Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  Luke shifted. “I have the new season of Pound Rescue on my tablet.”

  Yes to that and yes to not saying good-bye to him just yet. And yes to avoiding Dad for a little longer. If I stayed long enough, I wouldn’t have to talk to him until the morning.

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eight

  I waited on the side of Global City’s massive big-top tent while Luke stopped inside to check in and make us sandwiches from their 24/7 peanut-butter-and-jelly bar. I shot a text off to Dad, telling him where I was so he wouldn’t worry. I gave the text a minute to send, then turned off my phone. I didn’t want to read Dad’s response. I didn’t want to think about any of it yet.

  I followed Luke to his tent in the upper quadrant of Global City where the University of Washington’s colors of purple and gold blazed in the beam of my headlamp. The quadrant’s central gathering tent had a sign clipped to the side, labeling it as the Dawghouse.

  Luke and I crawled into his tent, and he looped his headlamp strap through an X in the tent poles. He clicked the power down on the bulb so the light wasn’t overpowering. We unfolded napkins across our laps, then we pulled our sandwiches apart and put potato chips in the center before taking our first bites.

  In previous seasons, Luke had shared a tent with Mingma, so we had mostly hung out in my tent. His tent—this tent—was quite impersonal and typical for a guy, except for the worn copy of World’s 19ers on his pillow. I’d gotten him that book as a graduation present, purchased with the birthday money my grandparents had sent that year.

  I looked from the book to him, finding a hint of discomfort on his face. Claustrophobia, perhaps? Like a two-person tent wasn’t big enough for us now that he had a girlfriend? Or that there were things he should have been doing, but he was stuck with me because he’d been a nice guy who’d noticed something was wrong and invited me to watch Pound Rescue?

  I tried not to think about this as we rolled our napkins up and washed the sandwiches down with cartons of chocolate milk. Luke slid World’s 19ers to the side and propped his tablet against his pillow. The tablet was a definite upgrade from the rickety portable DVD player I still used.

  Luke sat on the far side of the sleeping pad. He unzipped his sleeping bag and spread it wide like a blanket. Even wearing thick down jackets and long underwear, you couldn’t just hang out in a tent in the ten-degree Himalaya night without a sleeping bag.

  Next, Luke and I would lie down on his bed to watch the movie. Now it was me feeling claustrophobic. In just seconds, we’d be squished together out of necessity because of the narrowness of the foam pad, the smallness of the screen, and needing to share earbuds. It didn’t matter that we’d watched a hundred movies this way; the last time we’d watched a movie together, we’d ended up cuddling and on the brink of something more.

  A pang of regret hit me that our last season together hadn’t been a full one. I had this strange feeling that if it had, my whole world right now might be completely different.

  Luke was lying down now, scrolling through his tablet for the Pound Rescue episodes. If I delayed joining him on his bed any longer it would be awkward. More awkward than it already was.

  I lifted the edge of his sleeping bag and crawled in next to him. He reached up behind my head and clicked off his headlamp. The light from the screen was the only thing illuminating the tent now. He handed me the right-side earbud. To my utter humiliation, my fingers were shaking so much that I dropped it.

  The episode started, but I couldn’t focus at all. Despite the multiple layers of clothing and jackets between us, every point of his body that touched mine was burning.

  And his smell! Being so close to him, beneath the very sleeping bag he slept in every night, was like being inside a cozy, warm air freshener made of the Nepalese soap Mingma used for laundry.

  My body longed to nudge closer. To prompt him to put his arm around my shoulders as if there had been a time warp and we were back in that afternoon of the earthquake. My willpower to resist this was melting.

  No! I scolded myself silently. I couldn’t let him see that I had not moved on like he had. That still, after all this time, I was overpoweringly attracted to him.

  Luke paused the movie. “What’s up?”

  He’d noticed. Shit. I sat bolt upright, which dragged the tablet off the pillow until the earbud yanked out of my ear.

  Double awkward. What to do? Say something!

  “You know how I said I hadn’t told my dad about Townsend College?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I told him today, and it’s bad. That’s what’s been bothering me.”

  Luke removed his earbud and sat up. “He wants you to go?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. We’re completely out of money. I have to get a job right away.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Guiding.”

  He frowned.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know that’s what you wanted to do.”

  “It’s what I know. It’s what makes sense. Besides, what’s wrong with guiding, Mr. Global Adventurers guide?”

  He laughed. “Okay, point taken.”

  Luke’s deep, familiar eyes sparkled along with the smile his dimples were framing. His straight black hair stuck up all over the place from wearing a hat today. My mind found him adorable; my body found him irresistible.

  Almost too gradually to detect, the bow of his smile lowered until he wasn’t smiling anymore.

  My smile slid off as well. In the glare of Pound Rescue paused on his tablet, our eyes locked. The intensity burning in his made my stomach flip over and over.

  “You said it makes sense to be a guide,” he said. “And you said back in Tengboche that you didn’t think college was right for you. So what is it that you want?”

  A way to climb Cerro Torre and the Top Five.

  I wasn’t going to tell him this. Especially now that my only shot at it was gone.

  “It’s not straightforward like that,” I said. “Have you ever dragged your feet on something, but it wasn’t until that thing was out of the way that you could start thinking about everything that thing might have been blocking? Well, that’s how it was for me about college.”

  He looked away quickly, like I’d hit a nerve. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.

  “Well, it’s getting late. I should probably get back,” I said, sliding over to the door and reaching for my hiking boots.

  “Hang on, Emily.”

  He scooted closer so he wouldn’t have to yell across the tent. “I know it sounds weird that I was implying you shouldn’t be a guide when that’s exactly what I’m doing right now, but that’s all it is. It’s just for now. A college job. It was something I fell into because of my job at the outdoor rec center and this being a UW expedition.”

  “Luke—”

  “Just listen. I have a feeling you’re thinking about guiding because it’s convenient and safe. But the thing is, there’s nothing safe about guiding inexperienced clients on dangerous mountains. And it’s not climbing, either. It’s neither mountaineering nor a career.” He swallowed. “You were right to call me on the guiding thing, because the truth is, I don’t really want to be on Everest this season. I only did it because it was a free plane ticket home, and with Mom sick, I wanted to make sure she and Pasang were okay.”

  The heaviness in his voice tugged on my heartstrings, and I knew how hard it had been for him to admit that. I put my arms around him and squeezed. He did the same.

  And then neither of us let go. My heart raced.

  Why did you never email? After all that had been building between us, why was there never anything more than Circs?

  His grip tightened. “You’re like me,” he whispered. “You have dreams in the mountains. Think of Cerro Torre. Think of the Top Five project. You’re good enough to get a sponsorship, and then it could be completely within reach. I would hate to see you lose your dreams because
you’re being paid to make other people’s dreams come true instead.”

  His words filled my heart to the brim. I didn’t mean to, but I laid my head on his shoulder. It felt good and right. “Dreams can change a lot in two years,” I whispered back.

  He pulled me in a little tighter. “Yes, but some things never change.”

  Chapter Nine

  I awoke to the beautiful glow of early morning light in my tent. I was glowing inside, too—the glow of happiness and possibility. It took me a few seconds to realize the sensation had been from a dream. A dream where Luke and I had been in a real bed instead of a tent, tangled up in sheets and a pretty quilt. He was kissing my neck. My bare neck because, beneath the sheets, I’m pretty sure the rest of my body was also bare.

  I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want to lose the memory of it, the sensations. When I finally had to, the glow faded, leaving my insides hollow in the face of my new reality. One in which Luke was not mine. Dad was not mine, either. Nobody was mine. I was completely alone in this world.

  Sadly, it was a feeling I knew well, though not as much in recent years. Until now.

  I thought about what Luke had asked last night: what it was that I truly wanted. It was the mountains, yes, but now I thought about the other part, the part I’d deliberately given up when I’d decided not to go to Townsend College. A house to come home to—the kind of little white bungalow with a big front porch I’d always dreamed of. A place of permanence and friends, comfort and welcome. I’d so easily let that go in order to continue my roving life in the mountains with Dad.

  But now I’d lost them both—the mountains and the home. Having a physical house of my own was as extravagant of an idea as climbing the Top Five, but there was no reason I couldn’t have a life of my own. That was the ray of light in this situation. I could learn from the loneliness I felt right now, the lack of belonging. Moving forward, I would build my own life, one where I was the center instead of orbiting someone else. Starting right now, with finding a job.

  I sat up, drank some water, and turned on my phone. I began with the jobs pages of U.S.-based mountain guiding companies. It was a relief to see I had the minimum qualifications, but troubling to see that most companies wanted additional certifications. Some even listed experience minimums in number of years rather than number of peaks climbed, which put me at a definite disadvantage. And there was the problem that, though I’d climbed mountains nearly twice as high as America’s tallest mountain, I’d never actually summited a mountain in the U.S.

  I looked at a few more guiding websites, including Luke’s company, Global Adventurers, which was even bigger than I’d expected, with a dozen offices around the world and more than a thousand employees. They did it all, everything from senior citizen European tours to major mountaineering expeditions.

  Online, I found some examples of mountain guide resumes and then got out a piece of paper to jot down some notes.

  “Emily, you up?” Dad called from outside my tent. “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah,” I said, slipping the paper under my sleeping bag and then unzipping the door for him.

  He came inside and sat cross-legged next to my lettuce-box shelves. His face was weary to the point that I suspected he’d had trouble sleeping last night.

  “Emily, I’m really sorry that I kept you in the dark about my financial situation. I should have brought it up last spring when you were deciding to take a gap year. Or even after that. I just didn’t want to worry you. There was a plan in place, and if I just got you through to when you left for college, it would all be okay. My money problems shouldn’t be your problem, but now they are, and I feel terrible about it.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m fine. Don’t feel bad. Please.”

  “Well, I do feel bad.”

  In just one day, Dad seemed a decade older. More gray hair, more wrinkles. It wrenched my heart.

  “It was a little bit of a shock,” I said, “but I’m okay now. I’m sorry if I was rude yesterday.”

  “You weren’t rude at all.”

  I looked down and fanned the pages of World’s 19ers.

  “I keep thinking about how I haven’t been paying you,” he said. “I should have been doing that all long. Or at least giving you a formal stipend.”

  “Seriously, Dad, don’t even think about it. I’m the one who should have been more considerate about money when I decided to take a gap year. I never even offered to pay my own expenses.”

  “Don’t try to take the blame. This is my blunder.”

  “It’s going to be okay. I’ve already been looking at some jobs.”

  “Guiding?”

  I nodded.

  “About that,” he said, eyeing the World’s 19ers book and rubbing his beard. “I thought about it more last night, and I don’t think you should go down that path. Not yet, anyway. I don’t think you have a concept of how perfectly suited you are for mountaineering, mentally and physically. You’ve got this immense capacity for it in your power and drive. You have skill on par with Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and Lhakpa Sherpa, I would say. I know you want to climb the Top Five, and I believe you have the skill to be the first woman to do it.”

  I was stunned, in a good way. He always praised me at the top of our climbs, but it was never much more than a simple good job or nice work today. I had no idea he thought these things.

  “The thing is,” he continued, “being a career guide, you’d never have money for a major project like that. And besides, your paying clients get the best summit windows in the best locations. You’d never be free at the right times of year for the summits on your own tick list. Life only gets more complicated as you get older. If you don’t climb for yourself in the beginning, you might never get the chance.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I cancelled at Townsend College.”

  “No. It’s the opposite. You need college so you can get a really good job so you can pay for the trips.”

  “And if I had said really good job, then I’d never have enough time off for even one major expedition a year, let alone enough time for the acclimation and all the training. That’s why pursuing a sponsorship—not college—is what makes sense.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You didn’t finish college,” I pointed out.

  “No, but the business classes I took have been extremely helpful in running Winslowe Expeditions. And I would never have become an Esplanade Equipment athlete if I had not crossed paths with Barrett Browning when I was guiding on Mount Rainier as my college job.”

  I sighed and looked up at the laminated photos strung across my ceiling. The picture right above me was a close-up of a snow-tipped rhododendron. Just out of view, Luke had been holding the stem so the flower wouldn’t blow in the breeze and make the picture blurry.

  Luke.

  Something sparked in my mind. The Global Adventurers permit snafu he’d told me about. From a staffing perspective, the extra cameramen who would be climbing were the same as guided clients. And this meant Global might not be meeting their advertised guide-to-client ratios. If true, this could be a chance to get my foot in the door with Global and get off Dad’s threadbare dime immediately.

  There might be hope of a seventh summit after all.

  I wanted Dad out of the tent so I could consider the Global Adventurers idea further. I gave him a firm good-bye hug and assured him that I wasn’t mad about yesterday and would think more about college.

  As for my Global Adventurers idea, there were three cons.

  One: Going to Global City to ask Jim if he needed another guide would require me to be much braver and more outgoing than I actually was. And it was likely he’d say no.

  Two: It wouldn’t put Dad or Winslowe Expeditions in a good light to have me up there begging for a job from the competition. Dad would be hurt and embarrassed if he found out.

  Three: Luke. It had been wrong that I let myself linger in his arms last night. He had a girlfriend, and we were jus
t getting back to how we used to be as friends. By not respecting that boundary, I’d risked ruining it all. What I needed right now was some time apart from him so I could cool down, not the close quarters that would be inevitable if we were part of the same expedition.

  But in the end, neither Dad nor I were in a financial position to let number one or number two stop me from inquiring. And about Luke, well, I’d have to cross that bridge if it turned out Jim had a position to fill.

  I hiked up to Global City right after breakfast. Doc’s tent was easy to find with her sparkly purple camp boots sitting in front of it.

  “I talked to Dad. You were right.”

  “I know. I didn’t want to push you guys into something ugly but, well, we both know your dad. He might not have ever told you.”

  “I feel stupid that I didn’t know. You’d think I would have been able to figure it out. I had no idea he was borrowing money from you. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Emily, it’s okay. It was just for the plane ticket, and I am more than happy to help. I told him he didn’t need to pay me back, but he’s insisting.”

  “I know, but still, I’m twenty; I should be buying my own plane tickets.”

  “Yeah, you probably should, but it’s not your fault for not knowing things that were being kept from you. Not maliciously, of course. You might have had the world’s most adventurous upbringing, but Greg Winslowe somehow found a way to be a helicopter parent.”

  I frowned.

  “It’s because he loves you, Em.” She offered me a Thin Mint from an open box of Girl Scout cookies, and I presented my theory about Global being understaffed.

  “That’s some good thinking, MiniBoss. I know Jim’s been trying to bring in another guide, but it’s impossible to find a fully acclimatized Western guide in the middle of Nepal who happens to have the right qualifications and is not already on a job. I’m sure he never even considered looking here at Base Camp. My only question is if Greg knows you want to do this.”