“No. I need to do this. I need this to be mine. This one thing.”
“Son, you could die up there.”
It’s funny. Sitting there in that truck with nothing but the mountain in front of me, I was so scared I could hardly breathe. My stomach was flopping like a fish in a net. But I’d never felt more ready. I’d had enough. Of everything. That’s the truth.
“I might die anyway,” I said. Beau was sitting up, leaning against me. I dropped my nose down to sniff at his fur. “I don’t get anything else. Let me climb the mountain. It’s all I want. Please.”
Wesley nodded. He was nodding to himself, I think. With his eyes still out the window, he reached out and squeezed my shoulder with a heavy hand.
“Go,” he said.
“Thank you,” I answered. “And don’t call anyone, okay? I’ll be fine. I don’t want to be rescued. I don’t want search parties. I don’t want my mom and dad worried about me being up there. I’ll call them from the visitor center when I get back down, and they won’t have to worry anymore.”
Wesley chewed on his lip.
“Just a bit, then you come right back down?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Just a bit, then right back down.”
The door opened with a rusty creak, and the wind scooped in and wrapped its fingers all around me. Beau leaped over my lap to be the first one out. I slid down to the asphalt and was about to close the door when Wesley’s voice stopped me.
“Son,” he called out. I stopped, my hand on the door and frozen rain slapping at my face. “I don’t know if I can not tell. Maybe I can. But I know I can not tell for at least an hour or two. I know I can give you at least that. Maybe all of it. I don’t know.”
I nodded. It was the best I was gonna get, and I knew I was lucky to get it.
“All right. Thank you.”
I slammed the door and without waiting the truck rolled to a start, moving away from me slow. I could still hear the country music, softly, could still feel the truck’s warmth, still smell the hot air and coffee and sandwich and cigar smoke. I knew it might be my last happy place. And I hadn’t even been happy.
I lifted my camera and snapped a shot of a green truck and white snow and black clouds and the friendly shape of a good man inside and red glowing taillights, driving away. Leaving me alone.
I turned toward the mountain. It still wasn’t there. It wouldn’t show itself to me. Hiding in clouds, waiting for me to come to it.
“This is it, buddy,” I said. Beau whined and pranced around me. It was freezing.
On the other side of the parking lot, just past the visitor center, was a dark little stand of pine trees hunched down in the wind. I walked over into the middle of it with Beau at my heels.
“Stay,” I told him. Beau cocked his head and looked up at me. “I’ll be right back.” I put the backpack down and turned and walked away. I knew he’d stay. He was a good dog.
The visitor center was huge inside, with high, towering ceilings and great open spaces filled with displays about Mount Rainier. There was a big, 3-D model of the mountain that you could walk all the way around, and exhibits about the plants and animals that lived there, and information about history and climbing routes. I looked at the model, its black stone faces and great white peak, and I felt tiny and terrified and alone, alone, alone.
With the storm coming, the place was mostly empty. Just a few people here and there, in twos and threes and fours. I recognized some of the people from the shuttle bus and tried to avoid eye contact. I was the only person I saw who was all by himself.
Upstairs there was a gift shop. It had books and maps and movies and key chains. And snacks. I dug through my pocket and pulled out the last of my money. Nine lousy bucks. The last nine bucks of my life.
I grabbed a couple of Snickers bars, some chocolate-covered peanuts, a bag of trail mix. There were a few families shopping around, the kids excited and noisy, asking their parents to buy stuff. I moved through them quietly, without being noticed. It was like I was already a ghost. I wanted to ask them to buy me a stuffed animal and then go home with them and change my name and live forever.
The lady at the register rang up my snacks. “Eight-fifty,” she said. The lady looked crabby. She was wearing too much makeup. She smelled like cigarettes and she looked at me like she hated me. My headache, always there, scraped its dull teeth against the inside of my skull.
She couldn’t be the last person I talked to. It couldn’t end like that. My heart trembled at how small and lonely it felt.
“Is there a pay phone?” I asked. My voice was weak, pushing through my pounding head and trembling heart.
“Downstairs,” she answered.
I put one of the candy bars back.
“Could I have my change in quarters?”
She almost rolled her eyes, but she gave me my quarters.
I walked downstairs.
The phone was in a dark little hallway that led to the bathrooms. There was no one around.
My hands were shaking, and the quarters squeezed in my fist were wet with sweat.
I fed the quarters in one by one. I felt almost too shaky to stand. My head was one big pounding ache. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to remember the number. I only had one shot. I needed to get it right.
I pressed the numbers, one after another. The buttons were metal and worn smooth by thousands of fingers.
With the last number pushed, I pressed the phone to my ear and leaned forward against the booth and closed my eyes. My ear reached out hundreds of miles through the hissing static.
The phone rang.
Dark room of secrets.
She sat alone in quiet.
The telephone rang.
She walked over to the phone and squinted at the screen. It said “Unknown Caller.”
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jess.”
He didn’t have to say his name. The cup of water she was holding slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor with a splash, but she didn’t look down. His voice — that voice she knew so well — her favorite voice — the voice she’d been missing for two days — just his voice, so small and far away in the phone made hot, blurry tears burn into her eyes.
“Mark? Mark!”
He laughed in her ear, a shy little scared laugh.
“Yeah, Jess. How … how is everything?”
She shook her head, and she could tell her breaths were too fast and too small. She was going to pass out.
“Everything is crazy, and I don’t care — who cares? — but where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m there, Jess. I’m there.”
She swallowed. I’m there. He didn’t exactly say it proud. He didn’t exactly say it scared. Like his words couldn’t decide what part of his heart they came from. And her ears couldn’t decide what part of her heart heard them.
“Okay. Are you okay?”
There was a long, long silence. She thought he’d hung up, or the line had gone out. Her knees almost folded beneath her.
But then his voice came back. And it sounded like it was turning away. It sounded like good-bye.
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Mark —”
“I was just feeling kind of lonely now, and before I left I just wanted —”
His voice fell off a cliff, and she waited. The words before I left hung in her head like black birds on a tombstone.
“Mark —”
“Thanks for everything, Jess. For all of it. You’re —”
“Mark —”
He kept talking, soft but fast, kept talking so that her words couldn’t fit in.
“You’re the best. You always have been. Thanks for it all. And … I … I love you, Jess. I just — I just love you, that’s all.”
There was nothing mushy about it. It didn’t matter that he was a boy and she was a girl. It just mattered that they were friends. Best friends.
His voice was so thin, across the miles. So skinny and
weak and by itself. Her friend had done it. He’d made it that far, by himself. But now he was there.
Her heart soared and broke at the same time. That’s the truth.
“Mark, wait!” she almost shouted. “Mark, listen, I need you! I can’t —” But the line clicked dead.
The phone went silent.
Only she heard her whisper.
“I love you, too, Mark.”
The storm, now, was fierce.
I started up the mountain.
Beau was by my side.
Of course he was. He always was. When I’d hung up the phone and come outside, he was sitting right where I’d left him, by my backpack in the trees, waiting for me. My other best friend.
I pulled my extra socks and my hiking boots out of the backpack and put them on. I left my sneakers behind. I pulled on my two sets of gloves and high-tech winter coat and the thermal hat that covered my face except for the eyeholes and a little mouth slit. I’d lied to Wesley; I didn’t have anything close to the gear you needed to climb a mountain like Rainier. All I had was enough to get me started, to get far enough and not come back down. The second part I’d told him was true, though: I knew exactly what I was doing.
I pulled a little black plastic film canister out of the bag. It was about the size of a C battery. I’d already taped it shut and hooked a metal ring through a hole I’d punched in the lid. Inside was a note that explained it all. And an apology to my mom and dad. And my name, address, and phone number. I clipped it on to Beau’s collar, next to his tag.
“You’re getting home safe, buddy,” I whispered, kissing him on the nose. “You have to.” He grinned at me and panted.
Beau and I shared some bananas and jerky and trail mix. I unwrapped a Snickers to eat while I walked, and stood up. We were as ready as we were gonna be.
The trail led right out of the back of the visitor center, right out of the parking lot. Like it was nothing. Just a walk through miles of snow and ice and glaciers and boulders and crevasses to the towering top of a sleeping volcano. No big deal.
It was uphill from step number one. There was snow all over as soon as we’d stepped beyond the parking lot, hard-packed from all the feet before mine, but it still slid out from under me a little with every step. It made the walking slow and my breathing fast already, and I was just getting started. Beau scampered around, happy with snow under his paws and a ham and cheese sandwich in his belly. And his boy by his side. He wasn’t worried about mountains.
I didn’t want to think about anything, so I thought about how the wind was needling through my clothes to my skin. I thought about how my feet were already starting to feel cold from the snow. I thought about how my legs were rubbery and weak. I thought about my sour, shaky stomach that lurched between feeling starving and feeling pukey. I didn’t have to think about my head — that grinding, growing ache did my thinking for me.
Yeah. And, sometimes, between steps, I thought about my mom, and how she’d have no one to pull the blankets up on when they fell asleep.
Or my dad, and how he was probably sitting at the dining room table alone, looking at his hands. Like he did for hours when my grandpa, his dad, died.
And Jessie. Sometimes Jessie. And how hard it must have been for her not to tell.
But I tried not to.
When my legs were burning to their limit and my lungs were sucking at the thin mountain air and my knees were shaking and weak, I stopped for my first rest. I leaned down with my hands on my knees and tried to breathe and not throw up. I looked back over my shoulder.
I could still see the visitor center. It didn’t even look that much smaller. I shook my head.
“Okay,” I gasped to Beau between breaths. “No more looking back.”
The higher you go in the world, the harder it gets to breathe. That’s the truth. I’d done my research. The higher you are, the thinner the air gets. There’s less of the oxygen your body needs. With less oxygen your muscles get more tired, you can’t catch your breath, your brain gets weak and fuzzy. Everything gets harder. On really high mountains, climbers bring their own oxygen in tanks. They breathe through masks like scuba divers. It keeps them alive.
I kept going. The wind was coming from behind me. That was a good thing. It was blowing so hard that it almost blew me over sometimes. It was freezing, and loud, and it was peppered with hard, biting flakes of snow — but it was blowing me up the mountain.
I didn’t like the shaking in my legs. I didn’t like the stabbing in my empty lungs, or the way my stomach squeezed and rolled and clenched. It was too soon. I knew my body was down to nearly nothing. I knew I was weak and sick. But it was too soon. I had too far still to go.
I kept going. All the thoughts I’d tried to stop were raging wild within me now. Faces and voices and memories. All the people I’d miss. Jessie. My dad. My mom. Other people, too, but mostly them. They were the ones who would miss me.
I stumbled, fell to one knee. I knelt a moment, trying to catch my breath in wind that held more snow than oxygen. Beau pressed himself against me. My legs were wet spaghetti. The faces were still frozen in my mind. I held them there tight. And then, in a sudden gust, my sadness turned to cold anger.
They would miss me. But they would be around to miss me. They got to go on living.
Jess had kept my secret. So what. She’d had to keep the secret of where I was going to die — but I was the one who had to go there and do the dying.
My mom would never get to tuck me in, sure. But I would never be warm again.
My dad would sit alone at a dark table. I was going to die alone in a snowstorm.
They would cry when I was gone, but I would be the one who was gone. They had all the tomorrows in the world to start feeling better.
“It’s not fair!” I shouted. The wind swallowed my words and blew them to icy dust.
Here’s what I don’t get: just about anything. I don’t get any of it at all.
My anger was strong enough to lift me to my feet and, one raised foot at a time, push me higher into the storm.
I kept going. The storm was fierce, but so was I.
Beau was an angel by my side. All I looked at was the snow at my feet, and he was always there. Snow clumped in frozen chunks in his fur. I could see him shivering when we paused to rest. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth. But he was always there. Trusting me. Following me. My heart burned with black tears when I thought of where he was following me to. So I stopped thinking about it.
I kept going. Really, that’s all there is to it. I was so sick I shouldn’t have even made it out of the parking lot. But I kept going.
Even though I said I wouldn’t, I turned around once and looked back one more time.
The visitor center was long gone. Behind me was a hopeless white emptiness. There was nothing. There was no one.
The aloneness howled louder than the wind.
Louder, even, than my anger.
My teeth chattered.
“Well,” I said, dropping to my knees to hug an arm around Beau’s shaking neck, “that’s it. That’s it, buddy. We’re gone.” Beau nuzzled in against me. It scared me how much he was shaking. He stretched up to lick my chin. I scratched him behind the ears.
I didn’t know if tears could freeze. If they could turn to ice in your eyes and blind you. But they felt too hot to freeze.
I turned back to where I was going, still on my knees. The slope climbed away above me, steeper all the time. With the wind and the snow I could only see maybe a hundred feet.
“I wish I could see you!” I hollered up to the mountain, hoping the wind would carry my words to the hiding peak. There was no answer, and no break in the clouds. I got to my feet. I kept going.
All my sense of time and direction was scattered by the wind. There was only up and down, and I was going up. I kept my eyes down on the shadows of the footsteps I was following, of all the climbers and guides before me. The snow was so white, even in the dark of the storm, that I had to
squint. I walked sometimes with my eyes closed. It felt a little warmer that way.
I couldn’t see the sun, but I knew that it was moving. Something in the shadows or the angle of the dim light told me that noon had come and gone, and afternoon, and that evening was coming behind the clouds. And, after that, night. Darkness. I ignored my lungs, my legs, my head, and walked faster.
I kept going.
For minutes or hours, it’s hard to say, I walked. For feet or miles, impossible to measure, I walked. I was too cold to be hungry.
Although I didn’t look back again, I did stop sometimes and squint forward. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see the mountain. I wanted to know it was there.
It was always lost somewhere in the clouds ahead, gone.
It was when I had stopped again, on my hands and knees with Beau shivering beneath me, that I saw the climbers. I was peering up to spy the peak when the blowing snow parted for a moment and I saw a line of people. They were small, far away. They were trudging downhill, back down away from the mountain and toward where people lived.
But they weren’t coming toward me.
They were off to the side, up on a ridge of snow a little higher than me. There was a deep little valley of snow between us.
I crouched there with my knees and gloves in the snow. I shook my head and tried to think, sucking the weak air in through my chapped lips.
“They’re off the path,” I said to Beau. My voice was thin and panting. “They’re lost.”
I wondered if I should try to get to them, try to warn them that they were going the wrong way. It’s a big mountain. If you wander too far in the wrong direction you can disappear altogether. But, no. I couldn’t let them see me. A kid, out here alone in this storm on a mountain. They’d thank me for saving them and then drag me back down. I bet they had a guide, anyway, to get them home safe.
Home. Safe. I shook my head and staggered to my feet and kept going.
It was a little while later — or maybe hours, I don’t know — that I realized that I wasn’t following any kind of trail at all anymore.
I stopped short. The snow in front of me was smooth and windblown. I jerked around and looked back behind me. No footprints. Not even my own.
The Honest Truth Page 9
