Lessons In Gravity

by Megan Westfield

  It was so unfair that her job was in jeopardy because her dad decided to be a stunt pilot instead of having a normal, safe career.

  “April?”

  She couldn’t speak.

  “I’m sorry, I know this is a terrible thing to talk about, but you let go of your Grigri out there. It has a safety, but there are a thousand other things that could happen up here where there isn’t a safety.”

  She had to find a way to answer him. If she didn’t, his fears would be confirmed and he would take her off the shoot.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said. “You have to have your head at all times for this kind of work. Really, it’s my fault. I should have asked you about this a long time ago.”

  She swallowed hard. Her dad was a selfish asshole jerk for putting her and her mom through this.

  “It was horrible,” she said, “but it’s been almost three years. I’ve had plenty of time to process everything.”

  In reality, she’d never be able to process everything. How could she ever forget the smell of the Pitts’s charred wreckage? Aircraft fuel, burning metal, and things too grotesque to acknowledge, she had smelled.

  “My buddy who went to Afghanistan is still a little jumpy sometimes, and it’s been eight years,” he said.

  “Thanks for bringing this up,” she said. “It’s a good reminder to control myself if I start to get nervous out there. I’m sure I’ll be fine next time. I’ll practice more at Celery Slabs.”

  “You sure? I was pretty worried about you back there.”

  She was still angry he had brought it up, but she also knew his concern was coming from a good place. She, of all people, knew what it was like to worry about someone.

  “I’m sure. I’ll be fine now that I know what it’s like up here.” She gave him a kind smile.

  Over on the fin, Theo and Danny had finished their sandwiches and were hooking into the safety line to walk back.

  “Just curious,” she asked. “How did you know about my dad?”

  “The internet. I do a search on anyone we’re going to hire.”

  “Does Danny know about the crash?”

  “I told him, but you know how he is when he’s focused on other stuff. And it was nine months ago.”

  Her secret was probably safe. But was it safe from Josh, too? Thankfully, Stephens was a common last name, and with a calendar month for a first name, unless somebody had access to the kinds of personal details Madigan did from her Walkabout application, it would be almost impossible to link her to that combination of April Stephens.

  …

  April put her pack in the van parked at the base of the Sorcerer. “I’m going to stay here and stretch out,” she told the guys. “I’ll catch the bus back.”

  Between the incident on the tower and Madigan’s confrontation, she needed some time alone to feel stable again. She pulled out her phone, swiping to the very first picture in her photo gallery. It was a picture she’d taken a long time ago of one of the framed photographs hanging in the house in Arizona. It was of her in late elementary school, hugging one of the Mooney Rocket’s propeller blades. Back then, she didn’t know that everybody’s dad didn’t have an airplane—or five of them. She also didn’t know planes could fall out of the sky.

  Her smile in the picture was so happy and carefree. Would she ever get back to that place?

  From the road, she took a faint trail to the base of the Sorcerer, which was fully in afternoon shadow. From this perspective, she couldn’t see the tower’s jagged peak until she’d craned her head so far back that her skull touched her shoulder blades. Even from the ground, looking at the heights of the tower made her feel a little queasy.

  She walked to the start of Josh’s Sorcerer route and put her hands on the strange black rock. It was cold and slick. Just like her father’s coffin had been when the undertakers pulled it out of the air-conditioned hearse.

  The coffin had just been for show, of course. But it was a good thing they did it. Even at the burial, he had an audience that packed his section of the cemetery.

  Why had he tried that new sequence before he’d fully perfected it, especially when he knew about the oil in the engine cowl? Why had he even gone up at all? How many other times had he done that type of thing?

  Her father flying with a known engine problem was no different than Josh climbing the Sorcerer without rope. Who did Josh think he was? He was a mere human challenging this menacing force of nature to a duel. It was a duel he could never win, and he’d pay for it with his life.

  And the lives and sanity of the people who love him.

  She leaned against the frigid rock. Tears stung her eyes.

  Last night in her tent, she’d watched the twenty-minute segment of Josh’s first Sorcerer climb. Instead of admiring how young and adorable he was, all she could see was the terrifying magnitude of the feat. Right from the start, she knew why he hadn’t wanted her to watch it. He had been reckless on the climb, to the point of being sloppy. He lunged for holds, his feet slipped off nubbins, and he took several falls that rivaled Barbara Gregory’s. It had seemed like he was in an angry race to the top and he didn’t care what happened to him along the way. But he’d had a rope to catch his falls then; this time he wouldn’t.

  Josh couldn’t die. He just couldn’t. She pictured his large, soft eyes, and a knot broke loose in her throat.

  Madigan was right: she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t sit there on the side of the Sorcerer and wait for Josh to fall to his death.

  She’d helplessly watched one man she loved fall to his death. There was no way she could watch a second. A human being only had the capacity to handle so much. There was an emotional trauma ward at her mother’s hospital. She would end up there.

  She slid down the rock and buried her face in her hands.

  What if it hadn’t been her dad who’d crashed that day? It would have been awful to see, but her dad would still be alive. What if she hadn’t been in the audience when it happened? The pain of losing him would still be there, but she wouldn’t be nearly as physically affected by it.

  Perhaps if she could get rid of one half of the equation, she might survive this. But which would it be? Caring about Josh, or filming his stunt?

  Even if he survived the Sorcerer, there would always be another Sorcerer, bigger and more dangerous than the last. It was just a matter of time until he died the kind of gruesome death that was the very reason people had paralyzing phobias of heights. Besides, Josh was leaving for Utah soon, but her internship would go on in Yosemite, then she’d be in Seattle, and after that, she’d live wherever she could find a job. This thing between them wasn’t going anywhere.

  Film was her passion, her career, her livelihood. And the other day, Danny had hinted at the job openings Madigan had told her about. There wasn’t even a choice to be made: Josh was the half of the equation that would have to go.

  Tears flowed down her cheeks. She had to cut herself off from him, and she had to do it now. As it was, she only had one week to transform Josh into a stranger. One week to train herself to look at his beautiful face and feel nothing.

  She hugged her legs and pressed her eyes against her kneecaps, her chest tight with her decision. The shadows were getting blacker and closing in. Cold air flowed along the ground, and she shivered.

  Tomorrow she was scheduled to interview Josh in the meadow. And after, she would break it off with him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  April had to get over to the meadow quickly. Josh was due to show up any minute, and she needed to make sure they didn’t end up walking over there together. The less one-on-one time they had before the interview, the less chance he’d pick up on something being wrong.

  “I’m going to go set up for the interview,” she said to Theo, who was sitting at the picnic table, BSing with the contractors. “Can you tell Josh to meet me out in the meadow? He knows where to go.”

  “No prob, Hollywood,” Theo said.

  She practical
ly jogged to the meadow, trying to burn off her nervous energy on the way. It was crucial that Josh not notice anything was wrong. It was her last chance to get everything they needed for the film. After she put a halt to their relationship, he would most certainly put a halt to her interviewing him.

  He walked into the meadow just as she finished setting up her equipment. Her skin bristled with every second that she held herself back from what would have otherwise been her natural reaction: running to him like in the movies. She couldn’t do that, knowing the unhappy ending that was about to happen. As he got closer, she could see that he was not smiling and his face was tentative.

  She couldn’t stand it. She walked over to him, meeting him halfway, and squeezed him hard.

  “April,” he said, burying his face in her hair.

  What she had to do after the interview was impossible. In this one, single way, dying was a better way to say good-bye. At least there wasn’t a choice involved. At least it wasn’t personal.

  She wiggled out of Josh’s tight grip. He grabbed her hands. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “You weren’t at dinner last night, and then you didn’t come out to my truck.”

  What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t promise him nothing was wrong, just to break it off with him once the interview was over. She would be no better than a scoop-happy reporter. Not that she wasn’t that already: in switching the order of the interview and the personal conversation they needed to have, she was essentially using him.

  “I thought you might be upset about something,” he said.

  “I’m not. It’s just harder to get away now that we have all the contractors here.”

  She rose on her toes and kissed him. She wanted to lose herself in the kiss, but she was too aware that it was their last, and her eyes filled with tears beneath her lids. She lowered off her toes, and he squeezed her like he might never let her go. Like he was sensing what she was about to do—that if he let her go, he’d lose her for good.

  They walked hand in hand to the camera. He sat on his stool, and she checked her light meters and turned on the microphone.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Yes, but make it fast so we can get over to ice cream happy hour at the snack shop.”

  If only life was that simple.

  She looked at him through the camera, and the sharp eye of the lens gave him away. His lighthearted comment was an act. There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes, across his forehead, and on the sides of his mouth. Worry lines. Worry lines that had probably been there all morning. He had indeed detected something was off.

  She should ask him if he was okay, but she didn’t. She needed this interview, and then she needed out. God, I’m a terrible human being.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Here we go. First question. What initially attracted you to the Sorcerer, back when you decided to free-climb it?”

  He sighed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Can’t we start with something easy?”

  “That was one of the easy questions. Just remember, all you need is a short little sound bite. Just like last time.”

  She shifted on her stool. “So, the Sorcerer. The first time. What made you want to climb it?”

  He looked exhausted, like he’d hardly slept at all last night. “April, I was young. It was impossible. That’s why I did it.”

  “But there are other impossible routes out there. Why this one?”

  “One, it’s Yosemite. Two, it’s a classic.”

  “Josh, you have to do better than that.”

  “Honestly, that’s all there is to it.”

  His first Sorcerer climb was what put him into the spotlight of the international climbing community. He went from being an unknown teenage prodigy to a rock star overnight, and he hadn’t disappointed yet. He would shock the world again if he succeeded in free soloing the Sorcerer. She had to have more.

  “Listen. I know the gear placement is bad. It’s impossibly hard. It’s dangerous. There’s a reason no one had been able to free-climb it before you. How did you do it? Why did you do it?”

  “You watched the video, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t pretty, was it?”

  “You were insane, Josh. I’m glad you don’t climb like that anymore.”

  She was talking too much. This was an interview, not a conversation. “Josh, you’ve gotta help me out here. The sooner you give me some good answers, the sooner we can be done.”

  Literally.

  He rubbed his temple and nodded.

  “We’ll come back to that question later, okay?” she said. “Tell me about the crux and how you’ve prepared for it.”

  He took a breath. “The crux is on the tenth pitch. The crack disappears and it goes to a blank-face climb. It’s the longest runout I’ve ever seen.”

  “What’s a runout?”

  “April, are you sure you want to talk about this?”

  Of course she didn’t! “Yes. Please. No holding anything back.”

  “A runout is the distance between the protection. The gear. Like cams. When a runout is really bad—like this one—it gets an X rating. An X for death if you fell on that section.”

  “So it’s basically free soloing?”

  “In that one place. But, remember, I’m not using a rope, so for me, all of it is X for death. Except if I fall near the top, then I have the parachute.”

  Adrenaline burst through her body. She took a controlled breath.

  “But don’t worry. I’ve rehearsed everything a hundred times on a rope. I was here for six months last year, just working on this one route. I’ve been on it a lot this spring, and the moves are still there.”

  “Have you ever fallen on the hard parts when you practice?”

  “Never.”

  “Will it be different when the rope’s not there?”

  “Of course. Those hard spots become hard on a whole different level.”

  “How do you handle it, mentally?”

  “Once you commit, there’s no going back.”

  “It can’t be as simple as that. You’ve got three thousand feet below you. One wrong move…”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s above or below. There’s only what’s right there in front of you.”

  “But how do you control your fear? Try to explain it, Josh. I have friends who won’t ride in a glass elevator. How can you climb a skyscraper without a rope?”

  He shrugged.

  “Tell me what you feel when you look down from the side of the Sorcerer.”

  “I would never look down. I’m not even thinking about that when I’m up there.”

  She could keep pressing, but she wouldn’t get anywhere. And it wasn’t because Josh was being difficult. It was like asking a dolphin why it preferred to be in water. Josh was not like other people when it came to fear. It had been the same for her dad. It was almost a genetic thing, like they were born without fear. They were energized by things that would make a normal person vomit with terror.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s switch gears. Why do you free solo?”

  He studied her face. “April, I can tell something’s wrong. Are you okay? Are we okay?”

  Yes, something was wrong. That something was that she had completely fallen for a man who was preparing to play a game of roulette with the Grim Reaper.

  “This interview is really important to the film, and I just want to get through it,” she said.

  Josh looked beyond her to the grove of aspens. When he looked at her again, she felt the sudden presence of the shadowy cloud that often followed him.

  “What was the question?” he asked.

  “Why do you free solo?”

  “I’m not free soloing the Sorcerer. I’m free BASEing. With a parachute.”

  Yeah. An unreliable, untested backup method that only works on the top third of the route.

  “You know wha
t I mean,” she said. “Why do you have to push it like that?”

  He was quiet while he considered his answer. “It’s like I said at the gala. It’s a new frontier of a skill. There’s nowhere else in this world you can find that kind of peace.”

  Again with the western frontier comparison! Not everyone on Lewis and Clark’s expedition made it back home, but at least Lewis and Clark were on an important mission. For Josh to take such a deadly risk for something ridiculous like rock climbing was totally different. Who cared if a person climbed the Sorcerer, and furthermore, what method they used to do it?

  It was the same with aerobatics. Who cared if her dad did a tail slide or a beginner loop? Hardly anyone in the audience would have known the difference. Her dad couldn’t stop himself from doing it, even at the risk of widowing his soul mate and abandoning the daughter who worshipped him. He hadn’t deserved their devotion.

  April looked at Josh, who was waiting for the next question. His eyes rose to meet hers, and she realized that he hadn’t been making direct eye contact since they started. She didn’t care.

  “Ten free soloists have died in the past two years,” she said. “That’s not very good odds, considering hardly anyone does it. The average age at death was twenty-three. Have you ever considered your family? There are people who love you. Have you thought about what it would do to them if you became one of the statistics?”

  “Why would you ask me that?” he said. His voice was sharp.

  “It’s not personal, Josh. In a week, all the media who are coming here will be asking you the same thing.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not personal?” His eyes were furious. “The only reason I’m even sitting here is because of you. You think I’d do this for Madigan or Danny? And answer questions like that for some newspaper?”

  “My question is legitimate,” she said. “And everyone else will ask.”

  He clearly cared only about his own selfish pursuits and didn’t even have the guts to admit it. “I’d like to know, Josh,” she said. “Personally.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  He was seething. Good. She couldn’t wait to break it off with him. He deserved it for his lack of regard for any of the people who cared about him.