Chapter Nine
I awoke to the beautiful glow of early morning light in my tent. I was glowing inside, too—the glow of happiness and possibility. It took me a few seconds to realize the sensation had been from a dream. A dream where Luke and I had been in a real bed instead of a tent, tangled up in sheets and a pretty quilt. He was kissing my neck. My bare neck because, beneath the sheets, I’m pretty sure the rest of my body was also bare.
I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want to lose the memory of it, the sensations. When I finally had to, the glow faded, leaving my insides hollow in the face of my new reality. One in which Luke was not mine. Dad was not mine, either. Nobody was mine. I was completely alone in this world.
Sadly, it was a feeling I knew well, though not as much in recent years. Until now.
I thought about what Luke had asked last night: what it was that I truly wanted. It was the mountains, yes, but now I thought about the other part, the part I’d deliberately given up when I’d decided not to go to Townsend College. A house to come home to—the kind of little white bungalow with a big front porch I’d always dreamed of. A place of permanence and friends, comfort and welcome. I’d so easily let that go in order to continue my roving life in the mountains with Dad.
But now I’d lost them both—the mountains and the home. Having a physical house of my own was as extravagant of an idea as climbing the Top Five, but there was no reason I couldn’t have a life of my own. That was the ray of light in this situation. I could learn from the loneliness I felt right now, the lack of belonging. Moving forward, I would build my own life, one where I was the center instead of orbiting someone else. Starting right now, with finding a job.
I sat up, drank some water, and turned on my phone. I began with the jobs pages of U.S.-based mountain guiding companies. It was a relief to see I had the minimum qualifications, but troubling to see that most companies wanted additional certifications. Some even listed experience minimums in number of years rather than number of peaks climbed, which put me at a definite disadvantage. And there was the problem that, though I’d climbed mountains nearly twice as high as America’s tallest mountain, I’d never actually summited a mountain in the U.S.
I looked at a few more guiding websites, including Luke’s company, Global Adventurers, which was even bigger than I’d expected, with a dozen offices around the world and more than a thousand employees. They did it all, everything from senior citizen European tours to major mountaineering expeditions.
Online, I found some examples of mountain guide resumes and then got out a piece of paper to jot down some notes.
“Emily, you up?” Dad called from outside my tent. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” I said, slipping the paper under my sleeping bag and then unzipping the door for him.
He came inside and sat cross-legged next to my lettuce-box shelves. His face was weary to the point that I suspected he’d had trouble sleeping last night.
“Emily, I’m really sorry that I kept you in the dark about my financial situation. I should have brought it up last spring when you were deciding to take a gap year. Or even after that. I just didn’t want to worry you. There was a plan in place, and if I just got you through to when you left for college, it would all be okay. My money problems shouldn’t be your problem, but now they are, and I feel terrible about it.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m fine. Don’t feel bad. Please.”
“Well, I do feel bad.”
In just one day, Dad seemed a decade older. More gray hair, more wrinkles. It wrenched my heart.
“It was a little bit of a shock,” I said, “but I’m okay now. I’m sorry if I was rude yesterday.”
“You weren’t rude at all.”
I looked down and fanned the pages of World’s 19ers.
“I keep thinking about how I haven’t been paying you,” he said. “I should have been doing that all long. Or at least giving you a formal stipend.”
“Seriously, Dad, don’t even think about it. I’m the one who should have been more considerate about money when I decided to take a gap year. I never even offered to pay my own expenses.”
“Don’t try to take the blame. This is my blunder.”
“It’s going to be okay. I’ve already been looking at some jobs.”
“Guiding?”
I nodded.
“About that,” he said, eyeing the World’s 19ers book and rubbing his beard. “I thought about it more last night, and I don’t think you should go down that path. Not yet, anyway. I don’t think you have a concept of how perfectly suited you are for mountaineering, mentally and physically. You’ve got this immense capacity for it in your power and drive. You have skill on par with Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and Lhakpa Sherpa, I would say. I know you want to climb the Top Five, and I believe you have the skill to be the first woman to do it.”
I was stunned, in a good way. He always praised me at the top of our climbs, but it was never much more than a simple good job or nice work today. I had no idea he thought these things.
“The thing is,” he continued, “being a career guide, you’d never have money for a major project like that. And besides, your paying clients get the best summit windows in the best locations. You’d never be free at the right times of year for the summits on your own tick list. Life only gets more complicated as you get older. If you don’t climb for yourself in the beginning, you might never get the chance.”
“Exactly. That’s why I cancelled at Townsend College.”
“No. It’s the opposite. You need college so you can get a really good job so you can pay for the trips.”
“And if I had said really good job, then I’d never have enough time off for even one major expedition a year, let alone enough time for the acclimation and all the training. That’s why pursuing a sponsorship—not college—is what makes sense.”
“Yes, but—”
“You didn’t finish college,” I pointed out.
“No, but the business classes I took have been extremely helpful in running Winslowe Expeditions. And I would never have become an Esplanade Equipment athlete if I had not crossed paths with Barrett Browning when I was guiding on Mount Rainier as my college job.”
I sighed and looked up at the laminated photos strung across my ceiling. The picture right above me was a close-up of a snow-tipped rhododendron. Just out of view, Luke had been holding the stem so the flower wouldn’t blow in the breeze and make the picture blurry.
Luke.
Something sparked in my mind. The Global Adventurers permit snafu he’d told me about. From a staffing perspective, the extra cameramen who would be climbing were the same as guided clients. And this meant Global might not be meeting their advertised guide-to-client ratios. If true, this could be a chance to get my foot in the door with Global and get off Dad’s threadbare dime immediately.
There might be hope of a seventh summit after all.
I wanted Dad out of the tent so I could consider the Global Adventurers idea further. I gave him a firm good-bye hug and assured him that I wasn’t mad about yesterday and would think more about college.
As for my Global Adventurers idea, there were three cons.
One: Going to Global City to ask Jim if he needed another guide would require me to be much braver and more outgoing than I actually was. And it was likely he’d say no.
Two: It wouldn’t put Dad or Winslowe Expeditions in a good light to have me up there begging for a job from the competition. Dad would be hurt and embarrassed if he found out.
Three: Luke. It had been wrong that I let myself linger in his arms last night. He had a girlfriend, and we were just getting back to how we used to be as friends. By not respecting that boundary, I’d risked ruining it all. What I needed right now was some time apart from him so I could cool down, not the close quarters that would be inevitable if we were part of the same expedition.
But in the end, neither Dad nor I were in a financial position to let number one or number two stop me from inquiring. And about Luke, well, I’d have to cross that bridge if it turned out Jim had a position to fill.
I hiked up to Global City right after breakfast. Doc’s tent was easy to find with her sparkly purple camp boots sitting in front of it.
“I talked to Dad. You were right.”
“I know. I didn’t want to push you guys into something ugly but, well, we both know your dad. He might not have ever told you.”
“I feel stupid that I didn’t know. You’d think I would have been able to figure it out. I had no idea he was borrowing money from you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Emily, it’s okay. It was just for the plane ticket, and I am more than happy to help. I told him he didn’t need to pay me back, but he’s insisting.”
“I know, but still, I’m twenty; I should be buying my own plane tickets.”
“Yeah, you probably should, but it’s not your fault for not knowing things that were being kept from you. Not maliciously, of course. You might have had the world’s most adventurous upbringing, but Greg Winslowe somehow found a way to be a helicopter parent.”
I frowned.
“It’s because he loves you, Em.” She offered me a Thin Mint from an open box of Girl Scout cookies, and I presented my theory about Global being understaffed.
“That’s some good thinking, MiniBoss. I know Jim’s been trying to bring in another guide, but it’s impossible to find a fully acclimatized Western guide in the middle of Nepal who happens to have the right qualifications and is not already on a job. I’m sure he never even considered looking here at Base Camp. My only question is if Greg knows you want to do this.”
I shook my head.
She clucked her tongue, yet she looked proud of me. “Come on, let’s go find Jim before you change your mind. It would be a great opportunity for you, and I’d love to have you here with us this season.”
Doc walked me through Global City. I kept my eyes peeled for Luke, as it would be really bad timing to run into him right now. Doc left me inside Global’s enormous communications tent, standing in front of Jim in his Yellow Yeti fleece and matching hat, wishing desperately I’d insisted on taking a few minutes to plan what I was going to say.
“Uh, hi,” I said.
“Hi, Emily, what’s going on?”
I swallowed my urge to run away. Here goes nothing. “I heard you have more people up on the mountain this season than you’d planned.”
“True.”
“I know Global Adventurers advertises the lowest Western guide-to-client ratio of all outfitters here, and I was curious if the additional climbers will affect that?”
“Did Greg send you up here to do some reconnaissance?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Don’t tell me he’s going to run a smear campaign for us not sticking to our advertised ratios.”
“He didn’t send me. I’m asking for myself.”
“For yourself?”
“Well, I do have my Wilderness First Responder and Avalanche II certifications.”
“Don’t you work for Greg?”
“It’s a long story, but no.”
“And so you’re here looking for a job?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’ll be darned.” He pulled on his chin. “Now that I know you’re not here as a spy—”
I shook my head earnestly.
“I’m just joking, Emily. But, yes, you guessed right. Our low ratios are one of our major differentiators, and breaking that is not something corporate is interested in doing. But they’ve yet to find me a suitable extra guide who is already acclimatized. So it’s been a bit of a thorn in everyone’s side. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Twenty.”
He frowned. “That’s young.”
“I may be young, but I bet I have more Himalayan summits than your entire guide staff combined,” I said boldly.
He laughed. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve seen you here so many years that I don’t doubt that you have more Everest summits than any single Global guide. How many, exactly?”
“Six.”
He whistled.
“Five of those were here in Nepal, on the South Col Route. One was from the Tibet side, and a total of two were without oxygen.”
“Well, we do have Luke on the mountain this year, and he’s only twenty-two.”
“Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily advertise your age to our clients. Not that I’m telling you to lie. Maybe just make a point not to bring it up.”
“We do that at Winslowe Expeditions, too.”
“Perfect. So when can you start?”
Oh my god! I’d done it! He was offering me a job!
“Right away,” I replied.
“Right away as in today? Our first rotation is in a few days, and I’d like to give you as much time as possible to get to know the clients beforehand.”
“Today is fine.”
He chuckled and cracked his fingers. “This is almost too serendipitous to be true.”
It was too serendipitous to be true. Tashi.
“Go grab your stuff,” he said. “Welcome to Global Adventurers.”