Lessons In Gravity

by Megan Westfield

  Josh sighed and then folded the mattress back at the cab end of his bed to pull a bouldering pad out from the trapdoor. He rested it against the canopy. Voilà, they had a couch. Josh leaned against it. She sat between his legs and pulled his comforter around them.

  She popped the DVD into her laptop. The one Danny Rappaport made for her. In the cafeteria, it seemed so normal for him to hand her the DVD, but she didn’t take this simple action for granted. She was so lucky to be in a position where an accomplished filmmaker like Danny personally selected files off his computer for his intern to watch.

  The first of twenty clips followed a climber for several months as he failed over and over on a short, overhanging cliff.

  “Do you know him?” Josh asked.

  “No, but it looks like a Crank It production.”

  “Not the director, the climber. He’s a buddy of mine. Scotty Knight. Ever heard of him?”

  “Oh, is this the Godzilla climb?”

  “Godzilla Returns. Out in New Hampshire. He’d been working on it for two seasons before they came out to film.”

  Not only was she watching Danny Rappaport’s hand selections, she was watching them with one of the best climbers in the world. Perhaps the best. It was like watching a football game with Tom Brady.

  “Does he make it?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was the hardest route in the world for years. The first five-fifteen ever.”

  On-screen, Scotty’s whole body was shaking as he inserted a cam into the overhanging crack. It certainly looked impossible.

  “The camera work here would be hard, too,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “See how the camera is moving right now? They wouldn’t be able to get a boom all the way in there, so they must have made a trolley or something.”

  Some people burned out on watching movies once they started making them, but she would never be like that. She loved everything about film, how all the parts came together to sweep you completely out of your world. If it hadn’t been for movies, she would not have survived that first year back at school after the crash.

  On the screen, Scotty Knight reached the top of his climb. “Yes!” he yelled, throwing a hand into the air. He bent over, trying to catch his breath, and after he did, he stood up with an ear-to-ear grin.

  “Take note,” she said to Josh. “That was perfect.”

  “You want me to do a victory dance at the top of my climbs?”

  “That was hardly a victory dance.”

  As the next clip started, she laid her head against his collarbone. He wrapped his arms around her and slipped his fingers in between hers. Her chest lifted, and she felt like she was floating.

  It was such a perfect way to spend a rainy day. Watching movies with Josh. It felt so normal. Like they did this all the time, and like they’d do it hundreds of times again.

  “Do you know what I regret?” he asked her.

  “What?”

  “That it was your crew who took you climbing for the first time. I wish it had been me.”

  “The second time could be really special, too.”

  “You’d go again?”

  “Yeah. It was fun.”

  The fifth clip started with a breathtaking bird’s-eye view of Monument Valley from a red sandstone tower. A woman about ten years older than April with a long black braid was clinging to the corner of the needle, desperation on her face.

  April paused the video. This looked like it could be the sequence that had terrified Theo. “Let’s skip this one.”

  “Wait. This is good. It’s Barbara Gregory’s famous whipper.”

  April thought about the bungee-jumping scene in film class. Her stomach cramped. Decision made. She closed the file and double-clicked on the next one in line.

  “What?” Josh asked. “You only want to see the triumphs and victory dances?”

  “No. I just don’t want to watch someone take a nasty fall.”

  “She doesn’t get hurt that bad.”

  “I still don’t want to see it.”

  “Falls are a fact of life in climbing. It’s okay. We all appreciate a good one.”

  Her skin was clammy. “That’s terrible, Josh.”

  “If you’re not falling, it means you’re not taking risks.”

  Anger filled her. She was glad her back was to him so he couldn’t see her face. “So why do you need to take risks?”

  “You’ll never go anywhere in climbing if you don’t.”

  “Oh, so it’s totally worth it.”

  “It’s not just a climbing thing. It’s the same with any other athlete. It’s a life thing, really. If you’re not taking risks, you’re not really living.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up. Her father used to say the same thing. He had said that to her over coffee on the morning of the crash. What good is life if you’re not living it?

  She hardened herself to the memory. The rain had extended her vacation from reality for a few days, and she wasn’t going to waste it thinking about her dad, or bickering about the very reason this thing with Josh would never be more than an interlude.

  April played the next clip on the DVD, instantly recognizing the looming profile of the Sorcerer, where a big-eyed, light-haired boy was putting chalk on his hands.

  “Aw,” she said. “It’s you.”

  “Oh, no! We’re not watching this one.”

  “You were so cute! How old were you?”

  “Eighteen,” he said. “Okay, moving on.”

  Eighteen wasn’t all that long ago. He’d changed so much in the last seven years.

  “You skipped one, I get to skip one.” He reached over her shoulder and paused the clip as his younger self stepped up to the dark rock.

  Neither one of them had a problem with the next clip, and they made it through the rest before her battery died. But when the distractions were over, there was a lingering sense of gloom in her body.

  Josh was watching her, his brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

  “Are you sure you’re okay with me filming on the Sorcerer?”

  “Of course. Whose idea do you think it was in the first place?”

  Her mind fumbled to understand. “You told Danny to assign me to the Sorcerer?”

  “No, not like that. I just asked him one time why you never filmed on the rock, and he said, ‘You know, there’s really no reason she can’t.’”

  Even if it had happened in a casual sort of way, it still stung that the invitation to join the Sorcerer crew had been initiated by Josh rather than being Danny’s idea first.

  “You will be a distraction, you know,” Josh said.

  He was smiling. He meant it as a compliment. He was just teasing her. Flirting. She knew these things, logically, but it didn’t matter. Her presence messing with his mind space on a life-or-death climb? That was not okay. Invisible plates of armor slammed up around her, locking into place. Her breathing was getting heavy, and she pulled her hand out of Josh’s. This wound from her dad, it would always be open, always affecting her. Her brow was drenched in sweat. She had to get away.

  “April?”

  So much for a rainy day vacation from reality. Not with stakes like this.

  “April, look at me.”

  She didn’t want to, but she did. His eyes were pleading.

  “You have to understand, I only asked Danny about the filming because I was so desperate to know more about you. I would have done anything. I even messed with the charger that day on Flying Sheep so I could have some time with you when you weren’t working.”

  Her sweaty body went cold. It was worse than she thought. He’d messed with their equipment? Because of her?

  “I had no idea that anything would actually happen with us,” he said. “I thought you were dating Madigan, remember? Even if you weren’t, I didn’t think there was any way a girl like you would be interested in a guy like me.”

  This had all been such a mistake, and now everything was
irrevocably tangled up. But it hurt to see him miserable like this. She fought her urge to run and reached under the blanket for Josh’s hand, threading her fingers between his. “You underestimate the attraction of a truck-house.”

  “April, I’m really sorry that I meddled with your guys’ equipment.”

  If only she could disappear into him and have the peripherals go away. Like at the gala, where it was the two of them, adrift together within the rest of the big, wide world.

  But she couldn’t, because that was not the reality of their situation. Those things out on the peripherals had the power to kill one of them. The danger was right there beyond reach, looming, closing in. She’d always feared that her father would be killed in a plane crash, but when it actually happened, she’d been caught completely off guard. She would not be caught like that again.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I overreact sometimes. This internship is really important to me.”

  Josh looked relieved, but she could also tell he didn’t quite believe her.

  “I’m fine, I promise.” She smiled to prove it. “But I have to go do some footage logging in the van.”

  She slid to the edge of the bed and put on her shoes.

  She was so not fine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  April heaved her backpack off her shoulders and dropped onto the nearest log. Three thousand feet of elevation gain in six miles, with a pack that weighed almost as much as her. This kind of exhaustion they did not teach in film school.

  Other than the dampness in the air, it was impossible to tell it had rained in Yosemite just yesterday. The sun was shining, the sky was bright blue with puffy white clouds, and birds were chirping all around.

  Theo the mountain goat had arrived long before the rest of them and had already built a safety line along the Sorcerer’s spine with rappelling anchors off the far end. He dug through April’s discarded pack for the rest of the equipment he had been waiting for.

  “Want any help?” she asked.

  He snorted in response. April put on her harness and helmet while trying not to look at the fin, which extended into the valley like a diving board of the gods.

  It was all happening so fast now. Josh’s practice run of the Sorcerer was in just a few days, when he would climb it with a rope and Lars belaying him. After that, the Walkabout crew would be doing a dress rehearsal with everyone except Josh. Then they’d just be waiting for a go from Josh. After the climb was done—assuming Josh survived—he’d be leaving for Utah.

  Over on the end of the fin, Theo motioned for her to clip into the safety line and come join them.

  From below, the Sorcerer’s fin looked as thin as a knife blade. In reality it was ten feet wide, but with the sheer drops on either side that were three times as high as Flying Sheep Buttress, ten feet wide was terrifyingly narrow. The extreme exposure made her dizzy. Walking down the fin was like being drunk on a balance beam. If her boss wasn’t right there watching, she would have gotten down on her hands and knees to crawl.

  She reclipped her line to the anchor at the end and sat down with the guys. Theo opened his sequence board to reveal a remarkable 3-D pencil drawing of the top third of the Sorcerer. Josh’s route and key moves were in bright red, and the rest of the crew and their position shifts were color coded and labeled.

  “April, you’ll start here,” Theo said, pointing to the lower of two magenta Xs. “After Josh passes through his knee bar, you’ll move up to here.”

  Danny had told her that she was just rappelling down to her spot and would stay there. Now she had to make a move on the rock, during filming? Her stomach heaved. Theo’s words were garbled and warped as he discussed the orange Xs, which belonged to one of the contractors.

  Her butt, hands, and feet were planted securely on the rock, and her daisy chain hooked in securely, but she felt no more stable than a toy top careening along the rocks. The air around her was alive, like she was inside a cloud that was sizzling with lightning.

  “Ready?” Madigan asked her.

  The guys already had moved over to their lines and were prepping their gear for the rappel. “You’re over here,” Madigan said, pointing to the line between him and Danny.

  To stand took a herculean effort, and to walk the five steps to her anchor required every bit of focus she could muster. She grabbed a length of the rappel rope and pushed the Grigri gate open, but her hands were shaking too much, and it snapped closed on her fingers.

  Madigan backed over the edge and waited for her. She wiped her clammy hands on her pants and tried the Grigri again, this time successfully curving the rope through the device.

  “Everything look okay?” she asked.

  “Yep. You’ve got this. It’s exactly the same as Celery Slabs, just higher off the ground.”

  You’ve done this a hundred times.

  But you’ve only known how to rappel for a few weeks, her devil’s advocate replied. The Sorcerer is not for beginners, you idiot.

  She exhaled and unclipped the daisy chain. Now her life was officially in her hands. She inched backward over the lip of the cliff. Her stomach rolled and then rolled again.

  There had been no wind in the valley when they started hiking up this morning, but over the edge, it made its presence known, pushing through her clothes and finding its way beneath her helmet. It was loud and scary, exactly like a sound effect for a doomed party in a blizzard.

  Her eyes were so unfocused that she could barely see, but she forced herself to keep pressure on the Grigri lever and continue her baby steps down the side of the Sorcerer. Way, way below, the loose ends of her rope skipped and waved along the rock, a taunting reminder that it was possible to rappel herself right off the ends and into oblivion.

  Her body responded with a shudder, and then she thought about the cliff edge up at the top. It had been sharp. A sharp edge could sever a rope, like she’d read in the Yosemite Deaths book in the gift shop. She thought about Theo, and how he’d downed four pints of beer at Tall Pines last night. It was very possible he hadn’t hooked up their ropes right.

  At least she had a rope. How could Josh possibly be up here without one?

  One wrong move will mean certain death.

  Goose bumps rushed up her shins. She was falling. No, it was her dad falling. There was smoke from the engine, and he was starting to spin. Spinning wasn’t part of a tail slide. Wait! Stop! Something wasn’t right!

  “April!” Madigan yelled.

  He was just five feet below her, looking up. “You coming?”

  Her eyes were wild, and she knew it.

  His words from their first rappelling lesson echoed through her head. Even if you get scared and let go, the lever snaps back and you’re not going anywhere.

  She had, in fact, let go of the Grigri. Guiltily, she sneaked her hand back onto the lever.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She’d let go of the Grigri, but, yes, she was okay. She nodded. Sweat was pouring off her like a fever that had broken. The fuzziness and swirling were gone.

  “Just keep on going to where Danny is. He’ll walk you through your positions.”

  Her hand was steady on the lever now. She looked straight ahead, pretending the rock in front of her was a section of Celery Slabs. She reminded herself that she’d done the whole multipitch, loose-end-rope rappel with Josh on Flying Sheep without so much as a thought other than how sexy he was.

  “That’s good right there,” Danny said when she was next to him.

  He waited for her to lock off. “This is your first spot,” he said. He pointed to a hairline fracture in the glass-smooth rock, seven feet to the left. “That’s Josh’s route.”

  “There’s nothing there,” she said.

  “Which is exactly why Josh is the only one in the world who can do it.”

  Josh. The guy with those vulnerable hazel eyes. The guy who was taking a correspondence course in economics and kissed really, really well.

  “I want you to keep the came
ra on him at all times,” Danny said. “Even when the angle doesn’t look good. He’s only doing this one time. There are no retakes. We want to document everything.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “After he’s moved through here and you get to eighty degrees, he’ll be in Ernesto’s camera.” Danny pointed to a bulge on the other side of the fracture. “You’ll want to get moving right away so you’re in place in time. But don’t hurry. That’s how people get hurt. Let’s go to your second spot.”

  April switched her gear and followed Danny upward. “Josh will be doing a knee bar here, and I really want that shot, especially if he goes hands-free and reaches back for his chalk.”

  She and Danny rappelled farther down to go over some other things with Theo. Afterward, all four of them ascended back to the top. The guys ate lunch at the end of the fin, but she needed a break from the exposure and took her food back to solid ground near their pile of backpacks. She settled onto a nice patch of grass with a boulder as a backrest.

  “Mind if I join you?” Madigan asked. She hadn’t realized he had followed her off the fin.

  “Sure,” she said, taking a bite of her PBJ.

  He sat cross-legged in front of her. “I think we need to talk about what happened to your dad.”

  She choked on her sandwich. How did he know, and what did he know?

  “It was such a terrible thing, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  She couldn’t talk about this. Not with him, not with anyone.

  “I know you were there when it happened,” he continued. “Do you ever have any flashbacks or anything like that?”

  She had a flashback then, but not of the crash. She saw her dad walking through the door at home in his flight suit and felt the surge of happiness that followed, from the lift of that barely perceptible worry she’d carried all day that he might not ever come through that door again. She felt the heat from the Arizona sun radiating from his flight suit as her young arms squeezed all six-foot-three, 250 pounds of him. He was her rock. Her big, strong, boisterous rock that was perched so tenuously on the edge of a cliff.

  “I’m just asking because it seemed like you had a little trouble on the rappel today. I was wondering if it might be related.”