Excerpt from The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And now, ever since she'd scratched the meet in Los Angeles, he'd shut her out completely.

After she'd cycled through her list, Ria stopped diving into air and took off running. Down the trail. Along the ups and downs. Past the shrubs and boulders.

She hated running.

There was the wearing of shoes. The monotony of doing the same motion over and over. The hard pounding on the ground. Fighting the heavy pull of gravity. No adrenaline thrill to balance the effort. The awkward feeling that she was taking up too much space. Sweating. Panting.

All the ways it wasn't diving.

There was no finesse required. No precision. No power laced with grace.

But her body needed to get tired, so she ran harder. Faster. Even if she hated it, she knew how to push herself to that edge of not being able to go one more step, and then taking that next step anyway. To keep going. If it's possible, then do it. Pain is temporary. It's the body's warning, but not the defeat.

She hit a patch of gravel, slipping sideways. As a reflex she hugged her arms close, ready to roll, but she regained her balance before hitting the ground. The near-fall shook her, made her slow her pace.

It only took one slip to change everything.

If she hadn't slipped in Los Angeles, she wouldn't have fallen, wouldn't have invited all the trouble that followed. If she hadn't been running, she'd still be diving.

She left the trail, away from the slippery gravel. As she jogged down the grassy hill, momentum made her slide. Thick blades scraped against her legs. At the bottom, the land flattened out amid the weeds. This area was filled with hazards like rocks and sticks and who-knows-what living behind the bushes and trees. She should turn around before she got hurt or lost. But it was easier to keep moving in the same direction.

Her contacts felt dry and scratchy, and sweat dripped around her eyes, making it hard to see. Her breaths came rough and jagged, sounding loud and embarrassing.

As she followed the trail around a collection of boulders, she slammed into what felt like a wall.

A muddy, moving wall.

She stumbled backward, awkwardly bending her legs beneath her. "Damn!" was all she could manage around her gasps for air.

Two figures stood in front of her. One—the wall—was enormous, the other shorter and wiry, both of them covered from head to toe in mud. They each wore a yellow hard hat with a lightbulb in the middle.

"Ria?"

The enormous wall took off his helmet and wiped the mud coating his face. Now she could see it was Cotton Talley. They used to be friends back in elementary school—the kind of friendship too embarrassing to reminisce over. He was with his friend Leo, who she didn't know as well.

"Were you cleaning out sewers or something?" she asked.

"No. We were not cleaning sewers. We were spelunking."

She had no idea what that meant. "Well, you have some of it on your face. And your clothes. And pretty much all of you."

"We were in a cave. Over that way." He swung his arm outward, sending a spray of gunk through the air.

Ria wiped the mud droplets off her leg. "Is that allowed?"

The two boys looked at each other briefly. "Yes and no," said Leo.

"Technically, we should have written permission from the owner of the property," Cotton said in his usual stiff way of talking. "But as the owner is the housing developer who built our neighborhood and is based out of Alexandria, Virginia, we assume we, as residents of this neighborhood, have access rights."

He sounded so formal. Even though they were both wearing the same kind of weird olive-green full bodysuit, Leo's looked loose and baggy, while Cotton's was zipped all the way to his neck and fit him precisely, borderline tight. Maybe that was just because he was so tall. His dark brown curls, matted and twisted from the helmet, looked more rebellious.

Excerpted from The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp. Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Tomp. Excerpted by permission of HarperTeen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.