just enough leaves on the tall oaks and sycamores that the gray skies are almost completely blocked. The ground is soft, mostly dried leaves that crunch underfoot, the scent of pine and earth almost overwhelming.
“The start of the course is down this way,” Levi says, his whisper barely audible over the creek water rushing near us.
I look around and imagine the utter blackness of this place at night. “No lights, I take it.”
He laughs softly. “That’s another caveat of the course. It has to be done between midnight and three.”
Whoa, that Rex is a sadist. “Hasn’t the guy ever heard of an essay? There’s got to be an easier way to get a scholarship.”
A few feet away something scurries through the brush, making me hesitate and pull closer to Levi. He’s strong, warm, and knows where he’s going, which is small comfort.
“Okay, look up there,” he says, pointing to a space about twenty-five feet wide between tall white birch trees. “That’s the line.”
I squint and look up to the treetops, some a good forty feet high. “Line of what?”
“A zip line. See? Between those two trees.”
A wire so thin it could be considered a thread links the trees, and I peer closer to see very small platforms built on thick telephone poles that blend into the trees. “You mean you ride that?”
“Yep.”
“In a safety harness?”
He laughs again as though charmed by my naïvety. “You clip a rope and hang on.”
Holy cow. “How do you get up there?”
“Climb. And follow the instructions. Here.” He takes me around the tree and lifts the gray bark like he’s peeling back skin. The words are burned into the trunk.
AUT VIAM INVENIAM AUT FACIAM
“Literally, that translates to ‘I’ll find a way or make one,’ ” I tell him, “but it’s sort of the motto for the person who doesn’t quit. How did you translate this when you did the course?”
“I didn’t, but I could tell that the way was up.” He points upward and my neck practically cracks as I follow a series of two-by-fours, each about six inches long, nailed into the tree. About halfway up, the thickest branch reaches over to the telephone pole, where there are more “steps” up to a platform. That piece of wood is about two feet wide, with no railing, no safety line, no chance a human in her right mind would climb that.
At least, not this human.
“This is how it starts,” he explains. “You climb up to the top, grab a rope, and connect it to the line and zip to the next platform. You need upper-body strength and a pair of titanium balls.”
Neither of which I have.
“And,” he continues, “when you get up there, you don’t know which line to take, since there are two or three or even more. One takes you farther into the course, the other two dead-end on the ground and you have to start over. Or quit.”
Which is what I would probably do. “How far did you get?”
“I made it through about three platforms, then—” He freezes, frowning. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Shh.” He touches my lips with his fingers, peering around with narrow-eyed intensity. An engine in the distance. We’re fairly far from the road, but it sounds like …
The truck? “Let’s hide,” he says.
Using one hand, he pushes branches aside to get us through a thicket, the sound of our ragged breaths and footsteps on soft ground filling my ears.
We round a hill, avoiding any chance of high ground, and are passing more broken, bare trees when Levi stops so suddenly I crash into him. Without a word, he holds me still and we both listen. The engine is definitely in the distance now and headed the other way—but we’re deeper in the woods and lost.
“We need to get cover,” he whispers. “Long enough to use a GPS to get out of here.”
I spot a steep drop off a small cliff and we work our way there and peer over the edge. It’s about a twelve-foot drop down an embankment, but it’s protected and hidden at the bottom.
“Let me help you.” He crouches and I follow, turning and slowly letting my whole body drop over the cliff. Holding on to him, I dangle, but it’s only about five feet to the ground when I let go.
A second later, he scrambles down and drops the same way.
The sound of the engine might have disappeared, but I still feel vulnerable knowing we’re not alone in the woods, so I nestle deeper into