“Of course.” Tearing my eyes away from Ryan, I looked at my crew. Gabriela and Maximus were both wearing gloves and had black masks around their heads. They pulled them down over their faces. “Do you need a motivational speech? Because I’m not sure there’s time for that.”
“We’re good,” Maximus said.
Gabriela gulped, loudly. “I think I can do it.”
I turned to look at Ryan. “Ready?”
“Be careful,” he told me.
“This will work,” I told him. We’d planned, prepared, and practiced. We couldn’t fail. And then I wondered if Mom had felt this way too.
“I believe in you,” Ryan said.
And then, as if to prove it, he kissed me. Cupping my face in his hands, he pressed his lips against mine. You’d think a kiss in such a moment would feel like fireworks. But instead…it felt like coming home. I felt as if I’d been wrapped in a soft robe, given a mug of hot chocolate, and told I’d be kept safe forever.
When he released me, though, he still looked worried.
He got into his own car. He’d drive home, like usual, and shut himself into his room to do homework, like usual. And then he’d contact us when his code was uploaded and ready to overwrite their security camera system,notlike usual.
Getting into Liam’s car, I sat in the passenger seat. Gabriela took the driver’s seat. She was examining all the bells and whistles. “Really nice car,” she said.
For an instant, I didn’t want her to put it in drive. The past couple of weeks had been nice. Full of hope and possibilities. From here on in, the possibilities would narrow to only two: success or failure.
But I didn’t stop her. Gabriela backed out of the warehouse and onto the chunked-up driveway.
“We should have blown up the warehouse,” Maximus said regretfully. “Then we could have done the slow walk away from the ball of fire.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Drive,” I told Gabriela.
Fat drops of rain plunked on the car as we drove away.
Higher up in the mountains, the pines and aspens blurred like a watercolor. The storm clouds deepened the green of the pines, and the aspens looked like white candles against them, lit with a smudge of paleness from their growing buds. Dusk wrapped everything in a layer of gray. I felt the wind picking up, shaking the car. Two turns before the winding private road that led to Ryan’s house, we took a left and headed down toward the lake.
Ryan continued straight home. I watched his taillights recede until he was out of sight. My heart gave a little lurch, as if I wasn’t going to see him again, and we drove down between the trees toward picnic tables.
Rain disturbed the lake. The surface rippled like silk in the wind, distorting the reflection of the cliffs, which was good. On a calm day, anyone in the house could have looked down and seen the cliffs mirrored in the lake. I didn’t think it had ever occurred to Ryan’s parents that on a rainy evening, they had a serious blind spot. Probably because it had never occurred to them that anyone would try to climb the cliffs—an oversight in a state that encourages rock climbing. In Colorado, when you’re born, instead of giving you a baby blanket, the hospital wraps you in a climbing harness. Or they might as well.
Gabriela parked Liam’s car beside the lake, in the shadow of the trees, and we all got out. I unpacked my climbing gear and pulled it on, then shouldered a large coil of rope.
Looking up at the cliff, I felt that rush: the moment before you defy gravity.
“She’s going to climbthat?” I heard Maximus ask Gabriela. “I thought she said it was an easy climb.”
“She likes to climb things,” Gabriela told him. “In third grade, she climbed onto the roof of our school.”
“This is a bit higher than that. And note the ‘Dangerous—Do Not Climb’ signs?”
“She can do it,” Gabriela reassured him.
I appreciated the vote of confidence. And truthfully, this wasn’t the part of the heist that made me nervous. In fact, I’d been looking forward to this.
Climbing, I felt the rain slick the rocks, and I had to dig my fingers into the crevices. My shoes slipped as I scrambled to place them. I felt adrenaline course through me, as if I’d drunk six cans of soda in a row and eaten all the Halloween candy (which I did once and only once). I knew I was grinning, even though no one could see me. My smile pulled at my cheeks and made me feel like a wolf baring her teeth. Or a dragon.
It was exhilarating.
And oddly peaceful.
I didn’t think about the heist. Or my mother. Or Ryan. All my focus was, and had to be, on the rocks. You forget about past and future when you climb. That’s one thing I love about it, when you slip into this moment that is purelynow.Innow,there’s no guilt or regret or worry or fear. There’s only the doing.
