Fourteen
Rilla found Jonah drinking water in the shade outside the service entrance to the big cafeteria. His gaze swept over her—a bemused smile flickering across his face as he leaned against the brown slats of the building and looked at her. “You’re looking more like Yosemite today.”
“Lobsters are so California, I know.” She tugged at her shorts, pretending to curtsey.
He smirked.
“You working right now?” she asked.
“I need to finish putting the trash in the dumpster.” He gestured with his middle finger to the pile of slick black trash bags. Flies circled overhead.
The sound of clinking metal echoed in her head and she blurted out, “Give me five bucks and I’ll do it for you.”
He laughed. “Five dollars? That’s a little steep.”
“A dollar a bag? That’s five.”
He took another drink of his water and seemed to think. “You’re just going to give it back to me for weed.”
“I mean . . . I keep trying to stop.” She crossed her arms. “Can I go running with you sometime? Is there, like, a secret formula for being good at sports? I just want to get like . . . not as much as a lazy toad. I don’t want to run ultramarathons or even a marathon. Or even a half. Or quarter. Or—”
“All right. Fine. Take my money. Just stop talking.” He rolled his eyes. “You have a deal.”
Rilla grinned. “Deal.” Trying to avoid stepping in the puddles leaking from the garbage, she grabbed one off the top and lugged it over to the Dumpster. A trail oozed behind.
“What do you need five dollars for?” Jonah asked.
Rilla hauled a bag over her head, sore muscles screaming and her stomach rolling from the curdled smell. It fell over the edge of the Dumpster and dropped inside. She made a face at her sticky hands. “I don’t know. I don’t have a job.”
“You could get a job here.”
“Don’t you have to be eighteen?” she asked, grabbing two bags this time.
“Oh. Right. Yeah. You’re right.”
“Are you here just to run?” she asked, before realizing it sounded sort of harsh. “I mean, what made you want to work in Yosemite?”
He shrugged, smoking. “I wanted to travel, but didn’t have money just to travel. So, I’ll work here. See what I can do next. I can run anywhere, but not everywhere is this beautiful.”
The last bag didn’t quite make it over and Rilla squealed and jumped out of the way. It plopped on the asphalt. Thankfully, intact.
“I think I made out on this deal,” Jonah said.
She heaved the bag over in a second effort. This time it made it in. “I need to go wash my hands,” she said.
“I’m going to go clock out. I’ll meet you outside the bathroom.” He kicked up and went inside.
Holding her hands far from her body, she trudged up the hill to the bathrooms and washed her hands, face, and arms until she couldn’t smell trash on herself anymore.
Jonah waited outside with a fountain soda in his hand. “My treat.” He handed it over and then dug in his pocket. “And your five dollars.”
She smiled and stuffed it into the top of her sock. “Thanks.”
“Want to see something?” he asked.
“Sure. As long as it doesn’t involve a lot of hiking.”
“Oh, were you hiking?” He snorted.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, sipping the icy root beer and following him toward the woods. “I was actually climbing and hiking. Sixteen miles.”
He looked back, a mixture of impressed and genuine surprise on his face. “Priscilla Skidmore!”
Rilla couldn’t help but glow. “See?” She grinned over the straw. “I’m not always a stoner.”
“You did Half Dome?”
“Sure fucking did.” She skipped ahead, gleefully forgetting all about her aching feet. Her blood sang sharp and bright and if only—if only—everyone in her life could look at her the way Jonah had in that split second.
“Wow. That’s really incredible. You don’t need my help to run. If you can walk sixteen miles, you can go for a jog.”
“Well, it hurt a lot,” Rilla admitted. “I kinda swore I would never do it again.”
He laughed, leading her up a thin footpath. They wound through house-sized boulders that had sloughed off the cliff and crushed part of the camp, reclaiming tents and cabins to the crawl of the forest. It was quiet and cool. The sounds of the busy Valley fell away as if they were an hour into the wilderness. Her feet were sore, but the walking wasn’t nearly as painful as when she first started that morning, even when they reached the bottom of the wall under Glacier Point, and Jonah started up the scree at the base.
Still, her breath was heavy by the time Jonah stopped on a wide ledge.
“Oh,” she said with a smile, looking around her. They were level with the tops of the trees, and the deep blue sky was perfect and boundless. All the tourists, cars, and signs of life had been swallowed by the trees. She couldn’t even see the roads from this angle. There was nothing but the proud cliffs standing watch over the sweep of the Valley in each direction.
“Like the couch?” Jonah pulled a Baggies out of his shorts and began stuffing a bit of weed into the pipe on his lap, curled over to protect it from the wind.
“It’s a nice spot.” She sat beside him, pulling her legs up in the wallow of granite curved out of the wall. Resting her shoulders back, she stared at the stretch of the magnificent view.
At least Ranger Dick Face wouldn’t catch her up here.
She took the pipe and lighter from Jonah, and held the smoke so long in her lungs Jonah made a joke about whether she was still alive. But when she exhaled, everything loosened and unwound in her spine, and she wiggled her toes as the wretched feelings of failure and frustration slipped off her skin like oil on water.
A solitary cloud sailed across the sky—it’s shadow slowly sliding over the wall across the Valley. The granite swirled and arched, and her gaze lazily followed their lines in the sunshine. Thin shouts echoed from somewhere, whipped and distorted by the wind, and it was hard not to wonder where Adeena and Petra were today. Maybe they were climbing again, feeling relieved they didn’t have to haul her around.
Hey-o. Give me some slack, the wind cried.
She checked her Instagram, heart dropping when she saw Curtis had replied to her DM. Thanks for apologizing. I forgive you. How’s California?
“What’s wrong with your face?” Jonah asked.
“Huh?” Then she felt the glower etched into her expression and shook her head, tucking the phone away. Her face burned with shame to think if Thea or Mom or anyone knew she’d messaged him in the first place. She didn’t even love Curtis or anything, it was just—it was that he loved her.
Got it, the wind said.
She blinked. “Did you hear something?”
“No? You seem distracted. I mean. Even more than usual.”
She frowned, scanning the cliff around them, beside them, below them. “I’m just . . . I thought I heard a friend. A climber friend.”
“Climbers are all assholes.”
“Really? All of them?” She raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged.
“Screw you. I want to be a climber,” she admitted, hoping he wouldn’t laugh.
“Well, you won’t get a better chance than this,” he said matter-of-factly, leaning against the rock.
“It’s expensive,” she argued.
“You seem like an enterprising young woman.” He raised a meaningful eyebrow. “Who recently relieved me of five dollars.”
She laughed, leaning forward on her hands. “It’s dangerous.”
“Would you like it if it wasn’t?”
She snorted. “It’s not something I’m good at.”
“I guess that’s why they call it learning to do something.” He folded his arms against his chest. “It seems like you’re trying to talk yourself out of even trying. Why do that? This is your chance to try something you seem interested in. You can’t expect to wake up a good climber, when you haven’t put in the work and effort toward becoming one.”
She winced. He was talking about climbing, but somehow, she felt the truth of it in the deepest parts of herself. It was true. That was what she’d been expecting—to change the minute she determined she should. Terrified when she was not immediately the things she envisioned. Panicked she never would be. Maybe . . . maybe, it wasn’t that she couldn’t change, but that she was afraid to try all the things required to change. Maybe it was like he said, she kept expecting to change without putting any of the work and effort into changing.
He shook his head. “Your five fell out,” he said, reaching down and putting the money back into her hand.
She looked at the crumpled bill and her buzzing thoughts narrowed down to something clear and sure. She could find a way to make money in the Valley. She could do her schoolwork and figure out how to climb. She could pack her own snacks and learn fast. She could prove to everyone, she was something. For the first time, the thought of the impossible was more excitement than dread. Fear, but with longing. The future unknown, but with potential that had not been there before.
It wasn’t a question of if she could succeed. It wasn’t a question at all.
She could try.
Stuffing the five back into her sock, she took the lighter, relit the weed, and put her elbows on her knees. And as another cloud slid its shadow over the Valley, she let her thoughts do the same—let the sorrow and fear and hope skim the surface of her mind so that in five minutes when she was done, she could stand and go down into the Valley and begin.