Tiger Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

are hanging out in the parking lot. I have forgotten that it is Friday, another school day. Which reminds me of how many classes I’m missing. Sixteen days. Still, sixteen days at the beginning of the term isn’t that bad. I bet I can catch up in a week, if I want to.
    I pedal harder and faster, until my legs hurt. The pain begins in the backs of my calves and spreads up, into my thighs. My shoulders ache. But I don’t care. I’ve been numb for so long the pain makes me feel alive again. I wish I could skip the whole school year. I bet I could keep up at home. I wish I never had to go back to school. What good does it do you in the long run?
    I have trouble breathing, but not from hyperventilating. From the exercise. From the altitude. Everything is that much harder at 7,300 feet. Even breathing.
    Sweat trickles down my face, stinging my eyes. It trickles down inside my T-shirt and along the backs of my knees, but I keep pedaling, past the Conoco Station, past the golf course, up the hill, until I come to an area of tall pine trees. I pull off the road and lean the bicycle against a tree. I make my way through the woods until I come to a beautiful canyon. I am still amazed at the scenery here. I half expect to hear hoofbeats in the distance, and then, to see a cowboy thundering into view, riding a slick, black stallion.
    I sit on a rock, at the very edge of the canyon, hugging my knees and looking down. The rock juts out and makes me feel I could fly right off it.
    How quickly everything can change, I think. One minute you’re alive and the next, you could be dead. There isn’t any way to know what’s going to happen. If this rock comes loose, I’ll fall, I think. Fall to the bottom of the canyon. Will I fall straight down, I wonder, or kind of float down, gently? Either way my head will smash open and my bones will break. How long will it be before I am found? Days, weeks, a month? Maybe I’ll never be found. Then the buzzards will pick at my flesh until there is nothing left of me. Nothing, but bones. Broken bones.
    I shake that image from my mind and concentrate on the beauty of the canyon. I think about being at the bottom, surrounded by it. I am tempted to climb down but then I remember Bitsy’s story about the fourteen-year-old boy who was killed by a falling rock while he was climbing in a canyon. And about the woman who tripped and fell, breaking her leg. By the time she was found she was in shock and didn’t make it.
    Bitsy and Walter are full of stories about what might happen. They don’t believe in taking chances. They will probably live to be one hundred.
    I decide to climb down anyway. I don’t know whether to go backwards, hanging onto the rocksor to try walking down, frontwards. I combine the two methods and get going.
    Down, down I climb, rock after rock, losing my footing every now and then, grabbing hold of a branch to steady myself.
    Down, down, traveling over the steepest inclines on my backside.
    Down, down.
    I don’t know how long it takes me. Half an hour? An hour? I’ve left my watch at home, knowing that today there is no schedule to follow. That today is mine.
    Down, down, into the bottom of the canyon.
    I look up now, surprised at how far I have come and for a second I remember that I will have to climb back up, that I shouldn’t go too far. Then, I am distracted by a lizard. How perfectly he blends into his surroundings. I stand there and watch as he scampers from rock to rock. I stretch out on a rock myself, lifting my face to the sun, and a feeling comes over me. A feeling of wanting to share all of this with my father. I want to talk with him so badly I ache. I want to tell him how I climbed down into the canyon by myself. That I wasn’t afraid. I want to tell him everything. Everything that has happened since that night. Everything I am thinking and feeling.
    I wish I could feel his kiss on my forehead again, light and loving. I wish I could feel his hand smoothing my hair away