Excerpt from Crux by Gabriel Tallent, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She was blowing with panic. In the flashlight's beam, he could see gooseflesh on the backs of her arms. She dipped one hand into her chalk bag, clapped it clean on the butt of her jeans. The slab was so steep that her cheek was up against the rock.

He watched as she planted her pointer finger on the domino hold by her hip. Then she backed off.

"Dude!"

"Yeah?"

"That's a bad hold, dude."

"Tamma, there's no other choice. It's go, and maybe fall. Or stand there, and definitely fall."

"I just want to go home!"

"You have to try, Tamma!"

"I'm too scared, dude!"

She planted her finger again on the domino hold. A centimeter deep. Four centimeters wide. She started bringing her right foot up to it, and then, once again, retreated to the stance at the dike. Put her face to the wall, making scared and miserable noises.

"Commit or crater, slutcake."

"How's the fall?'

"Not good!"

"I can't do it!"

"You can!"

"Dan?"

"Yes?"

"If I die?"

"Yeah?"

"At the funeral? Like, during the speech? I want you to say I was the best lay you ever had."

"What?"

"I don't want people to think I died a virgin, dude."

"You are a virgin," Dan said.

"But it's so embarrassing, Dan! I want people to think I lived a rad life of adventure and blossoming sexuality. A kind of slutty, swashbuckling pirate princess!"

"Why?"

"Just say I was better than Madison."

"What? At the funeral? Won't it seem inappropriate and apropos of nothing?"

"Nah, dude, it'll be fine."

"But I barely know Madison, won't she find that confusing? Won't her mom be alarmed?"

"I'm sure she's amazing. She's, like, the third hottest girl in school. Just stand at the head of the casket, weeping, and say, 'Ah, Tamma. The best lay I ever had. Even better than Madison Van Der Meer.' Then point her out in the crowd. So everyone can see how hot she is."

"Tamma, don't make me do that!"

"Promise me!"

"I promise!"

She began drawing her right foot up to the hold, hooking her leg around the back of her arm, aiming to share space with her fingertip in a hand‑foot match. She was trembling all over, canting her hips, engaging every muscle. Then her left foot greased out from beneath her and she came cheesegrating down the slab, and at the last moment her foot snagged an edge and she flipped over backward. Dan reached up to catch her and she came on toward him headfirst, her hands extended in a backward somersault. She put her thumb into his eye and he twisted away with her thumb pad catching in the socket, bringing his chin down and reaching to catch her nonetheless, and she squirted out from his grasp and took a header into the dirt.

She lay in the sand for a time and then rolled over and tried to prop herself up and then she puked and put her face right back down into it and lay breathing. Dan crouched beside her, not wanting to say anything, covering his eye with his hand. Then he let himself down into the sand, staring up at the stars with one eye, holding a hand over the other, unwilling and afraid to open it. She crawled over to him. Her face crusted with gravel.

"I'm sorry, sorry, sorry," she said. She started to cry, leaning over him, bracing her head with both hands, as if to hold it together at the temples.

"I'm sorry," Dan said. He spoke to the stars. Andromeda lay there above him, the chained daughter of Cassiopeia swathed across the starscape.

"No it's me."

"I should've caught you."

"I shouldn't've fallen."

"It's my job to catch you, Tams."

"It's my job not to fall."

He could feel sludge beneath his fingers. He did not yet have the guts to lift his hand. Tamma was crying and snotting into the downy peach fuzz of her upper lip. Jupiter was enormously bright.

"You okay?" he said.

Excerpted from Crux by Gabriel Tallent. Copyright © 2026 by Gabriel Tallent. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.