Free Lost by S. A. Bodeen

plan or whatever, right?” Sarah stumbled over a root and caught herself before she fell.
    â€œYeah, I guess,” said Marco.
    â€œSo someone should be coming to rescue us, right?” She hoped Marco agreed, because it would make her feel better.
    But his shoulders went up and down. “The whole thing seems sketchy to me. Like the regular rules of the world don’t apply.”
    Sarah didn’t say anything else as she kept on following him. She gazed around the area, checking for any signs that her dad might have come that way. Then Marco stopped and she ran right into him, hitting her mouth on his shoulder. “Ow.” She put a hand up to her lip.
    He set a hand on a tree to keep his balance and looked at her. “You okay?”
    She moved her hand and pointed at her lip. “Am I bleeding?”
    Marco squinted at where she pointed. “Don’t think so. But check that out.” He looked ahead of him.
    The end of the path split into a V.
    â€œWhich way?” she asked.
    Marco put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I have no clue.”
    Sarah heard something. “Do you hear that?” The sound she strained to hear grew louder and louder, until there was no doubt.
    â€œYeah, I hear it.” Marco tilted his head to the side a bit and scrunched up his forehead. “Is that…?”
    â€œBirds,” said Sarah. “It totally sounds like birds.” She brushed by Marco and headed down the left-hand trail, toward the cacophony of sharp squawks and piercing whistles and singsong-ish tweets.
    Marco called after her, “Hey, slow down! I think we should be careful.”
    But Sarah kept going, moving as fast as she could along the trail, dodging tree branches and pushing aside vines.
    Marco was only a few steps behind her. “Sarah, wait! Please slow down!”
    But Sarah didn’t want to slow down. Her heart pounded, sure that her dad must have come the same way, heard the same noises she was hearing now. The path grew lighter, and she began to jog toward the opening, thinking that her dad could be just ahead, waiting for her and—
    The ground suddenly disappeared from under her. She was falling.
    Sarah screamed and clutched for a tree limb. Her hand scraped down the rough surface until it hit a notch. She reached up her other hand and clung to the branch, hanging there by outstretched arms, dangling over nothing but empty air. “Marco!’ she screeched.
    â€œHang on!” Marco appeared on the edge of the cliff. His eyes were huge and his mouth hung open. His gaze went down, down, down, then snapped back up to her. “Whatever you do, do not look down.”
    Sarah twisted her head to the side and looked down. She screamed again.
    â€œI told you not to look down!” yelled Marco.
    Sarah was a few feet off the abrupt edge of a rocky cliff, with the closest ground more than fifty feet below. “Help!”
    â€œHang on,” said Marco. He gingerly sidestepped to the edge, then got a grip on a thick tree branch with one hand as he reached out the other. “Just go hand over hand, see if you can move sideways.”
    Sarah scrunched her eyes shut. Her heart was pounding out of her chest as she panted, struggling to hang on. “I can’t! I can’t!”
    â€œSarah! Look at me.”
    His voice was so forceful that she had to do as he said. Marco held out his free hand as far as it would go, which was about three feet from Sarah. “You can do this. You only have to go this far, then I’ll grab you, okay?”
    She started to look down.
    He yelled, “And quit looking down!”
    Her gaze snapped back to him.
    Marco nodded, his brown eyes huge. “That’s it. Just keep looking at me.” His face was red. He wiped some sweat off his forehead, then rubbed his hand on his shorts. “Okay, so just do what I tell you. Take your right hand and slide it over to your left