The Speed of Falling Objects Read online

  From the author of When Elephants Fly comes an exceptional new novel about falling down, risking everything and embracing what makes us unique.

  IF YOU HITCH A RIDE ON SOMEONE ELSE’S STAR

  YOU’LL NEVER SHINE AS BRIGHT

  Danielle “Danny” Warren lost her eye and her father when she was seven—the eye to an accident and her father to his TV survival show, COUGAR, which has kept him away for most of the past ten years. Living with her single mom, and nicknamed Pigeon by bullies for the jerky head movements she used to make while adjusting to her altered depth perception, Danny is thrilled when her dad invites her to be on his wildly popular show alongside intimidatingly gorgeous teen movie idol Gus Price, even though the extreme situations her dad loves terrify her.

  When her dad calls with an offer to join him to film the next episode of his popular survivalist show, Danny jumps at the chance to prove she’s not the disappointment he left behind. Being on location with the hottest teen movie idol of the moment, Gus Price, should be the cherry on top. But when their small plane crashes in the Amazon, and a terrible secret is revealed, Danny must face the truth about the parent she worships as well as her feelings for Gus, survive the rainforest’s deadly threats and find her own inner strength and worth to light the way home.

  Praise for The Speed of Falling Objects

  “A perfect blend of adventure and romance, set in one of the most dangerous and fascinating places on Earth. I inhaled this story!”

  —Jennifer Mathieu, author of Moxie and The Liars of Mariposa Island

  “Nancy Richardson Fischer has pulled off the wondrous feat of writing a story where the characters’ emotional journeys are as intensely compelling and deeply gratifying as their harrowing life-or-death adventure. I could not put this book down.”

  —Misa Sugiura, author of This Time Will Be Different

  “A thrilling, edge-of-your-seat adventure with characters you’ll fall in love with.”

  —Alexandra Monir, bestselling author of The Final Six

  “This riveting, moving, and beautifully written tale is packed with excitement—you won’t put it down.”

  —Erica Ferencik, author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle

  “This gripping page-turner shows that, in the end, the greatest danger of all might lie within our own hearts.”

  —Kelly deVos, author of Fat Girl on a Plane

  “Intensely thrilling...fizzes with energy from start to finish.... [A] joyous and highly satisfying read.”

  —Declan Henry, New York Journal of Books

  Books by Nancy Richardson Fischer

  available from Inkyard Press

  When Elephants Fly

  The Speed of Falling Objects

  THE

  SPEED

  OF

  FALLING

  OBJECTS

  NANCY RICHARDSON FISCHER

  Nancy Richardson Fischer is a graduate of Cornell University and an author with children’s, teen and adult titles to her credit, including When Elephants Fly, Star Wars titles for Lucasfilm and numerous autobiographies of athletes, such as Julie Krone, Béla Károlyi and Monica Seles. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

  This book is dedicated to my husband and best friend, Henry.

  To say that I’m not a fan of creepy crawlies or creatures that slither is, as you know, an understatement. But I would live in the Amazon to be with you.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  DAY ONE

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  DAY TWO

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  DAY THREE

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  DAY FOUR

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  DAY FIVE

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  DAY SIX

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  DAY SEVEN

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  DAY EIGHT

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR NOTE

  RESOURCES

  1

  I don’t remember impact.

  There’s silence, followed by individual sounds, like someone conducting a nature symphony—first birds with different songs, then the deep vibration of frogs, the buzz of myriad insects and an undercurrent of slithering that might be my imagination. I don’t know. I’ve never been in the rain forest before.

  The world is dark, just a pinhole, that slowly expands. Splashes of iridescent paint turn into birds taking wing. Below, flowers explode like fireworks—crimson, hot pink, cobalt. Twisted roots tunnel into coffee-colored earth. The rich smell of organic matter mingles with the musty funk of decomposition. Above my feet, I see every possible shade of green made from clusters of leaves. Massive palm fronds reveal temporary slivers of a stormy sky. Lightning licks its dark gray fabric.

  A wave of vertigo hits and I’m spinning again. Screams echo. Are they Cass’s, Jupiter’s or mine? All I know for sure is that they’re not Cougar’s.

  My world is upside down.

  No. I’m upside down, still strapped in, feet above my head tangled in a thorny vine that is suffocating a tree’s thick limb. The airplane seat beside me remains connected to mine but it’s empty, the metal caught in the bough of a massive tree that suspends me two stories above the ground. My stomach, despite the painful compression of the seat belt, lurches.

  Where’s Sean? He was sitting next to me when... We were talking about surfing and then...

  Raindrops patter down on my face. They’re hot. Rivulets leak into my mouth, tasting like copper, salt. I touch my tongue. My finger comes away stained red. I look up, a little bit to the left, and then close my eyes, brain scrambling for a different explanation.

  I hear my mom’s no-nonsense voice like a siren in my brain: List everything that scares you. When you give your fears a name, it takes away their power.

  The nightmares began when I was eight and lasted an entire year. After each one, my mom would make me list the things that scared me, then everything I liked, then what I wanted to be when I grew up. It became my mantra—a way to cut the dark dream threads. The list changed over the years, but now I revert to my eight-year-old self.

  I am afraid of...

  Heights. Snakes. The dark. Dancing in public. Headaches... Spiders. Wrong choices. Surprises. Playing sports. Losing friends. Guns... Blindness. Disappointing people. New places. Hospitals. Did I say snakes already? Bees. Migraines. Speed... Being an anchor, a problem or an embarrassment... Bad dreams.

  More droplets patter down on my forehead, dribble into my hair. I refuse to look up again.

  I like...
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  Flannel sheets. Some Thursdays. My mom’s smile. Milk Duds. Writing letters. Carrot cake... Making people laugh. Creating dioramas. Dancing if no one is watching. My dad’s phone calls. The Phantom Tollbooth. Dogs. I like dogs that I know. Dad’s show.

  My head is pounding so hard that my skull may explode. If I pass out upside down, will I die? The ground is far, probably twenty feet. Unlike my father, I’m not a coordinated cat with nine lives. My neck will snap if I land on my head. Death if I’m lucky. Paralysis if I’m not. Both ankles will break if I come down on my feet, possibly fracturing tibiae and fibulae, too. Maybe only my ribs will splinter if I land on my side, but that could puncture a lung. If my back and pelvis break like twigs, there’s no way I’ll be able to drag myself out of this place.

  A hysterical giggle burbles to the surface. I don’t even know where I am. My vision blurs.

  When I grow up I want to be...

  Adventurous. Strong. Athletic. Popular. Brave. A propeller. The solution. Cougar.

  I unbuckle my seat belt and drop.

  2

  Four Days Earlier

  “Let’s call her Lady Bacon.”

  The fetal pig lying in a dissection pan on our lab table appears to shudder. Its once-pink skin is now a mottled tan. A rough tongue hangs sideways from a body that feels like plastic but has the weight of something once alive. She deserves respect. “We’ll call her Poppy.”

  Trix scowls. “Why do you get to name her?”

  “Because I’m the one doing all the cutting.” I tie a string around one of our pig’s forelegs, pass it under the pan, stretch it tight, then tie it to the other foreleg. I do the same thing with the back legs. The hard sternum is easy to find. I follow it down to the bottom of the rib cage, pick up a scalpel and begin an upside-down V incision. If our teacher had some nylon thread for sutures, a needle holder and forceps, it’d be fun to try to close up the incision with the stitches my mom taught me one rainy afternoon using a banana instead of a piglet.

  When the smell of formaldehyde rises from the long slices, Trix gags. “Don’t barf on our pig.” I don’t mind the smell. It’s part of the environment of a lab where everything is controlled, clean and in its proper place.

  Using the dissecting scissors, I cut through the muscle of the pig’s belly. The next two incisions are down and around the umbilical cord, then above the hind legs. When I peel back all the flaps of skin there’s still membrane attached to the muscle. I consider asking Trix to cut it but she looks kind of green.

  “Please tell me you’re done mutilating Poppy,” Trix says.

  “Almost.”

  “Did someone actually raise this pig just to kill it for our biology class?” Sarah asks from her seat at the lab table in front of us. The overhead fluorescents highlight skin that’s such a pale white that it has a greenish hue, and lank, greasy hair. In fourth grade a group of kids created a giant calendar to document when she changed her clothes or showered. Turned out it wasn’t often. They posted the calendar in the cafeteria.

  Mr. Petri’s fingers twist the tiny island of gray hair in the center of his otherwise bald, black dome. “These pigs are a by-product of the pork industry. We don’t use ’em, they become fertilizer. You have an hour to dissect, identify and flag what we’ve studied, so less talking, more slicing.”

  Trix’s eyes water when I make an incision up through the chest, then cut away the rib cage and sternum. The final two cuts expose the pig’s neck. I resist the urge to twist my head to see each exposed organ more clearly.

  “Look at Pigeon dig in,” Nate says from the table to our left, and I look up. A grin splits open the lower half of a pasty face dotted with acne.

  The scrutiny of the entire class crawls along my skin like ants. Kids rarely use my old nickname. They call me Danny now, and the snickers don’t happen that often anymore. I’ve changed. But so has my dad. He became Cougar Warren when I was twelve, star of his own NetCom TV show, COUGAR. He travels around the world, sometimes alone, other times with celebrities, surviving the desert, the jungle, the mountains or even the ocean in a makeshift raft. The show’s tagline: Wits. Strength. Ingenuity. Having a dad who’s famous, especially one who kicks ass every week and hangs with rappers, actors and pop stars, definitely cuts down on harassment. There are a lot of kids in my class who want to meet him. Thing is, Cougar left my mom when I was seven. He rarely visits. But they don’t know that.

  “Pigeon, did you skip breakfast?” Lander asks me. He’s Nate’s lab partner and fellow baseball player, sports identical brush-cut hair, though his brown skin is acne-free, and he follows his buddy around like a puppy. No surprise that Lander needs to make a joke about me, too.

  Trix peers over at their pig. “Wow, the big, tough jocks haven’t even picked up their scalpel. Maybe their little piggy isn’t the only one missing its balls?”

  Lander sneers and gives her the finger.

  Trix tenses. I say, “Let it go,” then pin flags to their corresponding organs before moving to Poppy’s right side. “It’s kind of amazing,” I say, tracing the fetal pig’s heart.

  Trix pinches her nose with gloved fingers. “How much it stinks?”

  She’s the toughest girl I know, but bad smells are her downfall. “No, how—”

  “How you’re afraid of spiders,” Trix interrupts, “scary movies, the dark, thunderstorms, swing sets, worms, ticks, riding a bike, lumpy food and flies.”

  I stick in another flag. “Horseflies bite. Ticks carry Lyme disease. The rusty chains on swings are an accident waiting to happen.”

  “But you can cut open Poppy without a problem?”

  “What’s amazing,” I say, “is that every living organism starts with a single cell that divides, communicates with other cells, keeps dividing until it eventually makes us, and Poppy here, with all our parts in the right places.”

  Trix isn’t listening. She’s playing with the gold hoop in her right nostril. It’s the latest of her nine piercings. They’re all new. Last year she was preppy—plaids, pinks combined with parrot green, high socks and shiny loafers. The year before she was into black lipstick and nail polish, dark trench coats, and eyes ringed so thickly with liner and mascara it was a miracle she could see. The only sure things with Trix are that she’s bound to change her look and she’ll always be my best friend.

  Right now Trix has locked eyes with the new kid, Tim Hunt. For today, he’s her type—shaggy black hair, a nose ring, skin so washed-out that he looks like a vampire. They’ll probably go out this weekend. By go out, I mean get at least partially naked.

  What would it be like to be Trix? I’m basically invisible to guys. The only boy I’ve fooled around with is George McCay. He goes to Jesuit. We met at a party Trix dragged me to, and both of us were buzzed on cheap beer. We made out. He had braces and a mouth that tasted like Doritos. I counted to sixty, then said I needed to head back to the party. I don’t think George was disappointed to see me go.

  Mr. Petri is watching us. “Do something,” I say with a nudge.

  Trix unlocks her green eyes from Tim’s. “Fine.”

  She identifies the rest of the items on our list and when our teacher looks away, I correct her mistakes. Then I take a moment to appreciate the neat dissection. While I’m leaning over the fetal pig, I inhale to breathe in its essence.

  Trix laughs. “I thought we broke that tired routine.”

  I blush. “Old habit.” After the accident when I lost my eye, I had this stupid idea that if I found a dead butterfly, bird or squirrel and breathed them in it’d somehow make me whole again. In my defense, I was young and, while I thought my actions were subtle, some people did notice.

  She peels off her gloves. “Done. Gotta love teamwork.”

  “I’m the work part of that equation. Truth.” Truth is what we say when there’s zero bullshit.

  Trix nods. “We all have our s
kills.” Again, she eyes Tim. “Yours just happens to be the science part of our equation. Admit it, you love this stuff.”

  “I do it because you suck at it. Do tell, what do you bring to the mix?”

  “Fun.”

  I snort. We met in detention in the fourth grade. Trix had cursed out her teacher, Mrs. Glass, who made the mistake of telling my friend that being aggressive in gym class wasn’t ladylike. I’d done nothing to deserve detention. I’d just ducked into the room as an alternative to an afternoon home alone. It’s been the two of us since that day.

  Trix leans in and takes a selfie of us. “Stop,” I say, putting up my hand too late. She checks out the photo. What does she see? A pretty girl with creamy white skin, perfect curves and pink hair, though she’s a natural blonde, beside a homely one in glasses who has two different-colored eyes—gray and blue—a bad decision I made at age eight. I’m a skinny five-eight with dirty-blond hair that washes out my sallow, white skin. My hair is always in a braid so that it doesn’t obscure my view. I’ve been told I have a great smile and an easygoing personality. Other than that, I’m nothing special. So I’m beyond lucky to have a friend like Trix who doesn’t care about surface stuff like looks, or that I’m unpopular, and even defends me when I act weird.

  She says, “I’ll pick you up Saturday night at seven.”

  I consider arguing, then shrug my acceptance. Trix will show up at my door the night of whatever stupid dance the school is having and won’t leave until I go with her. “You do get that my going to a dance is a waste, right?” I don’t dance in public. Not since seventh grade. That was when a group of kids, including Nate and Lander, came up with their own dance. It was called “The Pigeon.” They stood in a circle flapping their arms like wings and poked their heads left and right, imitating me.

  I’d never realized that was how I looked. I was just trying to see better because having only one working eye makes judging depth and the speed of moving objects, like people dancing with abandon, a bitch. Until then, though, I’d thought I was doing a pretty good job. Funny how a single moment changed my self-perception forever.