Twenty Five
The Nose became a secret. She kept it tight inside her chest, a note she’d hidden inside her ribcage, that only she could read. A desire so laughably out of her ability, she couldn’t afford to let it escape, even as she alternated between working for more gear and climbing with anyone who would have her as a partner. She unfolded it and read it in her soul while scrubbing the floor of the public bathrooms in Half Dome Village for twenty dollars from Bethany and Amarie. She checked to make sure it was still there when newcomers, Olivia and her partner Avery, showed her the short, painfully big moves on the Camp 4 boulders. She picked it out of the dirt and tucked it back away after she landed on her ass on their bouldering mat over and over.
Olivia caught her staring at the white lightning bolt smeared onto the granite boulder in chalk.
“It’s famous,” Olivia said. “Midnight Lightning. It took Ron Kauk and John Bachar two months to do it the first time. Anyone who gets it goes back over the lightning bolt with their chalk. To share in it.”
Rilla tried the problem and could barely get on. Avery tried and got halfway before landing on their ass. Olivia didn’t get any farther.
But after they moved on, Rilla often found herself looking at the lightning bolt as she walked back through the Camp, and reaching for that secret note tucked into her ribs. To share in an experience bigger than herself, a history she became a part of—it was what she’d wanted even before climbing came into her life.
“Do you aid climb?” she asked Petra, too intimidated to ask her to teach her outright.
“Ugh. Aiding is a slog,” Petra said. “Let’s just find something you can actually climb.”
Rilla shrugged and kept packing.
•
“Why don’t you just fucking ask her?” Jonah asked as they jogged side by side one morning through the Valley.
Rilla growled. “I don’t want to have to ask her. I want her to know, like, duh, Rilla is amazing. Rilla needs to aid to do anything bigger.”
“Does she even know how?” Jonah said, slowing as they came to the open spring near the start of the Valley circle.
“Yeah, she knows how.” Rilla came to a stop, sides heaving. She was a better runner than when she started, but Jonah had this unfair ability to run and never seem winded. “She climbs with Adeena all the time. Big routes.”
“And they don’t invite you?”
“They’re partners. I don’t know. I get it . . . if you have a good rapport with someone, and they climb at the same level, you don’t really want someone new to come in and change the dynamics.” She bent and filled her Nalgene with water from the spring. A cool breeze stirred the wisps of hair at her neck and brought a wet, earthy smell that made her feel at home. “You know, I never realized how much the humidity unlocks the smell of things.”
“Does it smell differently on the East Coast?”
Rilla blinked. “Yes! Totally! Haven’t you ever been?”
“I’ve never been farther east than Kansas.”
“Oh. No, it’s so humid and disgusting. It’s like the air is a heavy, hot wet blanket. In West Virginia, I mean. I haven’t actually been to the coast.”
Jonah shuddered.
“But it carries all the smell and soul. The flowers and the earth and the trees. You can smell the breath of everything. You can get drunk on the smell of honeysuckle.”
“You make West Virginia sound nice.”
She rolled her eyes. “It is nice.” Tipping the water bottle, she drank the sweet, clear spring water.
“If West Virginia is full of people like you, I don’t know why it gets a bad rap.”
She snorted. “It’s full of people like me. But also, people much nicer than me. But it’s terrifying when outsiders have ideas about you already. What can you do different to change a story they already think they know?”
Jonah didn’t say anything, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he pursed his lips as he refilled his bottle. “I still think you should ask Petra. Or, if not her, maybe Adeena would do it.”
“Adeena is Petra’s partner. I would feel really weird asking her. I haven’t seen Caroline in a while, and maybe she hates me. Petra obviously doesn’t think I need to aid. Walker doesn’t find me attractive. Everyone hates me. Wah.”
“All right. Whoa, girl. No one hates you.” He rolled his eyes.
Rilla stuck out her tongue.
“Just ask. The worst that could happen is someone says no. You’ll live.” He shifted away.
“You heading on?” she asked.
He nodded. “Thanks for running with me.”
“Fine. Bye.”
“See ya.” He jogged off, heading farther into the woods for more miles.
Rilla closed her eyes against the breeze that tasted like home, and then turned back for the heart of the Valley.
She stalked the Camp 4 parking lot for the next few days, until she found Adeena alone one evening.
“Do you know how to aid?” Rilla asked.
Adeena nodded over a drink of water. She lowered the bottle. “I was wondering if you were ever going to learn.”
“I asked Petra, but . . .”
“Petra doesn’t like it.”
Rilla forced herself to say the words. “Would you be willing to teach me?”
“Absolutely,” Adeena said, screwing the lid on as the car pulled in, Petra driving. “Pick out the climb you want to do and meet me here tomorrow afternoon.” She waved goodbye.
Rilla waved back, in the direction of the car. After all her agonizing, it had been so easy.
Gage leaned across the seat. “Your turn for dinner duties. I signed you up with me. We’re making bibimbap. Tomorrow.”
“Sounds good!” Whatever that was. The unspoken rule was that when it was your turn to cook, you tried to make something only you could make. Rilla assumed if she ever had to come up with a dinner they’d want her to make fried chicken and collard greens, and good luck because she could barely cook rice and beans.
Stuffing her hands into her shorts, she walked over to HUFF, trying not to replay the conversation with Adeena, and thereby find a way to talk herself out of trying. She wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t tried. And kept trying.
It wasn’t safe, but it was better than not trying at all.