Seven
This was what she’d envisioned when she thought of a new life in California.
Rilla draped her arms and head out the open window, hair whipping in the wind. A massive tower looked over them—a sun-drenched monolith of peachy granite that stayed firm in the sky as the trees moved past in a blur.
“What is that?” Rilla breathed, jaw unhinged.
“El Capitan,” Petra said, with reverence in her voice.
The overstuffed hybrid doggedly huffed up Big Oak Flat Road, driving out of the Valley, into the late afternoon shadows as it fractured thick beams of dazzling gold over the ridgeline. Beside them, the massive walls fell away toward the bottom, where deepening purple shadows gathered over the Merced, as if night crept up from the ground.
Rilla leaned farther out, trying to see around the car to catch a glimpse of the foaming water at the bottom. Instead, she noticed the sheer face of Half Dome reflecting the sun, the streaks of snow still at the top, and how narrow and deep the Valley was—like a tight scar cut into the wide mountains behind her. The prow of El Capitan sat as a guard over the entrance. Things she hadn’t seen, at the bottom. Things that could only be seen moving up.
And then it all went dark.
Rilla pulled away, tasting the stone and earth of the tunnel wall. It hit her—she had just gotten into a car with virtual strangers who were all older than she was. She didn’t even know where they were going. She should have been more cautious.
“This is my new gumby,” Petra said to the boys, patting Rilla’s shoulder. “After yesterday, I have to try and make a climber out of her.”
Rilla smiled and slid back into her seat, heart in her throat. “What’s a gumby?” she asked, hoping it wasn’t bad.
“Someone who is new,” Petra said.
“Someone who is new, doesn’t know what they’re doing, has no common sense, is not super coordinated, and is liable to fuck everything up,” Gage said from the back.
Rilla shot him a look over her shoulder. “What did I do to you?”
He laughed. “Don’t let Petra bullshit you.”
“I meant it the way I said it,” Petra said. “She’s new, like we all were once.”
It was one thing for Rilla to think she could become a climber like them, sitting in the attic with quiet fury gathering in her blood. It was another thing to sit here feeling very young and lumpy and new.
“Well, you couldn’t have picked a better place to start climbing,” Gage said, sun lighting his face as he leaned against the door. The sunglasses, coconut-scented tree air freshener, and ChapStick hanging on the rearview mirror tilted as Petra followed the mountain road. “It’s like going to heaven to become a believer.”
Rilla looked back to the road ahead, hand open to clutch at the wind. Outside the window, the trees and brush were changing. The air was sweeter and cooler.
Petra turned off the smooth asphalt to a dirt road. The car hopped and wiggled and squeaked; and the manzanita bushes flattened and puffed as they flew through the shallow valley, passing the few standing charred pines and cedars. The trees were so big and old, they’d managed to absorb the fire and remain alive, unscathed at their core. Great clouds of golden dust boiled up and rolled into the open window. No one moved to prevent it, they just accepted the gentle layer of dust settling on their skin. Maybe that’s why they all looked so tanned.
Led Zeppelin blared, familiar and eternal.
The sun deepened.
Hico and Gage rattled in the backseat, expressions immovable.
Rilla sank into her seat, feeling at ease for the first time since she’d arrived. Though they were surrounded by a ring of snow-capped mountains in the distance, the wide-open feeling stood in stark contrast to the immensity deep inside the Valley. For a place so huge, the Valley felt as if it could fold in on her at any minute. Here she was closer to the sky. Let loose and un-cinched. For one brief moment, she didn’t have to convince herself she was okay here—she simply was.
They turned down smaller and narrower dirt roads to a dead end at a big house with nothing but trees and far mountains in sight.
“Welcome to the Grove,” Petra said, turning off the car.
“Wow,” was all Rilla could think to reply, not taking her eyes off the house as she unfolded her legs and crawled out of the dusty hybrid.
The redwood-trimmed structure stood below the edge of the hill, in the midst of a clean forest of pines. In some ways, it felt like West Virginia; but when Rilla took a deep breath—expecting the pungent scent of pine and earth—there was nothing to smell. The scent of home was just a thread for her to follow, not a world to sink into.
“My grandparents are traveling through Europe this summer, so they let me use it,” Petra explained, leading them onto a catwalk to the uppermost deck of the house.
Rilla blinked. She knew rich people, but not people that rich. And their granddaughters didn’t look like this. Petra’s twin braids were sloppy and falling out, and she wore a pizza-printed tank top that looked so hideous the thrift store probably had given it away. Money did not look like that in West Virginia. But then, maybe there was a point where you had so much money you could afford to look poor.
“It’s not Camp 4,” Hico said. “But it’s as close as we’re gonna get.”
“Who even wants to be in Camp 4 anymore?” Petra said. “Bea stayed there at the end of her trip and said she was kept up half the night by a kid crying. And, oh my god, all the rules.”
“I meant what Camp 4 was, not as it is now,” Hico said.
“It’s still Camp 4,” Gage said. “Just . . .”
Everyone seemed to silently nod in agreement to whatever Gage didn’t say.
“What did it used to be?” Rilla asked, thinking of the birdlike line watching her huff past the ranger shack.
“It used to be this,” Petra said with a spin to raise her hands to the roof. “Except, a short walk to climbing, instead of the drive.”
“It used to be the climber’s campground,” Gage said. “Where people lived for months. Climbing, as we know it, was basically born there. There’s so much history there.”
Petra stopped and turned back. “Get the other side, will you, Rilla? God, can you imagine the golden years of Camp 4?” Petra took one side of the container Gage and Hico were trying to carry along with their packs.
Hico handed over his side to Rilla with a relieved-sounding “thanks.”
The container yanked on her arm, much heavier than she expected, but Rilla gritted her teeth and kept her gait smooth, hoping no one could see her struggle.
“I can smell the food from here. I’m starved,” Hico said, opening a sliding glass door.
Fragrant spice, fried meat, and warm bread all mixed with the smell of a stranger’s home, enveloping Rilla like a cozy blanket. Though unfamiliar, it was the kind of smell that made Rilla feel at home. And hungry. Her stomach growled.
“Rilla?” Adeena shouted from the kitchen. “Damn it!” She pounded her spoon on the edge of the pot and glared at Petra.
Rilla remembered being introduced to Adeena the day before, but she was surprised she hadn’t noticed how short Adeena was. Somehow, she assumed all climbers were tall—with Petra and Thea, who were five-ten and change, and Walker, who was easily six-three. Both Gage and Hico were tall enough she just added them to the tall category. But Adeena was tiny—no taller than five feet and narrow framed, with thick, wavy black hair falling out of a ponytail, light brown skin, and wide green eyes. Not what Rilla expected either Pakistanis or mountaineers would look like.
Adeena lowered her chin to Rilla. “Did she abduct you? This jackass stuffed you into the trunk to get you here, didn’t she?”
“Ha! I told you I’d find her first,” Petra smirked.
Rilla’s heart raced, trying to think fast enough to be clever and funny in reply. “Um . . .” She readjusted her grip on the container.
“Dude. Tell me where this goes, or I’m dropping it here,” Petra said to Gage.
Thankfully, everyone’s attention shifted from Rilla’s grasping for words.
“Just dump it,” Gage said to them, pointing to the floor beside the door. “We didn’t sort anything out.”
Rilla followed Petra, shuffling the container back toward the door.
“He’s not fucking anything up in there, right?” Petra asked Adeena, sitting on a stool on the edge of the kitchen island.
Rilla quietly joined her, careful not to knock any of the food or draw attention to herself.
A white boy with shattered blond hair, a British accent, and long, lanky limbs frowned over the boiling pot he stirred. “Hey, my sister-in-law is Pakistani. That’s why we signed up for the same meal.”
“Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on him.” Adeena raised an eyebrow in his direction.
He rolled his eyes.
“We’re lucky I found her tonight,” Petra said. “Otherwise, we’d have to seduce her with Gage and Hico’s food and we all know how that would go.” Petra glanced to Rilla. “It’s not good,” she said in a low whisper.
“I heard that.” Gage bellowed from the hall.
Petra rolled her eyes.
“This is really the only thing I can cook,” Adeena said. “And like, macaroni mix-ins. If my mother was here, she’d tell you I don’t actually cook this very well and I need more practice.”
“It seems like you should be looking for a girl who can be seduced by granola,” Hico said from the couch in the living room beyond them.
“If we can’t give her Walker, we have to give her something. Granola isn’t going to cut it,” Adeena said, shoving the wisps of her hair back over her forehead and studying the contents of her skillet.
A snort of exasperation escaped the British boy.
Rilla’s cheeks warmed. “Listen. I don’t . . .” she protested.
Adeena and Petra looked at her, bemused, like go ahead and deny it.
“Yeah, okay,” Hico said.
“We all have our weaknesses, all right?” Rilla muttered.
Both girls cracked up.
“Don’t we all when it comes to Walker,” the British boy said.
“Walker will sleep with anything thin and blond,” Petra said.
Rilla tried to look like she didn’t care, even as her stomach sank. She searched the memory of Walker’s face, that intensity directed at her, but the memory was foggy—all she was certain of was how she felt under his gaze. “Are you guys search and rescue climbers too?” she asked.
“Oh god, no,” Petra said. “We’re just dirtbags. Out of school for the summer, or trying to string together enough money to climb. Eammon usually lives in a van, but he’s upgraded this summer.”
“I don’t know what to do with all this space. I’m going to be spoiled,” the British boy said.
“But you,” Adeena said to Rilla. “You live in the Valley? And you don’t work there?”
Rilla nodded.
“How did you manage that?” Adeena asked.
“By being the actual worst,” Rilla said with a laugh. She tossed her hair and put a little wickedness into her grin. She didn’t say anything more. Whatever they assumed would be safer than what was true.
“It would be a waste if she didn’t climb,” Adeena said to Petra. “I have to take her.”
“Agreed.” Petra nodded. “But I’ll take her. Since this is my home crag.”
Adeena rolled her eyes.
It had been a great idea—back in her attic and staring at her miserable Instagram—to become this epically cool climber and tell everyone to shove it. But to actually climb . . . Rilla gulped. It was within her ability to make herself seem cooler than she was, but climbing, she’d learned, stripped all that away.
“Why doesn’t your sister take you?” Hico asked.
“Does she climb?” Petra glanced at Rilla. “Sorry, I don’t know your sister.”
“Yeah. She was a climbing ranger last year,” Hico said. “Not the SAR site.”
“Thea’s trying to get a permanent position,” Rilla said.
“She’s a law enforcement ranger this summer,” Hico explained. “When I saw her last, she was directing traffic.”
There was an awkward pause. Rilla studied her nails.
“Rilla, let me show you around before we eat,” Petra said, pulling up off the counter.
Relieved, Rilla followed as Petra gave her a grand tour.
The Grove, as Petra jokingly called the house, though Rilla wasn’t sure she got the joke, was a luxury home at odds with its contents—like Thea’s house in the Valley, there was a proliferation of outdoor gear, clothes, mangled shoes, and dust; and underneath the smell of food, an under-current of something sour and mildewed. Unlike Thea’s bare-bones, pine bungalow in the Valley, the Grove was all redwood and granite, tall windows, and a two-story stone fireplace under an exposed beam ceiling.
It was the most gorgeous and lived-in house Rilla had ever seen. Even the screened-in porches flanking the sides of the house had sleeping bags stretched out and packs leaned up against the wall. Her mom wouldn’t have been able to spend more than ten minutes without needing a smoke to calm down from the mess. For all her flirting with disaster, her mother’s house-cleaning was something she took seriously.
“I’m just going to get a massive cleaning done at the end of the summer and not worry about it now,” Petra said at one point, leading her over a pile of dirty clothes in a hallway. “If I can’t pay someone to fix it, it deserves to stay broken.”
“Does everyone just live here?” Rilla asked. “How do y’all afford to do this?”
“Well, we don’t have to pay for the house. There’s a few of us who saved to be here all summer—we can eat pretty cheaply, and we rotate through these big meals where everyone chips in a few dollars. Everyone else comes and goes,” Petra said, shutting a door. “You aren’t allowed to stay for more than two weeks in the Valley, total. Non-consecutive. So these are climbers who need a place to stay near the climbing, but can’t stay in the Valley. Not everyone can live out of a cool van like Alex Honnold.”
Rilla didn’t know who Alex Honnold was, but at least that explained why it was such a big deal Rilla lived in the Valley. No one else got to do that.
“You can try to evade the rangers.” Petra shrugged. “Or you can stay here and catch a ride with whoever is going to the Valley that day. We use it for a base camp. Everyone pays a little bit to use the laundry, but other than that, it’s free. We’re still in Yosemite, and there’s always someone to climb with.” She cracked open a door. “You decent?”
“Sort of,” Gage yelled.
Petra shrugged. “Good enough.” She opened the door and showed Rilla the bathroom. Complete with a half-dressed, still damp Gage. He didn’t seem bothered by Petra’s tour, but it was hard not to notice the flex and roll of muscle rippling under his skin as he toweled off. Rilla glanced to the floor, trying not to look embarrassed, but embarrassed that she felt like she needed to avert her eyes. The bathroom was luxurious—a copper tub and separate river rock shower—but also a horrendous mess with piles of clothes in corners, the countertop splashed with muddy water, and the trash overflowing. “Does Walker’s sister live here too?” Rilla asked as they went back into the hall.
“Caroline? Yeah. There’s a handful of us here for the entire summer. She keeps to herself a lot though. I mean, she’s a great climber, but . . .” Petra trailed off.
“She seems a little detached?”
“She’s trying to turn this into a career. Caroline really only climbs with climbers she thinks are on her level. She spends a lot of time on her social media. Like, her Instagram probably tells you a lot.” Petra pressed her lips together and frowned. “I don’t mean to sound catty. I can’t imagine handling all that bullshit commercial stuff that goes into monetizing a passion, so what do I know?” Petra led her to the top of a twisting metal spiral staircase. “Let’s eat.”
Rilla followed Petra back to the kitchen. Being here was nothing she could have imagined herself doing even a week prior. Like she’d been dropped into a dream of her life and any minute the alarm was going to go off and she’d be late for school in Rainelle.
Back in the main area, more people she didn’t know and hadn’t been introduced to gathered in the border between the kitchen and living room, eyeing but not touching the trays and platters of food arranged on the counter. Looking around, Rilla was certain she was the youngest. And the least in shape.
A winning combination.
“Ajeet?” Adeena asked.
Everyone straightened and bowed their heads, and a lean, dark-haired climber began saying something in a language she didn’t understand.
A half second too late, Rilla realized it was a prayer, and ducked her head.
After the blessing, everyone lined up, buffet style.
Rilla fell in line behind Petra, plate to her chest as she surveyed the food—most of which she’d never seen.
“This is Chapshoro,” Petra said with a confident accent on the word. She peeled back a portion of the folded flat bread, showing her the inside. “It’s chopped lamb and beef, onions, chili peppers, tomato and coriander. I don’t know if you like any of that.”
“Oh, it’s so good though,” Hico said, reaching around them to grab one. “I want to go climbing in Pakistan with Adeena again, just to be fucking fed.”
“That was the only time I’ve seen a climber come home fatter . . .” Caroline said, coming up to the back of the line.
“But the food! Don’t judge me!” Hico roared over a mouthful, in mock anger.
“Guys, my mom would have ten pounds on all of you in a week,” Adeena said.
“Hey, you made it back,” Petra said to Caroline, who had just joined the rear of the line.
“Barely,” Caroline said, picking a plate off the stack. “That was an ugly day.”
Rilla took some and moved to the next dish. Everyone in line, aside from Hico, waited patiently or offered up opinions on how to tell if she’d like the food. Rilla took it all, including chili sauce for the Mamtu—a type of dumpling—and followed Petra out onto the big deck. Everyone perched on steps or chairs or sat, legs folded and their plates on the redwood, diving in with fingers and forks.
For a moment, it was silent. The last of the pink sunshine slid into purple. Someone began a story about getting turned around during a climb and ending up in Italy when they were supposed to be in France, and trying to get a sheep herder to give them a ride back to the border. And as Rilla ate—swiping her dumplings through the chili sauce and savoring every bit of the spice and meat and dough—the dust turned into a purple haze, and the shadows gathered into something reminiscent of home.
If asked outright, Rilla wasn’t positive she’d have been able to tell anyone those countries bordered each other. When she got back to Thea’s, she was going to find her schoolbooks. If they were going to take her to magical houses in the woods, feed her, and tell her great stories, she would do anything to meet their expectations—even study.
In the lull between stories, Petra announced to everyone that in the near future, she and Rilla were going to climb something called Snake Dike, and Rilla was going to come back to the house as a real climber; while Adeena argued that Rilla should climb something shorter and more manageable for a first time.
Forgetting that climbing was probably the worst way to convince everyone she was cool, Rilla stuffed another dumpling in her mouth and nodded an emphatic agreement.