Chapter Twenty-Five
I walked over to the command center right after breakfast to work on my résumé. When I arrived, April was the only one in the tent, Skyping with—
I did a double take. Was that Josh Knox, as in Josh Knox who was pretty much the best rock climber in the whole world?
“Sorry!” I yelped. “I’ll come back.”
“Don’t worry about it. We were just getting off.”
I went over to the long table of Global laptops, trying hard not to eavesdrop as they said their good-byes.
“That was Josh Knox, wasn’t it?” I asked when she hung up.
“Yeah. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh. Wow.”
She laughed. “So I’m guessing you rock climb.”
“Not like that! But I love it.”
“I’m just starting out,” she said. “It’s pretty fun.”
I bet, with Josh Freaking Knox as the person teaching you.
April turned on the second screen at Walkabout’s editing station to catalog the rest of her drone footage from Rotation One. I typed up my résumé and then dropped it off with Doc at the UW sub-camp for her to look over.
I still had some time to kill before lunch so I settled in at one of the small tables in the big top with a cup of coffee and Dad’s career worksheets. As I did, my phone pinged with a #YCCM Circ. It was the tub of peanut butter fudge cookies I’d given Luke this morning at breakfast. The cookies sat high atop a boulder, and he’d shot the rest of the video like the cookies themselves were doing a self-Circ. I smiled and shook my head. For the first time ever, there was something written after #YCCM: #Heaven.
I replied in our usual way: identifying the location the Circ had been taken. In this case: #DawgsOnEverest camp. I added an eye-wink emoticon.
The first worksheet in front of me was massively thick—almost too thick for its staple. I did the first two pages before skipping ahead to the back, skimming over the long lists of professions that were grouped in a seemingly illogical way.
The second was a fun multiple choice quiz that quickly determined that I should become a baker. I could see that.
The third worksheet required free-form sentence answers that I didn’t see how would result in magically telling me what my career destiny should be. At the table in front of me, Phil, who had been playing solitaire, stood up to get another cup of tea.
“What are you working on there?” he asked when he returned.
“Oh, just some quizzes from my dad. He wants me to explore other career options before I commit to full-time guiding.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“You’re a lawyer, right?”
He chuckled. “No. But close. I work in a courtroom. I’m a stenographer.”
I knew it! Phil wasn’t some rich lawyer or doctor or businessman. I couldn’t wait to boast to Luke that I was right about Phil being different.
“How’d you pick that as a job?”
“The town I was raised in was tiny, but it was the county seat. Working for the government was what people there did if they weren’t in logging or manufacturing. I can tell you more about stenography, if you’re interested. Though I should mention that we’re losing a lot of jobs to automatic transcription these days.”
An indoor career? Hopefully never. “I guess I should see what these worksheets suggest first.”
Phil returned to his table and laid his cards out into a new game. I looked at the papers in front of me and sighed. I didn’t need to do the worksheets. I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t know how to get there from here. Or if it was even possible. Could a sponsored climber have a life of adventure in mountains all over the world and a steady home base to come back to? Maybe having a flexible job in addition to being a sponsored climber was the key. Like being some sort of seasonal specialty baker or something. Hmmm…
Regardless of how everything came together, it was my current job with Global that would afford me the opportunity to get that record-breaking seventh summit, and that was key to the sponsorship side of the equation.
Luke came in then with a group of the UW clients. His hair was wet and spiky from a recent shower. He walked right by me with a little wink, leaving the good, fresh scent of soap floating in his wake.
This, of course, made me ultra-conscious of the fact that I hadn’t showered since before we left on Rotation One. It took a big effort for the Sherpas to make the water for showers, and a long time for it to heat up in the solar shower bags, so the guides usually waited until a day or two after each rotation for the clients to have their turn before we took our one-a-week shower allotment. As soon as we were through with lunch, I was going to beeline for the A-Team shower.
After dinner, the Sherpas converted the inside of the big top to a movie theater so we could watch the Yosemite rock climbing film April, Theo, and Ernesto had worked on last spring. It wouldn’t release until this summer, but their boss at Walkabout had given them permission to show it here. Our Global clients were beyond excited for this privilege.
Doc handed back my heavily marked-up résumé as we stood in line for popcorn.
“That bad?”
“It’s your first one. Make those changes, and you’ll be all set.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Anytime. Still on for some primping and nail painting tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. I’ll tell the guys to find a different tent for their morning video games.”
Luke and I found each other when it was time to take seats, picking two chairs in the last row, up against the tent wall. The chairs were close together, close enough that nobody would be able to tell our legs were pressed together on purpose.
The movie was breathtaking. Yosemite was beautiful, and the climbs were of a scale beyond anything I’d ever seen. If I could climb walls like that, the doors would be open to a whole new arena of alpine climbing. Mountains like the sheer-faced Meru in Pakistan, or even the notorious Compressor route on Cerro Torre. I exhaled wistfully.
“What?” Luke whispered.
“I want to go there.”
“Me, too.”
“Gotta learn to aid climb first.”
“He could teach us.”
At the moment, the he on the screen was Josh Knox.
I elbowed Luke for being ridiculous.
“He’s a good guy. He would, I bet.”
“You know Josh Knox?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Wow. I guess it made sense, considering Luke knew Theo, who was the coworker of Josh Knox’s girlfriend.
We settled back into the movie, watching a scene shot at this gorgeous storybook lake on top of a cliff with trees, grass, and flowers, and a waterfall in the distance. It was beautiful here in the Himalayas but in such a different way than the scenery on the screen. Here, there was no plant life higher than the village of Dingboche. It was just rock, ice, and snow on a scale unlike anywhere else on earth. Yosemite, on the other hand, was alive.
Ever so slowly, Luke snuck his hand into my pocket and threaded his fingers through mine. He traced the inside ridge of my thumb, making tingles run through my body. I pressed my thigh tighter against his, and he hooked his toe around my ankle. It was torture being this close to him yet being able to touch in only this limited way.
We unhooked ourselves as the credits rolled. The Walkabout crew held a question and answer session afterward. Once it became clear the clients’ questions were never going to stop, Luke nudged me and then slunk out the side door. I followed a couple of minutes later.
As soon as I stepped outside into the black night, Luke grabbed my hand. This took me by surprise and knocked me off-balance, but he caught me mid-stumble and pulled me into his body. I was sure he was going to blow it for both of us by kissing me right there in the open, but he moved his head to the side at the last moment. “I’ll come to your tent as soon as it’s clear,” he whispered.
Then he let go and walked away.