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and locked them in place by spinning a case up around their openings. He stood. “You’re first,” he said.
    She swallowed. Her mind raced. She looked down into the gorge. The river below was a thin line of green and white water. “Is it safe?” she asked, breathless.
    “Usually,” he said.
    Her face fell and she looked into his eyes. He wasn’t going to lie to her now. He wasn’t going to tell her it was safe when maybe it wasn’t.
    “I’ll go first if you want,” he said.
    She felt like her heart might burst with fear and excitement. Why do such a thing? a voice said in her head. You could be killed.
    Or maybe I’ll live , she countered.
    She shook her head and chased the voices away. Ash’s words came back to her: All you have is right now. This minute. The words filled her with certainty.
    “No …” She looked down into the gorge. Her eyes snapped back up. She took a breath, though she doubted any oxygen was getting to her brain. “I’ll go first.”
    He nodded.
    Her heart pounded loud in her ears.
    Ash bent back to his bag and pulled out a set of red straps connected together. He untangled them, adjusted the buckles, and bent down to her feet. “Here, step into the harness.”
    She hesitated and looked down at him, trying to focus on him, and not the abyss beyond. She shook her head. “I’m not very brave.”
    He sat on his heels and looked up at her. “It’s okay to be afraid, but you can’t let fear stop you.”
    Her legs shook as she stepped into the harness. He pulled the straps up along her calves and thighs and sent chills over her already tingling body.
    He stood up close to her. When the metal buckle was just above her hips he cinched it tight and pulled her close to him. She looked up into his glowing, smiling face, only inches from her own. He paused. She thought he might kiss her. She wanted him to. But he only looked back to the harness and finished adjusting the straps.
    Her disappointment was soon replaced by raging nerves as he bent to attach the black bungee cord through yet another strap, with more carabiners, around her ankles.
    “Okay.” He stood and looked at her. “You’re ready.”
    She bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. Her heart pounded as she turned toward the edge, determined to not look down. He was behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck, raising goose bumps.
    He breathed out a single word. “Jump.”
    And she did.
    The free fall was terror, exhilaration, and freedom, all at once. The boulders at the bottom of the gorge rushed up at her. The mountain before her was unchanging as she accelerated down and down at breakneck speed. Her thudding heart felt like it would break free from her body with each beat.
    It went on until she was sure that the bungee had snapped and that she was plummeting to her death. But when the stretchy cord caught, it threw her back up into space. At the top she felt her body pause, floating, for a split second, and then free falling once more.
    Each bounce was a little shorter than the last until finally they were just little rebounds and she was hanging upside down by her feet with the white-water spray reaching up to splash her from below. It was then that she heard herself screaming, loud, above the sound of the rushing water beneath her.
    She heard Ash too, distant, from the railroad bridge so far above. “Whoo!”
    Her screams turned into frenzied laughter. She tried to do a sit-up to look at Ash, but he was busying himself with something on the tracks. She couldn’t hold the position.
    She relaxed and looked at the banks of the river from her upside-down vantage point. Fear, or adrenaline, or both, had sharpened her senses. She could see every needle on every pine tree, every drop of water coming up off the river. She smelled the pine, not just the needles, not just that Christmasy smell, but the trees themselves, the bark, the xylem, the phloem, the earth itself.
    Each hair on her skin stood on end, stiff in