Alone at 90 Foot Read Online Free Page B

feeling good that you’re more than halfway there. You have to work hard, hanging tightly to the cables to pull you up, using the speed bumps to brace your feet. And there you are. Safe, with the bridge swinging in the canyon behind you.
    Now, that’s if you do it alone. That’s become a rarity. Tourists love the suspension bridge. They love to cross it in herds. You can just imagine how it pitches back and forth with lots of people on it. Especially if you get some wise guy that figures he needs to stand in the middle and heave on the cables to turn it into some kind of ride.
    But now, Joanne’s story:
    It was like this. Mrs. Dalrymple came in to tell us about your mom during social class and, like, no one could believe it! All day, that’s all anybody could talk about. Everyone cried and said how awful it was and how we felt so sorry for you and for your dad. And then after school, we were sitting under the cover next to the bike stands when Carol Sanchez said that the worst person tolose in the world would be her mother. That started it.
    Â Â Â Â Â Some of the guys disagreed with her and that got everyone talking. Linda Yip insisted it would be much worse for her if it was her grandmother. John Robbel said it would have to be his father. Danielle said it would definitely be her sister. Everyone talked louder. Then Tony Lasserman seemed to get mad and said he couldn’t care less about his mother, but he never wanted to lose his brother. Danny Kim said he’d pay to have someone take out his brother. By then, the talking had turned to shouting. Suddenly, Mike Ortega stood up and shouted above everyone else, “Yeah, but jumping off the suspension bridge would be the worst way to go!”
    Â Â Â Â Â This made everybody go quiet. Of course, we had all been thinking about that, but nobody had said it. I mean, you know how scary it is up there and how when we were kids we used to talk about what it would be like to fall off? All the things we’d imagine? What it would be like to let go and fall into nothing. Would you pass out? Would you be killed by hitting the canyon walls on the way down? Would you get impaled on a tree? Would you bounce at the bottom or just go splat? I guess silently we were all thinking these things
    Â Â Â Â Â Tony Lasserman was the first to break the silence. “Do you think they got all of her?”
    Â Â Â Â Â We all looked at him. It was like he knew what we were thinking.
    Â Â Â Â Â â€œWell, you know as well as I do, they couldn’t just pick her up and carry her out. They’d have to scrape her off. Maybe they didn’t get all of her?”
    Â Â Â Â Â â€œWe thought seriously about this,” Joanne told me. “Mike Ortega got all excited. “What if she broke into a whole bunch of pieces? What if they missed one? A foot? Or an eyeball or something?”
    Â Â Â Â Â John Robbel began to unlock his bike. “There might still be brains stuck to the rock.”
    Â Â Â Â Â At this point Linda Yip told them how disgusting they were being. How they didn’t have one manner between them and that it was not only morbid, but in extremely bad taste to discuss the physical condition of the dead.
    Â Â Â Â Â They considered this for maybe half of a second. Mike ran to the bike stand and jumped on his bike. “Maybe her hair caught in one of the cables and her head is still swinging beneath the bridge!” He tore off and so did all of us behind him.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Joanne continued.
    Â Â Â Â Â â€œIt was raining that day and half of us fell on the way there, slipping in mud puddles andtripping over our own feet. We were like this frenzied pack, pounding along the road, past the ecology center, past the concession stand and down the steps to the foot of the bridge. Nobody stopped, they just kept on going, screaming and hollering as