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My hand slips from its hold, and rock scrapes my arm before I catch my balance. “Can we talk about this later?”
“I kind of like this. You can’t run away.”
“I don’t know what happened, okay?” I slide my foot up to the next hold. “We hit some bumps during the pandemic. He was having a rough time with the business, and I was dealing with Anna’s cancer, and… it fell apart, I guess. Now, seriously, can we talk about something else? Anything else?”
A smell wafts past. The wind has been blowing from the lake, and that’s all I’ve been able to smell, but now I catch a whiff of something that reminds me of that hank of hair, and my hand slips. I catch myself, but my fingers immediately start to slide.
“Jayla? Can you—?”
“Why did you post that dating profile for me?” she says.
I stop moving. “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me, Laney.” Anger edges into her voice. “It was a shitty thing to do, and maybe you thought it was a joke, but it hurt.” A crack in that anger. “It really hurt.”
My fingers slip again, and I try to grab a jutting chunk of rock, but it’s covered in lichen.
“Jay—”
“We were young,” she says. “We tried dating, and it didn’t work, and yeah, that was awkward. Maybe there were hurt feelings.”
My fingers find another hold, and I exhale. Then I look up her way. “There were no hurt feelings, Jay.”
She continues as if she didn’t hear me, “Maybe you thought you were being funny, but putting up a straight profile for me, onthatkind of site, withthosepictures… You owe me an apology.”
“I literally have no idea what you’re—”
My hand and left foot slip at the same time. I plummet, scrambling, hands grabbing for something, anything. Yes, it’s only a short drop, but it’srock.I can hit my head and—
“Laney!”
There! I catch something and grab on, but it comes loose and falls on top of me. Somethingbigfalling on top of me. A rock? A—
I strike down, my body falling as far as it’ll fit as the crevice narrows. A smell washes over me.Thatsmell. Decomposition. Something animal died in here, and I’ve pulled it on top of me.
I can’t see anything. The dead thing is on top of me and blocking all light. When I move my leg, it won’t budge. My foot is wedged down into the crack.
A diffuse light fills what little of the crevice I can see.
“Laney? Is that—” Jayla stops short with a little gasp.
“I’m stuck,” I say. “My foot is wedged in. You’re going to need to get the others.”
“Laney?”
She must not be able to hear me. I lift a hand to push away whatever fell on top of me. As I do, I inwardly cringe, bracing for the touch of fur and decomposing flesh. Instead, I touch…
WhatamI touching? It’s smooth and cold, but not like rock. Bone? It’s softer than that.
Do I want to know what part of the poor dead critter I’m touching? No. Just get it off me.
I push, and my fingers touch something else, something slick and ragged with a hard nub. Oh God, what am I touching?
“Laney?”
I grit my teeth and push up on whatever is in my hands. It moves easily and then the light hits, and I see bone. Bone sticking out of bloodied flesh. My stomach lurches. It’s a leg bone. It must be. A fox, maybe? It’s thicker than I’d expect but I’m hardly an expert and—
The light shifts, and I see the whole of what I’m pushing at. I see pale skin and dark hairs. An arm. A human arm. I’m holding a human arm, the hand severed off.
