Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  She was so fucking high. In the air.

  Between the hike and the little scramble, she’d risen so incrementally, Rilla hadn’t realized how far she’d come. The tops of the pines were far below, and over the edge, the wall swept sheer and warm to sudden death. The edge itself seemed to shimmer with its own forces of fate. She pulled away and her back slapped on the granite that continued to rise overhead.

  Holy shit.

  She closed her eyes on the height—on the feeling of her body untethered and adrift. Her heart raced against her ribs. It was quiet all around and inside. Blessed quiet. The ache in her chest eased. She tipped her head against the rock and closed her eyes to the sunshine. And in the quiet, her thoughts formed clearly enough for her to hold on to them.

  She would come down off this cliff, and find a way to keep moving. She didn’t want to go home and see the pity in everyone’s eyes. Pity that she’d been sent away. Pity that she’d come back the same. She had to prove everyone wrong—Thea, her mom, all her friends back home, even these climbers below. She had to prove she wasn’t what everyone thought, and could be what they didn’t expect. If she didn’t, she’d lose everything—any home, any family. She couldn’t change the past, but she could change herself. And by changing herself, her future would have to follow.

  Rilla opened her eyes, setting her shoulders and standing to her feet. Details later. Big picture now.

  All she had to do was keep going.

  Pressing firmly against the wall, away from the edge, Rilla made her way back to the edge she’d ascended.

  The pool shimmered in the breeze thirty feet below, sparkling like a sapphire inlaid into silver granite. The people—strangers in every way, no matter how nice they’d all seemed—sat talking with their feet in the water. Occasionally studying the cliff with their eyes shaded. They’d forgotten her already.

  Rilla’s stomach turned, and the exhaustion and fear left her empty. But she had to get down, she had to keep going, and there was only one way. She backed up, lifted her chin at the empty space, ran, and . . .

  Jumped.

  Straight and sure. Her body snapped tight, hurtling with a snarl toward the bottom of the hole. The water swallowed her, filling her ears and nose, and pausing her heart with its chill. But there was relief in its cold baptism. She arched her body up for the sun, as her clothes swirled around her limbs. Her stomach rolled and unknown fear shook out in every inch of her body as she thrashed.

  Her head broke.

  Petra hollered encouragingly.

  Instantly, Rilla felt the panic on her face and how visible it all was. The fall and the force of the water had sheared back pieces of herself she had never intended to remove. With one deep gasp of the wind, she locked the cold and the fear into her chest, teeth clenched tight to keep it from escaping.

  Petra hollered something, her smile becoming clear as she stood on the shelf and held out a hand.

  Rilla’s ears buzzed. She couldn’t quite hear, but she swam over and took Petra’s hand, letting herself be hauled to stand on the lip. Her shirt was plastered to her bra, and her hair hung in strings. The breeze so cold she wanted to jump back into the water.

  “I thought you didn’t climb?” Walker said accusatorily.

  Rilla swallowed and unhinged her clamped jaw. “I don’t,” she managed to say, hiding the trembling by bending to wring the water out of the bottom of her shirt.

  “That water looks cold.” Petra laughed. “I don’t mind the jump, but I don’t want to swim.” She shivered.

  Rilla tried to chuckle, but it came out more like a hiccup. She flashed Petra a casual smile and shrugged it off. “On the plus side, I think I’m finally sober.”

  Petra looked confused, but she didn’t ask. “You’re making me reconsider why I haven’t made it to West Virginia yet. I’ve heard the New River Gorge is amazing.”

  “It’s one of my favorite places,” Caroline said. “You should totally go, Petra.”

  “Oh, that’s right, is that the closest climbing to you?”

  Caroline shook her head. “We’re closer to the Red.”

  All Rilla wanted to do was to listen to someone talk and not feel totally lost. She sat down and clutched her knees, trying to keep the trembling under control.

  “You have to do it now, Hico. She’s never climbed,” Petra said, sloshing toward the base of the cliff.

  “The climbing isn’t the problem,” Hico replied. “It’s the swim.”

  The wind died and the sun hit her back, easing the shudders wrenching at her spine.

  Rilla closed her eyes. She could do this. She could do this. What this was, she was still uncertain. But she kept telling herself she could, over and over.

  “What was that shit?” Walker asked, his tone low and clipped.

  No one answered. Her eyes flew open and found him watching. “What?” she asked stupidly, dropping her gaze. Unfortunately, staring at the hard lines of his forearms draped over his knees just turned her mouth cotton dry like she hadn’t just crawled out of the water.

  “You don’t climb?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been climbing,” she said.

  “What did you just do?”

  “Cliff-jumping.” Just like at home. Minus all the warmth, friends, and inner tubes.

  He was silent.

  Rilla tugged her eyes away from his arms.

  His jaw worked, eyes on Hico and Petra on the cliff. “Did I do something?” he asked tightly. “To upset you? Earlier?”

  Oh. She hadn’t expected him to ask. She’d cried and frozen on the wall ten feet off the ground less than two hours ago. But now her mind was blank, staring again at the sun on his skin. He was tanner than he’d been at the roadside in Merced. It was only a few days and he’d managed to change. Meanwhile, she had traveled the span of the country and stayed the exact same person she’d been at home. “The rope upset me,” she finally said. “I’ve never climbed with a rope.”

  “You don’t like safety?” He asked it as if it was a joke, but as he said the words, her spine straightened and she couldn’t look at him again. Before she could come up with a retort, he nodded and repeated in a serious tone, “You don’t like safety.” As if that said much more about her than she’d ever intended to tell him.

  “You’re full of shit,” she retorted. “If you didn’t want to take me climbing, why didn’t you just say so? If I can’t trust you to tell the truth about how you feel, why should I trust you to tell the truth when you say I’m not going to fall? Why should I trust you at all?”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched, and he looked at her. But this time, for real. The intensity under his skin gathered and fixed directly on her.

  She forced herself against the urge to shy away, staring right back into his cornflower-blue eyes. They looked like the pool from above—the same fathomless blue water dropping into unseen currents and holes she might get sucked into and never escape. Her body hummed. Something passed between them—but what it was, she had no idea.

  She wasn’t sure how long that moment lasted. Petra called for her, and Rilla ran off to climb, feeling all the while as if she and Walker were still sitting on the granite. The moment they’d accused each other of fear and deceit had left something massive and new, uncovered.

  •

  Rilla made it back to the house in mostly dried clothes and what she felt was a reasonable hour around dinnertime, half expecting Thea not to be home. But Thea was on the phone on the steps—still in her ranger uniform, with her shirt untucked, hair loosened from her braid, and bare feet. She lifted her head as Rilla walked up, eyes sunken with dark circles.

  Rilla ducked her head, ashamed to think Thea looked haggard from her late-night rescue efforts.

  “Mom wants to talk to you,” Thea said over the phone.

  Oh. Rilla bit her lip and nodded.

  “Mom.” Thea paused. “Mom,” she said again. She rolled her eyes. “Mom. Rilla’s here. I’ll let her hang up.” She handed over the p
hone.

  Rilla’s stomach tightened, but she pressed the phone to her ear and looked at her feet in the dry grass. The rock had left scrapes on her legs, and she focused on the sting to keep from feeling the one in her chest.

  “Hey baby,” her mom said. “How is California?”

  “Good,” Rilla answered.

  “Get all settled in with Thea?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was an awkward pause. “Daddy said to tell you he loves you. I’m doing all right,” Mom went on. “The house is lonely though. I went over to Ashlyn’s the other day just because I couldn’t handle the quiet . . .” Mom kept talking.

  Rilla looked up and found her sister watching her, chin in her hand, eyes dark and sad.

  Rilla turned her back to Thea. “That’s great, Mom. I’m doing great. Thea has to wear a cowboy hat.”

  “Oh really?” Mom was distracted. “Oh, that’s right, they wear Stetsons, don’t they? I’m not surprised, Dad . . .” Mom meant Marco, Thea’s dad. Daddy always meant Tom. Dad was Marco. Rilla had thought every family was like that, until somewhere in third grade when Alison Andrews said Rilla couldn’t be invited to anything because Rilla had three parents. “. . . always looked good in a Stetson. He had this black one . . .” Mom launched into a story about a man that left her eight years ago, her tone bright and energetic as if it hadn’t meant anything at all.

  Rilla listened to the story, laughing in all the right spots. It made her feel less homesick. “Your mother is many things, but first and foremost, she’s a survivor,” that’s what Granny had said before she died, and it’d stuck as the best way to summarize her mother even to herself. Rilla didn’t understand all her mother’s life, but she knew this was how she coped with loss, even though it made Rilla’s chest ache to feel the hole of a man she’d once called Dad. She could understand the sadness in Thea’s eyes—Mom probably talked to Thea the same way.

  “You’ve been keeping out of trouble?” Mom asked, but with a conspiratorial tone. “I don’t know why I ask though. Your sister is such a hard-ass—everything is probably trouble.”

  Rilla looked down. “Yeah, we’re both . . . uh . . . adjusting.”

  Mom laughed. “You’ll manage. I know you will. It’ll be good for you to be on your own a little. I was on my own at your age. Grandma kicked me out. I was pregnant.”

  Not with Thea, but with a baby Rilla only knew of as having not made it.

  “At least we know Thea gets it honestly.” She laughed again. Mom always had a great laugh. And hearing her made Rilla feel reassured this was all part of the process.

  “You’re going to be okay, baby. I know it. Don’t miss me too much.”

  “Love you,” Rilla said.

  “Love you too.”

  Mom hung up. Rilla handed the phone back to Thea.

  “What did she say?”

  Rilla shrugged.

  Thea’s eyes narrowed. “You okay? Where were you at?”

  “Not in trouble,” Rilla snapped.

  “Did I say you were? I asked where you were.”

  “I don’t know. In the woods. With Walker and some climbers.”

  Surprise flickered on Thea’s face. “Rock climbers? Walker?”

  Rilla nodded.

  Thea pushed back her hair, eyes narrowing. “Hmm . . . well, you have all that schoolwork to catch up on.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t forget about it. If you do a little every day, it won’t be bad.”

  Rilla nodded. “I know.”

  Thea still didn’t move. “You feel okay about Mom?” she asked like she was expecting something else.

  Rilla stepped over her sister. “Not everyone has mommy issues like you,” she said, heading inside and shutting the door on whatever Thea planned to say next.

  Six

  The next morning, Rilla opened her eyes to the god-awful sight of Thea hunched under the eaves, kitchen tongs brandished in one hand and a new cell phone in the other. “I’m cooking bacon. Get it while it lasts,” she said, tossing the phone onto the blankets.

  Rilla rolled over, an involuntary moan escaping as her muscles protested every movement. The sides of her back felt as if someone had wound the length of her muscles into snarls overnight; and her hamstrings were definitely two inches shorter than they’d been when she went to bed. The cold morning air wasn’t helping. She turned on the phone and texted a friend from home, Layla.

  Hey got a new phone, finally. Call me! It was mid-morning back home; Layla was sure to reply soon.

  Rilla pulled on a pair of socks and climbed down the ladder to the hallway. It was a little easier today—to walk past the strangers in a strange house.

  Thea was in the kitchen, cooking bacon under a wall of oppressively dark walnut cabinets. Rilla leaned on her elbows just inside the kitchen door, on the edge of the pea-green counter, logging back into social media and inhaling the smoky-salt scent of bacon. “This weather is giving me whiplash,” she said to Thea’s back, switching over to the camera to see what manner of death she looked like today.

  Rilla frowned and held the phone farther away. Sorcery. Her hair looked frizz-free and tousled in a way she’d never ever be able to replicate on purpose, and her cheeks were flushed pink, making her look alive. She took a selfie and flicked over to Instagram, trying to ignore that Layla still hadn’t replied.

  “It’s the desert. Cold at night, warm in the day.” Thea set a plate in front of Rilla and licked her thumb. “Did you get any schoolwork done last night?” Thea opened a cupboard next to an honest-to-god rotary phone and took out a glass.

  Rilla put the #hangoverselfie on Instagram and picked up her bacon. “I looked at it.” She passed the pile of books on her way to bed.

  “I can’t believe your grades were all failing. Don’t you remember how much you loved school?”

  Rilla remembered. She remembered when Mom, Dad, and Daddy were in jail for check fraud, and Thea hid it from everyone so they wouldn’t get separated. Rilla would spend hours in the library after school, until Thea came to get her from work. Funny how Thea was doing the same things Mom always did when it came to remembering the reality of someone else’s life. Rilla decided not to answer.

  “They wanted to make you redo junior year,” Thea continued. “But I told the principal about your situation, and they agreed to let you make up the work over the summer. I told her it’d be different. You’d be different here. With some stability.” Thea filled the glass and handed it over. “Right?”

  Rilla took a sip of the water and nodded. “Right.” Her throat felt dry. She took another drink, and her phone lit with a notification. A friend from home had commented on her photo.

  You can take the girl away from the Skidmores, but you can’t take the Skidmore away from the girl.

  Rilla made a face. The hashtag was supposed to be funny, Bobby Jo. A joke. West Virginia got involved and suddenly Rilla felt tragic. Rilla put the phone down.

  Thea’s neatly wrapped chignon bobbed briskly as she lectured, flipped pancakes, and made three other plates.

  “Aw, shit,” one of the women said, coming out in a hooded sweatshirt that hit her knees. “Bacon!” She grabbed pancakes off the pile.

  “Rilla, this is Jessica. Jessica, this is—”

  “The baby sister,” Jessica said, eyebrows high on her forehead like she had finally hit on something interesting while channel surfing. She seemed around the same age as Thea. “Hey, Rilla.”

  Rilla forced a smile.

  Another woman came into the kitchen, smiling at Rilla like she already knew her.

  Rilla pressed her lips tight and glared at Thea’s back. When had Thea turned into a person who told everyone her business?

  “I’m Lauren,” the smiling woman said. She had shoulder-length black hair and tattoos covering one arm.

  “Hi,” Rilla said curtly.

  Thea turned, giving Lauren a look Rilla didn’t understand.

  “Still settling in. Got it,” L
auren said, taking her plate. She gave Rilla the universal look of oh shit, you’re in trouble, and disappeared.

  Thea resumed her lecture as she finished cooking the pancakes. “It’s stupid that you waste your brain like this . . . this is manageable. If you work hard . . . I know you can do this. You just have to want to do it.”

  As if Rilla didn’t try and still, somehow, didn’t get it right. As if she wanted to fail. It almost made her not hungry for the fluffy pancakes Thea piled on her plate. Almost. Rilla dumped syrup over the pools of melting butter.

  “My schedule is on the calendar on the fridge,” Thea said, wiping off the griddle. “When I’m not here, you need to be doing your schoolwork. I’ll leave my computer on the counter. Don’t leave the Valley. Be smart. Be safe. And be home by nine thirty.”

  Home was in West Virginia. Rilla couldn’t feel like California was home—there was nothing here to make it hers, and it would be ripped away whenever Thea decided. Rilla stuffed a bite into her mouth and tried to shift the conversation. “Do all rangers have to work this much?”

  It was the wrong question. Thea’s forehead creased. “I don’t work that much. They’re just long shifts.”

  “How did you get into this job, anyway?” Rilla asked, cutting her pancakes. “Do you have a boyfriend, or is this basically your life?”

  Thea shrugged. “I like this. I don’t know what you mean by is this my life? You can have a life without a boyfriend.”

  Rilla poked at her pancakes. This wasn’t going well. New direction. “Walker says you climb? I went with them up to this hole in the cliff. The water was so cold it gave me a headache jumping in, but . . .” She paused to shove a mouthful of pancake into her mouth, and continued talking over it. “I mean, I didn’t hate it. Walker tried to show me—”

  Thea looked up from where she flipped through mail. “Walker is great as a person, but he’s not a guy to get involved with. You know that, right?”