Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

Fortunately Cooper, being completely ignorant of my plans for him (you know, the fact that he’s going to marry me and be the father of my three as yet unborn children and the inspiration for my Nobel Prize—winning medical career), doesn’t catch on that I’m jealous. He seems to think I’m still angry because he made me leave the party early.

“I didn’t want to say anything to you before,” he says. “You know, in case she didn’t have anything to tell me. But the fact is, therewas something a little strange about those girls’ bodies.”

I just stare at him. Because I can’t believe it. Not that his “friend” in the coroner’s office had found something strange about Elizabeth’s and Roberta’s bodies. But that he’d bothered to consult with her on my behalf in the first place.

“B-but,” I stammer. “But I thought… you thought… I was just making the whole thing up. Because of missing the thrill of performing… ”

“I do,” Cooper says, with a shrug. “I mean, I did. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

“And?” I lean forward eagerly. “What is it? Drugs? Were they drugged? Because I thought Detective Canavan said no drugs were detected in their systems.”

“None were,” Cooper says. “It wasn’t drugs. It’s burns.”

I stare at him. “Burns? What kind of burns? Like… cigarette burns?”

“No,” Cooper says. “Angie isn’t sure.” Angie? Cooper knows someone in the coroner’s office named Angie? Just how had he and Angie met, anyway? Angie didn’t sound like the kind of name a medical examiner would have. An exotic dancer, maybe. But not a doctor…

“And you have to take into account that those bodies,” Cooper goes on. “Well, they’re kind of a mess. But Angie says they did find burn marks on both girls’s backs, marks they can’t explain. It’s not enough for them to change the coroner’s ruling—you know, that the deaths weren’t accidental. But it is… strange.”

“Strange,” I repeat.

“Yeah,” Cooper says. “Strange.”

“So… ” I can’t look him in the eye. Because I can’t believe he’s actually taking me seriously.Me, Heather Wells, of “Sugar Rush” fame!

And all it had taken were a couple of murders…

“So maybe I’m not just making it all up out of displaced aggression toward my mother?” I ask.

Cooped looks taken aback. “I never said you were.”

Oh, right. That had been Sarah.

“But you believe me now?” I prod him. “I’m not just your little brother’s crazy ex-girlfriend? But maybe, like, a rational human being?”

“I’ve never thought of you as anything but,” Cooper says, a flash of annoyance in his blue eyes. Then, seeing my expression, he says, “Well, crazy, maybe. But I never thought of you as irrational. Honest, Heather, I don’t know where you get this stuff. I’ve always thought of you as one of the—”

Most beautiful, ravishing creatures you’ve ever met? Most intelligent, stunningly gorgeous women of your acquaintance?

Sadly, before he gets a chance to tell me what he’s always thought of me—or to fall to one knee and ask me to be his bride (I know. Still, a girl can dream), the phone rings.

“Hold that thought,” I say to Cooper, and pick up the receiver. “Fischer Hall, this is Heather.”

“Heather?” It’s Tina, the desk worker on duty. “Hold on, Julio wants to talk to you.”

Julio gets on the line. “Oh, Haythar, I sorry,” he says. “But he’s doing it again.”

“Who’s doing what again?” I ask.

“That boy, Gavin. Ms. Walcott told me—”

“Okay, Julio,” I say, careful not to let Cooper catch on, considering what happened last time. “I’ll meet you at the usual place.” Then I hang up.

Talk about bad timing! Right when Cooper had been about to tell me what he really thinks about me!

Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to know. Because most likely it’s going to be something like “one of the best data-entry typists I’ve ever known.”

“Stay right here,” I say to Cooper.

“Is something wrong?” Cooper asks, looking concerned.

“Nothing I can’t handle in a jiffy,” I say. Oh my God, did I just say jiffy? Well, whatever. “I’ll be right back.”

Before he can say another word, I hightail it from the office, running for the service elevator, where I tell Julio, who meets me there, to take the control lever, and Go, go, go!

Because the sooner we get back, the sooner I can find out if, you know, there’s a chance for me where Cooper is concerned, or if I should just give up on men already. Maybe New York College offers a major in being a nun. You know, giving up guys completely, and embracing celibacy. Because that’s seriously starting to look like it might be the way to go for me.

As Julio takes me up to the tenth floor, I climb the elevator walls and slide through the open ceiling panel. Up in the elevator shaft, it’s warm and quiet, as usual.

Except that I can’t actually hear Gavin laughing, though, which is not usual. Maybe he’s finally gotten his head cut off by a snapping cable, as Rachel has so often warned him he might. Or maybe he’s fallen. Oh, God please don’t tell me he’s at the bottom of the shaft…

I’m reflecting upon this—what I’m going to do if all I find on top of Elevator 1 is Gavin’s headless corpse—as the service elevator approaches the two other cars, which are both sitting in front of the tenth floor.

As we rise above them, I see no sign of Gavin—not even his headless corpse. No empty beer bottles, no chortling laughter, nothing. It’s almost as if Gavin had never been there…

The next thing I know, a thunderclap shakes the shaft, leaving a roaring in my ears, like the sound of ocean waves, only magnified a thousand times.

I’ve stood up—a little unsteadily—to get a better look at the roofs of the cabs below, and when I feel the explosion rip beneath my feet, I grab instinctively—but blindly—for something—anything—to hold on to.

Something that feels like a thousand razor blades slices my hands, and I realize I’m holding a metal rope that’s vibrating crazily from the force of the explosion. Still, I hold on to the bucking steel cable, because it’s the only thing that separates me from the oblivion of the dark shaft below. Because there’s nothing else beneath my feet. One minute I’m standing on the roof of the service cab, and the next, the roof has caved in beneath my feet, crumpling like a can of Pringles.

Hmmm. Pringles.

It’s funny what you end up thinking about right before you die.

I avoid getting hit by the rain of steel from above by sheer luck alone. The cable I’ve grabbed hold of continues to buck wildly, but I cling to it with both my hands and legs, wrapping one foot around the other.

Something strikes me hard enough on the shoulder as it plunges past to make me loosen my grip on the cable, stunned breathless by the impact.

That’s when I look down, wild-eyed, and see that the service car is gone.

Well, not gone, exactly. It’s free-falling below me like a soda can someone has thrown down a trash chute, the loosened cables—all but the one I’m holding—trailing behind it like ribbons on a bridal veil.

It can’t crash, is all I could think to myself. I’d asked the elevator repairmen once if what had happened in the movie Speed could ever happen in real life. And they’d said no. Because even if all the cables connected to an elevator car snap at the same time (something they asserted could never, ever happen. But, um, hello), there’s a counterweight built into the wall that would never let the car crash to the ground below.

I feel the deafening impact of that counterweight as it slams into place, saving the elevator car from colliding with the basement floor.

But when the broken cables rain down onto the cab’s roof, the noise is unbelievable. Impact after impact shakes the shaft. I struggle to retain my grip on the one remaining cable, thinking only that with all that noise, I haven’t heard a peep out of Julio. Not a single sound. I know he’s still inside that car. While he’d been saved by the counterweight from being crushed, accordion style, against the cement floor of the basement, those cables have literally flattened the cab’s roof. He’s under that tangle of steel…

But God only knows if he’s still alive.

The silence that follows the crash of the falling elevator cab is even more frightening than the shuddering impact of the split cables. I’ve always loved the elevator shafts because they’re the only parts of the dorm—I mean, residence hall—that are ever totally quiet. Now, that quiet is like an impenetrable canopy between me and the ground. The quieter it gets, the higher this little bubble of hysteria rises in my throat. I hadn’t had a chance to be frightened before.

But now, hanging more than ten stories with my feet dangling above nothing, I’m seized with terror.

That’s when the bubble turns into a fountain, and I start to scream.

23

I’m falling

Falling for you

I’m falling

All ’cause of you

Catch me now

I’ll show you how

I’m falling

Falling for you

“Falling”

Performed by Heather Wells

Composed by Dietz/Ryder

From the album Magic

Cartwright Records

Though it seems like hours, I think I’m only screaming for like a minute or so before I hear a distant, masculine voice shouting my name from far below.

“Here!” I shriek. “I’m up here! Tenth floor!”

The voice says something, and then, below me to my left, the two remaining elevator cabs both start moving down.

If I’d had any presence of mind, I’d have jumped for it, leaping to the roof of the nearest cab.

But it’s a distance of more than five feet—the same distance Elizabeth and Roberta would have jumped, and missed, if we were to believe they really had died elevator surfing—and I’m pretty much paralyzed with fear.

I realize, though, that I can’t hold on for much longer. Whatever struck my shoulder has left it numb with pain, and my palms are raw from clinging to rusty metal cable—not to mention slippery with blood.

Dimly, I think back to my PE days in elementary school. I had never excelled at rope climbing—or any physical activity, actually—but I did remember that the key to hanging suspended from a rope was to wrap one’s foot in a loop in the slack end.

Getting a steel cable to wrap around my foot proved more difficult than it had ever been back in fifth grade, but I finally get a semblance of a foothold. I know that I’m still not going to last more than a few minutes. My shoulder and especially my hands are aching so badly—and my threshold for physical discomfort has always been low, given that I’m a huge baby—that I know I’ll let go and fall to my death rather than endure much more.

And it isn’t as if I haven’t had a nice life up until now. Okay, maybe parts of it have been rockier than others. But hey, I had an okay childhood; at least my parents had seen to it that I’d never gone to bed hungry.