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By Root 976 0

meant I was one of the ‘slower ones.’ “There were two women at the tail end, friends, I think. We were really far behind. The others must have been down the road, waiting for us.” He sighed. “I was right behind them when it happened. They went to turn a corner, too close to each other—less than the bus length we tell you to leave between bikes—so when the micro came around the corner…” His eyes were unfocused, and I realized that he was picturing what happened: “From where I was, I could see the driver was asleep. Maybe he was drunk, or maybe he closed his eyes for a second, I don’t know. Then—” He raised his left hand in a fist, and struck it with his right palm, “the bus hit, one woman, then the other. They crumpled onto the front of the bus, which woke up the driver. He slammed on the brakes while still on the turn and the back tires skidded, swung the back of the bus over the edge…then the cabin pitched sideways and they all went over…then down…hitting trees as they went…” His eyes widened.

Oh God. “Cesar,” I said as calmly as I could. His eyes came into focus and he looked up.

“You know how I said there were two kinds of cliff?” He whispered grimly.

I nodded reluctantly.

“This was the second kind.”

I closed my eyes. I opened them when I felt Cesar’s patient gaze. He continued the story: “I got the others. We could hear survivors, but there were so many trees, we didn’t know if we could get down in time. We took machetes from the bus and started to cut towards the voices, but it took a long time. When we got there, most had gone quiet. Many were crushed underneath the bus, which we couldn’t lift, but the two women were still alive. We had to carry them up, and they were in bad condition, one had her feet ripped off at the ankles—”

He saw my hands fly to my face in horror and stopped immediately, meeting my terrified expression with a worried one. “Oh no, Sabine, I’m sorry…”

Oh my God.

“I’m sorry.”

“Jesus Christ, Cesar!”

It came out in English, and suddenly I felt the entire bus looking at me, choking the atmosphere with attention. As I tore my gaze away from Cesar to face the inquisitive expressions, I let the horror slide off my face like silk.

“He says he can do a double back-flip on a mountain-bike,” I huffed, raising my eyebrows skeptically.

The words settled on their drunken audience, and then the emotional charge of the moment evaporated. Within moments, everyone was involved in a fervent discussion of the physics of mountain-bike tricks. Dozing passengers woke up, and bottles were passed once again. By the time I looked back at Cesar, he was staring out the window again.

Things had started to get out of control. For one thing, the door of the bus was open, and people were leaning out of it, laughing maniacally as the gravel whooshed underneath. The bus’ drunken occupants were bouncing around the cabin with their cameras out, making faces by the windows. I felt a potent mixture of intoxication, exhilaration and concern, at least until the whole circus finally came to a halt.

We were looking across an expansive ravine at a section of road dubbed Postcard Corner: a sharp turn rimmed by a perfectly vertical drop, straight as if drawn with a ruler from its cusp, which kissed the air with tantalizing innocence.

“Get out! We’re documenting this for posterity!” yelled our Canadian drill sergeant.

One by one, people started to hop off the bus. I watched my fellow riders march out to the edge, posing for their camera shot.

“Do you want me to take your picture?” Cesar asked me, the first words he’d spoken since my lie twenty minutes earlier. Bloody hell, I thought, I’ve come this far. I handed him my camera wordlessly.

I walked out with a young woman from our group whom I had befriended with nervous chatter at 7:30 that morning. She had been with me for more emotional turmoil in the last eight hours than some of my friends of eight years. We walked out to the corner, arms clasped around each other, until we were only a couple feet from the edge. My stomach tightened as the security of the ground seemed