Eleven
Rilla crawled on the raised spine of granite lifting out of the dome like some prehistoric snake frozen in the act of diving for the depths of the earth. Nearly forty feet of rope blew in the wind ahead of her, shortening as she climbed to Adeena.
They were only halfway up the curve of the dome—but the angle was leveling off and when Rilla finally reached Adeena and Petra at the anchors of the eighth pitch, she could stand and walk.
“You did it,” Adeena shouted.
Petra pumped her arms in victory. “See?”
“I did it!” Rilla yelled to the wind, dropping onto her back on the granite. She smiled so wide it hurt, cheeks aching, and raw from the wind and sun. She couldn’t even imagine herself doing this, and yet, it was done. She had done it. Whatever happened, no one could take this moment. With the granite against her backside and the sunshine on her face. She grinned to the sky.
“You’ve officially completed your first multi-pitch,” Petra said. “Peanut butter crackers?”
“Ooh. Yes, please.” Rilla sat up so quickly her head spun.
“Here, take some of these.” Adeena scooped a handful of almonds out of her bag. They were coated with flakey salt that smelled faintly of wood smoke. “They’re better fuel than crackers.”
“You did not just come at my crackers,” Petra said.
“Oh, I definitely did. What are you, ten? Peanut butter crackers?”
“Peanut butter, Dee,” Petra said. “It has protein.”
“That’s not even real peanut butter.”
“It’s . . .” Petra frowned and looked at the package. “Canola oil, soybean oil, sugar, wheat . . .” It was quiet a second. “Peanuts!” Petra shouted triumphantly. “In your face!”
Adeena rolled her eyes. “Oh, the pinnacle of western nutrition.”
“Whatever, you lost, I win. All that counts.”
Petra’s competiveness didn’t seem to bother Adeena, who just flopped back on her pack and threw an almond at her, laughing.
Rilla still didn’t know how to act—whether this was all a joke, or whether there was something real at the root of their arguing. Inside, it made her want to stay very still, like a rabbit in the grass, waiting to see if the way was clear.
Rilla hooked her arms over her knees and stared down the climb they’d just come up, crackers in one hand and almonds in the other. Below them, another group of climbers was nearly halfway up the last dike. She’d been so focused on getting up here, she hadn’t paid attention to anything behind.
“Is it always this busy?” she asked Petra, interrupting their arguing to point down the dike.
“I was surprised we didn’t have to wait when we got here. It’s usually busier,” Petra said.
“It’s been cold this spring,” Adeena said, standing and brushing off her pants. “And the cables on the back for hikers aren’t up. I think that cuts down on traffic.”
“You did good today,” Petra said to Rilla. “Did we get you hooked?”
“Yes,” Rilla said confidently. She could see why people did this. The taste of the wind and the edge of fear. The feeling of pride and accomplishment that she had just done something not many people could or would ever do. That she’d done something she herself was afraid of. She didn’t know how she would ever do it again, but she wanted to.
“You’re going to become the next Lynn Hill now, right?” Petra teased.
“Who?” Rilla asked.
“The patron saint of women climbers.”
“In Yosemite, at least,” Adeena added.
Rilla laughed. She laughed—not because she thought Petra was absurd, though she did—but because her entire body felt lighter and stronger and sharper, and she could hardly believe she sat here, laughing.
“You have a chance hardly any other climber in the world has,” Petra said. “You live inside Yosemite Valley. In a house. With a bed. And a kitchen?” Petra squinted at her.
Rilla nodded.
“A kitchen! And this is your backyard.” She flung her arms wide. “This is your fucking backyard.”
“Well, yeah . . . I guess.” Rilla’s heart beat faster—whether from fear or exhilaration, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want the privilege of living in Yosemite to be wasted on her. She looked around, at the mountains surrounding her. Maybe there was a home here.
“We’re going to turn you into a climber,” Adeena said.
Rilla clutched the plastic wrapper in her fist. She understood the words, but didn’t believe them. The wind whipped her hair into tangled wisps about her face. In silence, they watched the climbers below them struggle slowly upward on the dike, before standing, hoisting their packs, and heading up the steep slab toward the summit.
After another forty minutes, Rilla took back all the good things she felt—certain death was imminent. Her calves burned, and the cold wind scraped her lungs. Snow fell into her shoes no matter how carefully she stepped. Somewhere near the top, she paused to catch her breath, and a sudden wave of head-spinning nausea slapped her in the face, making her gag. “I’m going to be sick,” she gasped. “I need a minute.” She sank onto a rock and closed her eyes.
“Altitude sickness,” Adeena said. “Be careful. It slows your head. It’ll get better once we start going down. We can stop again if you need it.”
Rilla waited until she caught her breath and stood—following on, silent and nauseated. Her eyelids drooped, heavy and weirdly swollen. They crossed the barren moon landscape of the top of the dome in a thin line, one after another, with Petra leading.
She was on top of Half Dome. She should be running around, high kicking and Instagramming all over the place—but all she wanted to do was get off.
They wound past impossibly balanced cairns—rocks stacked one on top of the other to stand taller than Rilla’s head. She slipped in the snow as she tried to stay in Adeena’s and Petra’s footsteps.
Adeena grabbed her wrist. “Hold up.”
Rilla slid to a stop, lifting her head and realizing they’d crossed the top and now stood overlooking the back side of the dome. Even the altitude sickness didn’t dull the thrill of seeing what lay beyond the dome she’d gotten so used to seeing every time she looked east. They stood on a gentle edge before the plummet. As far as she could see, there was nothing but white and gray jagged peaks, charcoal valleys, blunt domes, and the scrubby dark sage of evergreens. Oblivion spread before her. Oblivion, with no way down.
“How do we get off?” Her heart was already racing, thumping in her stomach and throat. It didn’t feel like it could go any faster. The edge of panic rippled against her.
“We’ll go down the cables route,” Petra said. “As soon as the people ahead clear out.”
“I thought you said the cables were down.”
“They are. But they just drop them down on the rock. The boards are left,” Petra said. “It’s not suitable for most hikers, really. But it works.”
“Why don’t you sit,” Adeena said. “Drink something.”
Rilla sank onto a rock, shivering in the icy wind.
“See if this will fit.” Adeena handed her a ball of quilted nylon. “It will be warmer.”
Rilla stupidly held it up, before realizing she needed to put it on. Slowly, she pulled it over her sweatshirt. It was too tight to zip and her arms and shoulders strained in Adeena’s tiny jacket, but she clutched it across her chest with numb fingertips.
This was totally how people died. Even with Petra’s and Adeena’s experience she could see how the altitude numbed you and slowed you enough to make mistakes you wouldn’t normally make.
Another group was ahead of them. Not climbers, but hikers who had made the climb to the top of dome using the thick wire cables lying flat on the rock. Petra stood at the edge, watching their progress as they disappeared over the swell.
“Hey,” someone hollered across the wind.
In unison, the girls looked up and behind them. A man came toward them from the summit, waving and running over the snow and rocks.
“He’s going to slip,” Adeena said, before yelling back to him. “Slow down.”
He didn’t slow. The strings on his hat bounced off his shoulders as he ran up to them. “My partner is . . .” He looked at the three of them wildly. The panic in his eyes made Rilla’s chest tighten. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
Adeena and Petra bolted off after him, snow flying into the wind. Rilla pushed up to follow, holding the jacket tight across her chest. Her pulse pounded hard even though she’d just been resting. She ran as fast as she dared up the slope, back to the summit, where a man leaned against a rock.
“It’s like altitude sickness, but this altitude should be fine. He’s diabetic, but he’s got a pump. I don’t know . . .” the guy said, looking down at his buddy. “Rob. How’re you feeling? You awake?”
He looked pale and sweaty. He shrugged.
“He has a pump?” Petra asked. “So, it shouldn’t be his insulin, right?”
“Sometimes altitude fucks you up when it didn’t before. Can he get down?” Adeena asked.
“No. I mean, yes he has a pump. No, it shouldn’t. I don’t think I can get him down though. Maybe with your help. You guys were the climbers ahead of us, right?” He didn’t look up from his partner.
“But we can’t hike him out,” Petra said. “Can he walk?”
“Barely.”
Rilla sank down to a rock, her stomach tight and the nausea heavy. It felt like she could see the curve of the earth on the horizon and it made her almost feel the sensation of spinning through the cosmos. The sick man sat across from her, looking like she felt. The voices of the more experienced climbers blurred together, muffled by the wind. “Shit, if we can’t get him to walk . . . could we contact someone?”
He must be terrified. She’d be terrified. His mouth was open a little. Brown eyes glazed. As if he too felt the world spinning in space and couldn’t stand upright against those forces. Rilla’s granny had been a diabetic. No pumps—just shots, so many shots. One day, when Rilla was nine and helping in the garden, Granny had sat down, unable to move anywhere else. Looking pale and sick, just like this man. She’d swatted at Rilla’s hand. “I’m fine, girl. Just this heat.” She’d fanned herself and the air had smelled like the warm, sharp scent of tomatoes. It hadn’t been the heat.
“It’s his diabetes,” Rilla heard herself say. She crawled forward, feeling like she might puke. Her head throbbed, but she wasn’t sick like he was.
“He has a pump, but that’s to keep his blood sugar from going too high. But it’s probably too low, because he’s working hard. Does he have one of those of blood sugar stick things?”
Adeena looked to the other man. Petra looked to Adeena.
“I don’t know . . .” The guy who’d ran to get them whirled around and started digging through what Rilla assumed was his partner’s bag.
“It’s okay. We’re going to figure this out,” she said, surprised how calm and relaxed she sounded. Her heart raced.
The other man looked up from the shambles of a backpack. “This?” He held up a little thing that looked like a step meter.
“That’s it.” Rilla grabbed it and stuck it into Rob’s limp finger. In seconds the readout showed it was too low.
“Does he have glucose tabs? Petra, do you have those gummy bears? We have to give him a little at a time.”
The guy looked confused. “I can get it.” His words came out raspy and dry. He tried to reach out for it.
Rilla stopped him. “I’ll bring the bag to you,” she said.
Someone shoved the bag to her. Opening it wide, she looked at the sick climber—Rob. He nodded. In a few seconds, she’d found the little packet of glucose tablets in an interior pocket. She kneeled on the rock and took a deep breath, breaking one out of the package and closing it into his mouth.
He shut his eyes in relief.
Petra handed him a bag of gummy bears.
He took the bag, but didn’t eat any.
“How long have you guys been climbing together?” Petra asked.
“We just met the other day. I didn’t even know he was diabetic until we started. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Usually it wouldn’t be. He was prepared for it,” Rilla said. His partner wasn’t. If something had happened to Petra or Adeena, she’d have been the one unprepared. Rilla didn’t want that to happen again.
In fifteen minutes, she checked again, before giving him another dose of glucose and repeating until he was on his feet, color returned to his face. He gave each girl a warm hug in thanks—along with his partner—and they all headed toward the descent.
Rilla walked backward down to the sub-dome, slowly feeding the cable through her gloved grip as she lowered from board to board, like Adeena instructed. Trying to keep from puking.
Halfway down the back side, it was as if someone snapped their fingers and Rilla woke. The nausea lifted. Her heartbeat calmed. Her fingers were cold but not buzzing with numbness, and the heaviness left her body. The cold wind kissed her cheeks, and she carefully walked down the face, staring blissfully at the fathoms of open space. Adrenaline flooding the places the sickness had left vacant in her blood, sweeping her spirit back up into heady ecstasy.
She was alive.
•
Rilla continued to die and come back. Her feet were freezing in the sub-dome snow. But swelled once they warmed. Her legs and arms and back stiffened and gnarled. It was just hiking down; but down had its own woes. After the first four miles, her toes pushed against the front of her shoes so much they were numb and aching, and her thighs trembled from supporting each step.
“How did you two meet?” she asked Petra as they descended the never-ending turns of the forested trail.
“Um . . . what was it, that comp?” Petra asked, looking to Adeena.
“Yeah,” Adeena said. “At a climbing gym in L.A. I did this competition, and Petra came up and started talking. She was putting together this group for the summer, and offered a spot in the house. So . . . we kept in touch. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do this summer, but figured Yosemite was a chance I couldn’t pass up.”
“We climbed together after the comp too . . .” Petra said.
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
“Adeena is new to sport climbing,” Petra said.
“Well, not new. But yeah,” Adeena said.
“What’s the difference?” Rilla asked, hobbling around a boulder.
“Alpine uses a variety of climbing tools and techniques to climb a mountain. Ice, snow, just plain hiking . . .” Adeena said. “Or climbing like we did today.”
“Sport climbing,” Petra said. “Or traditional climbing is more like a blank sheer wall. In sport climbing you always clip into bolts. In traditional climbing, you place the protection along the way. It’s shorter and more intense than alpine.”
“It’s not more intense,” Adeena said. “It’s just a different kind of intensity. It’s more like a sprint and alpine is a marathon.”
“We used a bit of gear today,” Petra said. “But mostly just quickdraws for the bolts.”
Rilla nodded, still not sure she understood. “How did you get into climbing?” she asked Petra.
“I didn’t actually climb until the end of high school. I was a soccer player,” Petra said. “Until I busted both my knees.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Petra shrugged. “I started climbing during rehab. It’s hard and required my brain to engage in a way that let me forget I couldn’t play anymore.”
“Is that why you’re so competitive?” Adeena asked. “Your American sports complex?”
“I’m not competitive,” Petra said.
Adeena snorted. “Okay. That’s why you told Caroline you got the Pink Panther redpoint?”
Petra narrowed her eyes. “I did.”
Adeena stepped ahead and didn’t say anything else.
“Anyway,” Petra said to Rilla. “Climbing pretends it’s not competitive. But it is.” She stepped over a fallen tree. “How did you end up here with your sister?”
Whether it was the way they’d all climbed together, Rilla trusting them as much as they trusted Rilla, or the exhaustion starting to dull her defenses, Rilla opened her mouth, and wearily confessed the truth.
“I got in a fight.”
“With your mom?” Petra asked.
Rilla stepped over a fallen log and shook her head. “Not my mom. It was with my boyfriend, but it wasn’t like you’re thinking.”
“Oh, Rilla,” Adeena said, stopping abruptly, mid-trail. Her look was so concerned, it made Rilla cringe.
Petra frowned. “What?”
“No. No.” Rilla took a deep breath, trying to slow her heart. “That’s what I mean. It wasn’t like that.” She closed her eyes, willing her heart to calm, but behind her eyes it was red and violent and she heard herself scream and Curtis’s arms grapple after her. Her eyes burst open. “No,” she repeated. “It wasn’t like that. I started the fight and it was all mutual. Yes, we got out of hand. Both of us. And in the school parking lot . . .” She sighed and resumed walking. The two other girls had no choice but to follow as Rilla explained. “So, it blew up into this whole thing. They took us both to jail, and then wanted me to press charges. I didn’t though, because it wasn’t like that. No one would listen.”
Adeena shook her head, eyes down.
Petra’s face was smooth—her eyes free of that private judgment so many people had when they looked at Rilla. “So, you came out here? After that?”
Rilla nodded, following the twisting trail. “My mom called Thea, I guess. First time in my life my mother’s overreacted to anything. I mean, it would have been fine. It was over. But . . .” Rilla shrugged. “That’s what happened.”
“Well, it’s good you’re here now,” Petra said, linking arms with both her and Adeena and pulling them close. “Both of you.”
“Tragedy can birth new beginnings. I lose sight of that sometimes,” Adeena said softly.
“I’m not tragic tragic. Just tragically dumb,” Rilla said.
“No. You are neither,” Petra said, so confidently Rilla felt it must be true.
“You helped that man today,” Adeena said.
Rilla shrugged. “It just happened that I knew a little about it, is all.”
Adeena shook her head. “It doesn’t always work like that. You did great today. You should feel proud.”
And Rilla did, a little. Somewhere deep inside. It was a spark that was highly likely to be snuffed out, but it warmed her for the moment.
The afternoon shifted into evening, flooding the cedars and the snow with beams of light so thick she could taste it. A coyote ran across their path, looking at them over its shoulder like it was rubbernecking at an accident. It shook its shoulders, mangy gray fur shivering, and slipped soundlessly into the trees. In those moments, she forgot about her agony and only remembered what a privilege it was to exist in this wild, cruel world.
Then Petra grabbed the back of her pack and pulled her along.
She ran out of water in Little Yosemite Valley, and Adeena showed her how to fill her water from the Merced and make it drinkable with tablets.
The sun sank behind the mountains. Darkness unspooled in the trees. They passed the place they’d turned off the trail in the morning, and even Adeena and Petra seemed tired. The same canyon walls bore different shadows and their steps wound eternally down. Rilla stumbled through the mist, soaked again in the heavy clouds of silver.
In the purple alpenglow, they finally hit the paved trail. And in twilight, Rilla’s numb body staggered back into the Valley.
It had been amazing. But she was never going to do that again. Never ever.
Ever.