Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  I take similar photos and videos, sending them to Mami, trying to send every detail her way. But now when I’m writing, I try to think of words that are not kiss and hot and want and need. Now when I film the landscape for Mami I have to keep moving my camera away from Tate, like he’s true north and I’m the magnet, incapable of staying away.

  Yoon Su is still faster than me, and I’m breathless trying to keep up, breathless trying not to stare at Tate, who is always, always looking at me. Sometime. Soon. I keep my eyes forward and think of the mountains ahead.

  * * *

  —

  Today is a walk to Tengboche, a famous Buddhist monastery on the way up to Base Camp. I barely notice the trail, and suddenly we are there, in front of a massive, gorgeous temple looming against the mountains. It’s a cluster of buildings, really, all built around a central temple that rises against Ama Dablam, Lhotse, and of course, Everest. They still look endlessly far away, though we are only days from Base Camp. Pulling my eyes away from the peaks, I take in the temple and the masses of mani stones and prayer wheels that surround it.

  “It’s so new,” Luc says from beside me. “I thought it was ancient, this place.”

  Yoon Su answers. “It was old. Then it was destroyed in an avalanche in 1933. They rebuilt. Then a fire in 1989 destroyed it again. It is only in the 1990s that it was rebuilt again.”

  Luc laughs. “That is stubborn! Maybe their gods were telling them that this is not the place.” He continues in a high, silly voice, “ ‘Move ze temple! I will smite it! This is your last warning! Écoutez! I really mean it this time!’ Right? Not the smartest thing to do.”

  I can’t help laughing at his exaggerated gestures of confusion. Luc remains as politically incorrect as possible, maybe because it makes Yoon Su nuts. Sure enough, she starts lecturing him, and the two of them move forward, toward the huge red gate.

  I stare at the buildings, which manage to look both medieval and modern at the same time. There’s a steady stream of tourists walking in—probably Everest expedition climbers. Ever since Norgay and Hillary’s famous first ascent up this route to the summit in 1953, climbers have been stopping here to light candles and receive a blessing from the lama for safe passage. Of course, it doesn’t always work, but that doesn’t stop people—Sherpas and tourists alike—from being superstitious.

  I’m not ready to enter the monastery, to begin the official ritual that will mark our move up the mountain toward Base Camp. Everything changes here. I want to think about the path ahead, but instead I close my eyes and relive Tate’s lips, soft and hot against my own.

  “Are you meditating?” Tate’s voice comes from right over my shoulder, and I nearly fall over in surprise.

  When I open my eyes, he is right next to me, and my body wants to move without my permission, to lean into him and breathe him in. I look away. Red Hot Rose, melting the mountains with the heat of her cheeks.

  “Or maybe not meditating?” Tate says, even closer to my ear. “Maybe thinking about—”

  I cut him off. “Paul’s here.” I wave over Tate’s shoulder as he steps away from me, leaving cold air where he had been.

  “What are you two whispering about?” Paul asks, joining us. “Is there nefarious planning happening? If so, tell me all about it!”

  “Nothing!” I say, as Tate says, “Just enjoying the views.” My cheeks flame even hotter.

  Paul looks at us. “Okaaay,” he says. But he doesn’t ask anything else. Instead he turns to the monastery. “Here we go! This is the official beginning, right? Or at least the beginning of the beginning. So, we ready to go in?” He starts humming.

  Tate moves along the path. “I don’t even know that one. Dude, you’re getting a little esoteric in your choices.”

  Paul stops humming. “ ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You!’ Mulan! Exploring gender norms, discrimination, civil disobedience…right, Rosie? Back me up on this one.”

  I shake my head. Sometimes Paul and his Disney chatter is way too much for me. “I’m going to…I need to walk around a bit.” I head off before they can answer. I can’t tell if I’m grateful or pissed that Paul showed up before I did anything too stupid to be undone.

  I start to walk around the temple. In theory, I was going to take some notes and try to say something intelligent about indigenous design and architecture of the Khumbu region, but that hasn’t happened yet. And since I can’t stop watching Tate, I’m not likely to get much done now. Walking around the compound, I spin the prayer wheels that line the sides. Om mani padme hum. The jewel in the heart of the lotus. I try to take deep, calming breaths, try to feel the spirit of the place penetrate me, calm me, center me. I want to truly be here, immersed in this place. Instead my mind is flying ahead, to the increasingly cold and thin-aired lodges to come, to Everest Base Camp, which is only a week away. To Tate, kissing me as though our mouths belong together as easily as the rest of us. To me, kissing him back, his touch answering questions I only now realize I’ve been asking. The wanting threatens to flood my brain, and I push it away.

  Sometime. Soon. What can that even mean? Tate and I have this climb, this dream-come-true Everest summit, and then what? Summer? College? Unless he’s gotten more news than he’s shared, State’s the only place he got in.

  My chest knots, and I want to tear my brain out of my head. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m in the most beautiful spot on the planet, about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. But all I can do is worry about whether Tate should have studied harder in American History last year so that his GPA was a little higher.

  “You seem unquiet.”

  The voice startles me, and I have to stifle a scream. It’s Asha. I put my hand over my racing heart. I’ve walked almost halfway around the buildings, barely taking notice of the tall prayer flags and mani stones. Clouds have rolled in, hiding the mountain peaks and highlighting the bright red of the gates against the browns and grays: brown earth, pale buildings, gray rock.

  “I, too, thought to take a walk, to meditate a bit. But then I saw you, stomping—” here she breaks off to imitate me, scowl on my face, storming along the path “—and I thought I would see that all is okay.” She smiles.

  I like Asha. When Mami and I researched expedition companies, Mountain Adventure was one of the few that trained and supported women Sherpas to guide, and Asha will do her first Everest summit with us. She’s probably five years older than me but seems so grown-up that I feel like a kid next to her. A really tall kid.

  I start to answer but don’t really know what to say. I shrug, then look ahead. Beyond us Yoon Su is also walking, but at a fast pace. She spins the prayer wheels so hard I can hear the whir from here.

  Asha’s eyes follow mine. “She’s impatient, I think.”

  I nod. Yoon Su has been impatient from our first dinner. She gets visibly upset if we’re behind schedule, even by a few hours. I thought I was bad, but at least here I know I can’t go any faster than the guides—and the mountains—let us. I once asked her why she was in such a rush, since we can’t climb until we’ve acclimatized, until the weather window opens, until a million details come together. But she just shrugged and said something about no time to waste.

  I turn to Asha. “Why do you want to climb Everest? Why does it matter to you?”

  She laughs a surprised laugh. “Money. The guides who summit Everest earn more than anyone else. This will be my first Everest summit, though I have already summited Lhotse and Cho Oyu.” She names two of the ten highest mountains in the world, which are part of the same range as Everest. “I am lucky that Finjo was willing to train me, as many companies do not want women guides. But as a guide, I earn good money. My oldest brother died several years ago, and my middle brother is here, at the monastery, as a monk. After Everest, our family will be much better off.”

  I nod, unsure of what to say. I know how poor most of the country is, of
course. And I told Tate the truth: Mami researched and found a Nepali-owned expedition that pays fair wages and life insurance and helps the local economy, which some of the other companies definitely don’t do. But with my dreams of the summit, I never thought about Everest as a source of a pay raise. At home, tagging peaks is all about the bragging rights, not about the payout. Sure, pro climbers try to set more and more exciting routes to get sponsors, but most of us spend huge, once-in-a-lifetime sums for the challenge, the excitement, the rush we get from climbing.

  Asha looks at me. “Can I ask you why you are climbing?”

  I’m embarrassed, trying to think of an answer that doesn’t sound self-indulgent and spoiled. It seemed really cool? I want to knock it off my bucket list? I can’t quite think of how to answer.

  “Tate and I have climbed since we were kids. And my mom,” I begin but then stop. Because I’m trying to remember, trying to think back to the steps that landed me here. RoseAndTate, climbing partners forever. Mami, loving climbing with me, her monkey-mama arms reaching higher than seemed possible, always packing chocolate for the celebrations at the top. It seemed natural that we’d climb more and more challenging peaks, that we would set our sights on Everest, the top of the world.

  I try not to think about how I resented the hours of training, how Mami would ask me, an edge in her voice, if I was sure, really certain that I wanted to do this, and how I’d answer, a matching edge in my own, that obviously I wanted it, but she needed to chill out and stop nagging. I’ve always wanted this, but I never had to think about how much until Mami stopped being the wind at my back, pushing me up the mountain. Until suddenly I’m here, preparing to climb, and Mami isn’t.

  “I don’t know,” I say finally. “The challenge, I guess. And the beauty. If you love to climb, climbing to the summit of the earth seems an obvious thing to want.” I speak slowly, more to myself than to Asha.

  “My mom is…was…a climber too. And she got sick and can’t climb anymore. So if I can do this, then in a way, she gets to do it too, you know? Because she’s so excited for me.” I don’t say the rest, which is that secretly, shamefully, it’s far less scary to be here, half a world away from Mami’s pain and the endless waiting Dread that whispers in my ear that she could get sicker, she could die, she could leave me forever. Climbing, with all the exhaustion and risk, is easier.

  “I’m sorry about your older brother,” I say. “How did he die?”

  “Climbing,” Asha says simply.

  I nod, but I don’t say anything else because I don’t know what to say.

  We walk in silence for a few more minutes, until we are back at the entrance.

  “Are you ready to enter?” Asha asks.

  A thin, young monk waves at us, grinning from inside the doorway. He’s holding a cell phone in one hand, incongruous with his shaved head and burgundy-and-saffron robes.

  “My brother,” she says, and her smile is big and bright. “Come on.”

  We go in, and at once I’m struck by the riot of colors, bright reds, vivid oranges, deep blues, and greens that cover every inch of the space. Ceilings, columns, floors—they are all painted in wild designs that almost burn my eyes after the dull gray of the landscape.

  I smile and nod at Asha’s brother and follow obediently as he walks us through the richly decorated temple to the modern information display. But my mind is racing ahead. We will be at Base Camp in a few days. As I stare, unseeing, at the board in front of me, my mind is not on the climb. It is on Tate, whose eyes burn into me from across the room.

  I try to look away.

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Tate

  April 13

  Tengboche

  12,600 feet above sea level

  We’re way above the tree line now, above anything alive. Here it’s only scrubby, low bushes and dirt and hundreds of damn yaks that churn up crazy amounts of dust. It’s like walking through a continuous dust storm, and we leave our buffs over our mouths to keep from breathing it all in. I can tell Rose is starting to feel the altitude. She moves a little more slowly, talks a little less, pauses at the top of a steep ascent with her hands on her knees for a few seconds.

  I feel fine. Great, actually, at least in terms of the altitude. I’d feel even better if I could kiss Rose again, if I didn’t have to force myself to leave her alone. I want to be all caveman crazy, pulling her to me and holding her by her shoulders until she looks me in the eye and kisses me like she did that first night, until I get to kiss her neck and her wrists and every other tiny flash of skin that I see through slitted eyes when she silently slides into her sleeping bag, thinking I’m asleep.

  I’m spending a lot of alone time in the tiny ice-cold spigots that pass for showers in the lodges. Jesus.

  Wanting Rose is totally new, swallowing everything else in my brain. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, though not nearly as much as Ronan and the other guys assume. He used to beg me to spill Letters to Penthouse–worthy stories about me and Rose sharing a tent. And yes, Rose is hot, and yes, I’ve seen her mostly naked before, in tents or on climbs or at the beach. But it’s Rose, and there’s a wall in my mind that kept all those thoughts on the far side, with golf and cat barf and other desire-killing items. But now wanting her is unlike wanting any girl, even my girlfriends, such as they were. Most of my girlfriends have been pretty short-term. After all, whoever I was dating had to deal with the fact that I still spent most of my time with Rose.

  We’re heading into Pangboche, a village where we’ll stop in to see some famous religious guy for a blessing. It’s apparently an honor—we actually go to this old guy’s home, and he escaped from Tibet to live here. Definitely cool, but I’d rather skip it. I’m not really in the mood for some spiritual moment. I want to keep moving.

  Moving’s the only time my brain quiets, the only time I’m not worrying, not freaking out about Rose, about climbing, about whatever happens next. I put one foot ahead of the other, watching the swirl of dust fly up past my boot. The landscape’s empty, sky and peaks and the occasional prayer flag–covered stupa.

  It’s easy to walk. If I could, I’d walk for days, for months, for years, just keep walking, spending nights in tiny rooms with Rose, then waking up and doing it again. No need for plans or looking out for the occasional emails when we get internet for a few hours, which will only tell me I’ve been rejected from another college.

  Long before I’m ready to stop, we’re here. Yoon Su and Rose talk in low voices as we walk in, everyone slow and solemn.

  “Lama Geshe, namaste,” Finjo says, and bows.

  A tiny, old man with a bald head shining like a brown cue ball smiles at us. “Namaste,” he says, bringing his hands together and bowing low. “Welcome. And thank you.”

  We take our seats in his crowded living room, and his wife and daughter pass us small cups of tea. We’re all silent, and I slurp my tea.

  “GAH!” I work really hard not to spit the tea back out, but it’s a challenge.

  Lama Dude bursts out laughing. “Salted yak butter tea. Is it not to your liking?” he asks, and by the sly look in his eyes, I’m guessing I’m not the first guest to be surprised by the greasy, salty mess.

  Dad’s looking at me, his eyes narrowed in his don’t-embarrass-me stare. But I was raised right, even if my host gave me sink backwash for a cocktail.

  “It’s delicious, thank you,” I say, “just a little hot.” I take another sip, breathing through my mouth until it’s safely down my throat.

  Everyone else, warned by my canary-in-a-coal-mine move, takes careful sips. Lama Geshe winks at me, like it was all part of a good joke.

  “Last week, an old friend of mine came, a Canadian scientist, and he brought with him a group of graduate students from his university, here to research our glaciers. One of them was clearly unhappy. He moved slowly and heavily. He had no smile, even when ot
hers smiled at him. He did not carry as big a load as the others. Truly he was uncomfortable. The other students, they called him ‘Doughboy’ and did not seem to enjoy his company. So I gave him some tea.” He grins. “He spit it—splat! On the floor. He says, loudly, ‘TOO SALTY!’ My friend, he escorted that boy outside. I hear quiet voices, then loud ones. I never saw Doughboy again.”

  He looks around at us and laughs his big laugh again. “I am glad there are no Doughboys here today.”

  Well, that pretty much breaks the ice. We all start talking and laughing, and Luc imitates my face when I tasted the tea. But after a few minutes of this, Lama Geshe rings a small brass bell, and we all fall silent.

  He gives us his blessing, asking the mountain gods for permission to climb and for safety for the climbers. Then he walks to each of us and drops a silk kata, a white ceremonial scarf, on us, hands us a little written blessing, then puts a red string around our necks.

  I’m last in line. When he gets to me, he holds me by the shoulders and pulls me forward so that our foreheads bump together. I want to rub my head; he bumped me pretty hard. But I’m no Doughboy.

  He doesn’t let go right away but keeps hold of my shoulders, peering into my face. I try not to look away, but I’m all done with this. It’s hot and stuffy, with the incense burning and making my eyes sting, and I want out.

  But still he holds on.

  “What?” I say finally. “I mean, um, thank you.”

  He smiles again, and when he speaks, his voice is quiet, only for me. “You will not look me in the eye, and you move around like you want to be anywhere but here. I think maybe you do not wish me to ask the gods for you to pass. Is it because you don’t believe in them or don’t believe in this journey?”

  I don’t answer. I stood here, taking the scarf, the blessing, the whole thing, same as everyone. I don’t know what else he wants.

  Lama Geshe pulls me close one more time. “You must choose what peak you aim to summit. You must tame your mind before you tame the mountain.” Then he pushes me back and turns away.