English G

Maya stood on the platform at the canyon's edge, her stomach knotted into a fist. Before her stretched the glass walkway, suspended four hundred metres above the river. Sunlight glanced off the panels, making them appear to vanish entirely, leaving only the abyss beneath. "Your turn," said the guide, his voice deliberately patient. He had seen this many times — the first step was always the worst. Maya's father had brought her here for her thirteenth birthday. He stood at the far end, waving, his grin enormous and ridiculous. She loved him for it. She also wanted, briefly, to throttle him. "You can turn back," the guide added, as if reading her thoughts. "Most people don't. They just stand here a while and decide they will, after all." Maya considered turning back. The thought of admitting defeat to her father — of being driven home in silence past the gleaming gift shop she had refused to enter — was somehow worse than the drop. She inched her right foot forward. The glass held. Of course it held. Engineers had designed it to hold the weight of an elephant. She had read this on the brochure three times during breakfast. And yet some primal part of her brain insisted, with absolute conviction, that the glass was about to shatter. She took another step. Then another. By the fifth step, she had stopped looking down and had begun looking ahead — at her father, who was now bouncing on his toes like a small child. By the tenth step, she was walking normally. By the twentieth, she was almost annoyed at how quickly the terror had drained out of her, leaving only the magnificent view: red rock walls falling away into blue distance, hawks circling below her feet. When she stepped onto the platform at the far end, her father picked her up and spun her around as if she still weighed nothing. "Easy?" he asked. "Easy," she lied. And then, because honesty mattered between them: "Terrifying. But easier than going back."