“Come on, Jessa. I expected better from you,” the heckler continues.
I flush and pretend I don’t hear him. And hope to Fates Tanner doesn’t, either. “You sure you still want this tour?”
Tanner grins, and I realize that he has a dimple right in the middle of his chin. “Of course. Unless you’re scared?”
“S-Scared?” I sputter. “Fates, no.”
I get to decide with whom I spend my time. Not this heckler I barely know. If I want to hang out with a scientist, then I will.
To my surprise, I actually do want to hang out with Tanner.
Since Ryder’s been grounded from seeing or talking to me, I’ve been a bit lost. Floating around my cottage, going from one room to another as though my best friend will magically appear. It would be nice to have company for the afternoon.
“Come on,” I say. “I know the perfect place to begin our tour.”
19
Halfway up the observation tower, Tanner’s legs begin shaking. The tower is five stories tall—nowhere near the highest structure in Eden City. We have skyscrapers ten times that height. Difference is, we’re usually inside the building, protected by steel and glass, instead of outside, clinging to a chain-link ladder that sways in the wind.
A particularly strong gust buffets us, and the ladder swings back and forth. Heights don’t bother me—they never have—but even I have to pause a moment to swallow.
Above me, Tanner tilts his head skyward, either to pray to the Fates or to avoid looking down. Maybe both.
My lips curve. Okay, I am a terrible person. I really shouldn’t be enjoying anything about his obvious discomfort. But it’s not every day I get to see the great Tanner Callahan out of his element. Somehow, it makes him even hotter. His muscles are just as lean, his profile just as handsome. And yet, while I could push his attractiveness to the back of my mind before, now, my eyes are practically glued to the boy above me. I don’t know if I could look away if I tried.
“You okay, Tanner?” I call.
“Fine.” The verbal answer is quick and immediate; his physical response is not.
In fact, he stops climbing completely, gripping the rungs so tightly I can see his white knuckles from five feet below. The gust dies down, and the ladder steadies. Still, he doesn’t move.
My amusement turns to guilt. I wanted to knock him down a few quanta, and I knew he didn’t exactly love heights. At least, that’s what I’d assumed when Ryder said he avoided the vert walls. But I didn’t know he would be this paralyzed.
“We can go back down,” I say. “It’s no big deal. We’ll start the tour somewhere else.”
“I’m fine.” He pants the words, as though the oxygen’s thinner two and a half stories up.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I am,” he snaps, and I hear a glimmer of the old Tanner. Miraculously, he starts climbing again. Hand, foot, other hand, other foot. Somehow, he powers through the next two stories, and then we’re at the top. Although not yet on a solid surface. A five-foot gap separates the ladder and the central platform.
“Um, Jessa?” He licks his lips twice. “How do we get to the platform?”
“We jump.”
“Jump?” His mouth drops open. “What if we fall? Or worse?”
“What could be worse than falling?”
It’s the wrong question because it makes him look down. Through the mess of spokes and slats to the concrete sidewalk five stories below. At the tiny, ant-like figures of Logan and his girlfriend, still playing around with the hoverboard. At soft-spoken Zed, walking through the compound with a bucket and a set of pre-Boom fishing poles. At the flurry of bots in front of an open truck, unloading prepackaged meals and transferring them to the transport tube.
Sweat breaks out on Tanner’s forehead. “Please don’t make me talk about what’s worse than falling.”
“Listen, we don’t have to do this. We’ll just go back down and—”
“We’re already up here.” He closes his eyes briefly. “I…I don’t think I can brave the ladder for at least another hour.”
My throat tickles. I slap a hand across my mouth, but it’s too late. The laugh bursts out like a machine gun. “I’m sorry!” I gasp. “I’m not laughing at you, I promise. It’s just…” You’re adorable when you’re scared. Who would’ve guessed?
“I remember the first time I climbed the tower,” I say out loud. “I was nervous, too.”
He narrows his eyes. “How old were you? Twelve?”
“Something like that.” My lips vibrate, and I clamp them together. “Listen. The platform measures twenty feet by twenty feet. As you can see, there’s nothing up here. Just an old telescope and a pile of ratty blankets. No one’s used the tower in any official capacity for years. So you can’t miss the platform, and you won’t land on anything sharp, either. Easy as assembly pie.”
He doesn’t respond. The wind whistles across my ears, and two butterflies circle our heads and land on the far edge of the platform.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “You can jump into my arms. I’ll catch you if you slip.”
“You know, you’re really not helping. I’m not a little kid.”
“No,” I say, my mouth quirking. “A little kid would’ve been across five minutes ago.”
He looks pained, and I can’t help it. My laugh comes roaring out again.
“Sure, laugh now. We’ll see how funny you think this is when they’re sprinkling my ashes along the river.”
He takes a deep breath, mutters something about mutant babies of time, and then jumps. He crashes onto the platform, scaring away the butterflies.
I leap after him, ballerina-style. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Show-off.” He pulls his knees to his chest and tucks down his head. “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to curl into a fetal position for a few minutes.”
I sit cross-legged in front of him, patting him on the back. Partly because I feel guilty for making him come up here. And partly because I like him like this. When he shelves his ego for a few minutes and acts like a real person. “Who would’ve thought the great Tanner Callahan was afraid of heights?”
He lifts his head and pulls a water tube out of his shirt collar to take a few swallows. “Whoever said I was great?”
“You did. In everything you say and do. I mean, you even have holo-images of yourself playing across the inside of your locker!”
“That’s not me,” he says quietly. “That’s my dad, when he was young. If you watch the slide longer, you would see my mom, too.”
His dad? Oh.
All of a sudden, I remember the gossip about his parents being killed when he was young. Of course he would have a feed of them playing in his locker. Fike.
“I can’t handle more than a few inches off the ground,” he continues. “That’s why I stick to circuit racing on my hoverboard.”
“Since when?”
“Since the time I was six. My parents died in an accident, and I went to live at TechRA.”
So the rumors are true. He did grow up as an orphan in the care of the scientists.
He offers the water tube to me. Normally, I don’t share tubes with anyone, not even Ryder. The common cold is one of the few diseases the scientists haven’t cured, and sniffling and coughing puts a crimp in my extreme lifestyle. But for some reason, I lean forward and take a sip.
“They…they made me afraid of heights,” he continues.
I freeze, my lips still on the tube, the water just squirting into my mouth. “What did they do?” I whisper, even though a part of me already knows. The part that still wakes up screaming from my nightmares. The part that never left my six-year-old self’s past behind.