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“Wait!” I called after her, rushing to keep up, the meager flame from the light vanishing.
I saw her quite clearly as I felt the earth give way beneath me. She was saying something, a warning, a scream, but I couldn’t hear the words as the soft ground crumbled under my feet, and I was falling, falling into a darkness so thick and impenetrable it felt like death. I landed hard, the breath knocked out of me, and I lay there, gasping and choking, certain I was dying. I clawed out, my fingers struggling for something to hold onto, but there was only hard stone all around me.
My breath came back in a painful whoosh, and I could finally hear Bella’s voice from far overhead, screeching at me. “Jesus Christ, Podge, why couldn’t you watch where you were going? That ground could barely support my weight. You should have stayed toward the middle.”
I tried to say something, but only came out with a muffled sob, which surprised me. I never cried in front of anyone at Mariposa—that was kept for the sanctity of the small room I’d been given. Originally Bella and I had shared, just as the cousins and Marcus and Ian had, but as her wardrobe increased, her need for space had increased as well, and she’d been moved out of the nursery into one of the grown-up bedrooms with its own ensuite, something I deeply envied. I hated leaving my room in the middle of the night in my pajamas—it always happened that Marcus or Ian would be wandering around and see me.
Bella’s voice softened. “Are you all right, Podge?”
I managed to swallow my next sob. “I don’t think so. Everything hurts.”
“Can you move? Try to sit up.”
I tried, I really did, but it hurt too much to pull myself into a sitting position. “Everything works,” I said in a pained voice. “I just don’t want to move.”
“Light the lighter so I can see how far down you are.”
I’d put it in my pocket as I’d hurried after her. I reached for it, and it tumbled out of my hands. Thank God I didn’t lunge for it—I would have disappeared into the darkness as well. I could hear it, skittering down against the rock walls, and endless fall that finally ended in a watery plunk. “It’s gone,” I said miserably.
“Jesus Christ, Podge, Granda is going to kill you!” she snapped from overhead. “He loved that damned thing.”
I was feeling too wretched to point out that she was the one who had taken it in the first place. I put my face down against the stone, feeling the grit beneath my forehead, the sting of abraded skin. “Sorry,” I managed to mutter with less grace than I could have wished.
Bella’s sigh from overhead was long-suffering. “Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. I’ll cover for you—don’t I always? But in the meantime, we’re going to have to figure how to get you out of there without everyone finding out. Try to stand, Podge. I can’t see a damned thing and I don’t know how far down you are. Maybe you could climb up with the help of a rope or something.”
I sincerely doubted I could even manage to stand up at this point, but lying there crying wouldn’t do me any good. Gritting my teeth, I pulled myself to a sitting position, ignoring the screaming pain in my side. I’d fallen on something, maybe a rock, and I had probably broken ribs that were about to puncture my heart and lungs and kill me, and then Marcus would realize what he’d lost and...
I stopped my maunderings with disgust, reaching around me gingerly. I seemed to be on some sort of ledge, with unforgiving stone behind me and a steep drop in front of me. Great. I braced myself against the wall and tried to stand up, then collapsed back down with an unwelcome cry of pain.
“What’s wrong?” Bella’s concern was clearly mixed with annoyance.
“I don’t think I can stand up. I think I’ve broken something.” I felt my right leg gingerly, sucking in my breath at the pain.
“People run marathons on broken legs, Podge. It’s all a matter of adrenaline and nerve. You can stand if you really want to—I know you can. You can do anything.”
That had always been Bella’s belief, and it usually made me feel powerful and almost as wonderful as she was. Right then it annoyed me. I sniffed. “Not quite anything.”
“Stand up, Bella!” she snapped, harsher now. “Or I’ll leave you there.”
She wouldn’t, of course. But her words were enough to galvanize me. Using the wall as a brace, I rose, slowly, painfully, reaching above me to see how high it extended. Too high. And then my leg gave way and I collapsed, one leg slipping over the edge to pull me downward.
I managed to stop myself, just in time. “It’s too high,” I said grimly. “You’re going to have to go for help.”
There was silence from the darkness above me, and for a brief, terrified moment I was afraid she had left. And then her voice came back, a blessed relief. “I’ll go find Marcus. He can bring a ladder and we’ll get you out in a trice. No one need know anything about it—we’ll just say you fell on the rocks by the beach.”
“We aren’t supposed to go to the beach alone either,” I pointed out weakly. There was a dangerous riptide on the rocky coast, making it unsuitable for swimming, and Granda had declared it off limits from the very beginning.
“Trust me,” Bella said.
I heard her move away, the sounds of her departure growing fainter and fainter, and I leaned back against the wall to wait. It would take her a while to get back to the house, longer still to track down Marcus and pry him away from Ian. I could expect, at the very least, an hour stuck down here in this dark, dank hole.
I hadn’t thought I minded dark, enclosed places, but I’d never experienced such a deep, unforgiving darkness as it was on that hard, narrow ledge. It was like a physical thing, closing down around me, suffocating me, and I felt my breathing quicken, short, shallow pants that were easy to recognize. My fragile mother suffered from panic attacks, and I had nursed her through them any number of times. I was not going to let myself give in to the same wretched problem.
I slowed my breathing. My face was wet and cold, and I pushed my hair away from it, realized with surprise that it was tears, not sweat. I needed to stop, or I’d be all blotchy and miserable when Marcus rescued me. This whole thing was embarrassing enough—I could at least manage to look like a damsel in distress when Marcus came.
He might even have to carry me. The thought filled me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, being scooped up in Marcus’s strong arms had been at the base of every daydream I had ever had. On the other, he would notice the very solid weight, still encumbered by baby fat, and probably struggle beneath the burden.
That made me start crying again, which was ridiculous, and I wiped the tears away with the hem of my T-shirt.
