Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

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.

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.

And I was never abused or molested. I had had a successful career—granted, it had peaked at age eighteen or so.

But still, I’ve gotten to eat in a lot of awfully good restaurants.

And I know that Lucy will be well taken care of. Cooper will look after her if anything happens to me.

But thinking of Cooper reminds me that I don’t really want to die, not now, when things were just getting interesting. I’m never going to know what it is he really thinks of me! He’d been about to tell me, and now I’m going to die, and miss it!

Unless, of course, when you die you attain all the knowledge in the universe.

But what if you don’t? What if you just die?

Well, then I guess it won’t matter.

But what about those repairmen? They’d assured me elevator cables don’t just snap. Okay, maybe one of them snaps, but not all of them, all at once. Those cables hadn’t broken accidentally. Someone had deliberately booby-trapped them. Judging from the ball of flame that had erupted beneath my feet, I’m thinking bomb.

That’s right, bomb.

Someone’s trying to kill me.

Again.

Reflecting on who could possibly want to kill me takes my mind off my aching shoulder and throbbing hands—and even Cooper and the what-he-thinks-of-me thing—for a minute or so. Well, of course there’s Christopher Allington, who may or may not have already tried to shove a geranium planter on my head because I suspect him of murder. He’d better have a really good alibi for this one.

But how would Christopher Allington have known that I’d be on that elevator? I rarely ride the service elevator. In fact, the only time I ever ride it is when I’m chasing elevator surfers.

Could Gavin McGoren somehow be involved in the deaths of Beth Kellogg and Bobby Pace? This seems far-fetched, but what other explanation could there be? Julio can’t be the murderer. For all I know, he’s dead down there. Why would he want to kill himself and me?

Suddenly, the elevator closest to me returns, and this time, there’s somebody on the roof. But it isn’t Gavin McGoren. Blinking—the shaft is filled with smoke—I see through the mist that a grim-faced Cooper is coming to my rescue.

Which must mean he likes me. At least a little. I mean, if he’s willing to risk his own life to save mine…

“Heather,” Cooper says. He sounds as cool and authoritative as ever. “Don’t move, all right?”

“Like I’m going anywhere,” I say. Or that’s what I try I say. What I hear is actually a string of hysterical blubbering. But surely it isn’t coming from me.

“Listen to me, Heather,” Cooper says. He’s climbed onto the roof of Elevator 1, and is hanging on to one of its cables. His face, I can see through the smoke, is pale beneath his tan. Now why is that? I wonder. “I want you to do something for me.”