Twenty One
For two days, the Valley was quiet except for the rain drumming the roof as Rilla worked. Her eighteenth birthday came, and just when she was ready to throw all her books out the window and post something passive-aggressive about being forgotten on Instagram, Lauren came home with two chocolate cupcakes and a piece of dry spaghetti stuck in the middle of one and lit on fire as a makeshift candle.
“Don’t tell Thea, I forgot to get her one,” Lauren said, licking icing off the top after Rilla had blown out the spaghetti.
“Thea probably forgot anyway,” Rilla said.
Lauren snorted. “Sure, and how do you think I knew it was your birthday?”
Oh yeah. Rilla made a face.
“Well, how does eighteen feel?”
“Like seventeen,” Rilla said over a mouthful of cupcake.
Thea came home later with more cupcakes, and a new fleece Patagonia jacket.
Rilla clutched the jacket, her smile real.
She finished all of her trigonometry before the rain stopped, the waters receded, and tourists flowed back into the Valley.
Morning dawned—bright and simmering heat in the thick shafts of golden sunshine slotted through the pines. The river ran high, but within a week a fire had lit in the high Sierras and the wind shifted, bringing the smell of smoke with it. Rilla would have imagined Thea surely had something to do with forest fires in the park, but Thea just layered on more sunscreen and listened with a morose look on her face to the fire reports and the radio chatter.
“You hate your job, don’t you?” Rilla asked one morning. They hadn’t talked about the conversation during the flood. But resumed tentatively, as if it had never happened.
“I hate parking cars,” Thea said, without lifting her eyes from the massive swift-water rescue handbook she was reading. “But I’m not going to be parking cars forever.” She swallowed another bite of cereal. “How’s school?”
“Uh. Great. I finished all of my trig.”
“Great job! Keep at it,” Thea said. “Mom called. I told her you’d call today.”
Rilla nodded, still torn between being angry at Thea for criticizing Mom and angry at Mom for being that way in the first place. “Yeah, okay.”
“All right,” Thea put her bowl in the sink and reached for her Stetson. “Pray I don’t get run over by an angry tourist,” Thea said, and then was gone, leaving Rilla sitting at the table in an empty house.
She hadn’t seen anyone since the day she dropped the rope, on purpose mostly. Even though she knew she wanted to go back to climbing, going back out to show her face and ask to lead was a . . . hurdle. She looked at her phone and wondered if Mom would even be up. Probably not.
Taking the computer, she opened up a blank document, determining to knock out a paper on the book she’d only half finished reading. The clock ticked loudly. The quiet in between the ticks seemed to carry a noise. After ten minutes on the couch, her body was sore from sitting still. She should just bite the bullet, go back out, and ask. No one was going to be in Camp 4 today, especially not this late. She could go and try and find a stranger to climb with—people often signed up for partners on the ranger board—but any partner would be able to tell right away she was a fake. She couldn’t lead! Rilla groaned and leaned forward with the computer. She started writing and barely even knew what she was saying, she just kept her fingers moving. After filling a page, she figured it was time for a break and clicked over to movies, propping up Thea’s Wilderness First Aid on her knees to page through.
Ten episodes of Vampire Diaries later . . .
Shit.
Rilla looked up, realizing the light had turned amber and her whole day was gone. She closed the computer and unfolded herself off the couch just as Lauren came in the door.
“Hey girl, busy day?”
Rilla smoothed her hair and tried not to look guilty. “Yep. You?”
“A squirrel got into the Half Dome Village store.” Lauren sighed and sank in the recliner, unlacing her boots. “I swear, if I get the plague . . .”
“The plague?” Rilla said, stashing the computer under the couch and trying to think what she could do to make it look like she did something.
“Yeah, don’t touch rodents. They’ll give you the bubonic plague.”
“Are you serious? The actual plague. Who touches rodents?”
“You’d be surprised how many people try and pet those mangy bionic rodents.” She pulled off her socks and sighed. “What have you been doing all day? More Vampire Diaries?”
Rilla blinked.
“It shows what you’ve been watching.”
“Oh.”
Lauren laughed. “Oh indeed.”
“I did get all of my trigonometry done,” Rilla defended herself.
Lauran waved her hand. “That’s a fight for Thea. I do not care about a few episodes of Vampire Diaries.”
Rilla’s shoulders sagged in relief.
“We need to talk about what happened during the evacuation.”
Shit. Rilla studied her hands.
“I guess you’ve talked with her about it, right?”
Rilla stayed quiet.
“Yeah,” Lauren said like she’d just proved a point. “I know your situation is complicated. I’m not pretending I understand the dynamics that are unfolding there. I know for Thea, it’s been difficult to figure out boundaries and how to move forward, and I imagine you will need to learn the same things. But here’s the thing.” She pulled her legs off the chair and leaned on her knees. “You cannot, under any circumstance, tell a gay person she must come out. Even to your sister. Even to her mother. You crossed a line.”
Rilla’s face felt like it was burning up. “It . . .” She swallowed. “It wasn’t about coming out. It was about her and my mom.”
“It was about coming out. I don’t care who is involved. It was about exposing something intensely vulnerable to a mother who has never been safe for Thea. A mother Thea has always had to take care of. It’s not even remotely your business. Only Thea gets to decide that.”
“But our parents are . . .”
“It doesn’t matter, Rilla,” Lauren said. “What matters is you need to respect Thea and her decisions about how to handle her family. Thea deserves an apology from you.”
Rilla kept her head ducked. “I mean, she knows . . .”
“Not unless you tell her. She loves you and is here to help you. She was the one who suggested bringing you out here. When she heard what happened with that boy, she spent hours on the phone with your mom, convincing her that you needed to leave West Virginia.”
That ache started up again in the back of Rilla’s throat.
Lauren looked at her, waiting.
Rilla exhaled and closed her eyes. “I didn’t know,” she croaked. “I thought my mom asked her to take me.”
“Nope.” Lauren shook her head.
The silence was deafening.
Rilla felt sick to her stomach. All this time she’d thought Mom had wanted her to go, and Thea had just been the closest person. She hadn’t realized Thea had been convincing Mom . . . wearing her down, getting her to see how serious it was. That definitely made more sense. Ugh. Rilla put her face in her hands.
“Need in the bathroom? I’m getting a shower,” Lauren said, standing up.
“I’m good.” Rilla bolted for the door. “I’m going to get some sunshine.” Closing the door behind her, she sat on the porch and put her chin in her hands. How could she fix this mess?
With a sigh, she slid off the edge of the porch and started walking for Yosemite Village. As she left the meadow and joined the asphalt path, someone whistled behind her.
She turned as Walker pedaled up behind her in shorts and a fluorescent T-shirt with SAR printed in bold, black letters on the back. “Climbing today, Rilla?” He stopped and leaned the bike between his legs.
She tried not to grin like a goober, awkward conversation with Lauren forgotten. “Not today. You on call?”
“Just got back from carrying a hiker down from Half Dome,” he groaned. “I’m going to eat before something else happens. You going that way?”
“Yep.”
“Well, hop on then.” He straightened the bike and Rilla gleefully stood on the back, hands on his shoulders. She was pathetic, but it was okay, she’d accepted that about herself.
“I know you’ll probably say no, but . . .” He pedaled toward dinner. “Want to lead tomorrow?”
The California sun hung in a cloudless blue sky, but she was sure, at that moment, the clouds parted somewhere and shone brighter. “Yes!” She completely forgot to flirt or tease him in her desperation to have someone teach her to lead a route without having to ask Petra or Adeena.
They rolled through an intersection and Rilla spotted Thea, standing to the side, holding a long line of cars at a stop. Thea looked tired and sweaty. She waved as Rilla rolled past.
Shame crawled up Rilla’s spine.