Hildie’d always been very nice to her, but in the end-as she had the day she’d run out of her room and hidden in the Gazebo, where she’d met Josh — she’d always wound up doing what Hildie wanted her to do.
And now Hildie and Dr. Engersol wanted her to take this class.
Why?
Joe Iverson grinned at the two children who stood nervously in front of his desk, and slipped the note from Hildie Kramer under the metal clamp of his clipboard. “So Dr. E’s got two more hot prospects for his class, huh?” he asked. Josh and Amy exchanged a nervous glance, but nodded. “Well, then, let’s get started, okay?”
“But what are we doing?” Amy asked. “How come we can’t just keep on swimming, like we’ve been doing? We like swimming!”
Iverson’s brows arched. “Who said you’re not going to?” he asked.
Amy cocked her head. “Hildie. She said you had to do a special program for us. But I don’t see why.”
“Tell you what,” the coach replied. “Why don’t you two go change your clothes, then meet me in the gym. Okay? Then I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”
Ten minutes later, when the two children emerged from their respective locker rooms and entered the empty gym, they found Joe Iverson waiting for them. “Mostly what we’re going to do right now is see what kind of condition you two are in,” he told them. “I don’t know if Hildie explained this to you, but Dr. E’s not just teaching you in his seminar. He’s studying you, too.”
Josh frowned suspiciously. “Studying us how?”
Iverson laughed out loud at the expression on the boy’s face. “Well, it’s not like guinea pigs,” he replied. “But he figures that since the brain affects practically everything in the body one way or another, you kids should be different from kids whose IQs are in the more normal range. So he tries to keep track of everything about you, not only mentally, but physically, too. What I’m going to do this morning is weigh you and measure you, take your blood pressure and pulse and all that kind of thing, then give you some exercises and check your blood pressure and pulse again.”
“Are you going to take blood?” Amy demanded. “I hate that, when the doctor sticks a needle in my arm.”
Iverson chuckled. “No, I’m not going to do anything like that. Mostly, all we want to do is see how your bodies react to a little exercise, okay?”
Though neither of them quite understood exactly what Mr. Iverson was looking for, they let themselves be weighed and measured, and have their pulses and blood pressures checked. Then the exercises began.
They did push-ups, as many as they could. Amy gave up after only fifteen, but Josh managed twenty-five.
Next they ran in place for ten minutes, then did a series of jumping jacks.
After each round of exercises, Iverson once more recorded their pulse rates and blood pressures.
“Okay, just one more thing in here, then we head for the pool.” He pointed toward a thick rope, knotted every eighteen inches, that was suspended from a ring attached to the ceiling. “Which one of you is going to be able to climb that the fastest?”
Amy gazed up at the ceiling, at least thirty feet high. Did he really expect her to climb the rope all the way up there? Just the thought of it gave her a queasy feeling in her stomach. “Wh-What if I fall?” she asked.
“How are you going to fall if you don’t let go of the rope?” Iverson countered.
“But what if I do?” Amy pressed.
“That’s what the mats are for. If you think you’re going to fall, don’t go any higher. Just come back down. Okay?”
Amy’s eyes shifted to Josh. He suddenly remembered how terrified she’d been the first day he’d been here, when they had to climb down the zigzagging stairs to the beach. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just don’t look down.”
Amy stared at the rope but made no move to climb it. Josh, realizing she was too scared even to try it, finally stepped forward and grasped the rope in his hands. He yanked on it a couple of times, then ran forward, swinging himself off the floor. “It’s fun,” he told Amy. He stopped swinging, then started up the rope, wrapping his legs around it so most of his weight was taken off his arms. Slowly, he began climbing up toward the ceiling.
“Be careful,” Amy called out when he was halfway up. “Don’t fall!”
“I’m not gonna fall!” Josh shouted down. “It’s neat.” He worked his way up to the top, slapping the ring with his right hand before grinning down at Amy. “I did it!” he crowed. “I made it all the way.”
“Come back down,” Amy pleaded.
Laughing, Josh started back down. When he was still ten feet from the floor, he let go of the rope, dropping down to the mat and rolling over to break the fall. Amy, startled by his sudden descent, screamed out loud, but quickly cut it off. “You did that just to scare me,” she accused as Josh scrambled to his feet.
“I didn’t, either,” Josh protested. “I just did it ’cause it was fun. Go on. Try it.”
Amy eyed the rope once more, then finally gripped it. Tentatively, she tugged at it, half hoping that it might break right now and come tumbling down from the ceiling.
It didn’t.
At last, taking a deep breath, she started climbing, pulling herself up and wrapping her legs around the rope, moving her hands from knot to knot in quick motions, as if she might fall if she released her grip for more than a moment.
Josh was right. It wasn’t so bad.
“I’m doing it!” she yelled, and, forgetting Josh’s warning, peered down at him.
A wave of dizziness swept over her. Her eyes widened in fear.
“Don’t look down,” Josh called again. “Look up!”
Struggling against her terror, Amy forced herself to look up, but now the ceiling, too, seemed far out of reach.
When she tried to lower herself, her sudden panic wouldn’t let her release the rope.
“I can’t do it,” she wailed. “I can’t get back down.”
Instantly, Joe Iverson shinnied up the rope until he was right beneath her. “It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m right under you. Just put your feet on my shoulders. Hang onto the rope and stand on me. Okay? Can you do that, Amy?”
As Josh watched from below, Amy’s right leg relaxed slightly and her toe touched the coach’s shoulder. A few seconds later she was straddling his head, her hands still clinging to the rope. As he felt her weight being transferred to his own body, Iverson spoke again. “That’s right, Amy. Just stand on me. I’m going to start down, and you just steady yourself with the rope. And don’t look down, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” Amy managed, her voice strangling in her constricted throat.
A moment later they were back on the floor. Joe Iverson reached up, grasped Amy’s weight in his strong arms, and swung her down to the mat. “There,” he said. “Safe. See? We made it.”
Amy, her face pale, stood trembling in silence for a moment as the panic slowly released her from its grip.
“You okay?” Josh asked, watching her anxiously.
Amy nodded. “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “When I looked down, I just got all dizzy.”
“It’s okay,” Joe Iverson assured her. He made a note on the clipboard, then patted her reassuringly on the back. “It’s just a little acrophobia. Why don’t you two go put on bathing suits and meet me at the pool. You can swim a few laps, and then we’ll be done. Okay?”
Amy nodded gratefully and hurried out of the gym.
But twenty minutes later, when she climbed out of the pool after having swum five lengths, her fear returned.
“Ever gone off the high board?” Joe Iverson asked.
Amy stared up at the diving board that loomed three meters above the surface of the pool. She shook her head.
“Want to try it?”