Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Where is everyone?”
The cottonwoods and mint bushes surrounding Thunder Spring were eerily vacant. Mandy had lost track of time behind the waterfall,
taking not one but twelve dives through the Maytag’s underwater tornado before she felt satisfied. The experience was addictive:
pain and pleasure, shock and deliverance. It was like getting a tattoo or falling in love. As soon as it was over, she wanted
to do it again.
“Hello? Fiona? Lucinda?”
She and Thor picked their way across the mossy rocks to where they’d left their stuff. There was no sign of Lucinda or Fiona,
let alone Stefan or Charlie. Just Mandy’s sarong draped over a wild scraggle of mint, Thor’s day pack resting under the batiked
fabric.
“They must have taken off up the trail.”
Thor seemed strangely unconcerned about the fact that every one of his other charges had hiked on without him. But if he wasn’t
worried, Mandy decided she wasn’t, either. The last hour—or however long they’d spent spinning in the water—she’d forgotten
about the death threats. She’d forgotten about her investigative assignments from Liv, the duties she’d so thoroughly failed
to complete. She’d gotten what she’d come to the Grand Canyon for in the first place: an adventure.
It was a shame her sister wasn’t with her.
“We’ve got two options,” Thor said. He perched on the hollowed-out trunk of a fallen cottonwood tree. “We can hoof it up the trail to catch up with the others. They can’t be too far ahead. Not if we jog.”
Mandy craned her neck up. While the trail was clearly visible, it was an unending zigzag of switchbacks through cactus. There
was at least a thousand vertical feet of gravelly scree between them and a saddle of mesquite on the horizon. And she hadn’t
exactly been a speed demon on the first part of the hike.
“What’s plan B?” she asked.
He winked. “There’s a shortcut.”
“A tunnel?”
“Something like that. You trust me?”
She considered what she knew about Thor. He was cute. He was funny. He’d shown her care when she needed it, hiking along with
her at the back of the pack up to Thunder Spring. And he’d shown her adventure when she wanted it, swirling with her through
the Maytag. Liv probably had a twelve-point matrix for what constituted trust. But Mandy operated on vibes. She was certain
Thor would be good at a party, great in a crisis. Was that trust?
“I’m game.”
He looked her over for a long moment, assessing something.
“All right, then. Follow me.”
She scurried to keep up as he charged away from the hard-packed trail and slipped under a boulder as big as a house. She followed
him through a progression of caves, the bright sun blinking in and out of focus as they zoomed forward. Twenty minutes, three
broken nails, and a jammed pinky toe later, they stopped.
“Here we are.” Thor hoisted himself onto a sun-streaked chockstone sandwiched between two massive towers of rock. He reached
down and offered Mandy a hand.
“The back entrance to Surprise Valley.”
Mandy looked doubtfully at the narrow sliver of sun that shot through the rocky crevasse.
The light traced the outline of Thor’s athletic body, illuminating the tiny hairs on his arms. Beyond him, little was visible.
The travertine towers flared on either side of him, twisting the narrow space above him into a slender ribbon of air.
Thor unzipped his pack and pulled out a length of bright green rope. He uncoiled it with confident hands, lifting his T-shirt
away from his taut stomach and winding the rope around his waist. He tied one quick knot after another. Then he unfurled the
rest of the cord, adding a hand-sized loop at the end.
“We’ll be able to walk and scramble the first half. Then it gets tight, and we’ll have to climb up and traverse. It doesn’t
take any specialized skills. Just a willingness to press your feet against one side and shimmy your butt against the other.”
“This will get us closer to Deer Creek?”
“We’ll pop out in Surprise Valley, just above the spring that feeds Deer Creek. Should shave a solid hour off the hike.”
She peered again into the dark slot. It didn’t look like much of a shortcut. But it did look like one heck of an adventure.
“What’s so surprising about Surprise Valley?”
“Guess we better find out.”
He turned and grinned at her. The skin splintered at the outside edges of his sunglasses, making her wonder for a moment how
old he was, and how it would feel to run her fingers along the lines on his sunbaked face.
Mandy pulled her eyes from his and looked one more time at the narrow entrance to the crevasse in the rock and took a deep
breath. The longer Mandy was separated from Liv and the rest of the group, the more alone she felt. But the only way back
was through. She clutched the small loop at the end of Thor’s rope.
“If you get stuck or need a boost,” he said, “just give it a little tug.”
He winked, then turned back to the slot, which was looming taller by the minute. “You’re in for a real treat.”
It was like following the Minotaur into his labyrinth.
At first, they were just walking in the cool sand, Mandy trailing her fingertips against the smooth limestone walls that flared out and up to a broken window of sky.
After about twenty yards, the gap between the walls grew so narrow they had to turn their shoulders and walk sideways to proceed.
Another twenty yards, and Mandy was sucking in her stomach, praying she could squeeze through.
Then it got so tight she couldn’t even take a step.
“There’s only one way forward now,” Thor said. “Ready for your Spider-Man audition?”
Mandy craned her neck up at the slick limestone walls, which widened to a comfortable span fifteen feet above their heads.
“You bet,” she said, projecting a level of confidence she absolutely did not feel. “I AM Spider-Man.”
Thor demonstrated the technique, pressing his feet against one wall, his back to the other, inching himself up until he was
wedged in the flare, his body floating fifteen feet above her. The travertine was cool and buttery, which was a blessing,
considering she was wearing hiking boots, a sarong, and a bikini. For the first time, she wished she had a pair of her sister’s
ugly cargo pants. She’d be lucky if the rock didn’t rub the turtles right off her sarong.
“We have to drop the rope here,” Thor told her. “Too dangerous. But I’ll be right ahead of you as we traverse across.”
Mandy pushed herself back into the limestone wall until she felt the tiny pockmarks and perturbations engrave themselves into
her skin. She placed one foot against the wall across from her, then the other.
She looked up to where the slot widened. She was a human cannonball, aimed at the sky.
One deep breath. Two. Mandy shoved her palms into the wall in front of her and launched. As she rose, she stretched one leg
back, so she was standing with one foot against the front wall, one pressed to the rock behind her, her torso floating in
the growing gap between them. She was walking on air.
“THIS IS AMAZING!” she yelled up into the void.
Her words rattled in the slot, the echo sonorous and chaotic.
She felt powerful. She felt dangerous. She started moving up and laterally until she was more than twenty feet off the ground.
She followed Thor’s path, advancing with just her feet and the lightest kiss of her back against the rock, using the palms of her hands to balance and draw herself forward.
She looked up. She looked ahead. She was flying.
And then, all of a sudden, there was no more path. Just darkness.
“Thor?”
Darkness, and silence.
Her left calf started to ache, and she foolishly looked down. It was a long way into the narrowing V of rock below her. She
imagined getting trapped there, falling tightly between the rocks and no one coming for her for days.
“THOR?”
They must be close to the exit. He must have popped out the other side and would be waiting for her in Surprise Valley. But
musts couldn’t help her now. Her left leg started shaking, not from pain, but from nervousness and fatigue. She shoved her
foot harder against the wall, trying to impress the nubbly surface of the rock onto the sole of her boot.
Her leg kept trembling.
This was one of those moments when bravado failed her. When she was all alone, without an audience to perform for. A good
lie was like an echo: Its power came in how others reflected it back to you.
“I CAN DO THIS,” she yelled into the abyss.
Her words tumbled back and fell into the two-story gap beneath her feet.
Thor was gone. Liv was somewhere on the far side of Surprise Valley. Mandy had no choice. She had to keep pressing forward
alone.
Did it take ten minutes? Twenty? At first, she was inching along, craning her ears and eyes for the guide, wishing him back
into her field of vision. But Thor was beyond sight, beyond hearing. She had to accept it. She started taking bigger straddling
steps along the wall, rubbing her fingers raw over the rock as she pressed herself foot by foot, hand over hand, across the
chasm.
She prayed it wouldn’t get narrower, forcing her to climb higher. She prayed it wouldn’t get wider, beyond her ability to brace herself. She kept scooting sideways until she hit a sharp corner. The deep V broke into boulders, and she carefully lowered herself to the sand.
The ground brought stability, but little relief. It was only when she got to the far side and stumbled out of the slot that
she started to wonder. It was only when the wall opened and she saw the tight folds of Surprise Valley laid out in front of
her that she started to worry. The world before her was all boulders and brush, a stark, twisted beauty, with no discernible
trails nor signs of human activity. Was she really getting closer to the rest of the group? And if not, where had Thor taken
her?