Sixteen
Thea leaned back, glaring in that way Rilla found especially chilling when it was directed at her. “Excuse me?”
Dick Face blinked, a flash of panic crossing his eyes.
“What has she done?” Thea demanded.
Lauren sat up and leaned her elbows on the back of the couch, to watch.
“She was selling . . .” He had to stop for air. “Water bottles. At the bottom of.” He put his hand up and braced himself against the door. “Vernal.” Gasp. “Falls.”
“Do you need to sit down, Reid?” Lauren asked. “Or would you like some water?”
He glared at them each in sequence, taking off his Stetson and waving it over his red face before gesturing to Rilla. “I got you. I saw you. I know it was you. There’s no way out of this one, Thea.”
Rilla widened her eyes, then made them normal. She didn’t do innocence nearly as well as irritated injustice. She folded her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me,” he seethed.
“Oh god, you’re like a bad parody of yourself,” Thea said, coming back with a glass of water.
He took it. “I saw her. It’s done. Over.”
“I don’t know who you saw, but I’ve been upstairs since lunch doing trig.”
“Bullshit,” he said over the water glass.
Thea turned to Rilla, dead-eyed and irritated. “You been selling water bottles at the bottom of Nevada Falls?”
Rilla kept her face still. “Nope.”
Thea’s eyes got narrower. She knew.
Lauren snorted and turned back around. Rilla resisted glaring at her.
“I came home with her from lunch,” Thea said. “And she went upstairs to do schoolwork. Reid, I haven’t . . . seen her come through here at all.”
“She obviously went out a window.”
Rilla groaned. “Are you kidding me? What do I have to do here? Even if I’m studying, you’re somehow figuring out a way to get me into trouble. You’re why people hate cops.”
Thea held up her hand. “Rilla, you’re not helping.”
Ranger Dick Face’s face was red as a rooster. “You. Can’t. Escape.”
A shiver ran up Rilla’s spine, like she had, for a moment, looked into the red, sweaty face of all her worst fears, but she tightened her arms around herself to hide it.
“Reid. Come on. You can’t do it this way,” Lauren said from the couch. “The fact is, you’ve got two rangers who say she’s been in her room the last three hours. A girl who isn’t sweating and breathing hard. A girl who says she wasn’t there. And you.”
Rilla wanted to hug her. But she just tried to look innocent.
Thea leaned against the door. “Yeah, are you saying she ran back here faster than you?”
“I drove partly,” Dick Face said defensively.
“You’re only proving the point.”
“Well, there was traffic.”
Lauren groaned. “Come on, man. We have one day off together, and you’re killing it.”
Ranger Dick Face shook his head, stubborn and snarling and disgusted.
Rilla knew she’d won. “Can I get back to my homework?” she asked. “I’m almost done with this stupid unit.”
“Aha!” he exclaimed, pointing his finger at her. “Mistake. You never want to get back to schoolwork.”
Rilla glared at her sister. Could Thea just stop talking about Rilla at work?
“Yeah, get upstairs,” Thea said before swatting at Dick Face’s finger. “Reid, knock it off.”
Rilla turned for the hall and her face split with glee.
Nailed it.
She climbed the ladder and crawled across the floor, over the incomplete trigonometry and dirty clothes. Lying on her back on the cool wood planks, she breathed deep of relief. Her left hand brushed the edges of Thea’s, June’s, Lauren ‘s, and Jessica’s storage boxes. Her right hand was under her cot. But she was exultant. She’d done it.
Pulling the wad of money out of her sweaty sports bra, she peeled apart the damp fives and ones. Fifty-two dollars.
It had been warmer the last week, almost hot at midday, and Rilla had carted a big bag of ice-cold water and soda bottles a mile up the trail toward Half Dome. The vending machine in the outhouses had broken, and based on the crowds in the Valley, she had hoped the water fountain wouldn’t be much of a competition. It wasn’t. She’d sold out within forty minutes. It helped that it was a Saturday and there were crowds everywhere, even for the water fountain. Two bucks a pop to sweaty, tired tourists and she was looking at a gross pile of sweaty money. A perfectly acceptable amount to go toward another piece of gear.
The ladder creaked.
Quickly, Rilla stuffed the money under her cot, inside the sheet. She’d go to the outdoor store as soon as Thea was finished with her and Ranger Dick Face ended his shift at 4 P.M.
“Well, you’re grounded,” Thea announced, ducking under the eaves.
Like Thea could enforce a grounding. “Can you even stand up in here?” Rilla asked.
Thea had the decency to look embarrassed. “So, that’s why you needed those drinks at Walmart last week.”
“I have no idea what Dick Face—”
“Don’t call him that,” Thea snapped.
Rilla rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what Ranger Miller is talking about. I’ve been doing math.” Rilla gestured at the open homework. One of her notebooks was folded back weird from when she’d crawled over it.
“And all that thumping five seconds before Reid knocked?”
“One of my legs had fallen asleep.”
Thea sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What on earth do you need money for?”
Rilla frowned, her throat automatically tightening. She was currently, technically a high school dropout . . . rock climbing would be the last thing Thea would think she’d care about. If Thea knew Rilla was taking these risks to earn money for gear, she’d probably forbid the whole thing. And always, the fear that Thea would send her home to West Virginia shimmered behind their words. If Thea didn’t want her and Mom didn’t want her in West Virginia . . .
“I outgrew my clothes,” Rilla said. It was true. “I don’t have anything for summer that fits.” She’d been climbing every afternoon for two weeks with Adeena and Petra in the short slabs near the Valley floor, running with Jonah in the evening, and eating her fill for all three meals. She felt stronger, lighter, but nothing she brought out west fit—it was all too small.
Thea’s face contorted. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
Rilla blinked, not expecting the emotion on her sister’s face. “I, um . . .”
“Honey, we can get you some clothes.” Thea sank onto the cot, tucking her hands in between her legs.
Rilla shifted nervously. “But, I’m already eating . . . and living here.”
“Rilla! It’s . . .” Thea took a deep breath. “It’s not a big deal. Next time we go into town. Can you make it until then?”
She nodded, feeling guilty. It was hard to ask for more when Thea had already given her so much.
“How’s homework going?”
The guilt deepened. “Good.”
“You don’t want to be held back.”
“No shit,” Rilla muttered to her knees.
“You’re smart.” Thea smoothed the covers of Rilla’s bed and shook her head. “Stay outta Ranger Miller’s way. He is a dick. And he will eventually get you.”
“I hear you.”
“Mm-hm.” Thea eyed her. “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be,” Rilla said. “I’m doing good.”
“You look better than when I got you, that’s for sure. I know it sucks to not fit your clothes, but you have more color and you look less exhausted.”
Rilla shrugged. A tan and some sleep not on a bus would do that.
Thea looked at her like she was waiting for Rilla to say something. Again.
But Rilla didn’t have anything to say. “Sure.”
“All right . . .” Thea sighed, and went back downstairs.
Rilla heaved a relieved sigh, before rolling over to her elbows and trying to do trigonometry. Her phone sat on the floor, just under the bed. Dark and quiet. No one knew her number, but no one from West Virginia had asked. The stab when she remembered wasn’t the same sharp desperation she felt at first. Now, it was more a deep, raw ache. Like something healed over on the surface, but festering somehow below.
She copied one problem into her notebook, before getting irritated at the soft, blunt, unsharpened pencil. If she was going downstairs, she might as well sharpen all her pencils, so she wouldn’t be interrupted next time she started her schoolwork.
It took twenty minutes to find all the pencils she’d brought. She’d forgotten she put them in with her toiletries. It had made sense when she packed, she was sure.
Downstairs, there was an old-fashioned pencil sharpener screwed to the side of the kitchen cupboards. Rilla dropped her handful of pencils onto the counter, and shoved the first one into the machine.
Whirr. Whirr. It sang a rusty song that reverberated in her teeth.
She pulled it out. It had barely sharpened.
Shoving it back in harder, Rilla sighed and resigned herself to the task. Only a little bit more and she could maybe squeeze in a climb before she had to babysit for Ranger Stafford and his wife’s twins, across the meadow, that night. The fifty-two dollars burned a hole in her pocket. From experience, she needed to spend it quick, or she’d end up spending it wrong; but fifty-two wasn’t quite enough for the shoes she needed. Everything else, she could borrow a little longer. With shoes, she could climb the many massive boulders, for practice, without needing other gear.
The pencil suddenly snapped.
She pulled it out. It’d over sharpened and snapped off inside the pencil sharpener. Shit. She eyed the hole. Now she had to fix the sharpener before she could finish sharpening anything. “Thea, where’s a screwdriver?”
Thea answered from where she was cuddled on the couch with Lauren watching a movie. “The drawer at the end.”
Rilla went all the way down at the end of the counter and wrenched the old drawer on its sticky tracks. It was stuffed full of papers, scissors, knives, mail, paper clips, nail clippers, magazines, and candy wrappers. How was anyone supposed to find anything in this drawer? She pawed at the top and then yanked the drawer all the way out. Clearing a space on the counter with her arm, she dumped it over with a crash.
“What are you doing?” Thea asked from the couch.
“Finding the screwdriver,” Rilla said. She pulled the garbage can over to dump the used wrappers and weird trash. Carefully, she stacked all the papers to the one side, stopping only to read the most interesting. Ah! The screwdriver. She set it to the side carefully, where she would find it again, and went back to sorting out the trash. The garbage can was so full, the last bit of wrappers fell off the top. She had to take it out. Rilla shifted to the can, tied the bag in a knot, and yanked it toward the door. Outside, she hauled it around the house to dump it in one of the locked bear cans for trash collection.
“Hey there,” Walker said, in a tone so bright and friendly, she nearly jumped out of her skin.