Page 80 of Tricks for Free

“That part is,” I said, and looked up. Sam was looking down at me, anxiously, his face showing signs of strain. “Fern, how bad is your leg?”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said.

“If we pass you up to the ledge, can you stand long enough to pry the doors open?”

Fern hesitated before nodding. “I think so. But how are we going to get me up there?”

I smiled. I hoped she would find the expression encouraging. I knew she probably wouldn’t. Oh, well. “I’m going to throw you.”

Fern blinked slowly. The gloom in the elevator shaft was deep enough that I couldn’t see the fine details of her expression, but I knew her well enough to piece them together in my mind. I waited for her to finish working through the idea, and was rewarded with a smile.

“Like a whip?” she asked.

“Like a whip,” I said.

Her smile turned into a grin.

Thanks to a certain movie with Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore, the whip is probably the most famous roller derby move in the world, even though it’s relatively infrequent and often ineffective on the track. It looks cool, and that made it the perfect concept to frame a movie around (since “learn to fucking skate, you look like roadkill” is not a good title). Basically, the smallest, lightest skater available—usually the jammer, since she’s the one we need to speed up—joins hands with a line of her peers, who then use their momentum to “whip” her down the track, letting her get the sort of distance that would be otherwise impossible.

I looked up at Sam. “I need you to swing me,” I said.

“What?” squeaked Megan. “No!”

“Are you doing a whip?” asked Cylia, who had been a derby girl longer than I had, and knew what this sort of setup looked like, even when it had become suddenly vertical.

I nodded.

“Cool,” said Cylia, as if she weren’t hanging from the foot of a therianthrope monkey in an elevator shaft. I decided I liked her more than I had realized.

I reached down with both hands. Fern reached up with one, and our hands met, her fingers clasping tight around mine. She let go of my leg with her other hand, and we were two for two, a line dangling down into the dark.

Sam began to swing his tail, haltingly, like it hurt him to do. It probably did. We were like Rapunzel’s prince climbing up her hair, only we were two women hanging from a monkey’s tail. There was a joke in there somewhere. I wasn’t in the mood to go looking for it just yet. We swung, and I whipped Fern higher and higher, until I ran out of reach and let her go, sending her soaring toward the others. Cylia grabbed for her—

—and missed, the shorter blonde floating past unhindered. Megan made a panicked squeaking sound. Fern adjusted her density ever so slightly, and dropped back into Cylia’s hands. The loss of momentum and altitude would have been deadly for someone like me, whose mass was fixed. For Fern, it was barely a pause before Cylia was whipping her up again.

This time, she flew straight and true, grabbing hold of the elevator ledge and hoisting herself up. She winced a little as she put pressure on her left foot, but it held her weight, and kept holding as that weight almost visibly increased, Fern settling deeper and deeper into her position. Once her density was high enough that she didn’t have to worry about being whipped away by the faint wind still blowing from below, Fern wedged her fingers into the crack between the doors designed to keep people from falling into the elevator shaft and began to shove.

Strength is important. Strength can be the thing that turns the tide. But leverage is based as much on size as it is on strength, and Fern, for all that she was a dainty, delicate-looking little thing, was also a professional athlete, spending every minute she could strapped into her skates and going for the gold. If roller derby were played at the Olympic level, she would have been trying for the team. She would never have qualified—good as our little regional league was, there are other, better skaters out there—but she would have made it farther than most people expected. She was good. She was strong. And at the moment, she had the undeniable density of someone five times her size.

Fern pushed, and bit by bit, the elevator bay doors responded. They had never been intended to keep people in, after all, only to keep people from falling to their deaths. The doors inched farther and farther open, until she was standing between them, her hands pressed flat against their respective edges, refusing to let them close.

“Little help here?” she said.

“On it,” said Sam, and pulled himself into a handstand with the sort of ease that I could only envy. Cylia and Megan, dangling from his feet, appeared to do a slow somersault above me. I was hanging from his tail, and simply found myself hoisted farther out of the hole. Enough farther that I could reach the lip of the ledge.

Careful not to dislodge Sam’s tail from around my waist, I reached out and grabbed the ledge with both hands, getting a good grip before I angled my body downward. Sam glanced my way, saw what I was doing, and unwrapped his tail from around my waist with an expression of relieved gratitude. Gravity immediately kicked in, my lower body swinging down to slam against the wall in a half-controlled arc. I gritted my teeth, gripped the wall a little tighter, and waited for the impact to stop echoing in my bones. Then, deliberately, I began pulling myself up.

Megan and Cylia were already on their feet by the time I climbed up to join them. Sam was leaning against one of the elevator bay doors, while Fern leaned against the other. He had his left foot in his hands, and was massaging out the kinks with broad, firm strokes.

“Remind me not to do that again for at least a year,” he said, grimacing. “I am going to be one big ache tomorrow.”

“But we’ll have a tomorrow, and that’s what counts,” I said. “Everyone okay?”

“That was better than zip lining,” said Cylia.

“My hair threw up,” said Megan.

I paused. Sadly, that did nothing to dispel the image her words had conjured. “Ew,” I said, finally. “Come on.” I started walking. The others, mercifully, followed, Fern limping.