Read Online Under Zenith by Shannen Crane Camp - Free Book Online Page A

better if I shouted ‘go’ or counted you off or something?”
    I didn’t dignify his snarky question with a response. I simply looked up at him through my eyelashes, trying to convey just how annoyed I was with him right at that moment.
    “One, two, three,” he deadpanned.
    “Thank you for that,” I said, walking to the very edge of the island and trying to gauge the g ap between the two land masses.
    Of course both islands kept rotating slowly, meaning that if I wanted to stay lined up with the other one I had to keep walking to the right. That little detail was actually much more annoying than I would have thought when compared to the task that lay before me.
    “I’m just going to run and jump and hope for the best,” I told him, trying to give myself a little pep talk.
    “I’ll be waiting,” he answered.
    “Okay. Here I go,” I said, taking a deep breath and a few steps back.
    I ran as fast as I could, my eyes trained on a tree root sticking out of the light brown earth a few feet under the opposite island. Of course the second I got to the edge of the grass I stopped dead in my tracks and took a few steps away from the precarious edge.
    “Very impressive,” Hayden said sarcastically , giving me an arrogant slow clap. The guy could be such a tool. “Please do that a few more times just to make sure we’ve thoroughly exhausted the possibility that the island is going to come to you.”
    “You try it if it’s so easy,” I said in annoyance.
    I gave myself a mental and physical shake, trying to get rid of the screaming voice in my brain telling me it was completely insane to jump from one impossible floating island to another, hoping I could grab a tree root on the way down, then somehow manage to pull myself up ‘mountain climber’ style, without any kind of harness. I definitely wasn’t under the illusion that I was some sort of action hero. On my best day I could get halfway up the rock wall at the mini golf place. And now, somehow, I had to complete this task that no sane person would ever attempt?
    “Am I being punished for something?” I asked Hayden.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Punished,” I said again, slowly this time so that he couldn’t misunderstand me. “Is this because I took my dad’s car that night in high school before I had my license? Because I definitely had my driver’s permit so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.”
    “What are you going on about now?” Hayden seemed genuinely confused by my sudden barrage of questions.
    “Or maybe it’s because I kissed Bobby Pikitis at that school dance in junior high when I was supposed to be telling him my friend sort of liked him,” I went on, now trying to remember every bad thing I’d ever done. “I did cheat that one time Tuck and I were playing poker to see who would have to pull the weeds in the backyard.”
    “Please , stop talking,” Hayden said with a sigh.
    He had started rubbing his temples with his eyes closed, apparently trying to keep his cool.
    “Oh no,” I gasped.
    “What?”
    “It’s because I lied to Mama about who really dropped her box full of china from Grandma,” I confessed with a hand over my mouth, my eyes wide. “I said my cousin Amelia knocked it off the shelf in the garage when she came to North Carolina to visit.”
    “I beg of you. Stop talking.”
    “She got into so much trouble,” I told him, shaking my head guiltily. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”
    “Jus t shut up and get to the island!” Hayden finally yelled, apparently no longer able to contain his rage that already bubbled so close to the surface.
    “You don’t have to be so bossy about it,” I said huffily. “All right, take two.”
    Following the same pattern as before, I gave myself a running start, kept a determined gaze on my goal, and stopped right before I got to the edge.
    “I can’t do it,” I wailed. “The island is too far! And if I don’t grab any of those roots on the way down I’ll fall to my