“Your sister came over,” Walker said to Rilla.
“She was doing the rescue?”
“We put her on the line, since she’s trained for it.” Walker nodded. “We needed extra people, with the current so strong.”
“She’s okay, right?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, as if there was never any question. “I bet she’s pretty pumped. The person might even make it.”
Rilla smiled, happy to hear something went right for Thea.
No one even asked if Rilla wanted a plate. One was just handed to her, overfilled with fried potatoes, softened and charred onions and cloves of garlic, eggplant, and corn, a piece of battered, fried fish, and a soft roll that looked familiar to the ones Jonah stole from the dining hall.
“That hiker we brought off Half Dome the other day gave us the fish as a thank-you,” old guy said as Caroline lifted her phone high and took a picture.
Rilla hadn’t thought she even had an appetite until she inhaled the char-grilled smell. The others chattered away and the campground swirled around them, Rilla leaned on her elbow, forcing her aching muscles to move from her fork to her plate to her mouth.
“Tired?” Walker asked quietly, leaning back on his elbows.
“Sore,” she said. “I don’t think I even have energy to shower.”
He chuckled, gaze dropping in a distracting way. “What did you guys do?”
“El Cap Tree,” she said over a mouthful.
“You weren’t overplaying this,” Caroline said to him as she ate.
“I told you,” Walker’s voice lightly sang. “You didn’t want to believe me.”
Rilla wasn’t sure what they meant, but it seemed to be good, and she’d never felt more at home, despite being an outsider. The food went down easily, warming her belly. Her limbs stiffened and filled with sleepy lead.
They stayed there—in camp chairs propped up in a world carefully constructed of light. Shifting gold into fuchsia pinks, and deepening nearly fluorescent purple alpenglow, the sunset wove into the rocks and the water. The sky was sugar. The sheer cliffs rising up on all sides were veined granite polished into mirrors. Light gushed, frothing in iridescent foam on the Merced.
Every time she glanced at Walker, his blue eyes reflected the ephemeral joy she felt, sitting on that picnic table bench. Everyone sat around, laughing and talking. Rilla’s eyes burned and she eventually pushed off the table and said her thanks.
“I’ll walk you back,” Walker said.
Even in her exhaustion, Rilla felt the surge of adrenaline as his long body fell into rhythm beside hers and the people they left behind hollered suggestively.
He rolled his eyes and flicked them off.
She laughed.
“Martinez would kill me if her little sister died on the walk back,” he hollered over his shoulder.
Rilla groaned, tripping over the rocks in the dark. “It is possible I might die. I am so sore and tired.”
“That happens.” He reached over and grasped the back of her neck, giving it a squeeze like he was massaging her muscles, before awkwardly dropping his hand and pulling away.
Her eyes widened in the dark and tried to find something innocuous to say. “Busy day for you?”
“Not really. I wasn’t involved in the river thing.” He laughed. “I mean. I rescued bear cubs from the river, one in each hand.”
“With no shirt, right? And an axe or some shit, like a deodorant commercial.”
“Oh, we’re past deodorant commercial. More like body spray level.” He tossed his head like he was whipping back his hair in an imaginary wind.
She laughed, then cried. “Don’t make me laugh, my stomach muscles hurt. Everything hurts.”
“Poor baby,” Walker murmured mockingly, knocking the edge of his shoulder into hers.
“Ow.” She slapped at his stomach.
He grabbed her wrist and for a blissful second, they were entangled before he shook her off, laughing. “How did it go though, really?”
“Other than climbing with the most intimidating climber possible, you mean?”
“Caroline is nice.”
“Yeah, because she’s your sister.”
“If I was answering about my sister, I would not say that.” He snorted, still holding her wrist. “She was impressed. You did good. Does it feel good?”
Every beat of her heart pumped blood into that sliver of skin under his warm, roughened fingers. “It feels so good,” she said.
They walked under the spreading, lichen covered black oaks, the darkness sweet and warm and the wind tinged with a faint hint of smoke. His skin glowed in the dark and she closed her eyes, walking beside him with her wrist still held between his fingers, a little awkwardly like he was almost holding her hand but hadn’t committed to it.
Her head pulsed with the feeling of this moment.
It was everything.
In sight of the house, he let go. “See ya ’round, West Virginia.”
She didn’t respond—all the feeling was stuck in her throat. Turning, she wistfully watched the sway of his shoulders as he walked back into the dark. The wind blew and she shivered, longing rippling into something else. It was terrifying to want something she’d never wanted before—something that would expose her and risk herself in a way she’d avoided. Curtis had never been a risk, not like this. She narrowed her eyes into the dark. She wanted him, even if she had to work for it. Turning, she headed inside.
Thea was asleep on the couch when she went inside—belly down, fingers on the floor. And drooling. Rilla paused by the couch. Hopefully, Thea hadn’t been waiting for her.
Rilla showered off the dirt and grime. When she closed her eyes, all she saw was dihedrals and arêtes and her body making angles to work her way against gravity. She defied gravity. Broke the rules. And had come back alive.
After her shower, she came out to Thea sitting upright, with a stack of paperwork in her lap.
“Thought I heard you come in,” Thea said. “You look like you got sun.”
Rilla looked at her pink shoulders and shrugged. “Want tea?”
“No . . .” Her gaze flickered over Rilla. “I mean . . . sure. What were you up to all day?”
“Playing outside,” Rilla answered, pulling a mug out of the cupboard. “I heard about your river thing.”
Thea made a noise.
“Are you . . .” Rilla frowned and watched the microwave numbers descend. Somehow it seemed silly to ask her sister if she felt okay. Thea was always okay. But suddenly Rilla wondered if that’s just how she saw Thea because that’s how she wanted to see her. She swallowed. “Are you okay? I heard they’re going to live.”
“Yeah. We seemed to get to him in time. I’m just glad it wasn’t you,” Thea said, standing and stretching her arms wide. “I didn’t anticipate how I’d assume every rescue call was for you.”
Rilla snorted. “I’m not that much of a disaster.” She wasn’t. She’d climbed with Caroline Jennings and everyone had lived.
“You’re not a disaster, baby girl.” Thea pulled her forward and kissed her forehead in a way that made Rilla feel young, in a good way. “You’ve been doing so well. I’m proud of you. I’m so glad you’re here.”
The microwave dinged.
“But just because you’re not a disaster doesn’t mean disaster can’t happen to you. You can do everything right, and still not come back alive,” Thea said. “That’s just the risk we take to live our lives sometimes.”
Rilla pulled out the hot water and added a teabag. She handed Thea the mug and took a deep breath. If she could do it on the wall, she could do it here. “I am sorry.”
Thea’s forehead creased. “For what?”
Rilla swallowed. It was a little easier than it’d been the first time, but not much. “I am sorry I made you feel like you had to tell Mom something you weren’t comfortable sharing. That wasn’t right of me. I didn’t realize I was making it about that. But I can see now, it was easier to make it about y
ou and your feelings than to admit how angry I felt when you left.”
“Anger isn’t an emotion, it’s a reaction,” Thea said.
Rilla made a face. “Ugh. What do you want from me?”
Thea smiled softly. “Yeah, I know. It’s hard for me too. To talk about my feelings.”
If she wasn’t angry when Thea left, what had she been? She chewed her lip. “Abandoned? I felt abandoned. Everyone started leaving. Granny died. Daddy . . . Marco,” she corrected. “Left. Then you did. I can’t fault Granny for dying. But you and Daddy—did you just leave because he did?”
“No!” Thea sat down, looking stunned. “No, that wasn’t it at all. I was angry at Daddy for leaving. I didn’t even talk to him except for a few years ago. I left because I had to. I didn’t mean to abandon you, but . . .” She rubbed her face and sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”
Rilla looked at her hands. “I can listen.”
It was silent. Thea exhaled. “Mom depended on me . . . to the point where I was paying the bills, I was running the house, and Mom and Tom—they got angry if I did anything else. I woke up one morning and realized this wasn’t how I wanted to live. I was eighteen and if I didn’t leave then, I was afraid I never would.”
“I didn’t realize . . .” But Rilla could see it, now when she looked back.
Thea shook her head, dangerously close to tears. “I couldn’t stay, Rilla. I’m sorry.”
“I wouldn’t want you to have stayed. I just didn’t know that until now.”
Thea smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Rilla nodded. “Me too.” It was worth the fear and the agony. Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out. Caroline had texted—three pictures. The first was their selfie, smiling wide and messy hair in their helmets. An up-the-nose shot for Rilla, lovely.
The others were Rilla on the edge . . . the massive Valley framed behind her. She smiled. She barely recognized herself. Saving them to her phone, she flicked over to Instagram and got halfway through uploading a shot of her looking down, when she canceled it.
The only reason she’d wanted that picture was to prove something. But who was she trying to prove something to? Everyone at home had only wanted a spectacle. When she stopped being a spectacle, they stopped caring.
She looked at the photo again. That is me, she told herself over and over. Staring at the girl’s thick, hardened arms. Her curious look hundreds of feet below. Her strong legs and messy braid. That is me. No one in West Virginia needed to believe this. No one needed to see it. It was all she’d hoped she could be, and all they’d never believed. She was the one who needed to see it. She was the one who needed to believe it.
Going back to Instagram, she uploaded the one of her and Caroline, #ValleyGirls. Upstairs, she combed through the slopped over pile of homework, pulled out her algebra, and folded her legs under the bare lightbulb. Pencil in one hand and chin tucked into the other, she began.
And didn’t stop.
All night. Under the wind gusting through the open window, whispering all the things she could want, because a tree and a frog grew four hundred feet above the Valley floor.
Twenty Five
The Nose became a secret. She kept it tight inside her chest, a note she’d hidden inside her ribcage, that only she could read. A desire so laughably out of her ability, she couldn’t afford to let it escape, even as she alternated between working for more gear and climbing with anyone who would have her as a partner. She unfolded it and read it in her soul while scrubbing the floor of the public bathrooms in Half Dome Village for twenty dollars from Bethany and Amarie. She checked to make sure it was still there when newcomers, Olivia and her partner Avery, showed her the short, painfully big moves on the Camp 4 boulders. She picked it out of the dirt and tucked it back away after she landed on her ass on their bouldering mat over and over.
Olivia caught her staring at the white lightning bolt smeared onto the granite boulder in chalk.
“It’s famous,” Olivia said. “Midnight Lightning. It took Ron Kauk and John Bachar two months to do it the first time. Anyone who gets it goes back over the lightning bolt with their chalk. To share in it.”
Rilla tried the problem and could barely get on. Avery tried and got halfway before landing on their ass. Olivia didn’t get any farther.
But after they moved on, Rilla often found herself looking at the lightning bolt as she walked back through the Camp, and reaching for that secret note tucked into her ribs. To share in an experience bigger than herself, a history she became a part of—it was what she’d wanted even before climbing came into her life.
“Do you aid climb?” she asked Petra, too intimidated to ask her to teach her outright.
“Ugh. Aiding is a slog,” Petra said. “Let’s just find something you can actually climb.”
Rilla shrugged and kept packing.
•
“Why don’t you just fucking ask her?” Jonah asked as they jogged side by side one morning through the Valley.
Rilla growled. “I don’t want to have to ask her. I want her to know, like, duh, Rilla is amazing. Rilla needs to aid to do anything bigger.”
“Does she even know how?” Jonah said, slowing as they came to the open spring near the start of the Valley circle.
“Yeah, she knows how.” Rilla came to a stop, sides heaving. She was a better runner than when she started, but Jonah had this unfair ability to run and never seem winded. “She climbs with Adeena all the time. Big routes.”
“And they don’t invite you?”
“They’re partners. I don’t know. I get it . . . if you have a good rapport with someone, and they climb at the same level, you don’t really want someone new to come in and change the dynamics.” She bent and filled her Nalgene with water from the spring. A cool breeze stirred the wisps of hair at her neck and brought a wet, earthy smell that made her feel at home. “You know, I never realized how much the humidity unlocks the smell of things.”
“Does it smell differently on the East Coast?”
Rilla blinked. “Yes! Totally! Haven’t you ever been?”
“I’ve never been farther east than Kansas.”
“Oh. No, it’s so humid and disgusting. It’s like the air is a heavy, hot wet blanket. In West Virginia, I mean. I haven’t actually been to the coast.”
Jonah shuddered.
“But it carries all the smell and soul. The flowers and the earth and the trees. You can smell the breath of everything. You can get drunk on the smell of honeysuckle.”
“You make West Virginia sound nice.”
She rolled her eyes. “It is nice.” Tipping the water bottle, she drank the sweet, clear spring water.
“If West Virginia is full of people like you, I don’t know why it gets a bad rap.”
She snorted. “It’s full of people like me. But also, people much nicer than me. But it’s terrifying when outsiders have ideas about you already. What can you do different to change a story they already think they know?”
Jonah didn’t say anything, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he pursed his lips as he refilled his bottle. “I still think you should ask Petra. Or, if not her, maybe Adeena would do it.”
“Adeena is Petra’s partner. I would feel really weird asking her. I haven’t seen Caroline in a while, and maybe she hates me. Petra obviously doesn’t think I need to aid. Walker doesn’t find me attractive. Everyone hates me. Wah.”
“All right. Whoa, girl. No one hates you.” He rolled his eyes.
Rilla stuck out her tongue.
“Just ask. The worst that could happen is someone says no. You’ll live.” He shifted away.
“You heading on?” she asked.
He nodded. “Thanks for running with me.”
“Fine. Bye.”
“See ya.” He jogged off, heading farther into the woods for more miles.
Rilla closed her eyes against the breeze that tasted like home, and then turned back for the heart of the Valley.
She stalked the Camp 4 parking lot for the next few days, until she found Adeena alone one evening.
“Do you know how to aid?” Rilla asked.
Adeena nodded over a drink of water. She lowered the bottle. “I was wondering if you were ever going to learn.”
“I asked Petra, but . . .”
“Petra doesn’t like it.”
Rilla forced herself to say the words. “Would you be willing to teach me?”
“Absolutely,” Adeena said, screwing the lid on as the car pulled in, Petra driving. “Pick out the climb you want to do and meet me here tomorrow afternoon.” She waved goodbye.
Rilla waved back, in the direction of the car. After all her agonizing, it had been so easy.
Gage leaned across the seat. “Your turn for dinner duties. I signed you up with me. We’re making bibimbap. Tomorrow.”
“Sounds good!” Whatever that was. The unspoken rule was that when it was your turn to cook, you tried to make something only you could make. Rilla assumed if she ever had to come up with a dinner they’d want her to make fried chicken and collard greens, and good luck because she could barely cook rice and beans.
Stuffing her hands into her shorts, she walked over to HUFF, trying not to replay the conversation with Adeena, and thereby find a way to talk herself out of trying. She wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t tried. And kept trying.
It wasn’t safe, but it was better than not trying at all.
Twenty Six
Early afternoon when the dusty shadows lengthened through the pines, Rilla met Adeena at Camp 4 and they collected their gear, checking the route map to make sure they’d packed what they needed. It made Rilla proud and nervous that Adeena trusted her to take the lead on the trip. Adeena handed Rilla the aid ladders, and Rilla carefully dropped them into the pack.
In the amber light, they hiked the short hike along the east face of El Capitan.
“Petra won’t be like . . . mad at about this, right?” Rilla asked, even though it seemed weird that an older girl like Petra would do that.
“No,” Adeena retorted. “Why? Do you think so?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I was asking.”
Valley Girls Page 20
