”
Her neck was twisted, forced into an awkward angle. She tried to turn her head—she couldn’t—and felt another flare of eye-watering
pain.
My hair.
It’s tangled in the descender.
At the edge of her blurring vision, she could just barely see it: a black hairball gnarled up tightly between the rope and
the metal racks. Impossible to untangle. She felt spreading warmth under her helmet and knew her scalp was bleeding.
“Are you okay?”
She choked on embarrassment. She’d tied her hair up into a tight bun as Allie had instructed, but that had been hours ago.
At some point in all her physical exertions the knot had loosened, and now a lock of her hair was snarled through the muddy
gadget.
She couldn’t go up. Or down.
Her boots kicked over the void. She was swinging now, side to side like a pendulum.
The rope creaked again with tension, and this time she felt the vibration through her tangled hair, in her scalp.
She couldn’t turn her head to look down.
Below was a blind drop, and it could be into mud, or water, or a bed of spear-edged rocks.
“It’s okay,” Allie called down. “This is a minor hiccup.”
“Feels pretty major.”
“Stay calm.”
“I am.”
“And don’t move.” She heard scuffling movement, Allie’s gear rattling somewhere above. “This kind of thing happens. I’m going
to rope down to you for a closer look, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Just hang out until I get there.”
“Funny.”
With every passing second she felt more vulnerable. The pain in her scalp was growing. A handful of her hair had been sucked
up, locking her face sideways. She couldn’t move her neck a centimeter. It was a strangely volatile position: the thing holding
her head hostage was also the thing holding her to her rope.
And disconnecting? Not an option.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Remember, fear is power.”
“Yeah? I feel like lightening my load right about now.”
Allie laughed, but her voice sounded strangely distant.
Warm liquid dripped into Tess’s eyes. Blood? She tried to blink it away. She held the rope with both gloved hands, as tightly
as she could squeeze. The rope creaked again, and the sound reminded her of brittle glass under pressure. She struggled to
brace her feet against the wall, but the wet rock was too slick.
“Don’t do anything stupid, like detaching,” Allie called from the ledge above. “This is perfectly fine. I’ll be down in two
minutes.”
“Okay,” she croaked without air. Breathing was becoming difficult, like she was inhaling water. It was vaguely humiliating, swinging
in a harness with her neck bent sideways, her hair tangled in her own equipment. She wondered what was taking Allie so long
up there—would she attach to the same rope and descend to help? Was that even safe to do?
Until then, she was on her own. And, Tess was realizing, she was tired of being rescued.
I’ll figure this out myself.
With her free hand, she patted down her jeans pocket until she found her Swiss Army knife. For a heart-fluttering moment,
it nearly dropped between her fingers.
“Tess?” Allie noticed. “What are you doing?”
Not killing myself, I hope.
Raising it to her face, careful not to drop it down the abyss, Tess bit the knife open with her front teeth. She tasted cold
metal. The two-inch blade clicked into position.
“Careful, Tess. Maybe wait for me, yeah?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Whatever you do, don’t cut the rope.”
“I won’t.” She bit the glove off her right hand. She’d need full sensation in her fingers. Then she took a breath and raised
the blade behind her left ear, out of her view. She found the lock of hair, taut as a violin string. Definitely not the rope.
She touched it with her bare fingers several times, to make absolutely certain. Then she started to cut in a slow, sawing motion.
Come on.
The knife’s edge was blunt. The motion made her entire body swing.
Come on, come on—
Her hair snapped suddenly, quicker than she’d expected. Without resistance the knife sliced forward, out of her control—but cut only empty air. The rope was undamaged.
And she was free.
She exhaled through shivering teeth and stretched her neck, finally able to move it again. She squinted up into the glare
of Allie’s headlamp. “I’m good,” she shouted. “I handled it.”
“Badass.” Her best friend was impressed.
Tess wanted to cheer. She picked hair from the descender bars to clear the jam. The warmth trickled down her cheek, tickling
her bare skin. Was it more blood? Sweat? It didn’t matter. She ignored it all and laughed with a raw throat, a new voice she’d
never heard before echoing off the crevasse walls as she dangled.
Allie grinned above. “Fun shit, right?”
“Hell yeah.”
At the bottom Tess stood on reassuringly solid ground, every tensed muscle in her body now relaxing. Allie was demonstrating
ascent techniques, but she was barely listening.
Now buzzing with adrenaline, Tess relished the chance to do it all over again. Hell, an even higher drop. A hundred feet?
Bring it on. She didn’t feel embarrassed anymore; she was empowered. Shit happens. Hair buns come undone. She’d handled it.
Allie was halfway through showing how to tie something called a Prusik hitch when she froze. She dropped the rope, the lesson
instantly forgotten. “Tess. Do you see that?”
“See what?”
Allie raised a finger to her lips. Shh. As if someone might hear them.
Then she pointed up.
“Just look.” She stared up the crevasse, at the steep ledge they’d rappelled from. It was now pitch-black. Their lights couldn’t reach the ceiling of sharp stalactites, but Allie covered her headlamp with her palm anyway.
“Cover yours, too,” she whispered. “Do you see it?”