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Skye slumps into her chair, dejected. There goes our shot at me getting the night with Jordy. I’m just going to have to try hard to get some one-on-one time with him tomorrow.

And there’s only one week left until the finale.

I’m gonna have to make it a hell of a five-minute chat.

“Hey,” Perrie says, grabbing the camera from the bench beside her. “Could you guys get a photo of me? Maybe under the porch lamp, there? Ooh, then a group selfie?”

Skye jumps to her feet. “Yes, and get that tree in the background,” she says, using her thumbs to map out a camera lens angle.

I get up to help and focus on clearing my mind. There’s no point freaking out about tomorrow.

I’ll get my moment with Jordy. I’ll make sure of it.

It’s impossible to sleep, because I’m freaking out about tomorrow,I am freaking out about tomorrow!Which is a problem, because if I don’t get enough sleep, there’s nowayI can pull a physical challenge off in the morning. But, of course, panicking about not sleeping is only making me more awake, and the more awake I am, the more possible problems my brain thinks up to worry about.

What if I fall on camera because it’s harder than it looks?

What if they chose this challenge because Perrie’s the obvious front-runner—Perrie, who has made itsuperclear shehas no intention of rejecting Jordy on camera no matter how she feels about him?

What if I forget Skye’s path? Or, worse, what if the path doesn’t work in practice?

Finally, I realize I have to go back to the cliff. If I can just spend ten minutes or so examining it, I might give myself some sort of advantage over Perrie. It’s unlikely, but possible, right? Is it ridiculous? Yes. Is it dangerous to wander off into the woods in the middle of the night? Also yes. Am I going to do it?

Yeah. It’s happening.

I climb out of bed as quietly as I can, and grab the notepad, along with some clothes and shoes. I check on Skye, who’s breathing in the soft, steady way she does when she’s fully out, and then dash to the bathroom to get changed.

Twenty minutes later, I’m standing at the cliff’s base inspecting the rocks. The moon’s almost full tonight, and there are no clouds in sight, which is helping a whole lot.

Now that I’m looking at the cliff again, I can see it’s not vertical; not even close. If anything, it’s an extremely steep, rocky hill. Well, that’s different. A hill, I can do. Now I get what Isaac meant about it being possible to climb without a harness. To test it out, I step up a few rocks, making sure to choose the ones Skye and I identified earlier today. It’s easy enough.

I can go as high as I feel safe, I realize, and get a feel for how to scale it. Then I can head back down. Even doing a fraction of the route will confirm I have a chance at winning tomorrow. I just won’t go too far.

I take a step, then another. The icy night wind whips at me, but not strongly enough to throw me off course. The rocks are sturdy under my hands and shoes, and I don’t have to stretch too far with each step. My calves are burning in a nice “oh, hey, you’re actually doing some exercise” way, andnot a “dear god we weren’t made for this” way, which is a good sign, I think.

It’s nothorrible, or even all that bad.

That is, until one rock is a little too far for me to easily step on. I reach out until I get a good grip on a rock farther up and use it to lug myself up to the next rock. It’s only when I reach it that I realize the next rock is farther away still. There’s nowayI can reach that.

I can’t check the notepad without letting go of the rocks—which I have just about zero intention of doing—but I’msureI’m on the right route. It just must have looked more doable from the ground. Neither Skye nor I have any bouldering experience, after all.

This is exactly why I came here. At least I can solve this problem calmly, without a ticking clock. If I’d realized this tomorrow, I’d have beenreallyscrewed.

I look back down at the place I stood a few seconds before. Getting up here was one thing, but getting back down? It looks like, to put it mildly, a hell of a jump. One I am not anywhere near athletic enough to even try.

So, I can’t go up or down. That’s fine. I’ll go sideways. I feel around to the right with my hand, then my foot. And to the left with my hand, then my foot. And I find absolutely squat. There’s a rock that looks like it could probably hold my weight, but it’s a full jump away, and there is no way I’m leapfrogging my way around these rocks without a harness.

So. To recap. I’ve gotten myself trapped twenty feet off the ground, on a cliff face, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods. With no phone on me. And no one who knows where I am.

Okay.

Cool.

Now I let myself panic.

TWENTY-FOURMaya

“Maya?”