Today is Wednesday. Need I say more?

Fine, it is time to vote for Indies Unlimited flash fiction challenge. You know the deal so I won’t get too much into the nitty gritty. Read the story then go vote. It’s the way things work around here.

Lost Footing

Well good job, Wendy, I said to myself as I bent another fingernail backwards, ripping it to the quick. What the heck was I thinking, telling Jason that I’d love to go climbing? Sure, I’d been dying for him to ask me out, but I never should have alluded to being athletic. At all. Ever.

photo by K.S. Brooks

I glanced at Jason, just a few feet to my right. He smiled. I smiled back. He’s so cute, and smart, and funny. And every other girl in class has the hots for him, too. I know lying was wrong, but I really wanted just one chance for him to get to know me.

Through all that thinking, I had managed to get myself in a bit of a predicament. My feet were now way too far apart, and the left one was slipping…

I don’t know what came over me. It was the single moment in my life when I didn’t think about the action before I took it. I leapt, I mean seriously, hanging on the rock-face, I jumped.

The moment felt blind and free and I couldn’t breathe. I floated in space for a brief moment that felt like an eternity before my fingers scrabbled against the next section of the wall. I caught myself and held as my lungs raced to catch my breath again.

“No time for breaks,” Jason said. “I’m going to beat you to the top.” He didn’t look back.

My arms and legs were shaking from the jump and my adrenaline. Hell, I wasn’t sure if it was the remark or a need to get off that wall but something changed. Like my jump I stopped thinking about it, stopped thinking of all the things around me.
I saw the rock-face, nothing else. My fingers gripped and pulled, my feet locked and pushed. I climbed the wall like a machine.

I reached the summit, panting, sweating, and swearing the horrors of rock walls as I lay on my back looking into the sky above. I made it and I had no idea where Jason was right at the moment, not sure I really cared.

When I saw him on his phone, talking to Sara, I jumped. For a brief moment I was blind and free. His phone sailed deep into the canyon.

***