Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  “Oh, no, no, you’re going to mess up your nail polish,” she said, pulling my hands back.

  “So, basically, you guys broke up because of me,” I said.

  “Partly.”

  “You’re actually admitting that?”

  “You’re the one who said it.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you’re never supposed to say that kind of thing to the kid.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I love how dedicated he’s been to you since you came to live with him, but the cost of living in the U.S. is so high, and Greg wasn’t going to explore moving back until he no longer needed to support you. Really, it’s my fault. I was the one with the flexibility, but I wasn’t going to leave my practice in Seattle for a year-round volunteer medical job somewhere here in the Himalayas.”

  I frowned.

  “You know, it’s all okay,” she said. “Greg and I are friends now.”

  Yeah. A friend who borrowed money for his daughter’s plane ticket.

  “How did we end up talking about this?” she asked. “This is all old news. And you have hot, new news. You couldn’t have picked a better guy than Luke. He is the best.”

  She motioned for me to move to one of the chairs closer to the light for my haircut. “I don’t know what I’m doing, so I’m just going to trim straight across the back above your split ends, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I think it’s safe to assume Greg has no clue about this new romance of yours?”

  “Romance?” I scrunched my nose. That word was so medieval.

  “We have only a few more weeks here—what’s going to happen then? I’d be pissed if you broke his heart. Or if he broke yours.”

  “We haven’t talked about that yet. Seriously, it just happened.”

  Behind me, Doc snipped away with the scissors. I hoped she was at least a little better at trimming hair than she was at making eggplant parmesan.

  “So, you and Luke would have had the perfect scenario if you hadn’t gone nutso and rejected Townsend College. Now I’m sad I helped you with your résumé for that CentralPoint thing.”

  “But CentralPoint would be such an amazing opportunity, and you said it: he could break my heart just as easily as the other way around.”

  “You know, Luke isn’t in a position to leave Washington for a while. He has two years left of college and then medical school after that.”

  “Doc, it’s only been a week since we first kissed.”

  She brushed through my trimmed hair. “You can stay with me, you know. My place is small, but you’re welcome as long as you want.”

  “And continue the Winslowe family charity case?”

  She grabbed a chunk of my hair. “I’ll cut this right off,” she threatened.

  “Okay, okay! I’ll think about it.”

  “You’re getting sassy this year, MiniBoss. You better think about it, for real. It would be fun. I work long hours during the week, but I have most weekends off. We could do nails in a real spa, with some of my girlfriends. We could climb Rainier. You’d be like my live-in mountain guide.”

  She handed me a tiny mirror so I could look at my hair.

  “Looks great, thanks,” I said.

  I held the mirror for her so she could trim her bangs.

  “Luke aside, you really shouldn’t give up on college just yet,” she said. “I know Greg’s talked to you about it being okay to change majors. Maybe just come home to Washington for a while and explore some options.”

  “Washington’s not my home.”

  “Well, then, where is?”

  “Here, probably.”

  She set the scissors down and stared at me. “Here, as in Everest Base Camp?”

  “Yeah. Why not? I’ve spent more time here than any single place.”

  “This is no one’s home, not even the Sherpas,” she said as she finished her bangs. “This is a temporary village on the shoulder of a wrathful deity.”

  We didn’t finish the discussion because Cook-Phurba walked in with a plate of sandwiches, which Doc must have arranged ahead of time with Randall.

  “Much appreciated, Phurba,” she said.

  After we finished eating, Doc mixed up a bright yellow face mask from some mystery ingredients and a bowl of salt from the kitchen. I declined when she passed the bowl to me.

  When she was all done applying it, she asked me to drop off the sandwich plates over in the scullery.

  “I’m leaving this on until after my siesta, and I would prefer if the men didn’t get a look at this.”

  “No problem.”

  We loaded the beauty supplies into her backpack. “Well, this has been a highly successful girls’ day,” she said. “We both have fresh hair and perfect nails, were able to skip the tiresome politics talk at lunch, and uncovered two secret relationships.”

  I hugged her cautiously, not wanting any of that mask to end up on my jacket, even though, technically, it would blend in perfectly.

  “I gave you a hard time about calling me mom, but you are like a daughter to me. I think you know that. But how about we just call it ‘little sister?’”

  “The math doesn’t work out on that, either, you know.”

  “It could.”

  I gave her a smile, but I was still unsettled from all that we’d talked about.

  We have only a few more weeks here—what’s going to happen then?

  I had no idea. About Luke, what I’d be doing for work, or where I’d be going when the season was over.

  Instead of returning to my tent for a nap, I went to the command center to submit my CentralPoint materials and continue looking for a job.

  The command center was bustling this afternoon with the twins on two of the laptops, Norbu and a few of the Sherpas checking weather, and April and Theo over in the corner fixing something on the drone.

  I talked with everyone for a while, then logged in on a laptop on the backside of the table so no one would see what I was doing. After I’d finished submitting all the materials to Esplanade’s CentralPoint portal, I filled out the catchall application for U.S. national parks summer jobs, clicking the toggle buttons next to waitress, hostess, food service worker, hotel clerk, rental clerk, and housekeeper jobs in any location near mountains. Jackson Hole, Glacier, Denali, Yosemite, Estes Park, and Sawtooth National Parks.

  Next, I started checking for ski resorts that were open in the summer and had on-site staff lodging. This was a tedious process, and before long I was sidetracked, browsing recent trip reports for the peaks in Patagonia.

  But even as I daydreamed about Cerro Torre, Fitz Roy, and all the others, I was still being pulled by the image of a very different place: my tiny white bungalow.

  Now that Doc knew about Luke and me, I was extra self-conscious about hanging out with him in the big top, so I kept to the A-Team during dinner. After dinner, the clients sucked me into a three-hour A-Team Trivial Pursuit tournament. Phil, Phurba, and I were a team—and we won. Which was a big surprise, considering our educational levels in comparison to everyone else. Afterward, the men were still jazzed up on too much after-dinner soda, milling about outside, so I went to my tent instead of attempting to sneak over to Luke’s.

  Doc’s reminder today about the limited time Luke and I had left at Base Camp together was weighing on me. But it shouldn’t be. It was too soon to be overanalyzing Luke’s intentions and making plans for a joint future. Going on Eighteen articles were forever warning about putting the cart before the horse like this. I shouldn’t let the uncertainty of my future and what would happen with Luke and me after the summit bid cloud the joy of finally being together with him.

  It was late by the time it finally got quiet outside, but I was dying for the burn of Luke’s kiss. Since I wasn’t sure if he was still awake, I brightened my tent with my headlamp and then lay down on my sleeping bag to beckon him using a Circ of my decorated tent ceiling. Just before I finished, I remembered what he said about me never putting myself in Circs, so I dipped the scree
n across my face before it hit three hundred and sixty degrees and snapped off. I added #YCCM to the Circ and hit send.

  I awoke to the muffled, high-pitched beeps of my watch alarm beneath my pillow. I realized Luke had not responded to my Circ last night, but that was understandable. To save battery, all of us generally turn off our phones at night. I sat up and dressed quickly, excited to get outside and meet him for our ski day. Even more exciting than skiing, it was the first time we’d be alone together out of the prying eyes of the Base Camp gossipmongers since crossing the friends line, and we had the entire, glorious day ahead of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Luke was waiting for me at the Everest Base Camp signs with a pair of skis already strapped to his pack and the skis for me leaning against a rock next to him. He must have grabbed them from the Swedish camp on his way back from Kala Pattar yesterday.

  “See, one day to wait wasn’t so bad,” I teased when I got to him.

  I longed for his familiar voice and accent to wrap around me like the embrace he couldn’t give me out here in the open, but he hardly reacted, which was weird.

  I shrugged it off as I bent down to lash my skis to my backpack. “So, I found out something interesting yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “Doc and Dad were a thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean, yeah? This is a big deal!”

  “They aren’t anymore,” he said.

  “Yes, as I found out yesterday. You knew they were a couple?”

  “Well, not for sure, but I’d always assumed.”

  “And you never said anything to me?”

  “I assumed you knew.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  My internal alarm went off, and I bit my nails anxiously. It was unlike Luke not to play along with me, but he started coughing, so I didn’t push it. Once we began walking, I handed him one of the toasted bagels with cream cheese I’d made at the big top. As soon as we finished them, he picked up the pace. Quite a lot actually. Which was good because we had a long distance to cover today, and it would be best if we could get back before nightfall.

  At Gorak Shep, we turned north, uphill and deeper into the Himalayas. Milam Peak was four miles ahead in the distance, barely a molehill compared to the jagged goddesses around it. It was a good five-thousand feet of vertical, though, a rival for any ski resort in terms of longest run. As we continued, Luke’s pace didn’t relent. I was feeling it today, especially in my injured shoulder, because the skis added an extra fifteen pounds to my pack.

  After three miles, we veered off the trail, crossed a small stream, and ventured into unbroken snow. I was sweaty and winded, and we hadn’t even started on the steep part yet. Luke and I put on gaiters and screwed the plastic baskets onto the ends of our trekking poles to turn them into ski poles. Then, we unrolled skins along the bottoms of our skis that would enable us to walk up the slope on top of the snow.

  Luke was still on turbocharge as we skinned up the slope, and I struggled to keep pace. When we paused for water about halfway up, he still wasn’t joking around or teasing or anything like that. The hairs on my arms pricked up nervously. Something was wrong.

  We continued upward, step after step, with the typical uphill view of white, white, and more white, with the vastness of the panorama open to our backs. We reached the top of Milam Peak, which was windblown and had exposed rock in places. Mount Everest loomed in the distance, its jet stream plume flying in full force today. I briefly wondered if I would make it to the top this year and actually get that seventh summit.

  Silently, we unclipped from our skis and switched our layers around for the descent. Luke broke a granola bar in two and tossed half to me. He smiled, but it came out more like a wince. Adrenaline shot through me, not in a good way. There was definitely something wrong.

  “It’s beautiful today,” I started, testing him out.

  He surveyed Milam’s south slope. “Yeah. It’s perfect. But it’s a long way back, so we should be probably start down soon.”

  The volume on my internal alarm doubled.

  My comment to Doc yesterday came echoing back at me: maybe he’s going to be the one to break my heart.

  I told myself not to jump to conclusions. Just because he was acting oddly did not mean it had anything to do with me. Maybe there had been a confrontation with one of the Sherpas.

  Sometimes, it was normal for us not to talk, I reminded myself as I choked down the granola bar. But it was not normal for us to be two feet apart like this with him barely managing to make eye contact with me.

  We peeled the skins off our skis and walked over to the lip of the bowl on the south side to switch the rest of our gear for skiing down. I snuck a glance at him. His face was somber as he used one of his poles to knock the caked snow off his boot. Say something, Emily!

  “So, uh, is something wrong?” I asked.

  “You could say that.”

  My stomach hit the floor. I knew instantly: the problem was related to me.

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head, saying nothing. He stepped over his skis and got ready to click in.

  What in the heck? He wasn’t going to answer?

  Before I could figure out a different way to come about this, he jammed a pole into the snow and looked right at me. “Doc was joking with me last night—about us.”

  Oh.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell her,” I said. “She was right there yesterday when you Circ-ed me from Kala Pattar—”

  “I don’t care that Doc knows. She likes to gossip, but she wouldn’t about us. The thing that’s bothering me is something else she said. She mentioned your mom. And the way she said it, it was like…she wasn’t dead.”

  My body froze while my mind went into a tailspin. Form some words, Emily, form some words.

  “I’ve never told you that she’s dead.”

  “So it’s true? Your mom is alive?”

  I didn’t move for a minute, then I nodded my head.

  He turned away from me faster than I could blink. “I almost called off skiing today, but I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. Because surely there is no way you’ve been lying to me about this for ten years.”

  “She was in prison! That’s why I came here to be with Dad. She might as well have been dead. It’s a technicality, really. I haven’t spoken to her since the day she was arrested.”

  “A technicality? No. It’s a big deal. A really big deal.” I couldn’t see his eyes because he had on glacier glasses, but I didn’t need to, not with that icy tear in his voice.

  He jammed his boots in the bindings and grabbed his ski poles.

  “Hold on!” I begged.

  “Nope, sorry, I can’t.” He wiggled his heels to test the bindings and then pushed over the slope without me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Wait, Luke. Wait!” I yelled, though it was clear he wasn’t going to stop.

  He flew down the slope, angled straight to the fall line, not even putting in any turns.

  Oh god, what had I done?

  I scrambled to get my boots clipped in, then I pushed off with my poles as hard as I could. There was no pleasure in the five minutes of downhill that had taken four hours to climb. It was nothing but bad adrenaline. I wanted to gun the fall line, like him, but the skis were too long for me, so I was forced to keep my speed in check.

  I’d known that I needed to tell him the truth about Amy, yet I hadn’t bothered to follow through on it.

  As the slope leveled off, my speed dropped away quickly. I poled with all my might to keep my momentum going. When I reached him, he was in the final steps of reattaching his skis to his backpack.

  “Luke,” I blurted. “I’m really, really sorry that I never told you about my mom. It wasn’t intentional. It’s just something people assume, and Dad and I never correct them.”

  His jaw was set, and he d
idn’t bother turning in my direction. “It blows my mind that you lied to me for that long about something of this magnitude.”

  “It was out of practicality. An American single dad raising his daughter in the middle of the Himalayas…our situation made more sense to people if they thought Amy had died. And the result is nearly the same. Even though she’s living, she’s still dead to me.”

  Now he turned. “That’s exactly it. The result is not the same. Yesterday, Doc told me she offered for you to stay at her condo because she didn’t think you wanted to go back to Port Townsend, where your mom was. Where a person you’ve been pretending is dead happens to live. It all makes perfect sense. You didn’t decide not to go to college, you decided not to go back to Washington.”

  “No, that’s not true,” I said immediately.

  “Then tell me you’re still planning to come home to Washington after the season’s over.”

  “I never said I was! You know what kind of position I’m in financially. I have to take whatever job I can get after this.”

  “You said it the other night, when I was talking about roommate boards near Port Townsend.”

  “I said it was a good idea, not that I was going to do that.”

  His face went hard.

  “You have to understand,” I said. “Washington is not my home. It wasn’t even my home when I was living there.” The rising panic choked me. I couldn’t go on. My whole world was imploding.

  “You know, I’m not just some guy at a frat party, and you’re not some girl I happened to sit next to in class,” he said. “We’ve known each other for a decade. We were going to climb the Top Five. I lived for your Circs, always waiting, hoping to get one from you. Going a few days without was torture. But it’s clear that you entered this knowing we had only a few weeks together, max. Knowing you had no intention…”

  His head drooped. I wanted to reach out for him. Or to say something, only I couldn’t figure out what would make this better.

  “Honestly, Emily, I just feel so stupid for ever thinking it was a possibility. My mistake. Even the choice to go to UW in the first place. Yes, it was the best of the scholarship options for being close to good mountains to climb, but it was also the closest university to Townsend College.”