by Becky Melby
Copyright
ISBN 1-60260-301-1
Copyright © 2009 by Becky Melby and Cathy Wienke. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.
All scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. niv®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
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One
“I’m halfway to the top. No turning back now.”
Gripping the rung tighter with her left hand, April quickly adjusted her hands-free microphone. “My knees feel like spaghetti, but I will do this.” Eighty-three, eighty-four. She counted the rungs. Don’t look down.
Her gaze followed the ladder to the point where the giant steel legs met the base of the water tank. She arched her neck, staring up—and up.
The ladder swayed.
Or had it? April’s breath caught. Her heart hammered at her ribs. Hugging the ladder, she waited. “Vertigo. That’s all it was. I won’t do that again.”
Her breathing slowed. She moved one hand and then her foot. “I wish this was television instead of radio so you could see the scripture verses I’ve written on the backs of my ha—” Her foot slipped. She gasped, heart pounding again, and regained her footing.
Rung by rung, she reached the base of the reservoir. The wind picked up suddenly. Her Minnesota Twins cap bounced against her forehead. Honey blond bangs pulled free and whipped across her eyes, blocking her vision for a moment and sending a fresh ripple of panic down her back. She focused on her hands. “ ‘I can do everything through him who gives me strength.’ That’s the verse on my right hand. On my left, I have—”
The whir of helicopter blades covered her words as a massive shadow blocked the sun, darkening the pale blue surface of the water tower and obliterating her words.
“Well, folks,” she shouted into the microphone, “this is why the powers that be at KPOG don’t let me do live radio yet!” It was a comment she’d delete before it reached the ears of anyone back at the station.
The helicopter rounded the water tower, giving her a momentary reprieve from the deafening vibration before appearing in her peripheral vision on the opposite side. “Looks like I’m not alone up here!” she yelled over the rhythmic pulse of the blades. The chopper hovered about thirty yards out. Afraid that turning her head would cause another wave of dizziness, she gritted her teeth and slowly looked to her right. . .directly into a camera lens.
The cameraman sat in the chopper’s open doorway, his legs swinging in the air. Kneeling beside him was a man with a microphone. A man familiar to most of Pine Bluff, Minnesota—the local cable channel’s weatherman.
Seth Bachelor. The sight of him made April’s jaw tense and the cords at the base of her skull tighten like steel cables. Why him? Why now, in the middle of her first giant step away from fear?
But April Douglas knew how to hide her personal problems from the camera. She produced a TV smile. “The KXPB-TV news chopper is filming me.”
Her hand grasped the rung that ran parallel to the bottom of the bright blue i in Pine Bluff. A catwalk with a railing circled the reservoir. She remembered this spot; she’d been here before, years ago. Here—but no farther. A siren and a blinding spotlight had stopped her.
The chopper edged away. The air calmed, and the noise dropped. But the helicopter hovered at a distance. “It’s about time Channel Five decided to use me on camera.” Another comment she’d delete before her show.
The presence of the helicopter messed with her train of thought. Focus. Don’t stop. She moved to the next step. “The verse on my left hand is from Psalm 139: ‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there.’ ”
Reading the verse out loud acted like an intravenous drip of boldness, giving her just enough courage to let go with one hand and aim a smooth, controlled parade wave at the camera. For all her fears, performing on camera was not one of them. This was, after all, a chance to show KXPB-TV her versatility and make them sorry they didn’t snap her up when they had the chance.
Strength seeped back into her legs, and her hands gripped the rungs with a determination that banished much of her anxiety. It all worked together to propel her faster up the vertical side of the tank to the point where the steel curved toward the top and she had to crawl. The metal rungs bit into her knees, and she couldn’t shake the realization that only a skin of steel separated her from three hundred thousand gallons of water—and nothing but air separated her from the ground, 148 feet below.
Don’t look down. She kept her eyes on her hands until she reached the last rung. A lightning rod marked the summit.
“I’m at the top! I made it!”
She’d expected to feel nothing but triumph and exhilaration. But instead, an almost palpable sense of aloneness engulfed her. She wasn’t supposed to do this alone.
But she had. In spite of her fear of heights, in spite of the fact that her sister wasn’t with her, she’d reached the top.
Just like she’d promised.
With a sigh that vibrated the windscreen on her microphone, she smiled. A tear dropped from her chin to the sky blue metal. Slowly releasing her right hand from the rung, she gripped the bill of her cap, pulled it off her ponytail, and flung it into the air.
“This is for you, Caitlyn!”
d
“After nine inches of rain in less than twenty-four hours, the Snake River has crested and is overflowing its banks.” Seth Bachelor adjusted his headset as he peered through the helicopter window. “Several houses have—” Movement caught his eye. “Look!” He nudged the pilot’s arm and pointed. “Somebody’s climbing the water tower!” The guys at the station would hate him for the editing they’d have to do on his flood coverage, but this diversion could prove to be newsworthy.
Grappling with the latch on his seat belt, he squeezed through the space between the front seats as the pilot banked and circled the water tower. Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Get the police on the phone. See what they know.” He glanced at his watch. The morning news wasn’t quite over. “And call the station and tell ’em to get a reporter over here—stat.”
In the back, Rick James, the cameraman, already had his lens trained on the tower. Seth turned off his microphone. “Is it a girl?”
Rick had the advantage of a telephoto lens. “Oh yeah. Most definitely.”
“How old?”
“Can’t tell. Probably teens.”
A voice crackled in his ear. “Seth? Merv. Can you go live with this in one minute?”
“Sure can.”
The attack of nerves surprised him. He could give a weather report in his sleep, but the metamorphosis from meteorologist to reporter wouldn’t be smooth. He cleared his throat again, shouted a few instructions at Jay and then Rick, and said a quick prayer that his brain wouldn’t freeze up.
“In spite of warnings from the police and increased fines, some things never change. If it’s spring in Pine Bluff, Minnesota, kids will be climbing the water tower. They’ve been doing it for more than fifty years, and as the end of the school year and graduation approach, we’ll see more incidents of
this illegal and extremely dangerous—yet time-honored—tradition. What’s unusual about what we’re seeing here is that this young lady is more daring than most. She’s climbing alone and in broad daylight.”
Whoever she was, she was in for trouble. “This girl’s going to be arrested, and if memory serves me, the fine is likely to be around four hundred dollars.” He stared at the girl’s jean-clad legs and maroon jacket and the gold hair that whipped around her face. “She’s halfway up the tank now. This is where we’d expect to see the spray paint come out, but she’s still climbing.”
A thought struck him. Was she going to jump? Sure, she’d just smiled and waved for the camera, but what if it was all a ruse? He leaned over Rick, getting a good look at the base of the tower. “There are a couple people on the ground watching her. One appears to have a camera or binoculars. I’m expecting police sirens any moment. . . .”
But what if the police were staying away purposely so as not to frighten her? Were they actually communicating with her somehow, trying to talk her down? Maybe it wasn’t a camera or binoculars he’d seen after all. Maybe it was a bullhorn. “She’s reached the top. I hope what we’re witnessing is just a high school prank, but there’s no way of knowing what her intentions are.
“I can’t imagine what would bring this girl out here in the middle of the school day, knowing she’s likely to get caught. I’m surprised that she didn’t retreat when she saw our helicopter. You’re probably coming to the same conclusion I am—there’s a good chance this poor girl is climbing to the top of the water tower with thoughts of jumping. We’ve contacted the authorities, and you can rest assured that, if they aren’t already down there trying to talk her down, they’ll be on the scene any moment. Folks, if you believe in prayer. . .now would be a good time. This could be life or death.”
❧
“What in the world are they doing?” The chopper was closer now, the staccato beat of the blades so loud she couldn’t hear herself think, much less transmit. How could a dinky cable television station like KXPB afford a helicopter, anyway? Slowly, she climbed back down to the catwalk. Standing upright, with both hands securely clutching the railing, she drank in the view for the first time.
For a moment, she was grateful for the excuse not to talk; no words came to mind. The panorama that stretched in every direction was a kaleidoscope of color. Flowering crab apple and cherry trees dotted the town like wads of cotton candy. The sky, cerulean and cloudless, seemingly washed clean by days of rain, met craggy bluffs to her left and white pines to her right. To the north, the brimming Snake River, true to its name, wound like an overfed serpent toward its junction with the St. Croix.
Nestled close to the banks of the St. Croix lay the town April was learning to call home all over again. Below the water tower, the high school football field spread out, surrounded by a cinder track. She’d run that oval more times than she could count. Looking down at the miniature runners, she could almost hear the crunch beneath their feet. She located the roof of her apartment and the house she’d grown up in, but when she attempted to find the steeple of her church, the chopper blocked her view. She glared at it, the same thought cycling through her mind again. What in the world are they doing?
If they’d hoped to see something dramatic, they must have figured out by now that she wasn’t going to be performing any aerial stunts. They certainly had enough footage, though April was confident she hadn’t done anything worthy of the six o’clock news.
Pointing to her microphone, she tried to wave them off. What was the universal media signal for “I’m trying to tape here, you bozos!”? Maybe Seth Bachelor had all the time in the world, but she had a radio show that aired at three o’clock. If anything, her attempt at sign language made the helicopter edge nearer. Any closer and they’d rip into the reservoir. She could picture sliding down the newly created waterfall. That would be newsworthy. “Go away! Go do your weather thing!”
The catwalk was just wide enough for her to maneuver without turning sideways. She inched her way around to the west, hoping that News Chopper Five wouldn’t follow her. As she took her third step, the helicopter rose straight up and made a beeline for the river. Silence echoed in its absence.
April drew a deep breath and tried to bring her thoughts back to her reason for being there. Switching on the microphone, she closed her eyes, needing a moment of introspection.
“So this is number one, the first thing on Caitlyn’s dream list. As you can imagine, I’m experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions. By God’s grace alone, I stared down one of my major fears. There’s a sense of victory in that, but I can’t help thinking how much fun this would have been with my sister leading the way.”
The helicopter looked like a Matchbox toy as it followed the curve of the St. Croix River and angled west along the Snake. Sunlight glinted off the aircraft’s side and on the brown and churning river below it. April swiped at another maverick tear. “But life goes on. . .and God has a way of turning tarnished dreams into something beautiful.”
Two
“You have got to be kidding!” April paced her living room, unable to share even a modicum of her best friend’s amusement. “They aired it live?”
“In Technicolor.” Yvonne Sondergard fluffed her white blond curls. “Couldn’t really make out your face, but all of east-central Minnesota got a great shot of your Lucky jeans.”
With a groan, April plopped her Luckys onto the couch but bounced up again. “What did they say?”
“They thought you were going to deface the tower. . .or kill yourself.”
“What?”
Yvonne pulled a crumpled bag from under the coffee table and took out a tortilla chip. “He started out by saying that you were going to get slapped with a hefty fine when you were arrested.”
Another groan emerged. “So everybody who recognized my backside thinks I’m in jail now.”
“Yup.” Yvonne stuck a chip in her mouth. “These are stale. You’d better make it perfectly clear at the top of your show that you had permission from the city and that the station would have taken responsibility if you’d plummeted to your doom. . .or leaped to your doom.”
A twinge of guilt surfaced. “Yeah. . .about that. . .not so much.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“Seth was really getting into the drama of a possible suicide and—”
“Seth? You’re on a first name basis with the weatherman?”
“Of course. I know the mailman and the crossing guard on the corner, too. What are you so stressed out about?”
“That man—” The phone on the kitchen counter rang. April sighed as she got up to answer it. Her quick trip home for a shower had taken half an hour so far, and she still hadn’t had the shower. Her “Hello” echoed her frustration.
“April? I need you in my office. Now.”
❧
Jill Berkley’s almost-black eyes smoldered. “Why?”
“Because the risk had to be real.” April stood in front of her boss’s desk, hands on hips.
“Did you even once consider the risk to the radio station? If you’d slipped, and landed in the hospital—”
“If I’d slipped, I would have splattered. There wouldn’t have been anything left to hospitalize.”
Perfectly manicured hands shot into the air above Jill’s short-cropped black hair. “You’re impossible!” Her sigh fluttered the papers on her desk. “April. . .you wonder why the board won’t give you a live show, and then you go and pull something like this?”
“No one would have known I wasn’t wearing a harness if that stupid helicopter hadn’t shown up.”
“So it would have been fine if you hadn’t gotten caught?”
April shrugged. “Yeah. Sort of.”
A hint of a smile pulled at the corners of Jill’s mouth. “If you weren’t so crazy good at what you do, you would have been fired months ago.”
“So I’m not?”
Jill shook he
r head. “Once again, I went to bat for you. But you have to take this seriously, April. Three job applications have crossed my desk just this month. If you take too many chances, the board could run over me like a steamroller and hire somebody to replace you.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“Make sure you do. Now go. Put together a show that will knock my socks off and make me forget all the rules you break.”
April bowed, hands outstretched, grateful for the thousandth time that her immediate superior was far more friend than boss. She had her hand on the doorknob when Jill stopped her.
“That broadcast is on the KXPB Web site.”
“Great.” She stopped and turned toward Jill. “No, actually, it is great. I’ll copy it and keep it as a reminder of my first big step. I’ll just mute the commentary.”
“Oh, you have to listen to it. It’s highly entertaining. Seth Bachelor is layering the drama until his audience is convinced you’re going to jump, and then all of a sudden there’s dead silence, followed by, ‘We’ve just received information’ ”—Jill’s voice lowered to a rough impersonation of the weatherman—“ ‘that this. . .woman. . .works for a local radio station. Evidently this is some kind of publicity. . .campaign.’ ”
“Publicity campaign?”
“Hey, he didn’t say ‘stunt.’ Gotta give him credit for that.”
April closed her eyes and leaned her head against the doorjamb.
“At the end of the news, they showed another clip of your climb and said, ‘We now have the name of the lone climber.’ ”
“ ‘The Lone Climber.’ Think I’ll have a T-shirt printed with it.”
“The timing was perfect.”
“For what? Humiliation? I manage that on my own just fine.” She ran one hand through hair still tangled in places from the chopper. “At least he didn’t tape me throwing up when I got to the bottom.”
Jill shook her head and tossed a mini Mounds bar at April. “They gave a plug for your show. That doesn’t happen every day in the Christian radio biz. You may have a much larger audience today, thanks to Seth Bachelor.” Jill flipped a calendar with the tip of her pencil. “And you can thank him in person next Saturday.”