Breaking the Fall

by Michael Cadnum

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  Praise for Michael Cadnum

  “Not since the debut of Robert Cormier has such a major talent emerged in adolescent literature.” —The Horn Book

  “A writer who just gets better with every book.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cadnum is a master.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Blood Gold

  “A gripping adventure set during the 1849 California gold rush. Complementing the historical insight is an expertly crafted, fast-paced, engrossing adventure story full of fascinating characters. This is historical fiction that boys in particular will find irresistible.” —Booklist, starred review

  “This novel is fast paced.… The well-realized settings, which range from remote wildernesses to sprawling cities, create colorful backdrops for Willie’s adventure. An enticing read.” —School Library Journal

  “The prose is lively.… A spirited introduction to the gold rush for older readers.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Breaking the Fall

  Edgar Award Nominee

  “Tension hums beneath the surface.… Riveting.” —Booklist

  “Eerie, suspense-laden prose powerfully depicts the frustrating, overwhelming and often painful process of traveling from youth toward adulthood.” —Publishers Weekly

  Calling Home

  An Edgar Award Nominee

  “An exquisitely crafted work … of devastating impact.” —The Horn Book

  “Probably the truest portrait of a teenaged alcoholic we’ve had in young adult fiction.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “Readers … will never forget the experience.” —Wilson Library Bulletin

  “[Readers] will relate to the teen problems that lead to Peter’s substance abuse and the death of his best friend.” —Children’s Book Review Service

  “Through the prism of descriptive poetic images, Peter reveals the dark details of his sleepwalking life.… An intriguing novel.” —School Library Journal

  Daughter of the Wind

  “Readers will enjoy the sensation of being swept to another time and place in this thrill-a-minute historical drama.” —Publishers Weekly

  Edge

  “Mesmerizing … This haunting, life-affirming novel further burnishes Cadnum’s reputation as an outstanding novelist.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “A thought-provoking story full of rich, well-developed characters.” —School Library Journal

  “Devastating.” —Booklist

  “A psychologically intense tale of inner struggle in the face of tragedy.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Forbidden Forest

  “Cadnum succeeds admirably in capturing the squalor and casual brutality of the times.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Heat

  “In this gripping look at family relationships Cadnum finds painful shades of gray for Bonnie to face for the first time; in her will to grasp the manner and timing of her healing is evidence that she is one of Cadnum’s most complex and enigmatic characters.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Compelling. Adopting the laconic style that gives so much of his writing its tough edge and adult flavor, Cadnum challenges readers with hard questions about the nature of fear and of betrayal.” —Publishers Weekly

  In a Dark Wood

  Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

  “A beautiful evocation of a dangerous age … Readers who lose themselves in medieval Sherwood Forest with Cadnum will have found a treasure.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  “In a Dark Wood is a stunning tour de force, beautifully written, in which Michael Cadnum turns the legend of Robin Hood inside out. Cadnum’s shimmering prose is poetry with muscle, capturing both the beauty and brutality of life in Nottinghamshire. In a Dark Wood may well become that rare thing—an enduring piece of literature.” —Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War

  “[T]his imaginative reexamination of the Robin Hood legend from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham is not only beautifully written but is also thematically rich and peopled with memorable multidimensional characters.” —Booklist

  “Cadnum’s blend of dry humor, human conflict and historical details proves a winning combination in this refreshing twist on the Robin Hood tale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A complex, many-layered novel that does not shirk in its description of [the period], and offers an unusually subtle character study and a plot full of surprises.” —The Horn Book

  The King’s Arrow

  “The King’s Arrow is an adventure story full of color and romance, as resonant as a fable, told in clear, clean, swift prose. A wonderful read.” —Dean Koontz

  Nightsong: The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice

  “Cadnum (Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun) once again breathes life into classic mythological figures.… Skillfully creating a complex, multidimensional portrait of Orpheus (as well as of other members of the supporting cast, including Persephone and Sisyphus), Cadnum brings new meaning to an ancient romance.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Another excellent retelling of one of Ovid’s mythical tales. This well-written version is a much fuller retelling than that found either in Mary Pope Osborne’s Favorite Greek Myths or Jacqueline Morley’s Greek Myths. The story is a powerful one, delivered in comprehensible yet elevated language, and is sure to resonate with adolescents and give them fodder for discussion.” —School Library Journal

  Raven of the Waves

  “[A] swashbuckling … adventure set in the eighth century, Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) shows how a clash of cultures profoundly affects two distant enemies: a young Viking warrior and a monk’s apprentice.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Convey[s] a sense of what life might have been like in a world where danger and mystery lurked in the nearest woods; where cruelty was as casual as it was pervasive; where mercy was real but rare; and where the ability to sing, or joke—or even just express a coherent thought—was regarded as a rare and valuable quality … Valuable historical insight, but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.” —Booklist

  “Hard to read because of the gruesome scenes and hard to put down, this book provokes strong emotions and raises many fascinating questions.” —School Library Journal

  Rundown

  “Deep, dark, and moving, this is a model tale of adolescent uneasiness set amid the roiling emotions of modern life.” —Kirkus Review

  “Cadnum demonstrates his usual mastery of mood and characterization in this acutely observed portrait.” —Booklist

  Ship of Fire

  “Brimming with historical detail and ambience, this fact-paced maritime adventure will surely please devotees of the genre.” —School Library Journal

  Starfall: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun

  “Cadnum (In a Dark Wood) once again displays his expertise as a storyteller as he refashions sections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a trilogy of enchanting tales. Readers will feel Phaeton’s trepidation as he journeys to meet his father for the first time, and they will understand the hero’s mixture of excitement and dread as he loses control of the horses. [Cadnum] humanize[es] classical figures and transform[s] lofty language into accessible, lyrical prose; he may well prompt enthusiasts to seek the original source.” —Publishers Weekly

  Taking It

  “Cadnum keeps readers on the edge of their seats.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Cadnum stretches the literary boundaries of the YA problem novel. This one should not be missed.” —Booklist, starred review

  Zero at the Bone

  “Rive
ting … [an] intense psychological drama.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Much more frightening than a generic horror tale.” —Booklist, starred review

  “A painful subject, mercilessly explored.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Breaking the Fall

  Michael Cadnum

  FOR SHERINA

  The bay if we could see

  too beautiful to see.

  1

  You have to hold your breath.

  After a while you have to breathe, but you can breathe so slowly no one, even someone close enough to touch you, can hear that you are there.

  But even then, even with every breath measured and slow, something goes wrong. And all you can think is: I can’t do it.

  It wasn’t what I had expected at all.

  The house around me was huge. The ceiling was a flat, white slab. The furniture hulked, and the carpet hissed under my feet. The house was big, and it was alive, every shadow trembling.

  I knew I couldn’t do it. Leave now, I told myself. Back out the side window where you came in. Go.

  Now.

  But I stayed where I was. Some part of me loved this, and I thought: Jared should see me now. He should see how I steal, invisible, all the way across the floor without making a sound.

  See, I would tell him, I can do it after all.

  It was my first time. Jared had laughed, but I had told him that I could do it, just as he could, and that I would prove it tonight. He was waiting for me even now, and I could imagine him smoking cigarettes and shaking his head to himself, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to play his game.

  “Go ahead”—he had smiled, shrugging—“see what it’s like.”

  At the bottom of the stairs I pulled myself to my feet.

  I had picked out this house carefully, this big white house with green shutters. That would be my house, I had promised myself. That one, with three chimneys—that’s the one I’ll steal into. It was the biggest house I knew, and had the greenest, most perfect lawn. It was the kind of house I knew I would never live in.

  Jared was right: I did feel alive.

  The stairs did not merely creak. They moaned, chirped, boomed out low, big-timbred reports.

  My mouth was chalk dust. Maybe they aren’t home, I told myself. If they aren’t here, it doesn’t count. When I tell Jared, he’ll laugh. It was one of his rules: if no one’s home, it doesn’t count.

  But if they were gone, then I could leave now, and everything would be all right, until another night. Everything was all right, anyway. There was no question about it. The house was empty.

  A wave of relief swept over me, but then I gripped the banister so hard my fingers ached. A voice in me said: you are not going to be so lucky.

  When a person makes a sound in their sleep, a word or a sigh, it’s as though they aren’t human beings anymore, not people at all, but something slow and made of wood, some big beast only half turned into something alive, something stunned and lying there nearly gone.

  There was a grunt, half-gasp, half-word. Nothing more than that. A mutter, then, and someone swimming through sleep, working in the bedclothes to another position.

  I was not lucky tonight, not at all. They were in there, in the bedroom, and I leaned against the wall just outside the bedroom door with a slamming heart.

  With a terrible voice in me, not my inner voice at all, and not Jared’s, either. Some worse, fanged voice saying: Go on, Stanley. Don’t just huddle there. If you’re so smart, go right ahead.

  Jared knew how to be invisible, but I was an imposter, a fake, playing someone else’s game. I didn’t have the touch, the magic.

  Jared’s just down the street, waiting for you, and he knows, even though he was so kind, so reassuring. He knows that you can’t do it.

  Because you’re afraid.

  2

  Outside the bedroom I decided I would stay where I was, forever. This was supposed to be the good part: the fear. “You’ll love the way it makes you feel,” Jared had told me.

  I could not hear anything but the thud of my heart and the high, fine shriek of air escaping through my nostrils.

  I needed air. I took several shuddering breaths. I inhaled through my nose and exhaled slowly, hiding my breathing like someone in a pile of dead bodies trying to escape the killers, but even so, my panting was far too loud. Anyone could hear it. I might as well jump up and down, shouting.

  “How did it go?” Jared would ask. I could invent an adventure and simply lie, but he would see the truth in my eyes. Jared was one of those people who know, without asking.

  My body crept on its own, without any will on my part. I could not stop it. I watched myself ease into a room warm with the big, sleeping bodies.

  Stop. Go back. This is the worst thing you could do.

  But I was inside now. All the way inside the most intimate chamber.

  There were two of them, mountains in the bad light. The sounds of sleep, the slow breathing, so low and long it was like they would never wake again.

  My palms were wet. My body was cold. I had to breathe again, and yet I knew that if I exhaled now it would hiss out of me. So I crouched as Jared said I should and let my breath out down by the floor, far from where they might hear, and took in another long drag of air down by the crumpled, tossed-off socks and the great black shoes.

  I had to take something, but when I straightened just enough to scan the dresser, I couldn’t see anything but a white, gently wrinkled cloth, a kind of tablecloth, and a hairbrush. “We aren’t thieves,” Jared had always said. “We aren’t really taking anything important.”

  The man spoke.

  The word was unintelligible, a question of some sort. Maybe a name. Maybe his wife’s name, because she sighed a question in return, both of them asleep but knowing each other so well they were talking to each other without waking.

  Then the man rolled.

  His head was an indistinct shape on the pillow, and he was muttering again. His shoulder was a hulk. He rocked on the edge of sleep, about to slip back away, but something stopped him.

  His head lifted.

  Jared had told me that if I didn’t breathe and I didn’t move at all I would be invisible. That was the game: being invisible. Invisible like a ghost, and I stayed where I was and thought, you can’t see me. You can’t. You try, but your eyes can’t take me in—because I’m not here.

  The head fell back to the pillow. Then—the slightest sound. Not at all a sound, really. But something beyond hearing, something deeper than thought, an awareness of something happening in the bed, something from the bulk of the head on the pillow.

  The eyes. It was impossible. It couldn’t be true. Surely I couldn’t hear them blinking. Surely I couldn’t feel the weight of their gaze on me.

  I’m invisible. I’m holding my breath, so I’m invisible and you can’t see me.

  “Who is it?”

  It was a smaller voice than I expected, thin and sleep-strangled. Then, a full-voiced, “Who’s there?”

  But even then, even with the question reverberating, stirring his bedmate into life, my heart slamming, I remembered how to be invisible, holding my breath. I shrank to nothing.

  I could feel his doubt. He saw, but he didn’t see. I was there, crouched on the bedroom floor, and yet I was transparent, an illusion.

  A woman’s voice, sleep-clouded, asked, “What is it?”

  The man sat up, and fought the bedclothes, the blanket and the sheet confining him, weighing him down.

  I could not stop my arms, my legs. I leaped, my body springing from all-but-invisible to solid, visible, and trapped. But I was too slow. The air was water, and my bones were made of heavy, dark stone, each foot dragging.

  It was not even fear that froze the man and woman exactly as they were, tangled in the sheets. It was pure incomprehension. They could not believe what they saw.

  I swam, clumsier with each heartbeat, along the wall to the black cave of the bedroom door. That was eno
ugh: they believed in me now. I knew he was coming after me. I heard the rip of bedding.

  The nightstand drawer rattled behind me, and the hand fumbled, searched, and then, as I half fell down the dim stairs, the hand found what it was looking for.

  It was a small sound. It was a tiny, cold click. I had never heard a sound quite like that before, but I knew exactly what it was.

  He had a gun.

  3

  Loose and fleshy, the living room carpet held my feet, and the black electrical cords seemed to writhe, tripping me. The window, the open sash, and the parted curtain far across the room shrank as I stumbled, lunged, gasped my way to the sill.

  His steps thundered on the stairs.

  My shoulders, my butt, the backs of my thighs had high, keen, tickling wounds where I imagined, and nearly felt, the bullets rip me.

  And yet there were no shots, not even when I wormed and hung from the window, the night air on my face. I blinked at the surprising breeze that had risen, shaking the great column of a juniper beside one of the chimneys.

  Jared had always said that there was a way to fall so it wouldn’t hurt, a way to break the fall and roll away, uninjured. There is never any reason, Jared said, for a person to be hurt.

  I fell.

  I sprang to my feet, the lawn squeaking under my soles. I knew that I was free even as I knew that this was all too late, all too clumsy, and way too slow. The man had seen me, and even now he would be on the phone. Even now a black-and-white would squeal around the corner, siren off but lights twirling.

  There I would be, bounding, panting across the front lawns, splashing in the gutter, careening into a streetlight, dancing down one alley and up another, taking the long way, because I did not want to lead the cops to Jared.

  My body sang inside with the hope that I might make it after all. My bowels were steady now, and I had so much energy, power, pure light in my legs that I knew that if I really wanted to, I could bound over one of these houses.

  But that would be a stupid thing to even try. Anyone who saw me would know that I had been up to something very strange. I could imagine the cop voice. “Officer needs assistance. Kid jumping houses on Manzanita Street.”