Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  The climb’s nothing—a bullshit simple technical climb that I could have done when I was twelve. We’re only a few hours’ walk from the village, and the mountain’s barely a pimple compared with the giant peaks around us. But Finjo wanted us to get some ice-climbing practice while we’re acclimatizing, and this spot is close enough that we can climb for a few hours and be back in our lodge before dark. We’re all here: me, Rose, Paul, Dad, Luc, and Yoon Su, along with Dawa and Finjo and Asha. Dawa sticks to the rear with Dad, while Asha, in a kind of Girl Power move, leads Yoon Su and Rose at the front of the pack. The three of them are moving fast, though I should be moving faster. It’s supposed to be an easy climb.

  Kick off, grab the rock, pull. I’ve been doing this practically forever, and the muscle memory usually takes over. It used to be that the pull and grab chilled me out, shut up my brain, and let my body do what it’s trained for. I used to love this.

  But not now. Now a fucked-up hum of panic buzzes the whole time, fear and adrenaline making my tongue thick in my mouth and my skin crawl. My hands sweat and shake, and I hesitate before the simplest holds.

  Terror.

  I had no idea.

  No fucking idea what people meant when they said climbing was scary, that they could never hang off a rock face like I do. Today I get it—sweat like icy water runs down my spine, and I get a sick drowning pit in my gut when I look down. I don’t know what the fuck this is, but I can’t do it. I try to take deep breaths, but the air is thin and dusty, and I cough and cough.

  “Ça va? Are you okay?”

  Luc’s behind me, waiting for me to move off the ropes. I give a thumbs-up, coughing too hard to answer.

  “Okay then. We will keep going?” he asks. Hard to know if he’s being nice or a dick, and it doesn’t really matter because I’m stuck.

  “Pass me,” I say. And it hurts to say it. Hurts because my throat’s raw and dry and because hanging out on the ropes, feet jammed into the rock, while Luc goes up like he’s running up a line at a climbing gym, sucks. But I move out of the way, and he scampers by me.

  Rose is ahead, already at a rest point and probably gazing out at the panorama of mountains and gabbing with Yoon Su. They’ve been bonding, sharing the British fashion magazines Yoon Su brought and giggling over some secret topic that I suspect has to do with Rose trying to braid her leg hairs. But right now I have nothing in common with them, and not because of secret girl things. I’m halfway up the rock, and I don’t think I can keep going.

  “Hey! Zoom zoom! We need to keep moving, okay?” It’s Finjo, bringing up the rear. I look behind him, but peering down the ice face makes spots dance in front of my eyes, and I lurch on the ropes.

  “Where’s my dad?” I ask, once I’m sure I can keep my voice steady. “He hasn’t passed me.”

  Finjo shakes his head. “I sent him back down with Dawa. He was not feeling good, and though he says he is fine to climb, I took a look at him and said no.”

  This is not good news. We’re barely at the edge of the expedition and Dad’s already hurting with some virus that’s clogging his lungs and making him more susceptible to altitude. He started taking Diamox, the prescription drug that’s supposed to help with altitude sickness, but so far it hasn’t done much. Apparently, you can also take Viagra, but my guess is he hasn’t tried that yet. Or if he is, he’s not talking about it. Thank God.

  All at once I see a way out. I turn to Finjo. “I’d better go down. I’m worried about him.”

  Finjo shakes his head definitively. “No need. Dawa is with him, and you should be training. Zoom zoom, right?” He motions for me to head up, but I don’t move.

  “He’s my father, man. If he’s down, I’m going down,” I say. This is bullshit, of course, and Finjo, who’s been with us for almost two weeks, probably thinks so too. He probably noticed that father-son bonding isn’t really our thing…My fault, really, since Dad’s so delighted to be here that instead of nagging me, he’s kept up a consistent stream of hey-buddy-you-got-this pep talks that are almost worse.

  But Finjo’s not about to mess with paternal loyalty. Finally, with his blessing, I start down, trying not to think about what this retreat means.

  * * *

  —

  When I get back to the lodge, Dad’s sitting in the smoky dining room, waving off offers of more tea. He raises his eyebrows when I walk in.

  “Why are you back?” he asks, his voice cracked from coughing.

  I hesitate. The odds he’ll believe I want to check on him are slim. I go with a partial lie. “I wasn’t feeling great. I’m just…not feeling the climb today.” I slump next to him, avoiding his gaze.

  Silence for a second, then he speaks, trying to sound casual. But his hand tightens on his empty mug. “Really? Because you’ve seemed fine skipping up these trails. This is Mount Everest, son. Come on…If you’re not willing to push yourself now, when the hell are you going to?”

  I don’t want to answer. I want to squeeze a frozen orange or punch the heavy bag hanging in our basement or any of the other techniques Jimmy’s been getting me to use over the years. But I’m stuck here. There’s nothing I’m going to say that won’t piss him off, so I stay silent.

  He coughs, then pauses, taking a deep breath, and I know the next volley is coming.

  “The truth is I love you, but I’m worried. You don’t push yourself. You coast along waiting for things to get easy. I know you’re sick of hearing it, but when I was your age, I was working two jobs, one after school and one on the weekends, and trying to figure out how the hell to pay for college. You’re getting the trip of a lifetime paid for. And you won’t put in the effort to make sure you’re as prepared as possible. I’m telling you, buddy, given those first few college responses, I hesitated over this trip. You have got to learn to work for things.”

  I try to let his words wash over me, but at this my eyes fly open. All the exhaustion combines with a surge of anger so strong I almost lift out of my seat.

  “You have no fucking idea how hard I’m working,” I snarl, and in some far-off part of my mind, I know I’m too angry to be as careful as I should be. “I have worked hard. Every. Fucking. Day. I work hard not to lose track of shit. I work hard to keep staring at the massive pile of studying in front of me and not get up and go shoot hoops in the yard. I work so hard to hold it together, and now I’m working even harder trying not to break—” I stop. My hands are balled into fists so tight the veins have popped up.

  We’re both silent. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. I repeat the mantra: Smell the flower, blow out the candle. I almost smile, thinking of Ronan and Rose, who would whisper, “Flower, candle. Flower, candle,” when they saw me getting stressed. My hands unclench slightly.

  “Break what?” Dad asks, and his voice is quieter now. Defeated. I hate this part. The part when we both stop being mad and start being sorry that we have failed to be decent to each other yet again.

  I look at him. He looks exhausted, and we’re not even a week out of Kathmandu.

  I sigh, letting my head rest in my hands. The sweat from the failed climb is long gone, and I’m cold. My mind travels to Rose. Break a promise. Break down. But I don’t say that.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I’m in, Dad. Seriously. I’m…You know. Taking it slow.”

  He nods, not like he believes me but like he’s willing to be done with this conversation.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay then. Do you want some tea?” He waves to the porter who’s been texting on his phone in the corner, and within minutes the lodge owner comes in with steaming tea.

  She smiles and exclaims over how exciting it is to see a father and son head off together to climb Everest. We nod and smile, not meeting each other’s eyes.

  * * *

  —

  Soon Dad heads off to rest. Guilt and resentment swirl through me. I feel
trapped. There’s nothing here, nothing to do except prepare for the climb of a lifetime. My mind flies to Rose, who’s climbing while roped in with someone else and who’s got her phone and GoPro going so constantly that Finjo jokes that the Nepali government’s going to think she’s a spy. To Yoon Su, who takes photos of herself and Rose in every lodge, each of them trying to make a sillier face than the other, cracking up until they have to slump against the wall laughing. And to Luc, who calls Rose La Rosinator, after the Terminator, and has started joking with her about stealing her Twizzlers while she sleeps. What the fuck is my role here? What good am I if I can’t even climb?

  I need to move, to go somewhere, even though I don’t have any idea where. I leave the lodge and walk up the yak path that leads to a helicopter landing pad. The views here are stupid gorgeous, a sweep of the world’s highest mountains from end to end. Above them all looms Everest, an ugly black triangle jutting up above the rest. Snow crystals blown by the jet stream fly off one end. It’s unearthly, inhuman, other. I have no desire to be there. And though I know I used to want it so badly, I can’t remember why.

  It seemed as obvious as breathing, once. I was a climber. I bagged peaks. That was the best and easiest way to think of myself, especially once we got to high school, where Ronan and Rose and most of my other friends barreled through honors and AP classes like the overachievers they are, and I sat in my extra study halls and guided study sessions and felt like a total tool. Climbing was the best, most fun, most natural thing for me to be excellent at. And Everest. Everest is the grand prize, the one that, when you drop the name, even nonclimbers are amazed. Going for it felt as natural as grabbing for the next hold on the wall at Rockface.

  But now…now it doesn’t feel obvious or natural or even remotely possible. Now I’m here, and I can’t imagine spending fucking brutal days and weeks hanging on the ice, hoping to survive. I can’t do it. And I don’t even know who I am without it.

  I stay up on the helipad, shivering as the sun drops. The mountains turn amber, then deep pink and orange in the sunset. It’s a sight that belongs on a Sierra Club calendar or on an inspirational poster in Paul’s office—one that reminds us to ask for the strength to change what we can, the tranquility to accept what we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference—but it’s not where I belong. Nothing about this place is where I belong.

  * * *

  —

  Rose finds me there, hunched and cold, staring out at the fading sky. It gets dark faster than seems reasonable here, all light swallowed up by the mountains once the sun drops.

  “Hey,” she says quietly, standing behind me, pressing her legs against my back. She radiates heat, even through her thick leggings and boots. “I brought you this.” Bending, she drapes my down parka around me, as though it were a blanket.

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t look at her. Instead I stare out at the impossible mountains, now just a silhouette in the near-total darkness. The sky’s the color of a bruise, of Rose’s cheek after she rescued me.

  Slowly she lowers herself next to me. My back’s cold where she had been standing.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  I shrug and try to smile. “Just nerves or something. Nothing major.”

  “Nerves?” she asks, and her voice is careful, neutral, more doctor voice than Rose voice.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. “I…there’s a lot of shit to think about. There are so many fucking things that can go wrong.”

  My voice rises in spite of myself, and I shut my eyes tighter, trying not to see the endless blackness around us. “And I know I’m the Master of Disaster and always fucking up, but anyone can take a bad step, or shit can break down on the Icefall even if you do everything right! Everything can kill you up there. Do you get that? EVERYTHING!”

  I’m almost shouting, but I don’t care. I can’t help it because it’s like someone’s decided to show a greatest hits movie deep inside my head, reminding me of what it feels like to fall, to fuck up, to miss a step or not arrest a slide, and the fear’s right here trying to grab hold of me.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Rose says, her eyes wide and worried. She turns to face me, up on her knees, her hands on my shoulders as though she can anchor me. “It’s okay, Tate. You’ll be fine.”

  I shake my head. I want to shut up, stop spewing all this, but the stench of my fear is everywhere, and I can’t. I can’t stop my words, and I can’t stop leaning forward until I am pressed against her, wrapping myself around her, her arms folded in against my chest. “No, it’s not okay,” I say, and I try not to shout. “It’s not okay because it’s not only about me. It doesn’t really help if I’m okay because if something happens to you…”

  I stop talking. And she is so close, her eyes wide and worried, her mouth open as though she has more to say, tiny hairs escaping from her hat and flying into my face. And I lean down and kiss her open mouth, just like that, like it’s exactly what I’m supposed to do, like we’re made to do this.

  She kisses me back. Her lips are so soft, so incredibly soft, and they are nothing like the rest of Rose and exactly like everything I know about Rose all at once. We kiss for only a second, or for many long minutes, a bad gum commercial come to life in front of the mountains. I have no idea.

  Holy shit. I kissed Rose.

  “Oh.” One tiny word, a barely-there word, is all she says.

  I should lean away from her, give her some space, but I can’t let go quite yet. I run my fingers lightly down her back, feeling the sharpness of her spine through her jacket. “That was…I should have probably—”

  “No! I mean, I don’t know,” Rose says. She looks right at me, and her expression’s unsure. “But did you mean it?”

  I close my eyes and hold her tighter, tucking my head into her neck and breathing in sweat and incense and lavender moisturizer. She’s brave. Always.

  “Yes,” I say finally, letting her go but grabbing on to her hand. “I could not possibly have meant it more.”

  We stay up there in the darkness until the cold drives us back down. Neither of us says anything. I’m not sure what I can possibly say. We’re here. This is happening. All of it’s happening, and I can’t control anything, I just fall.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Rose

  April 12

  Tengboche

  12,660 feet above sea level

  Breathing like thunder, silence like mountains, newness like nothing has ever been new before. Tate’s skin endlessly hot, so hot that even when we are walking up the trail, many feet apart, I feel it blazing, pulling, calling.

  I keep away.

  We are friends. Best friends. We always rolled our eyes at classmates who whisper-gossiped in our ears, asking what’s really going on. How can this be happening to us now? Was this always there? Or did it grow here, out in the mountain air? I had been so clear, so sure, that it wasn’t like that with me and Tate. It wasn’t even worth discussing when friends brought it up. I don’t think I was lying, except now, now it would be a lie. But what is this new thing? And will it survive the journey home? Ex-RoseAndTate, ex-friends, experience extinguished…unimaginable.

  Kissing Tate in the first darkness of night by the mountains is magic, and I don’t know if there’s room here for magic. Not when I’m short of breath from climbing the stairs to our room, not when I spend dinnertime scooping dal, or lentils, into my mouth without noticing what I’m eating because Finjo is going over the acclimatization schedule at Base Camp; not when soon, so soon, we will be on the climb of our lives.

  I try and explain this to Tate, in our room, which has never felt smaller, all walls and closed doors and beds that grow by the second until they are practically pressing us into each other. My back against the wall, I tell him that no, we are RoseAndTate, we are about to summit Mount Everest, our dream, our biggest climb ever, and we have to concentrate. Have to keep our eyes on
the prize. I actually say “eyes on the prize,” and I wonder if my face could light my scarf on fire, it is burning so hot and red as I talk.

  Tate just nods. Then he walks over to me, only two short steps in our tiny room, until he is right in front of me, all stubble and heat and dark eyes and lips.

  “Maybe not now. But sometime. Soon. All right?” is all he says, and then he bends and kisses me, once, and flames grab my knees, my chest, my whole body, and I want nothing more than to melt into him. But I don’t, and he backs up, still watching me, still grinning his isn’t-this-fun electricity-everywhere grin.

  I open the door and run to the empty, freezing hallway, breathing hard, hoping no one is around to ask questions. My heart pounds so fiercely I am afraid I will fall, afraid I am already gone, somewhere I can never get back from. I stay away until I know he will be asleep. Then return to move around our room in silence, listening to his steady breath.

  * * *

  —

  Now I stay close to Yoon Su, pushing my pace to walk with her, listening to her talk about her life at home, her two cats and part-time job teaching at a girls’ school. She blogs constantly, writing updates to her students, and sometimes she asks me or Luc to write a few words, to describe the scenery or our lodges. Luc surprises me, jumping into this task with enthusiasm usually only seen in kindergarten teachers. Apparently, he has a bunch of nieces and nephews at home, and he is the ultimate favorite uncle. He writes painstaking descriptions of the puppies and kittens we befriend along the trail, photographing them in his jacket pocket or, once, in his hood until Yoon Su yelled at him about fleas.

  Her students love our posts and write comments, cheering us all on and asking Yoon Su to take photos with their school banner at the top. I swear Yoon Su starts moving faster each time she hears from them, like she can race to the summit and dazzle them all.