Julian
I hate heights. I hate heights. I mean, I really hate heights.
Digging my fingers into the crack in the rock, I find the next toehold and cling to the cliff for dear life. This seemed like a good idea when Orane suggested it—face your fears or whatever—but I am seriously regretting agreeing to it now.
“An inch to your left, Julian,” Orane corrects.
Following his instructions, I shift my foot to the left and find the elusive indentation I need to push myself up those last few inches. My hands reach for the ledge of the cliff and I pull myself over, gasping for breath and lying face down on the rocks.
“I told you it would be fun,” he says as he climbs up after me. I turn my head and look up at him, but otherwise I refuse to move.
“If you say so,” I mutter.
My pulse is still racing and I try not to think about the drop that’s only six inches to the right. A strong wind or a roll in the wrong direction and I could tumble over the edge to smash on the rocks below. I think. It’s hard to know for sure since, technically, I’m dreaming.
“You know I would never let you get hurt,” Orane says, crouching by my side and ruffling my brown hair.
“Tell that to the rocks.” I turn over and bat his hand away. Orane grins, his violet eyes gleaming in the bright sunlight, and straightens, turning to examine the landscape.
“If you wanted safety, you should have picked a different location.” Orane pulls the band off his shoulder-length auburn hair and fixes his ponytail. “The Grand Canyon is a dangerous climb.”
I swallow and push to my knees. My hands are shaking, my muscles trembling, and my pulse is still too fast, but at least I can breathe now. “You’re the one who said I needed to face my fears.”
“Yes, well, I thought you might start with something smaller. The roof of a house, perhaps.”
“This is the first place I remember getting that paralyzing freeze,” I tell him, groaning as I get to my feet. “This place still haunts my nightmares. Or, you know, it did. I don’t sleep much anymore.”
Orane shrugs. “A side effect of the time you spend here, I am afraid. But a pleasant one, right? You have so much more time to yourself now.”
He’s right. Those early morning hours between when I wake up at three and leave for school at seven are my favorite time of day. I don’t have to deal with school or whatever drama Lynnie has brought home with her. I can read or listen to music or just sit out on our tiny balcony and listen to the sounds of the Vegas Strip in the distance. I can pretend I have the same life as most fifteen-year-olds and that when I get home from school I’ll have parents—or, hell, even an older sibling—to take care of things like cooking and cleaning and making sure the bills get paid on time.
That’s not the hand life dealt me, though. I don’t have parents, I have a parent. Singular. And that parent is Lynnie. And she’s essentially useless.
Two years ago, I was on the verge of losing control, doing something stupid and getting myself in trouble I probably wouldn’t have survived, but then Orane found me. Now I have a secret that keeps me sane. I get to visit a dreamworld where I can go anywhere and do anything and now I know there’s at least one person in the universe who might care if I disappeared.
“Are you going to stand there the rest of the night or shall we attempt the next climb?” Orane asks, arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrows raised.
Tilting my head back and shading my eyes to keep out the sun, I stare at the towering wall of rock above us. The sun beats down on me and a bird—maybe a vulture—circles high overhead. I smell creosote and desert roses and hear the wind rushing through the canyon. Even knowing better, it’s hard to convince myself I’m not actually in the Grand Canyon.
I turn and look down at how far we come. The ground is at least a hundred feet away. The top of the cliff looks even farther. The ledge we’re resting on isn’t incredibly wide, but it’s enough for us both to sit comfortably if we wanted to. And right now, I really want to.
“Can we not and say we did?”
Orane laughs, the sound echoing over the canyon. “No. You wanted to push yourself and I am here to help you do that. There are things you want to say to your mother. This is one of the steps along the way to becoming someone who can stand up to Jacquelyn and give her the hard truth.”
I groan and rub my hands over my face, flinching when a small rock stuck to my skin scratches my cheek. “Oww. Ugh. Whatever. Let’s go before I can’t move my arms.”
Orane guides me up the next stretch of rock and the next until we’re finally standing at the top of the world and looking out over the barren, cavernous landscape. The exposed bones of the earth dressed in scrub brush and sunlight. As long as I don’t look down, it’s kind of beautiful. Desolate, but beautiful.
Orane steps up the lip of the cliff, so close the toes of his boots are hanging over the edge.
Instinct screams at me to grab the back of his shirt and drag him away from danger, but that’s not why he recreated this place for me. Like my parents should have, he’s helping me get
rid of the fears that pop up and cripple me, the habits I couldn’t break. In two years he’s taught me to cope with crowds and to quit smoking. Orane also taught me how to gamble well enough to make sure Lynnie and I always have enough to eat. I asked him to help me get rid of my fear of heights. Getting stuck—paralyzed, really—on a stupid class field trip to the Stratosphere Tower makes it worth the trouble. Luckily one of the employees noticed how green I looked before the rest of my class did and literally pulled me away from the window. If he hadn’t, that day could have gone very differently. I do not need to give them another reason to tease me.
What made the fear worse, though, is that we live directly behind the dang hotel. I can see the stupid thing from our apartment. Every day there’s that reminder staring at me from 1,149 feet in the air.
Glancing over his shoulder, Orane smiles. “Surely you do not plan on leaving without properly viewing your accomplishments.”
Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I walk toward the edge. Slowly. My gaze jumps from the horizon to my feet. I don’t want to see the drop, but I also don’t want to step an inch too far and accidentally throw myself off the cliff. Coming even with Orane, I take a deep breath and force myself to look.
It’s not nearly as bad as I expected. Dizziness hits at first as my eyes strain to adjust to the sudden gap at my feet, but they catch up quickly. After that… it’s not that bad. I don’t have the urge to get any closer but, after climbing all that way up, the drop doesn’t seem so scary.
“Huh.”
Orane smiles and gestures out to the land. “It is just rock and dirt. It is as likely to jump up and bite you as a cloud is to fall on your head and break your neck. Things have no power until you bestow it on them. Fear, as different as it may feel, is only in your mind.”
“Yeah.” I rub the back of my neck and look up at him out of the corner of my eye. “That’s easier to understand than follow through.”
“That is why you have this place,” Orane says, putting his hand on my shoulder and guiding me away from the canyon. We walk across the plateau and each of Orane’s steps creates a ripple. The ripples grow and spread, gathering speed and strength as they multiply. Though I feel nothing, it looks like the earth is falling apart or flipping inside out. The red and gold rocks split and darken. Trees sprout from nowhere and grass covers the land. The canyon closes behind us with a rumble, the temperature drops to a cool seventy degrees, there’s brine on the wind, and I can hear waves in the distance.
“That feels so much better.” I breathe in the refreshing air and take the familiar path to the shore. “I get enough of the desert at home.”
“I can only imagine.”
When we reach the rocky beach, I sit on a piece of driftwood and let the breeze cool me down. After I told Orane I’d never seen the ocean, he offered to show me. He says this beach is a perfect recreation of an isolated piece of shoreline in upstate Oregon. It slopes gently down to the water and the waves never get too rough since the place is protected by an outcropping of rock. Being able to spend time here every night almost makes up for living in the middle of the desert.
Too soon for my liking, I feel the tug under my ribs that means my time here is up. Groaning, I push to my feet and clap Orane on the shoulder.
“Next time, nowhere hot. I still feel like I’m sweating.”
Orane grins. “If you still want to challenge your fear of heights, we could try Everest. It is more than high enough and also quite chilly, I hear.”
“I don’t think so.” Losing my paralyzing fear of heights may have been the point, but there’s no way I’m attempting to climb Everest. Not even in my dreams. “How about hiking through the Rockies or something?”
“I shall see what I can do,” he says. “Good night, Julian.”
“Night.” I turn and walk up the hill where the doorway home is already opening. I wave over my shoulder as I walk through the portal of glowing white light.
