The Missing - Kiersten Modglin (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗

“No signal,” I read to them, breathless as new tears found my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d pinned on being able to reach him. As if it would solve all my problems. I just wanted to feel something familiar. I wanted to hear his voice and let him hear mine. I needed to know he hadn’t given up hope. I needed him to give me a reason not to.

“We’re on an island in the middle of nowhere,” Noah said coldly, though I suspected he was trying to cover his own disappointment as he wouldn’t meet my eye. “Of course there’s no cell phone signal. Haven’t you ever been on a cruise?”

I shoved the phone back into its pocket and turned away from him. Harry put a hand on my arm gently, trying to comfort me.

“It was worth a shot.”

I nodded, unable to speak. The lump that had formed in my belly upon our arrival had begun to swell into a black hole of hopelessness. With each passing day, a bit more of my remaining hope disappeared.

“We should go,” Noah said, leading us toward the edge of the cliff and turning around slowly, easing his foot toward the rock below. I slung the sack over my shoulder like a crossbody purse, making it easier to carry than it had been on the way up, and followed his lead.

As I eased myself down, pressing it onto the rock below. I felt it slip too quickly, losing my footing, and let out a scream as I imagined the fall to my death. Noah’s hand was under my foot in a moment, carefully guiding it to a new rock.

“Easy,” he said before releasing me.

I tried to catch my breath and slow my trembling before trying to move down to the next rock. As I moved, I accidentally looked out over the forest, realizing how far up we were and how ill-equipped we were to be making a journey like this. On the way up, I’d been so determined to make it I’d hardly noticed, but on the way down, it was all I could see. We weren’t mountain climbers. Truth be told, I didn’t even really like heights. Yet, here we were, climbing this mountain in the blazing sun, half dehydrated.

Okay, so mountain was a bit of an exaggeration, I guessed, but it didn’t stop the fear from crashing into me like waves. For some reason, I hadn’t thought about how dangerous the climb was until I’d nearly fallen.

“Don’t look down,” came the warning from above. When I looked up, Harry’s dark eyes met mine, his smile kind. “You’re okay, just don’t look down. Pay attention to where your hands and feet land. We’re in no hurry. Stare at the rock in front of you and nothing else. You’re fine.”

I nodded, following his advice and staring at the rock in front of me, easing my foot down to the next rock carefully. My fingers had begun to burn, both from the temperature of the rock and from the utter exhaustion of carrying my weight up and down the rock.

I tried to ignore the tremble as I saw Harry lowering himself onto the rock above me.

“Not too far now,” Noah said from below, and I refused to look down to make sure.

I knew I had to be getting near the bottom as we started to become level with the trees, rather than towering over them. At seeing that, my nerves calmed some. It was just like climbing the trees in my backyard as a kid. I’d survived that with little more than a few scrapes and scars, so I could do this. I was smarter now. Stronger.

My foot slipped again, and I felt myself losing my grip on the rock above. I cried out, my heart pounding in my chest, my ears, and somehow even my vision as I fought to regain my grip. Tears welled in my eyes instantly, and I whimpered, my foot floating through the air, tapping and tapping for the rock I’d slipped off from.

What happened next came in a flash.

As I tried to recall it, it seemed to happen in a millisecond, all at once. I felt Noah’s hand reaching for my toes. Heard him expel a heavy breath as he said, “Hold on—”

Harry, from above, looked down in a panic, his foot flailing to find a spot to land. My scream had distracted him, and he was now looking at me. “Are you ok—” His hand slipped, or maybe his foot… It all happened so fast, I couldn’t be sure of which it was. He screamed, both hands clawing to regain control.

I remembered the look on his face as he stared down at me, his eyes wide with fear. Then in the next second, his body was off the rock, his scream filling the air. In a flash, he fell sideways, clawing and clamoring to regain his footing, to take hold of something, anything, as he tumbled down the side of a cliff. I felt Noah’s hand leave my foot, felt my own body reaching for my friend as he fell, and then I remembered nothing.

Nothing except the crunch as Harry’s body connected with the ground below.

Chapter Seventeen

My own fear didn’t seem to matter anymore as I rushed down the side of the cliff. For the most part, I didn’t remember how I got down. I only remembered the moment my feet touched the ground, just seconds behind Noah’s, as we rushed toward where Harry’s body lay.

He wasn’t dead. It was my first thought. I watched his chest rise and fall with haggard, worn breaths. He’d landed straight down, as if he were just sleeping, and there was no blood. His glasses were strewn across the forest floor, several feet from him, but aside from that, without knowing what had happened, you could’ve easily assumed he’d just stopped in for a cat nap rather than having fallen more than thirty feet.

“Harry,”