Free What I Was by Meg Rosoff

disappeared.
    I shouted his name but there was no reply. Fury drove me on, and fear. There was no easy way down from here, particularly as I couldn’t see my feet, and didn’t dare look at the beach in case of vertigo. I felt above for another handhold, grasped what felt like a solid clay ledge. But as I began to haul myself up one more time it crumbled into nothing, leaving me poised in mid-air like a cartoon coyote, clutching a handful of dust with an almost restful feeling of inevitability, with enough clarity and what seemed like enough time to save myself, but with nothing to stop me tumbling backwards and somersaulting over and over to smash and break and bleed to death alone and abandoned on the rocks below.
    A hand shot out from nowhere and grabbed my wrist.
    The shock of it caused me to lose the rest of my fragile contact with the cliff and for a moment I dangled over the rocks below, scrabbling hopelessly for a foothold, rigid with terror, too terrified even to scream. And then a head followed the hand out above me, and a body leant out and another hand grabbed the waistband of my trousers, and half of me was scrambling and the other half being dragged thrashing up on to a ledge, which turned out to be a sort of a cave, the place Finn had been telling me about when I was barely listening due to the combined forces of pain and resentment.
    It took a number of minutes for my heart to stop pounding and my breath to settle into something like a normal rhythm. Finn lay there, watching me and smiling as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.
    ‘I am not bloody laughing.’ My voice had gone hoarse with terror, my eyes swam with tears and I was furious: at his superior physical prowess, at my near-death experience, at the extent of my humiliation.
    And then his expression became solemn and he looked at me gently, with genuine compassion. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
    Frighten me? Murder me, more like. I refused to answer, preferring to exert some miniscule power by remaining silent.
    The entrance to the cave was narrow, but once I managed to wriggle into a more dignified position (flat on my stomach, arms folded under my chest, feet shoved deep into the recesses of the cliff) I realized I could stretch out with a fair degree of comfort. Physical comfort, that is. The prospect of having to climb back down kept me twitching with terror. And yet the sun beat down on the pale surface of the cliff with surprising warmth, we were out of the wind, and in the confined space Finn radiated heat and animal comfort beside me. I edged out, stretching over the terrifying drop and shifting forward until my left side settled into the graceful length of his body. In the tight space we fitted together like pieces of a puzzle.
    Below us birds swooped and soared and I looked down on their backs as they flew, astonished, forgetting my fear. For that moment I was a god, with a god’s eye view of the universe. Exhilarated, I moved to get a better look, inching further and further out, until Finn reached out a hand to pull me back. I hovered, held aloft by the strength and warmth of his grip, feeling the hot slow pulse of his fingers. I wanted to launch us both into the sky, to pull him up with me towards the sun where we’d fly like gods and never have to tumble back to earth.
    He studied my face, amused by what he found there. The moment hovered, weightless.
    I have often looked back at that moment and imagined history veering fractionally in one direction or another, imagined if I’d been a different person, or if he had, whether what followed would have been a different story altogether and the history of the world might have changed ever so slightly around us.
    As it was, nothing happened except the two of us watching the sea come in and go out again, listening to the birds, sheltering from the rain when it came and lying silent as the sky changed from blue to white to gold. For hours