3 Flying

Chapter 3 Flying "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Chances are you've never fallen off a cliff. If you had, you probably wouldn't be reading this right now. Because you would be dead. But have you ever jumped off a high diving board? Have you ever dropped into a steep water slide or a half pipe? Have you ever been on a really high roller coaster? Well, forget it. Falling off a cliff is nothing like any of those experiences. You still have no idea what the McDonald twins were going through. When you fall off a cliff, the first forty or fifty feet are a straight vertical drop. The only thing you feel in that first second or two is sheer terror. You can't think about anything else. The

good thing is—and this is probably the only good thing—you can't worry about your problems. If your parents have been bugging you or some kid at school is hassling you, you don't think about it anymore. If you had an ache or pain in any part of your body, it's gone, instantly. In fact, you can't think at all. You can only experience. It's all sensory. Your nervous system goes into survival mode. Nothing else matters. You may even lose control of your bladder. Luckily, in this case, that didn't happen. After they tumbled over the edge, the twins spun and twisted and flopped around in the air, screaming their heads off the whole time. One thought did flash through Coke's brain for a millisecond. I JUST PUSHED MY SISTER OFF A CLIFF! What had he done? But he had no choice. If he hadn't pushed Pep and then jumped, he surely would have taken one of those poison darts in the neck, just like that lady Mya did. He

had made a snap decision, and he would have to live with it. Or die with it. Rocks, ledges, and trees shot past Pep's eyes as she plummeted. Something flashed through her mind, too, for a millisecond. I WILL NEVER BE NICE TO MY BROTHER AGAIN. This was the last straw, she thought. She would never again update Coke's iPod for him or help him pick out clothes so he wouldn't look nerdy. Not that it would matter, because they were both about to die. When you're at an amusement park, no matter how terrifying a ride is, you know you're not going to die at the end. Somebody with an advanced engineering degree carefully designed that thrill ride to simulate weightlessness. You know that thousands of people took that same ride before you did, and they all survived. You know that a safety inspector with a clipboard is required by law to check out the rides regularly.

You know that after a minute or two, the ride is going to come to an end. You'll climb out of the little car or whatever and go enjoy some cotton candy. But when you go flying off a cliff, there are no such assurances. At the end of a free fall, your body will most likely smash into the hard surface of the ground with thousands of pounds of pressure, crushing your flimsy bones. Your internal organs are going to explode like water balloons. Or maybe you'll get dashed against the rocks on the side of the cliff and fracture your skull on the way down. What an unpleasant way to end a life. But then again, it would be quick and painless. At one second into free fall, Coke and Pep were moving about thirty miles per hour straight down. The wind was whipping, ripping past them as they accelerated, pulling at the skin on their cheeks. There was a roar in their ears, like the sound of a jet taking off in their head.

Through squinted eyes, Coke could see Pep below him, flailing her arms and legs, trying to turn herself around. At that point, they were dropping like stones. By three seconds into free fall, they were close to sixty miles per hour and still picking up speed. Coke had once leafed through a physics book in the library and learned a few facts about falling objects. For instance, any falling body will accelerate until it reaches what is called terminal velocity: for a human, about 120 mph. But terminal velocity varies depending on the object that's falling. A large, flat object, like a piece of paper, will fall a lot slower than a penny. When the twins stuck out their arms and legs, their rate of descent slowed down. Suddenly, Coke realized what he was doing. He had seen a YouTube video about something called wingsuit BASE jumping just a few weeks earlier. People jump off cliffs wearing these strange-looking wingsuits, and they can actually fly. It blew his mind.

Coke had been intrigued enough to do a Google search of wingsuit BASE jumping. Go ahead and look it up. People actually jump off cliffs for fun, and they've been doing it since the 1930s. According to legend, seventy-two of the first seventy-five people who tried it died. Then, in the 1990s, a French skydiver named Patrick de Gayardon developed a wingsuit that worked. Well, it worked some of the time, anyway. He died in 1998 after jumping off a cliff in Hawaii; but other skydivers took up the "sport," and better wingsuits were designed. Coke realized he didn't have to die. The wingsuit could save him. At four seconds, Coke remembered what Mya had told them: Extend your arms and legs. You will soar like a hawk. Not to get all scientific on you, but if you throw gravity, acceleration, air resistance, and hundreds of feet of vertical drop into an equation and then you add the fabric of a wingsuit as it rushes against the wind like the