Twenty Two
The smell of the swollen river and wood smoke led Rilla under the cedars as she walked into Camp 4 the next morning. She was going climbing with Walker.
Her hair was braided, and she wore her mom’s cut-off “Southern X-Posure” T-shirt and a pair of Thea’s fancy outdoor pants she’d stolen. Gage had wrapped a cord around her sunglasses so they would hang on her neck if she knocked them off while climbing, and her old West Virginia Mountaineers hat rested snugly on her head. In her backpack she carried her booty from turning in all her homework to Thea and spending all her money—a harness, shoes that seemed to fit, a helmet, Grigri, and a chalk bag. It made her feel equally legit and fake. But she gripped the gear and tried to look like she belonged.
She was determined.
Hoisting the harness on her shoulder, she blocked out the image of everyone laughing at her behind her back, and walked into the sacred realm of white tents of the SAR site.
Four people—not including Walker—sat at a picnic table under one of the tarp porches, sharing what looked like a cozy breakfast. Two girls and two men. Tanned and strong and worn out in the way Walker often seemed—not in the physical sense, but where his clothes and his patience didn’t suffer fools. The girl on the end closest to Rilla, with her coltish limbs and a smattering of freckles, noticed her first and they all paused and looked quizzically at her, confirming her suspicion that entering this part of the camp was like entering into someone’s house unannounced. She’d just waltzed into their kitchen, during breakfast. She swallowed quickly and her face burned. “Walker?” she choked out, thinking the less she said, the better she’d be.
“What?” the girl asked, tilting her head further.
Rilla swallowed. “Is Walker around? I’m Thea’s sister.”
The girl blinked and suddenly her face changed, warm and welcoming and smiling. “You’re Thea’s sister? Hey! Welcome to Yosemite.”
Rilla smiled, relieved as she came closer to the table. “Thank you.”
“I’ve seen you around. I didn’t know you were Thea’s sister.”
Rilla nodded. “Yeah, we’re half sisters.”
The girl nodded like she was thinking clearly, but was trying to be polite.
Walker came from the direction of the road, back from a run and already sweating despite the cool morning air. He ran a hand through his hair and his eyes only met Rilla’s for a second.
Adrienne nodded hello.
Rilla waved hello and fought the urge to cringe. She didn’t belong here.
“West Virginia,” Walker said. “Have a seat.”
There was an empty chair beside him and Rilla sank into it, happy to be smaller, folded up and safe.
It was a different crowd, but the same circle in the dirt. A strange mixture of ranger, climber, and summer employee—they sat around a fire covered with a grate and a cast iron skillet and moved slowly as the sun crept through the trees.
“We almost ate your food,” a man said, picking up a plate. He wore a blue T-shirt and canvas pants, and his long white hair floated out from the bottom of his ball cap. He seemed much older than Walker—in that age where men’s ages become indecipherable beyond the modifier older. He was attractive, or could be, if one squinted and tilted their head and imagined him cleaned up a bit and the wild man beard trimmed and put into regular clothes instead of whatever sweatpants and white socks with sandals thing he was wearing.
“Mark almost ate your food,” Walker said. “Want some coffee?”
Rilla accepted the plate burdened with little sausages, softly charred peppers, and onions—and a browned waffle—with a nervous smile.
“Who’s this?” a guy said, coming up. “One of Walker’s rope bunnies got invited to breakfast?”
Adrienne laughed and pressed her fingers to her mouth to keep from spilling out her food.
Rilla’s face burned.
“Nah, it’s Caroline’s gumby,” someone said.
Rilla smiled politely, as if she was in on the joke and knew why they were talking about Caroline. She took a bite of her waffle. It was delicious and crunchy and tasted faintly of golden wheat and fire, and she forgot to wonder if they knew what a rope bunny actually was.
Walker handed her a blue speckled mug of steaming coffee and sank back into his chair. “Caroline should be here any minute. I won’t make you climb with me again,” he said with a wry smile. “She’s a million times better of a climber than you or I will ever be, even if we are reincarnated into better climbers forty more times.”
Rilla kept chewing, but her stomach twisted and her mouth immediately dried. She was going climbing with Caroline? The sleek, professional, amazing Caroline.
She stared at her plate, too panicked to eat.
“Speaking of Caroline, did she hear Celine Moreau is coming in July?” the white-haired guy said, leaning over his chair for the coffee. “Did you get some of this?” He offered the carafe to Rilla.
She nodded and lifted the mug still in her hand.
“Why July?” Adrienne said with a frown. “It’s maybe the worst time. So hot. So crowded.”
He shrugged. “I just heard it from a buddy.”
Walker leaned over. “Celine is a famous French climber.”
“As famous as a climber gets, anyway,” Adrienne said.
“She was on the cover of National Geographic last year,” Walker explained.
Rilla nodded and took a sip of the coffee to hide her awkwardness. It was bitter and hot and softly nutty, and perfectly balanced the bite of the peppers and the sweet brown sugar and sage sausage.
Caroline appeared over the edge of chairs. “Hey, guys!” she said with a wave.
Rilla looked into her cup. Her stomach flipped nervously.
“We didn’t save you any food,” old guy announced.
“I ate at the house. Sorry I’m late, it took a while for the car to leave.” She yawned and smoothed her hair. “I still need to pack up. My stuff is here.” Her gaze flicked to Rilla. “You ready? Did they feed you?”
Rilla stood hastily, still holding her plate and cup. “I’m ready. Thank you. The food was amazing.”
“Here girl,” old guy said with a chuckle, taking the things out of Rilla’s hand. “I got you. Calm down.”
Caroline readjusted her sunglasses. “Okay, let’s get going. Before it gets too hot.”
Rilla followed Caroline around the side of Walker’s tent where she opened a Rubbermaid container of gear and started pawing through it and handing things to Rilla to hold.
Rilla had her few things she’d been able to buy, but Caroline supplied the bulk of the gear. When she’d been climbing with Petra, Petra supplied it.
Her chest warmed and with her belly full of food and the camp alive and humming, she couldn’t remember a time she’d ever been this sober and this nervous. It was worse than the slow slog to the base of Half Dome. Then, she had nothing to lose. Not really. Now she had some semblance of a community. And what if she killed Caroline? Or injured her? Dropped her? Took her hand off the brake to scratch her nose? What if she dropped the rope again? It wasn’t hot yet, but Rilla started sweating anyway.
Caroline turned the pile of messy gear into a meticulous, Instagram-worthy, orderly spread on the picnic table by Walker’s tent. The cams and nuts were arranged by size and color. The carabiners arranged by length of webbing sling. More odd bits of carabiners and strange pieces that looked like they did the same thing as a cam or a nut, but weren’t either, were laid out beside a few long stretches of looped webbing Caroline had called daisy chains.
Alongside that, Rilla’s stuff was added in, her helmet and chalk bag sitting beside Caroline’s. The few pieces she’d borrowed from Petra combined with the few pieces she’d been able to buy.
Caroline added water and two apples, a bag of jerky, two little cups of canned fruit, three mashed date bars, leg-long ladders made of nylon, belay devices, rope, and a few other things Rilla didn’t recognize.
“Do you know how to aid?” Caroline asked.
“Um.” Rilla flushed, leaning on the edge of the table. She knew aiding is what you did to get through blank, unclimbable faces on long climbs, but Petra and Adeena had never climbed anything with her that they couldn’t free-climb—with gear placed along the way.
“There’s some 5.10 climbing on this route. I don’t know where you’re at or what you’re good at, so if you can’t free-climb it, I’ll show you how to aid.” Caroline handed Rilla a slightly crumpled printer paper of inked lines and x’s with the name written in block letters at the top.
Rilla stared. She couldn’t make sense of the drawing as being a climb; but that’s what it was—a map of sorts. A wandering line of x’s and several notations of grades ranging from “3rd class” to “5.8 C2 or 5.10 C1, which meant with or without aid” and arrows pointing meaningfully to other lines. She didn’t know what to make of it, but she looked at it carefully all the same.
Caroline filled a little bag of trail mix from a giant Ziploc and added it to the pile before making a second.
“So, this here indicates a roof.” Caroline pointed to a bit of straight line. “These x’s indicate bolts. The double x’s means there’s two bolts at the anchor of the pitch. And this is an arête.”
“A what?”
“It’s a corner that comes out to a point.” She put her hands together in a triangle, pointed at Rilla. “You’ll see when you’re climbing.”
Rilla went back to studying the map, trying to impress it into her mind, and not replay Caroline dancing up Doggie Diversions in her head. Her stomach churned. Ever since that first day at the Grove, she hadn’t even dared to dream of climbing with Caroline. And she didn’t want to—not now. Not when Rilla knew how bad she was. If she messed up today, she could hurt Caroline. Or worse, lose the tiny bit of trust Caroline seemed to have in her.