Under Zenith (8 page)

“Familiar with that test
, are we?” he asked back, shutting me up.

We walked in silence. Again.
As usual. Until we came to the opposite end of the island where Hayden abruptly stopped and looked over at me expectantly.

“What?”

“Get on with the test,” he responded, sounding like I definitely shouldn’t have to ask him what he was talking about.

“What do you want me to do? Touch my finger to my nose or something?”

“No, I want you to jump.”

Chapter 8

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked Hayden, sure that I had misheard what he’d said.

“I want you to jump,” he repeated in the
calmest voice I’d ever heard.

“Weren’t you the person who just called me all sorts of horrible things for almost walking off the edge of the island?” I asked. I needed to clarify that he was, in fact, just as crazy as he was coming off at the moment.

“That was on
that
side of the island,” he said with a smirk. “Now that we’re on
this
side, I want you to jump.”

“Oh
, is that all?” I asked sarcastically. “And why, exactly, am I doing this?”

“Motor skills,” he said, like I was an idiot.

“What does jumping off of a cliff have to do with motor skills?”

“See that island in the distance?” he asked me, pointing straight ahead at a large, rotating island a good
fifteen or twenty feet away.

“I definitely can’t jump to that,” I informed him.

Though really, that shouldn’t be the type of thing you need to point out to someone. I’d hope that information was pretty obvious.

“No, not that one,” he said in annoyance. “The one beyond that.”

I squinted my eyes in the fog, trying to see what he was talking about, but failing miserably. I could see a faint purple light in the distance, somewhere even higher up than the island we were standing on at the moment.

“The light?” I asked finally.

“That light is actually a stone set in a tree trunk on another island,” he said.

It almost sounded as if he had given this information hundreds of times and was now reciting it because he had to. Of course I knew that wasn’t the case because A) he’d only ever guided one other person and B) he’d said that I invented this entire place so he couldn’t have seen it before.

“And I have to get to the light?”

“The light is where the safe house is,” he confirmed with a somber nod.

I assessed the light in the distance, now understanding what I had to do. Somehow, Hayden wanted me to get from island to island until I reached the safe house. Of course I didn’t really think this exercise had anything to do with motor skills, but I also didn’t think pointing that out to him would do any good. At best he’d probably just brood some more.

“Will something be chasing me this time?” I asked, wondering if I could at least catch a break on the whole zombie thing today.

“I think this task is difficult enough without any motivation for you. Besides, it’s not about speed today; it’s about your hand eye coordination.”

“And upper body strength,” I added, not sure I could really pull myself up onto the island from the dangling roots I’d undoubtedly have to grab when I failed to jump to the grass.

“And that,” he agreed.

“Should I just get to it then?” I asked hesitantly.

“Would it make you feel better if I shouted ‘go’ or counted you off or something?”

I didn’t dignify his snarky question with a response. I simply looked up at him through my eyelashes, trying to convey just how annoyed I was with him right at that moment.

“One, two, three,” he deadpanned.

“Thank you for that,” I said, walking to the very edge of the island and trying to gauge the g
ap between the two land masses.

Of course both islands kept rotating slowly, meaning that if I wanted to stay lined up with the other one I had to keep walking to the right.
That little detail was actually much more annoying than I would have thought when compared to the task that lay before me.

“I’m just going to run and jump and hope for the best,” I told him, trying to give myself a little pep talk.

“I’ll be waiting,” he answered.

“Okay. Here I go,” I said, taking a deep breath and a few steps back.

I ran as fast as I could, my eyes trained on a tree root sticking out of the light brown earth a few feet under the opposite island. Of course the second I got to the edge of the grass I stopped dead in my tracks and took a few steps away from the precarious edge.

“Very impressive,” Hayden said sarcastically
, giving me an arrogant slow clap. The guy could be such a tool. “Please do that a few more times just to make sure we’ve thoroughly exhausted the possibility that the island is going to come to you.”

“You try it if it’s so easy,” I said in annoyance.

I gave myself a mental and physical shake, trying to get rid of the screaming voice in my brain telling me it was completely insane to jump from one impossible floating island to another, hoping I could grab a tree root on the way down, then somehow manage to pull myself up ‘mountain climber’ style, without any kind of harness. I definitely wasn’t under the illusion that I was some sort of action hero. On my best day I could get halfway up the rock wall at the mini golf place. And now, somehow, I had to complete this task that no sane person would ever attempt?

“Am I being punished for something?” I asked Hayden.

“Excuse me?”

“Punished,” I said again, slowly this time so that he couldn’t misunderstand me. “Is this because I took my dad’s car that night in high school before I had my license? Because I definitely had my driver’s permit so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.”

“What are you going on about now?” Hayden seemed genuinely confused by my sudden barrage of questions.

“Or maybe it’s because I kissed Bobby
Pikitis at that school dance in junior high when I was supposed to be telling him my friend sort of liked him,” I went on, now trying to remember every bad thing I’d ever done. “I did cheat that one time Tuck and I were playing poker to see who would have to pull the weeds in the backyard.”

“Please
, stop talking,” Hayden said with a sigh.

He had started rubbing his temples with his eyes closed, apparently trying to keep his cool.

“Oh no,” I gasped.

“What?”

“It’s because I lied to Mama about who really dropped her box full of china from Grandma,” I confessed with a hand over my mouth, my eyes wide. “I said my cousin Amelia knocked it off the shelf in the garage when she came to North Carolina to visit.”

“I beg of you. Stop talking.”

“She got into so much trouble,” I told him, shaking my head guiltily. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”

“Jus
t shut up and get to the island!” Hayden finally yelled, apparently no longer able to contain his rage that already bubbled so close to the surface.

“You don’t have to be so bossy about it,” I said huffily.
“All right, take two.”

Following the same pattern as before, I gave myself a running start, kept a determined gaze on my goal, and stopped
right before I got to the edge.

“I can’t do it,” I wailed. “The island is too far! And if I don’t grab any of those roots on the way down I’ll fall to my death.”

“You’re already dead,” he pointed out, quite unnecessarily.

“Fine, I’ll die again. I’ll fail to reach my Destination and you’ll have a track record of oh for two.”

“The island isn’t as far as it looks, just run, jump, and grab any tree root you see,” he told me.

Of course he had to make it sound like the easiest thing in the world.

“Fine,” I said simply, going back to my starting position once more, running, and failing to jump again.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Hayden said in exasperation. “I can’t take much more of this. My ten year old
niece had harder tasks than this and completed them in half the time.”

Except that she didn’t make it to the end
, I thought, knowing that this fact was too sensitive to actually bring up. Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that it was possible for me to fail and, looking at the impossible floating island, the odds were not in my favor.

“Would it make you feel better if I did it with you?” Hayden asked
, his brow furrowed in a concerned manner.

It had to be a trick.

“I thought you couldn’t help me,” I asked suspiciously.

“It wouldn’t be helping you physically. It would just be offering some moral support if I made the jump with you,” he answered reasonably.

I looked him over for a moment, wondering why he had suddenly turned nice and still sure it couldn’t be genuine.

“Isla,” he said, placing his hands on my
bare shoulders and looking at me with his icy blue eyes. “I want to make the jump with you, okay?”

He was so close to me that I could smell
the scent of soap on him and suddenly I felt as if I couldn’t breathe properly. How could I go from hating him to being flustered by him so quickly? Sure he was sort of gorgeous and had that whole ‘bad boy with an accent’ thing going for him, but he also happened to be the rudest person I’d ever met and completely unhelpful when I was facing death or death again circumstances.

Except for this moment.

For some unknown reason, Hayden had decided to grow a conscious right at the moment I needed his help desperately.

“We can do this,” he whispered to me
, his thumb tracing little circles on my bare shoulder.

I hated myself for
noticing how close his face was to mine and tried to regain some sense of composure.

“Okay,” I said with a dopey smile.

So much for my dignity.

Hayden took my hand and walked with me back to my starting point.

“Just let me know when you’re ready,” he said supportively, giving my hand a little squeeze.

“Okay?” I said
, sounding very confused over this personality change. “I think I’m ready.”

“Great. Here we go.”

With that, we both began to run full speed, Hayden holding on to my hand so tightly that I couldn’t back out of the jump even if I wanted to. If I suddenly stopped running, I’d mess up Hayden’s speed. I might not go over the edge, but he definitely would and it would be all my fault.

There was no other option. I had to do it.

Screaming as loud as I could right before I got to the ledge, Hayden suddenly released my hand, slowed his pace, and gave me one extremely violent push right in the middle of my back. My feet left the ground and the air left my lungs from the force of his hands on my back, and before I knew it, I was sailing through the air, arms flailing ungracefully all around me and my mind going crazy with a million thoughts at once.

I was angry at Hayden for tricking me, panicked at the fact that there was an endless amount of open air below my feet, and determined
to grab at least one of the tree roots sticking out of the earth in front of me without being impaled by them.

There wasn’t much room for error in the split second that I had to grab onto whatever came
into my grasp. If I didn’t manage to stop my fall, I’d definitely be a goner, and something told me the unknown for those who didn’t reach their Destination was not a pleasant place.

Letting out one final scream, I threw my hands out in front of me, unable
to see from all the wavy white-blonde hair that flew in front of my face.

             
With a horrible thud and a white hot pain in my middle finger, I grabbed onto the damp tree roots that miraculously held my weight. I pressed my cheek against the wet earth and clung for dear death to the side of the island, not looking up or down, simply panting and hating Hayden.

“Start climbing,” his very unwelcome voice said directly above me.

How on earth had he gotten onto the island?

“I hate you!” I screamed, my entire body shaking from just how terrified I was at that moment.

The endless expanse of air below me was scary, but knowing that I didn’t have the arm strength to pull myself onto the island and get out of this alive was the scariest part. At what point did I finally admit to myself that I couldn’t do it and just let go?

“I don’t care for you much either. Now stop being completely useless and start climbing.”

I hadn’t ever been a rage filled person. In fact, before I’d died I couldn’t name a single person I hated. Sure there were some girls I didn’t like much and a few cheating ex-boyfriends I’d rather not see. But no one I hated.

At that moment, clinging to the dirty tree root like it was my only hope
, I could very truthfully say, I hated Hayden.

With a deep burning passion.