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I leap to my feet. “I’ve got to go.”
I don’t wait for anything, including Jaylen’s response.
All I know is that I need to get to Violet.
17
VIOLET
I’m sitting in a tree twenty-five feet in the air with a wiggling cat, regretting my life choices. I never should have climbed this dumb tree. Except I met a tween girl who was trying not to cry because her cat was stuck in a tree and wouldn’t come down. I’d asked the girl if she wanted to borrow my cell phone to call someone for help, but she just shook her head and said there was no one she could call.
She’d seemed so lonely and forlorn.
The thing is, Iknowwhat it feels like when you feel like you’re all alone with a giant problem no one else can help you solve.
I cracked. I climbed the damn tree.
It hadn’t seemed so high up when I was climbing. And I’d captured the cat easily enough.
The problem was that as I was coming down, I put my weight on a branch that just...snapped.
I managed to scramble back up onto the branch above it. But now there’s too big of a gap between branches for me to get down.
Also, I’m low-key terrified that if I put my weight on another branch it will snap too, and I’ll fall and break my neck and be paralyzed for life and...
Breathe, I tell myself.
There’s a crowd of people gathering at the base of the tree, all shouting helpful, contradictory tips about what I should do. I’m pretty sure I saw a news camera at one point. Someone yelled up that they called the fire department.
Or maybe they called the parks department.
To be honest, I’m not listening to them too closely. The ground feels so far away. There’s a roaring in my ears.
Oh God. What if I faint andfallout of the tree?
I’m going to be one of those terrible New York Post headlines.Local Idiot Dies Trying to Rescue a Cat That Probably Would Have Been Fine Anyway.
I grit my teeth and force myself to breathe deeply.
I amnotgoing to be a headline in the fucking New York Post.
“Um, can someone get me a ladder?” I call down to the crowd below.
“Way ahead of you honey,” a guy calls. He’s the kind of square, sturdy guy who always seem to work in bodegas or hardware stores. He waves to someone I can’t see, and then they get closer, and I see a beautiful, wonderful,amazingladder.
I feel a rush of relief as they set it up.
Unfortunately, it stops about ten feet below me.
The crowd confers again.
“Maybe you can jump?” someone suggests. “If someone gets her a mattress...”
I take a deep breath, beginning to face the fact that jumping might be my best option.
The cat meows.
“It’s all right for you,” I say. “You’ve got nine lives.”
