An extra strong gust of wind pushed the tent low enough to tap Luke’s head before it sprang back. I was still not back in my sleeping bag after gathering snow, and I hadn’t realized that I was shivering. I slid out of his embrace to crawl in for warmth.
We sat side by side, sleeping bags up to our shoulders. Was it okay to scoot closer to him? I did, and he didn’t move away. This was an improvement. I put my head on his shoulder, and he still didn’t move away. Instead he rested his yellow-hatted head on top of mine.
“How did your mom get caught?” he asked.
I exhaled. I’d never, ever told the story. I didn’t need to; the people directly affected by what happened already knew what had gone down.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, sensing my tension. I exhaled again, my heart racing like when I was on the edge of the collapsed snowbridge.
He unzipped the sides of our sleeping bags so we could hold hands.
“We were at my grandparents’ house,” I said. “Amy’s parents. In Port Townsend. They have a nice place, and we used to house-sit when they traveled. I loved it there because they lived out of town, in the woods. Amy always went on benders when we were there. She didn’t know what I was doing, and she didn’t care. I was free to roam.
“One day, I wandered too far, and it started to drizzle. And it was foggy, too. I had a rain jacket on but not rain boots. My pants and shoes were soaked almost immediately.
“And then it started to get dark. I was lost. And cold. Just when I was getting really scared, I somehow stumbled through the trees and onto a road.”
Tashi for me, but not for Amy.
“A driver stopped. I tried to figure out where I was so I could tell them how to get back to my grandparents’ house, but they took me to a fire station instead. Then the police came and drove me to my grandparents’ house. All the lights were off. They knocked, and no one answered. I told them the house was dark because my mom was sleeping and that I’d be fine, but their suspicion was already raised, and in America you don’t leave ten-year-olds home alone like that. I was scared because I thought I’d have to go back to the station with them, so I kept insisting Amy was home.”
Luke’s eyebrows bent inward with concern. He rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb.
“The door was unlocked, so they went in with me so I could show them my school picture on the wall to prove that I belonged there. But once they were inside, they searched the house. They found her in the guest bedroom. And her boyfriend. Or maybe he was one of her suppliers. She was passed out. He was, too. They woke them up. There were handcuffs. And they took both of them away.”
“Oh, Emily,” Luke said. He hugged me tightly.
“They took me to stay at a strange place. It was like an office building but with bunk beds. They gave me some other girl’s old pajamas to wear. They got ahold of my grandparents the next day, and I went back to their house. Then Dad got called off his K2 expedition to come get me, and you know the rest of the story.”
Luke didn’t say anything, and I was afraid to look at him. It was unnaturally dark in the tent for it being only three p.m., which made everything seem ominous.
“I’m a jerk,” he said. “I never even gave you a chance to explain.”
“I wouldn’t have told you back on Milam Peak. Not everything. I was too stunned.”
I thought about the day after Amy was arrested, how I stood in the shadows of the hallway, listening to my grandparents argue about what to do with me. They had been so angry. It was Amy they were mad at, but it felt like it was me who was in trouble.
“She was a terrible mother, and she was in the wrong that day and a thousand other days, but it will always be because of my wildness that she was caught and went to prison. I’m as much dead to her as she is to me.”
Luke cupped my jaw and turned me to look at him. His eyes were pleading. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could take back so many things I said earlier.”
With his hand still cupping my face, he leaned in, brushing my lips with the most tender of kisses.
It was just one kiss, but it was a kiss that meant the world to me. There was still so much between us that was complicated and tangled, but even more than his words, this kiss showed me that things between us could be repaired. There was hope.
Our radios crackled with Thom’s voice, then squealed with interference. I clicked mine off.
“…all guides report to the cook tent,” Thom finished on Luke’s radio.
We bundled up, and then helped the Sherpas check on the clients, put more stakes in the tents, and deliver hot tea, water, and dinner before the storm got worse. The temperature had dropped even more by the time Luke and I returned to our tent. We lay in our sleeping bags, pressed together for the illusion of warmth and to steady each other’s shivering as we attempted to sleep.
It was hard to tell when morning arrived because it took dawn a long time to make a dent in the thick clouds. Just as Luke and I were getting ready to check on clients again, Jim came on the radio, telling us the strongest part of the storm was about to hit and forbidding any of us from leaving our tents.
Luke and I ate granola bars and packages of dried fruit for breakfast as the wind battered the tent like football players in a game of tug-of-war. I don’t think anyone except Dad expected the storm to be this strong. Dad, who was surely biting his nails as he watched the grim progression of this storm.
We were in the best expedition tents money could buy, but in winds like this, there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t simply be snatched up and blown off the mountain.
There was nothing to do but lie and wait. It was so, so cold, and each gust of wind was stronger and louder. It was possibly the highest winds that I’d ever been in, and if I was nervous, I could only imagine how terrified the clients were. Of them all, Doc would be the most aware of the potential for devastation this storm had. From her many years at Everest ER, she knew intimately that climbing with a guided company was no guarantee of getting off this mountain alive.
At some point, Luke unzipped the top part of our sleeping bags so we could lie with our arms around each other.
I tucked tightly in to him, forcing myself to stop anticipating the lift and slide of the tent being torn loose. Luke wrapped himself farther around me, his head dipping down to press a firm, deliberate kiss on my cheek.
Our foreheads were touching now, my eyes closed to the warmth of his contact. Just for that moment, it was like the storm went silent and the tent was still and solid.
“I love you, Emily,” he said.
My heart surged. “I love you, too.”
We clung to each other as the winds picked up even more, punching the tent so flat that it bounced off our bodies. We lay and waited, praying that the clients would be okay.
The force of the wind yanked out one of the stakes. The corner of our tent came alive in the wind, lashing out against the storm like a half-rigid bullwhip. Then all we could do was pray that we’d be okay.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Except for the two feet of snow left behind, it was as if the storm had never happened. The sky was bright blue, and with the parabola effect from the walls of snow and rock surrounding us, it was so hot that it seemed like the sun had mistaken Mount Everest for Thailand today.
After the winds had peaked during yesterday’s storm, they stayed sustained at that level for an hour before gradually backing down to a reasonable force. They died down altogether sometime in the middle of the night, but we stayed an extra day at Camp Two for avalanche reasons. Now our group was rallying for our climb up Lhotse Face to spend the night at Camp Three.
Lhotse Face is as steep as a double black diamond ski run, only instead of it being a narrow chute, it spans the full distance from Everest’s west flank to Lhotse’s east flank, like a drive-in movie screen for giants. The fixed line runs right up its middle, and
when there are several teams on the line at once, it looks like an escalator straight to the sky.
The Cubans were already up on the line as the rest of us waited in Camp Two. I purposely brushed against Luke as the UW team positioned to get started. He glanced over and nudged me back, the intensity in his eyes reigniting our kisses in the tent this morning. Even though we were in broad daylight with clients all around, he grabbed my elbow for a split second and gave it a quick but firm squeeze.
Things were different with us now. Like the storm, we’d blown into Camp Two with anger, uncertainty, and pain, but we were leaving Camp Two with everything sure, beautiful, and new. There was still the huge question of what would happen at the end of the season, but for the world we were living in right now, he was mine and I was his.
Luke continued checking the harnesses of his UW clients while I headed over to the cook tent. He looked back at me, and seeing that I had been watching him, a smug smile crept across his lips.
I shook my head at him across the distance. His smile grew bigger.
My crew got on the line once the last UW client had clipped in. It didn’t take very long under the blinding sun before all members of A-Team had our down suits peeled halfway off with the sleeves tied around our waists like a belt.
For once, I was happy to be stuck in the back, since going fast in this heat would be even more miserable. The sun’s rays sizzled through my hair like they were searching for a chunk of scalp to fry. I insisted that Phil, Glissading Glen, and Johnsmith stop frequently for water breaks.
Camp Three was two thirds of the way up Lhotse Face. The Sherpas had built it weeks ago by cutting tent platforms straight into the snow and ice of the face. Here, the tents were three-person, which meant I’d be sharing with Doc and Claudia instead of Luke. By the time Tyler, Hulk, and I finished getting all the A-Team clients situated with enough water for the night and oxygen flowing properly, Doc and Claudia were already laid out in our tent like they’d been there for hours. I had a nagging altitude headache, so I wasted no time arranging my sleeping bag in the open spot between them. Woozy and lethargic in the sauna-like heat of the tent, I drifted easily to sleep.
After a brief guides’ meeting later that afternoon, Luke caught my eye, then traversed over to the side of the slope and around the corner to a big pile of boulders. A few minutes later, I followed.
There, the storm had swept the rock clean, and it gave us a place to sit that was hidden from camp but with a wide view of the incredible panorama. It was like we were seated on thrones at the top of the world.
“It’s been a while since you’ve been this high. You holding up?” I teased.
In response, he grabbed my face with his mittened hands and kissed me thirstily. His hands traveled down to my waist. I leaned in for more, and we kissed until we were both panting from the altitude.
I’d like to see a Going on Eighteen article talk me through this one: how to literally not run out of air when kissing at twenty-three-thousand feet.
“So…you think we’ll kiss at the summit?” I asked.
The question was hypothetical, of course, as we’d be with different teams, likely hours apart. But it was fun to pretend that it was just us climbing this mountain. Simply walking up to the top, untethered to the fixed lines and with no one to watch over. If not for the jet stream blowing on the top, we could do it right this moment, he and I. We could head to Camp Four tomorrow, then set our alarms for ten p.m. to make our summit bid, and be back at Base Camp right on the heels of the clients finishing this rotation.
“Hmmm,” he said. “If you make A-Team step it up, and I get the Dawgs tangled behind a different team, it’s possible we could summit at the same time.”
“You’d kiss me right on top of Chomolungma, in front of everybody?” The thought made me laugh. The summit of Everest was all about jockeying into position for the quintessential victory photo while battling cameras that refused to function properly in the cold. It was all oxygen masks and clients digging summit trinkets out of their pockets as we guides made sure no one dropped a mitten or fell off the side.
“How about this?” he said. “I will wrap my arms around you wherever our teams pass and keep you like that for way too long.”
“Deal,” I said, leaning in to his body and using his shoulder as a pillow. I closed my eyes and relished the feeling of him solidly beneath my ear, thankful for the rare stillness on the mountain from the boulders blocking the wind.
“So that storm made me think about something,” I said.
“What?”
“How unpredictable the weather has been here in recent years. And how you changed your major. You know, weather modeling and avalanche forecasting don’t just help climbers and athletes. They help Sherpas, too.”
“True. But it doesn’t help in the same way as medical care.”
“I think it’s equal. Climbing Sherpas have the highest job mortality rate on Earth. And how many of those deaths are weather- or avalanche-related?”
“Most.”
Including his own father’s. “So as a forecaster, you’d be in the business of preempting. You’re keeping the doctor out of work. You’re saving lives before they are at risk of being lost.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, Luke. Don’t you think you’d be more effective in something you’re passionate about? And having grown up here and loving mountains like you do, don’t you think you could do a better job of it than someone in, say, New Orleans, who has never stepped foot in the Himalayas? You’re like a textbook in mountaineering history. You know the past storms. You know what went wrong on expeditions, and you know what the weather view looks like from the ground, not just from the satellites.”
“It’s something to chew on.”
“Yes, it is something to chew on!”
I noticed then that his mouth was rippled in his trademark W. Amused and content. He was trying to get a rise out of me. I smacked him. He grabbed my hand and kissed it.
Afterward, his mouth remained in a W, so I knew he was actually considering the idea. It wasn’t the answer to everything, but perhaps it could satisfy his sense of duty in a way that better suited him. Also, if he didn’t go to medical school after he graduated, then maybe there was hope of us doing the Top Five together someday. I gave an internal fist pump of victory.
We stayed there on our perch for a little while longer, watching the cloudless sky start its transformation into an airbrushed canvas of neon pinks and purples. Luke’s arm was warm around me. Together, we were part of the circle of the great Himalayas that stretched out to the left and right of us and joined on the other side of the horizon.
Dad was at Global City within an hour of us returning to Base Camp. Luke and I had finished putting gear away and were starting a game of cribbage at one of the side tables in the big top.
Dad was glaring—glowering—at Luke. He knew.
“Dad! Stop it!” I hissed.
He cleared his throat. Luke quietly excused himself on a bogus chore.
“How was Pumori?” I asked.
“Fine. You have some explaining to do, MiniBoss.”
I groaned. “Doc told you, didn’t she? Speaking of, you have some explaining to do. I had no idea—”
“So there is something going on. And, no, Teresa didn’t say anything to me. Your cook, Phurba, told Pertemba that one of the Global Sherpas saw—I’m not sure I can say this aloud…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”
“He saw…that guy”—Dad pointed to the door Luke had exited from—“coming out of your tent so early in the morning it was still dark.”
Oh god. People were gossiping about us? We’d been so careful, but I guess we hadn’t been careful enough.
“Don’t you know I was caught in a whiteout?” I said, trying for a diversion.
“Spending the night, Emily? With Luke?”
“What’s new about that? We share a tent up on the mountain all the time.”
&nbs
p; “This was in Base Camp.”
“We used to sleep over sometimes in Base Camp.”
“But you were kids then. Now—” He cleared his throat. “Now, neither of you are children.”
Oh, this was awkward. “You love Luke,” I pointed out.
“Yes, I do. He’s like a son.”
Annnd, it was getting worse.
Dad snapped his arms around me with a whomp, like a human mousetrap. “First you’re going off to college, and then you’re going off to who knows where—Tanzania, maybe—and now this!”
I was tempted to bring up Dad’s secret history with Doc again, but if I wanted to divert, it would be best to stay off the topic of relationships. “You’re going off to who knows where, too.”
“You know the location of every expedition I have planned for the next twelve months. Back to what we were talking about. Luke—our Luke—is your boyfriend. Okay, let’s see, how do I put this? I hope you and he are being careful—”
“Dad, stop!”
This was unbelievable. I’d never even seen Luke shirtless. I looked around, making sure no one was overhearing this conversation. The only other clients in the tent with us were watching a movie over in the far corner. The traitorous Cook-Phurba was not here at the moment. He better not be eavesdropping on the other side of the tent fabric. Perhaps I would suggest that Doc do a replay of eggplant parmesan night and then not help Cook-Phurba when he came begging.
“I’m a guide now, Dad. I think you can trust me to handle things”—I cleared my throat—“domestically.”
“You’re only twenty,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m twenty.” The sad part was that at the old-maid age of twenty, I actually could use some help, ahem, domestically.
Dad steepled his hands. “He treats you well?”
“Well, sometimes.” I laughed. “Just kidding, Dad. You know Luke. Of course he does.”
Leaving Everest Page 19
