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012 - Forte [coming-of-age]

[Warning: long chapter ahead]

While Cindy had taken ballet lessons for a few months, balance was not her forte. As she looked down into the gorge, her stomach sank.

"C'mon chicken!" Darrel bellowed from the far side of the chasm. Her brother's friends began making chicken and (for whatever reason) other animal noises at her.

Cindy swallowed hard. She wanted to kick herself for humming and hawing while the cadre of boys had made their way across the rickety old train bridge. It would certainly have been less nerve wracking to cross facing only two or three of the boys rather than all of them.

She wanted to turn and run away home but she knew if she did she would never live it down. Besides, she also knew that if the boys could do it there was no reason she could not.

With a deep breath, Cindy took a few steps forward on the bridge, stopping just before the beam where the weeds dropped away with the land. Her fists were tightly clenched.

Darrel, sensing her tension, switched his tactics to a more supportive line of attack.

"Just keep going! You've got this!" he shouted. His friends, at first a little slow in the uptake, switched over as well.

Despite knowing not to look down, Cindy leaned forward and did just that. She guessed the drop was about 10 feet and shrugged. It was high, but it certainly was not high enough to kill her.

Still looking down, Cindy carefully moved to the next beam and now found the ground below her had suddenly dropped at least 30 feet. 'That could definitely kill a person,' she thought, considering her own mortality for the first time.

With great effort she peeled her eyes away from the gap between the beams and looked up. Her brother and his friends were shouting for her to keep going. Forcing her negative thoughts into the pit of her stomach she made another step forward, this time without looking down.

Just then her mind drifted to her teacher, Mr. Harrell. He would certainly disapprove of this endeavor... but he also encouraged her to take risks and face her fears. Not wanting to let him down, she made another step.

She did not want to, but Cindy looked back to where she had started. It seemed both immediately close and hundreds of miles away. She knew the truth of it was the first, but she could not shake the feeling of the latter.

"Stop looking back!" Darrel hollered.

Cindy obliged, turning her head back. Carefully she stepped to the next beam.

It was here, just a quarter of the way across the bridge, that Cindy began to notice the breeze. Had it already been this strong, blowing her hair? And what about the sticky, humid summer air? She relaxed her clenched fists only to discover her palms were soaked with sweat.

Ahead she could see haze just beyond Darrel and his friends. He was waving to her, shouting encouragements. Cindy pushed the distractions from her mind and took another step forward.

She wondered if this was what it was like to be a bird, with a massive expanse of blue around you, wind drifting over your skin. She felt as light as feather, stuck only to the bridge by the tar on the beams. When she took her next step she was acutely aware of how the tar stuck to her shoes.

Cynthia would never do something like this, she thought, as she paused. There were no railings and the gaps between the beams we're almost a foot wide. A girl like Cynthia could easily slip between them. Cynthia, who was so much smarter than her, would never dare cross the old rail bridge! Cindy smiled and went forward by two beams.

Cindy, now about halfway across the old bridge, stood proudly and surveyed the world around her. The rail bridge laid between the steep cliffs; on her brother's side there was a not-quite-sheer rock face and on her side it had been a grassy embankment. From the centre of the bridge Cindy could see miles in either direction; to the south the embankment slowly leveled out into a river valley which cradled their town and to the north it went on in its majestic heights before terminating in white sands and the ocean.

With the salt air of the ocean perking her up Cindy continued on to the next beam and was about to continue on to another when her shoe got caught up and she stumbled forward, falling to her hands and knees. While her first instinct was to be scared of falling off of the bridge, instead it was the searing heat of the tarred beams on which her hands and knees were now in direct contact.

With a yelp Cindy scrambled back up to her feet and, without much thought, looked down at her hands and knees to look at her scraped skin. But it was not the black residue that she found which held her gaze, it was the drop.

She did not know just how far down the canyon was at this point, all she knew was that she was tremendously far from the ground and she did not like it.

Cindy felt the stress she pushed down into her stomach spring back up and grip her whole body. She tried to move her foot forward but found it frozen to the spot.

Realizing her eyes were tightly shut, she decided to focus her effort on forcing them open, if she could do that then surely the others would follow.

She was not sure for how long her eyes were closed; she would have guessed only a few seconds but found she was nearly blinded when she opened them again. Ahead she could see her brother standing at the other end of the bridge, slick with sweat.

She supposed he had been rushing to save her when she fell and the stress locking her up melted away at the thought of her brother looking out for her.

Cindy took a deep breath then gave her brother a reassuring thumbs up before moving to the next beam. She was probably only a dozen feet from the safety of the other side but the land below was just as far away as ever approaching the cliff face. Cindy shuddered.

She moved deftly to the next beam, ensuring to monitor her footing as best she could without looking down.

It was about this time that Cindy remembered a key fact about this bridge: it was a train bridge. Panic gripped her as she realized the thought came to her because she heard a trains whistle.

What would her mother think, 'Cindy Cross dead at 6, hit by train on bridge feet from safety'? Gathering her courage she ran across the last 4 beams and wrapped her arms around her brothers waist.

"The train is coming!" she screamed.

Darrel, at first confused, began laughing.

"Cindy, there are no tracks on that bridge. It has been out of service for years."

Cindy was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. All that effort and they were still going to laugh at her for years.