Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  Rose laughs harder than the joke deserves, but the mountain air is like a drug to her. She’s always sillier, quicker to laugh and relax here. Her laughter makes me relax, reminds me that I want to be here, even with Dad’s constant comments on my disappointing academics. My sunglasses fog with sweat, while the cold air works its way through my gear. I remember hanging upside down from the top bunk, trying to see if Rose’s eyes were open, if she was up and ready to play.

  She and Dad fall behind, talking logistics, while Maya and I keep moving.

  “You doing okay?” Maya asks. She says it like maybe it’s not the first time. She pauses, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  I smile down at her. Thank God for Maya, my other mother, who always insists I’m as amazing in every way as Rose. Even though we all know Rose is another species altogether.

  “Oh yeah. Spacing out, that’s all,” I say. I don’t tell her that—truth?—I’m trying to figure out how many more days of school we have before I’m finally done, able to take off for Nepal, able to leave high school and all its constant, stressful bullshit behind forever.

  Maya nods and grins.

  “Camp Muir straight ahead! Let’s camp above it. Should make the summit push easier.”

  I look back. Rose’s sunglasses are hanging around her neck, and her face mask is pushed down.

  “Wait for me!” she calls. “I want to find a good spot for our tents.”

  I wait for her to catch up, her cheeks red with cold, her mouth muffled back under her mask. But even so, I can see she’s looking a little tired.

  “Uggggggh…everything is already sore! Remind me why we do this?” she asks.

  I don’t answer but start moving toward the camp. “Race you!” I say, knowing she can never resist a challenge.

  “No fair! You have longer legs and you’ve been standing still waiting for me.” Even as she’s complaining, Rose is kicking into gear, her strong legs pushing off and her arms reaching to pole through the snow.

  I laugh, then laugh harder when Rose grabs on to the back of my jacket and glides along the snow, letting me pull her. We are both barely able to breathe by the time we land in a pile, but Rose is laughing, and I’m glad. Glad to be here with Rose, like always.

  Chapter Five:

  Rose

  April 5

  Kathmandu

  4,600 feet above sea level

  It’s our last day in Kathmandu. Tomorrow we pack up and leave the luxurious Hotel Shanker, leaving behind hot showers and fresh fruit that we can safely eat, saying goodbye to real pillows and a refrigerator in our room. We’ll fly out to Lukla, a tiny airstrip in the mountains far from any roads, then we’ll start walking, acclimatizing to the altitude as we trek through small villages and outposts until we get to Everest Base Camp. The trek itself is easy. We just walk on a dirt trail, and if it weren’t for the altitude, it would only take a few days. But we have to move slowly and take rest days, helping our bodies adjust. Not that we’ll ever really get used to the thin air above Base Camp. If a person were dropped on the top of Mount Everest with no acclimatization, she’d be dead in three minutes. Moving slowly and letting our bodies adjust to the reduced oxygen is our best chance at reaching the top.

  We’ve met the two other people on our team, though team’s not really the right word. We’re not a unit working together so much as six people who have all decided to climb Everest with the same guide. They seem fine, but it’s still weird…I’m used to climbing with people who are pretty much family, not strangers.

  Anyway, Yoon Su Rhee and Lucien “Luc” Cartier are with us now. They’re both young, probably midtwenties, which is why Finjo put them with our group. Yoon Su is Korean, though she speaks English with a posh British accent. She also informed us she speaks French, Italian, German, and Mandarin. She is shorter than me and probably thirty pounds lighter, gorgeous, and completely intimidating. Luc reminds me of a Texas cowboy by way of France, with a bandana around his neck and several days of stubble. He grew up in a small ski town in the Alps but from the sound of it has made it his life’s work to travel the world and climb mountains, funded by family money. He’s almost as big as Tate and speaks English with a strong French accent that, embarrassingly, makes me think of nothing so much as Pepé Le Pew, the skunk from the old cartoons. He and Jordan threw down with a macho-but-friendly discussion of summits tagged, routes explored, and gnarly near misses survived. By the end of our first dinner, they had officially bonded.

  Today we’re heading to a Buddhist stupa, and Finjo ushers Yoon Su, Tate, and me into one taxi, following behind in another with everyone else. Soon we’re rolling through the garbage and chaos of the streets, horn honking wildly. I try to pan my phone out the window, but the bumps are so bad it flies out of my hand onto the floor of the car.

  “Do you think the horns work extra hard because the brakes don’t work for shit?” Tate asks, bracing against the seat as we slide to the side of the car. Our driver merges into packed roundabouts by going full speed and holding his hand on the horn. We haven’t been hit yet.

  “Don’t talk. I’m too busy trying not to panic,” I say. People say climbing is scary, but it doesn’t scare me. I’m in control, setting the pace. Not like in a car, where I fly around at the mercy of our driver and every other person on the road. I don’t even like it when Tate drives, but this…This makes me wish Tate were at the wheel. “This must not be as dangerous as it seems, right?” I try to stifle a scream as we round a corner and nearly hit the stopped traffic in front of us.

  Yoon Su looks up from her phone. “All the shrines along the road are for the people who die in car accidents,” she states calmly, before starting to text again.

  I stare at her. She flashes a fast smile, and I decide not to ask if she was kidding or not.

  Soon we are at the gate of Boudhanath, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world. It sits huge and white and domed against the deep-blue sky. Rising from the dome is a dull golden pyramid, brightly painted eyes gleaming over the edge. Strung down from the tip, thousands and thousands of colorful prayer flags flutter in the wind. It is massive, endless, timeless, beautiful.

  “This was definitely worth the ride, since we survived,” I say, standing still. It is quiet within the gates of the stupa, quieter than anywhere else I’ve been in Kathmandu. It’s almost its own small city in here, with a few guest houses, restaurants, and shops tucked among the religious statues. Pilgrims and Buddhist monks walk clockwise around the massive structure, rolling the cylindrical brass prayer wheels that line the edge. All around us are buildings with pots of orange flowers and statues of Buddha.

  “We start the tour?” our guide, Ram, asks, joining us. He is an official city guide, unlike Finjo, who can only guide in the mountains. Ram meets us at all the tourist sites, wearing a rakish purple scarf and smoking constantly.

  Before we can answer him, he starts speaking. “I can tell you all about it. This is the largest stupa in Nepal, sacred to Tibetans and Buddhists. There are over five hundred prayer wheels, all engraved with the mantra om mani padme hum, which means ‘the jewel in the heart of the lotus.’ It is also one of the most ancient—”

  Yoon Su makes a dismissive sound and interrupts his monologue. “First we will look around by ourselves. Then you can tell us everything when Finjo and the rest arrive.” She doesn’t look at me or Tate for approval, but I can’t help being relieved. I want to soak it in.

  Tate leans over. “Holy shit,” he whispers. “She’s even bossier than Finjo.”

  I give him the big eyes to tell him to shut up. I’m liking Yoon Su more and more. “Want to walk a bit?” I ask her. “Before the others get here?”

  She nods. “Definitely. We will wander and meet back here. Can you please tell Finjo?” she tells Ram, then starts walking before he can answer.

  Ram looks a little disgruntled, but he agrees.

&nb
sp; Silently Yoon Su, Tate, and I start to circle the enormous building. There’s less dust and smog here, and the noise of the city is hidden behind the walls. Mostly it is the quiet murmur of prayers and the slow footsteps of pilgrims.

  I jump a little when Yoon Su speaks. “How are you feeling about the expedition?” she asks. “Are you ready?”

  Tate glances at me, shrugging, but I nod. “Definitely! We’ve been planning this since we were in fourth grade. In fact…” I pause, pulling out my phone. “Time to capture this for posterity!” I take a photo of the stupa, then a selfie with prayer wheels behind me.

  “How did you decide to summit Everest?” Yoon Su asks. “It is an unusual goal, even today, when so many are crowding the mountain.”

  I tense a little. The full truth about this trip is more complicated than I want to get into. I settle for the easy version. “We had been climbing for a while, with my mom and Tate’s dad. First in California, where we’re from, but then in Europe and South America. We were still pretty young when we decided to train for Mount Everest. And here we are.”

  I leave out all the stuff in between. The endless fund-raising and the ongoing, grueling training. I leave out Dad’s worries and Mami’s reassurance that we would be fine. I leave out Mami and our arguments over whether I was training hard enough. I leave out her pointed silences when I struggled on a climb, which felt louder than an I-told-you-so, and my grudging return to the training schedule.

  I glance at Tate, wondering if he’ll have more to add to my abbreviated version. He catches my eye.

  “We’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” he says. “It’s Mount Everest! Is there any climber in the world who doesn’t want to bag this one?” He smiles but it looks forced, and I wonder if he too is thinking about Mami and her plans. “What about you?”

  Yoon Su flashes her quick grin again. “I read about this mountain when I was a little girl, in boarding school in Switzerland, and decided that someday I would be one of the few who climb it. In Switzerland it was easy to train because climbing was so common. At home hiking is very popular, but climbing Mount Everest? That’s harder for people to understand. And a woman climbing? That can be even more difficult to explain.”

  She and I share a look. I’ve spent enough time on high peaks where bro dudes act like I’m there to hand them their beers and laugh at their jokes to guess at what she’s not saying. And that’s not even getting into the everyday harassment and sexism on the streets in towns where we travel. I’m white-passing, but Mami, who’s Puerto Rican, would get additional attitude: in places where the lodge workers were Latinx or even just dark-skinned, other climbers would often assume she worked there. She never complained about it, but I always felt a weird kind of guilt, like I was getting away with something I didn’t deserve.

  I wonder about Yoon Su. As an Asian woman, she probably has another level of crap to deal with. I wonder what it will be like for her, and me, on the trail up to Everest. So far though, Nepal has been refreshingly uninterested in me as female. If anything, people are excited that another woman wants to summit, since so far only around five hundred of the total five thousand people who have made it up Everest have been women. We have some catching up to do. As though reading my mind, Yoon Su says, “I have heard good things about climbing in Nepal. At least here I hope not to be called ‘China doll’ or told I can’t possibly know how to use the gear I’m carrying.” She sighs, then changes the subject. “Jordan is Tate’s father, yes? So where is your mother?”

  I swallow, trying to make the story easy to tell, easy to hear. Tell it like it was history, over and done, not something that still roils, digs, hurts.

  “She has some health issues and couldn’t come.” I leave it at that.

  Yoon Su looks at me. “Ah. I am sorry to hear that.”

  No need to talk about the bad days. No need to talk about the pain. No need to talk about the end of Everest. But not for me. Not for the rest of us, because Mami would never ever be the one who took it away from us. No matter if I used to complain about the training, I definitely want it now, want to succeed twice as much, for Mami, for me. The Dread bites at me, and I push it back, think about the summit, think about what it will mean to be there, to share it with her. Yoon Su is still looking at me, her face pitying, and I need to stop talking about this. Pulling out my phone, I start filming, moving slowly in a circle and narrating some of the facts Ram told us about the site.

  Tate’s hand lands on my shoulder, fast and heavy, squeezes a little. Then he asks Yoon Su about some technological advance in high-altitude gear. She answers quickly, and I’m relieved. The Dread retreats back as I finish up my video by blowing kisses into the phone, then tuck it back into my pocket. I look up at the burning whiteness of the temple, prayer flags flapping wildly, and breathe deeply, in and out.

  Yoon Su turns back to me. “It’s nice to be out of the smog. Nice to breathe.”

  “Seriously,” I say, and something in my voice makes Tate look over.

  “Oxygen. You’re going to miss it, huh?” he says. Altitude never bothers him the way it bothers me, although of course we’ve never been near the death zone—above 26,000 feet. And now it’s right around the corner.

  I don’t want to sound scared in front of Yoon Su, but the fact is I’m not psyched about it. “Yeah. Well…Thin air isn’t my favorite, you know. I’m a little freaked, actually.”

  “I’m sure you will be fine,” Yoon Su says, so firmly that I almost believe her. “There will be plenty of bottled oxygen, and the guides, well, that is their job. To help us.”

  “And worse comes to worst, you know, if you’re feeling bad, I’ll carry you. No problem,” Tate says, grinning his wild this-is-supposed-to-be-fun smile. “See? Easy!”

  Before I can move, he jumps in front of me and pulls my arms over his shoulders, yanking me off the ground and into piggyback position. I yelp and laugh, trying desperately to hang on.

  “Are you eating rocks again, Keller? Jeez, when did you last weigh yourself?” he groans, lurching back and forth. He staggers and nearly runs right into a group of monks.

  Three young guys with shaved heads and dark-maroon robes move carefully out of our way. I try to apologize, but I can’t stop laughing. They smile in return.

  “Tate! Cut it out. NOW.” It’s Jordan, who has caught up just in time to see our near religious collision.

  “Hey!” Tate protests, setting me gently on the ground. “You could say, ‘We’re here.’ No need for such aggression.”

  Luc laughs. “He cannot help himself! Who can, when it comes to a beautiful woman?”

  My cheeks burn hot and red. I ignore Luc and try to pull myself together. Finjo, Paul, Luc, and Jordan are all here, along with Ram, the city guide. I hope we didn’t look like total idiots.

  Jordan’s talking about respect and religious monuments, and I know he’s right, but I’m still grateful, as always, that Tate made me laugh before I cried. Even if we did almost knock over a monk.

  But that’s Tate. Brightness and fun and energy and happiness and always more and more and more, until the thunderheads break through and that hyper energy turns from hilarity to anger. Though most of the thunder-and-lightning anger ended in middle school. Now it’s more likely to be the endless daydreaming, the late-to-everything, the Tate-would-do-better-if-he-only-applied-himself fights.

  Finally, Jordan winds down, and we keep walking. Next to me Tate is coiled and angry. Ram walks behind us, spouting facts about the prayer wheels, the monks, the burning incense that sticks out of holders in the stones. I reach out and grab Tate’s hand.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Spectacular.” He spits the word out.

  “Hey. Don’t think about Jordan. Think about the climb. Tomorrow! We’re finally off into the mountains! That’s something, right?”

  “Right. Endless acclimatization climbs, fri
gid wind-blasted tents, no oxygen, frostbite and hypothermia…It sounds super,” he says.

  I pause. He’s not wrong, obviously. Climbing Mount Everest is going to be the most brutal thing we’ll probably ever put our bodies through. But even so…He’s always been the one who loves this stuff. He never complains.

  “Hey,” I start, but I’m not sure what to say. A slow ooze of unease spreads through me. Tate Angry equals Rose Unplugged.

  He looks at me and gives a turning-on-the-light smile, all crinkled, brown eyes and white teeth and gleam. “KIDDING. Kidding, of course. Of course I’m pumped! This is the big moment!” He gives a quick glance over his shoulder, then whispers, in a perfect imitation of Luc’s accent, “Zis ees ze moment zat separates ze boys from ze men!”

  I close my eyes for a second, relieved. Battery-Powered Rose, powered by Endlessly Energized Tate. The adventure of a lifetime, unfolding ahead of us. As it all should be.

  Chapter Six:

  Tate

  (Four Months Earlier) January 6

  Camp Muir, Mount Rainier

  10,200 feet above sea level

  It’s go time: time to stow all our gear in the total darkness, get our boots back on, jam some food down our throats, and start to climb. It’s also 2:00 a.m., which isn’t ideal, but still. The sky’s totally black, lit only by the quarter moon and the absolutely wild splash of stars. It’s beautiful. The snow gleams bright white in the moonlight, and farther down the slope, a few tents show signs of life as other climbers start their preparations. Like Maya planned, we’re slightly above them, giving us a better position to push for the summit.

  I’ve been awake for hours. There are times when I seriously hate these tents, these stupid, shitty, claustrophobic tents.

  My eyes burn like I’ve been surfing, but there’s no sun or sand or salt here, just exhaustion and darkness and a fierce wind that rips at my skin. I pull at my laces and snarl as they refuse to give up their knots.