How to Fall

by Rebecca Brooks

  “Your boyfriend is very sweet,” Suzi said right before they lined up at the edge of the ramp.

  He’s not my boyfriend, Julia almost said, but caught herself. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “When he’s not trying to kill me, that is.”

  “Remember, seven steps, keep running, and don’t jump!” Suzi called, ignoring Julia’s comment about impending death. It would have been nice to hear one more round of encouraging words about how they were definitely not going to die, but it was too late, there was no time, Suzi was running and so Julia was running too, following in her footsteps directly behind her, the woman’s strong, petite body propelling them forward, the wings rising up behind. The edge of the platform was getting closer, there was nothing beyond but nothingness itself, and there was something she was supposed to do, something she was supposed to remember…

  But it was too late, they were nearing the edge, and the platform was ending. She was going to fall. Everything tightened in her chest—

  And then the next thing she knew she wasn’t running, she wasn’t jumping, but she wasn’t falling, either. Her toes hit the edge of the ramp one second after Suzi’s and her next step brushed through the air and for one terrifying second Julia braced herself for a sickening lurch and the spiral down—their glider wouldn’t work, the harnesses would be strapped in wrong, she didn’t run correctly, she jumped when she shouldn’t have jumped, or maybe she was supposed to jump and she’d misunderstood… But nothing happened.

  Or rather, nothing happened and then everything happened at once.

  It was so smooth she suddenly knew why it was called gliding. They ran off the edge of the platform, toward the water, into the sky, and when the ground stopped holding them the wings took over seamlessly.

  Together in the harness their bodies rocked forward so they were lying on their stomachs, Suzi gripping the bar that helped her steer and Julia hovering above her. Their feet were connected to a strap that had hung loose when they were running but was now pulled taut, holding them up. Julia had thought it would be awkward, but it was okay hanging there, floating, supported by the straps and the air that buoyed them up as gently as if they’d been on land.

  They started off facing the ocean, Suzi letting the air lift them up until they were even higher than when they started. And then the glider slowly started to turn, so smoothly Julia hardly noticed they were moving until she realized they were flying over land now, the whole expanse of the city laid out at their feet.

  “Everything good so far?” Suzi called, and Julia gave a breathless shout, her heart hammering in her chest, so giddy she wanted to scream and whoop and pour out her lungs to the rolling hills so small below her.

  “Let go!” Suzy shouted up to her as she shifted to keep the glider from giving in to the wind.

  “What?” Julia asked.

  “Let go! You don’t have to hold on!”

  Julia realized she had been gripping the handles behind Suzi so tightly her knuckles were white.

  I can’t, she wanted to say, but the wind was in her face, wisps of hair from her messy bun whipping behind her, and she couldn’t make the words come.

  Gingerly she released one hand and let it hover over the handles, testing out the feeling. Her upper body rocked a little, but the harness was secure and Suzi’s capable arms kept the glider steady. In one rushed move, before she could change her mind, Julia let go of both hands and spread them out to either side like she was flying.

  “Aiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!” she called, a deep shout that came from her toes and up through her belly and out her lungs with the force of the sun and the wind and the forest and the sea, something long dormant inside her snaking out and stretching, breathing, testing its new legs and then running, leaping, flying deep within her, soaring through her mouth and her heart until she was breathless, laughing, so exhilarated that she couldn’t stop. She heard Suzi laugh along with her, encouraging her to keep her arms out and soar, and she knew, too, that this was also why Suzi did this. Not just for her own jump, but because no matter how many times she did it, it would always be the first time for somebody else.

  It was the same reason Julia taught, going through identical problems year after year after year, because every time she did it there was someone new who was seeing it for the first time, getting it for the first time, finishing it for the first time in their lives. Watching it click for somebody else never, ever got old.

  “We’re currently flying over the Tijuca National Park, which is the green you see here.” Suzi lifted one arm off the steering bar to point below them, and Julia’s breath caught, but the glider held steady and she made herself keep from grabbing back onto the handles. They were useless, of course, except for giving her the illusion of safety.

  And maybe she didn’t need to cling to that illusion anymore. Maybe nothing was as safe as she wanted it to be. But maybe the things she saw as risky weren’t as bad as she thought.

  Or maybe they were still worth doing, despite the risk.

  Because of it.

  “It’s beautiful,” Julia said, marveling at how the forest stretched for as far as the eye could see, wrapping around the city that glinted in the sun, clusters of towering buildings nestled in among the rolling green.

  “It’s the largest urban forest in the world. That mountain over there, with that pointy peak, is called Pedra da Gávea. Pedra means stone and gávea is like a kind of sail. Topsail, I think you call it?”

  “The sail above the gaff sail,” Julia said.

  “Gaff?”

  “On a large sailboat, the gaff is the square sail, and then the topsail is the smaller, triangular sail on top.” Julia remembered how she’d lied about getting seasick so she could run off with Blake and laughed to herself.

  “That’s what it looks like, you see? It’s 842 meters high and the largest monolith along a coastline in the world—that means it’s made out of a single rock, in this case granite.”

  Even from this high above Julia could see how the elements had eroded the granite into a dramatic, smooth face that jutted up and out and then swooped down. It really did look like a sail stretched full in the wind.

  “You know a lot about the area,” Julia observed.

  “I’m a geology student when I’m not jumping. I’m a Carioca—someone from Rio. This city is in my blood.” Suzi shifted her shoulders so the glider swung right, closer toward the ocean, giving them another view of the face of the Topsail Rock, and Julia understood how being here could make someone so much more aware of the land and the water. Millennia of shifts had created this landscape. Julia felt impossibly small in comparison, and yet somehow a part of it all.

  The more they hung in the air, the more the city unfolded to them. There were more sites to point out, more mountains and forests and tall granite peaks. Built up the sides of a hill was one of the country’s largest favelas, a slum that Suzi explained was being bought up by wealthy landowners. The corrugated tin roofs sparkled in the sunlight, and Julia wondered about all the lives being lived below her, the different heartbeats drumming around.

  As she took huge gulps of the cool air rushing by, she felt her own heart begin to normalize and her breathing slow until the panic, panic, panic alarm ringing inside her was replaced with an exhilarated hum. The wing dipped and Suzi steered them toward the ocean. The white foam where the waves crashed looked like a thin broken line snaking along the shore.

  The water came closer, the white sand beaches extending until the city ended in the point of the peninsula and curved around on the other side of the hills. It was a different feeling to be over the sea. Even though Julia knew the land wouldn’t protect her, it was scarier to have nothing below them but endless, unforgiving blue so bright it almost hurt, a light clear turquoise in the shallow parts toward land.

  They circled over the water, slowly losing altitude, until after what felt like an eternity but also way too soon Suzi was telling her it was time to prepare to land. Julia had forgotten everything sh
e was supposed to do, but suddenly there was no time. The glider was pointed out over the beach and heading straight down like it was coming in to a landing strip. The lazy circles were gone; every movement was purposeful as Suzi steered them in. The beach rushed up faster and faster until Julia could see the peaks and crests in the sand and the waves were no longer snakes of white but large breathing things that swelled and crashed beside them.

  They were coming in fast, so fast, something had to be wrong—

  “Lift up and run,” Suzi instructed, and before Julia knew it her body was swinging forward, pulled upright once again. When they touched the ground, she felt a little kickback from the glider but then she was running behind Suzi, and it only took a few steps for the whole thing to slow, brought in to such a smooth landing it seemed impossible that they’d been flying so fast.

  Suzi unhooked her harness, asking how she felt. Julia was breathless and giddy and relieved and amazed, and all she could do was laugh and keep saying how great everything was. She had jumped, she had fallen, but instead of crashing and breaking into a million pieces, she felt more whole than ever before.

  They moved out the landing area and Julia watched Blake’s glider circle overhead, so high she couldn’t tell it was him. She wondered if she had looked like that, a small dot suspended effortlessly in the sky. Then they circled down for their landing, and she spotted the sun-kissed curls and those tanned, strong arms she would recognize anywhere now.

  They landed like she had done, coming in fast and then suddenly standing up, Blake shouting and cheering as soon as he caught sight of her on the beach. When he was unhooked he ran up and enveloped her in a giant bear hug, rocking from side to side and refusing to let go.

  “How was it?” he exclaimed, brushing the loose strands of hair from her face.

  “My legs are shaking,” she said, and it was true. She was trembling like she was even more terrified now that it was over because she couldn’t believe that she’d actually done that, jumped off the tall, sheer peak towering above them.

  But she was laughing, too, and kissing him and so exhilarated she thought she might burst. From the beach they couldn’t see the rest of the city anymore. It was mind-boggling how much she might have missed if she’d stayed with her feet planted firmly on land.

  They thanked their guides whole-heartedly, leaving generous tips and wishing Suzi good luck on her studies. Blake kept his arm wrapped tight around her shoulder as they walked along the beach away from the peak they’d jumped from, São Conrado, and the landing strip. Every so often they looked back to see the cliff as it faded from view and the gliders circling like birds in the sky.

  “Are you mad that I took you there?” Blake asked.

  “Mad?” she said, surprised. “I was pretty shocked, but definitely not mad.”

  “You seemed really terrified.”

  “I was really terrified!”

  “I’d thought you weren’t afraid of heights.”

  “I have a healthy fear of the insane, Blake!” she cried.

  “But it was worth it?”

  She linked her arms through his. The ground still felt wobbly and strange after being in the air. “Some day my legs will start working again.”

  “You could have said no and that would have totally been okay,” he reassured her.

  She stopped walking and faced him, taking both of his hands in hers. She could feel the sand solid yet shifting beneath them, the steady swish swish of the ocean all around.

  She grazed his lips. “Sometimes don’t you have to take a risk and fall?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Blake’s knees were still knocking as he and Julia made their way down the beach, splashing their toes through the water, marveling at what they’d just done. They were north of the more crowded city beaches. Here on the outskirts of the wealthy Barra de Tijuca neighborhood the sand was fine, the color of pale straw, and there was hardly anyone around. They walked hand in hand, laughing and breathless, hearts beating a mile a minute after such soaring sights.

  “How on earth did you think of doing that?” Julia asked, still shaking her head from the rush.

  “I’d heard of people doing it when I was here before, but it seemed, uh, a little crazy.”

  “A little?”

  “I was going to do it. Really. I was halfway down the street and trying to make myself hail a cab when I just…oof, I was chickenshit.”

  “You?” Julia raised an eyebrow incredulously.

  “Maybe if I’d had some peer pressure, but it was only me and I…I couldn’t.” Blake shrugged. He might not have wanted to admit to just anyone that his nerves had gotten the better of him, but Julia wasn’t just anyone. Seeing how scared she’d been made it easier to admit that it had felt like a risk for him, too.

  “So you got your second chance,” she smiled.

  “It’s your fault really.”

  “Me?”

  “If you hadn’t been talking about how badly you wanted to do something new and different and exciting, something you’d always remember—that is an exact quote, is it not?—then I might have let the whole thing go.”

  “No way, you had this planned from the start. You knew you’d get your second chance in Rio, and this time you’d make me do it so that you didn’t chicken out.”

  Blake lifted his palms to the sky. “Guilty?”

  “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone about failed attempt number one if you don’t tell them how loudly I screamed as we were taking off.”

  “Deal,” he said.

  They shook on it.

  Julia was right, of course. As soon as she’d said she wanted to try something new and put the day’s plan in his hands, he’d known what to do. The whole thing had felt like a sign. Deciding to return to Rio meant he had the opportunity to do it over again, only this time better, deeper, without holding anything back.

  Sometimes it’s good to get second chances, he reasoned, and then wondered if he was talking about hang gliding, or Rio, or perhaps something else altogether.

  “Second chances, birthdays, the new year…” Julia mused. “Sounds like a time for a lot of new beginnings.”

  “I was hoping that when you said you wanted to try something new, you weren’t talking about fresh pineapple juice or something.”

  “Already tried it, so it’s not on the list anymore.”

  “So what, now things have to keep getting bigger and better? Do I have to take you skydiving next?”

  Julia planted her feet firmly on the ground and looked him square in the eye. “You have to let me catch my breath first.”

  He laughed. “All right, I promise I’ll try to stick with smaller firsts.”

  She started walking again and pulled her hair from its elastic. It tumbled over her shoulders, lifting in the breeze. He trailed his fingers over her back to feel the soft strands.

  “I think I’ve made it clear that everything we’ve done together qualifies as new,” she said. “You could say we were going to sit and watch paint dry, and I’d think it was perfectly fine, as long as I was with you.”

  “Well good, because I don’t know how you managed to guess what we’re doing this afternoon, but…”

  She laughed and he did too, but inside his heart was pounding like he was standing back on the cliff, preparing to run. Was it Brazil or the beauty all around them or just her hair in the breeze that made this, this thing they were doing feel so right?

  Or was Julia trying to say something else, that it was the two of them together? Would it be like this no matter where they were?

  But she didn’t say anything else. Part of him thought it was the perfect opportunity to insert something about watching paint dry in Chicago for a little while—after all, he had the money and the time.

  But he couldn’t. It was like the cliff was there but he couldn’t make himself run off it. Like he couldn’t make himself get in the cab and drive to the mountain the first time he’d thought about jumping.

 
And then the moment was gone, they were on a tangent about how to build so many houses right into the hills, and Blake was glad he hadn’t said anything. It would have been easy for her to broach the subject but she obviously hadn’t, and he intended to follow her lead. They had one more night together and it was the biggest night of the year, New Year’s Eve in Rio. He didn’t intend to ruin it by making things awkward for her.

  He knew the problem with Kelley wasn’t that he’d let her go but that he’d pushed too hard, asked too much. Offered a life she didn’t want. Somehow he’d been completely unable to read the signs she’d so obviously given to him. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He swore he was going to give Julia what she wanted, even if it wasn’t him. He would let her ask for her desires, and then step back when what he had given was enough.

  They walked a long time on the beach until the mountain they’d jumped from was lost in the distance and the more familiar sights of the city came into view. Then they cut away from the water to find a café for sandwiches. They were strolling through the streets of Ipanema, window shopping, when something suddenly occurred to him.

  “Are you ready for tonight?”

  “If it doesn’t involve jumping, falling, or in any other way endangering life or limb.”

  “How about drinking, dancing, swimming in the ocean, hanging out on the beach with two million of our closest friends, and heavy bouts of making out, if I’m lucky?”

  “Sold,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “One thing Jamie was telling me about before we left, though, is that apparently everyone wears white. Do you have anything?”

  Julia thought for a minute. “I have a white tank top. Maybe that’s okay with denim shorts?”

  Blake remembered the outfit she’d been wearing when he first saw her standing by the front desk, waiting to be checked in. If she was wearing that flimsy shirt, there was no way he’d be able to keep his hands off her all night.

  “Way too sexy, but I suppose it’ll have to do.”

  Julia made a face. “What about you?”