Girl With a Past by Sherri Leigh James Page B

beach below
reminded me that I had no choice.
    I grabbed a handful of a manzanita bush,
pulled myself to my feet, and stretched for an outcrop within my
reach. Hot granite stung my palm digging into tender skin. I pulled
myself up the face with constant reminders not to look down.
    An eternity later, I crawled onto the
shoulder of the road and wondered what to do next. My limbs shook
as violently as my heart throbbed. I clambered to my feet and
stumbled along the dry, dusty edge keeping as much distance between
the cliff and myself as the hot asphalt allowed.
    A multi-colored VW bus wandered around a
bend in the road. I waved both arms in broad X’s and the vehicle,
covered in hand painted peace signs, pulled next to me on the
roadside.
    “Can you take me to the ranger station?” I
asked.
    When the two bearded young men stared at me
without responding, I added, “Well, at least to the nearest
phone?”
    “Sure.” The bearded one in the passenger
seat grinned. He opened the sliding door to the rear compartment; a
cloud of marijuana wafted out the opening and engulfed me as I
climbed in. I perched on the edge of a homemade wood framed
bed.
    “I think Nepenthe’s got the closest phone,”
I gasped. The smoke didn’t help me to catch my breath or clear my
head.
    The two guys sat motionless, the driver
checking me out in the rearview mirror, the passenger turned to
face me.
    “Look, there’s been an accident. Someone, a
girl, fell down the cliff, landed on the rocks below,” I
wheezed.
    The beards nodded, but didn’t move.
“Shi-i-it.” The passenger muttered.
    “I . . . we need to get help.” When that
failed to elicit any movement, I slammed my fist into the back of
the driver’s seat. “Turn this fucking thing around!” I pointed to
the road behind us, “Help is that way! The closest phone is at that
restaurant you passed, back there. It’s a couple, maybe three
miles.”
    The driver slowly rotated the steering wheel
to the left, and pulled into the lane just as a sports car whipped
around the corner, smoothly corrected course to miss the lumbering
van. A pang of regret, if only I’d been pickier about what vehicle
I’d flagged down.
    We chugged along, jolted from gear to gear,
never exceeding fifteen miles an hour.
    “We kinda need to hurry,” I suggested, but
nothing changed. I sighed, resigning myself to the long minutes it
took to reach the restaurant parking lot. The bus rolled onto the
decomposed granite. I jumped out the side door and ran up the
timbered path beneath shading oaks.
    I reached the rustic patio overlooking the
ocean and grabbed the arm of the nearest waiter, “Help me please. A
girl fell on the cliff over there,” I waved down to the beach south
of the patio. “I need a ranger.”
    Blue green eyes beneath sun-bleached blonde
hair studied my face for the seconds it took to absorb my meaning.
Then he turned and strode through glass doors to the interior of
the restaurant. I hurried behind him.
    He leaned across the rough wood counter,
pulled a black phone toward us, and dialed a single digit. “Mare,
give me the ranger station.” He handed the receiver to me.
    I listened to the ring and looked down at my
body, at the dust and blood on my legs beneath once white shorts,
smears on my tennis shoes, and felt the sweat and dirt on my face,
I noticed curious patrons looking me over.
    I didn’t fit in the hipster chic, glass and
redwood structure that hung on the cliffside overlooking the ocean.
We seldom ventured inside this establishment. Lemonade on the patio
was the best I could usually afford. The one time Jamie had treated
the whole bunch of us to dinner here, we’d spent the afternoon
showering in a cold waterfall and getting ready for a big night
out.
    I told the rangers what I knew. “Yes, there
are three VW bugs parked on the other side of the road, I’m not
sure of the distance, maybe a hundred feet from the top of the
trail.”
    In the process of telling them, I realized