Knife-edge ridges and dizzying ledges. “Have you read this hike description, Nick?”
“Yeah. Sounds good, right?”
“It’s not going to rain this weekend, is it?” I snap my knife open and closed.
“Why?” Luis asks, eyeing my hands. “You gonna cut some body if it does?”
“Yeah, she’s gonna stab them with a two-inch blade,” Nick snorts.
I end up at Nick’s, where we often go if he doesn’t play basketball after school. He has a photo and a topographic map of a mountain called Crystal on his bedroom wall. I study the harsh gray rock of its summit, cold and barren as the moon. Surely Eagle will be gentler than that? Crystal’s in the Cinnamon Range, a couple of hours to our north, but Eagle’s in the Porte range, the smaller mountains to our south.
I flop onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. I have a choice of two pictures in my mind: the “exceptionally steep” slopes of Eagle, which I can only imagine, or Raleigh Barringer’s sneer. Terrific.
“Anything good up there?” Nick says, lying down beside me. “Um,” I say, wanting and not wanting to talk about Raleigh, to spill out the fear that’s been locked in my chest all afternoon. Instead, I ask, “You sure you want to climb a mountain?”
“Yeah. Don’t you?”
We’ve always craved new adventures, always driven each other. Let’s hike farther. Let’s try this hike in winter. Let’s do the loop and the spur this time. I like the power that comes from pushing myself harder than I thought I could . . . but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Nick either worries less than I do about failing, or else he hides it better.
“Oh, absolutely,” I say. “I also want to whack myself on the head with a hammer.”
He laughs. “You’ll love it. Three or four hours of climbing straight up. You can start thinking now about how you’re going to thank me.”
I poke him in the stomach. He flinches but laughs again. When my hand moves in for another jab, he grabs my wrist. “Watch it,” he teases. I try to spring on top of him, but he holds me off easily. In fact, he’s still laughing while holding me up above him, which is downright insulting.
“I need to take karate or something,” I pant.
“I’ll teach you.”
Our voices drop as he lowers me closer to him. Our eyes are fixed on each other, watching for sudden moves.
“You don’t know karate,” I say.
“That could be a problem.”
Nick is one of the few people I can look in the face, but now there’s a new kind of danger between us, a charge that makes me want to squirm. I want to sink the rest of the way down on top of him, and at the same time I want to push away, to leap off the bed in embarrassment. I’ve lost track of what we were saying. Something about . . . karate?
His phone rings. “I should get that,” he says, not moving. “Yeah, you should.”
But it’s another moment before he rolls me off him and leans over to grab his phone. “Yeah,” he answers.
I can’t hear the words on the other end, but I hear the voice, rising and falling, flooding the phone. I would know who it is even if the ringtone hadn’t tipped me off—a snippet of Beethoven’s Seventh, one of Nick’s father’s favorite pieces. “Yeah,” Nick says, every minute or so. “Uh-huh. Yes.”
While I wait for him to finish, my eyes roam through the room. I’ve seen everything in here a thousand times before: the heaps of laundry on the chair and floor. The backpack and water bottles and the rest of his hiking gear in the corner. The faded blue-and-brown quilt beneath us, with a smear of dirt from when Nick forgets to take off his boots before he lies down.
I can’t help wondering what would’ve happened if the phone hadn’t rung. If we’d kept lying face-to-face, if the gap between us had narrowed to nothing.
I’ve only kissed one boy before, and it was about as romantic as flossing my teeth. On Christmas Eve in eighth grade, Carl Gurney kissed me in the church parking lot while our parents were busy talking. Since Carl didn’t go to my school, he didn’t know how much of an outcast I was, how I’d expected to be unkissed forever.
The whole thing was over before I realized what was happening. “Merry Christmas,” he gasped, before planting his rubbery lips on my mouth. A few days later, his family moved to South Africa. I thought maybe he’d kissed me because he was moving away—kind of a last chance, something he’d dared himself to do.
That’s my entire history of success with the opposite sex. So it’s hard to believe that Nick and I are on the verge of sudden passion.
“I haven’t thought about that yet,” Nick says into the phone. “No, Dad . . . that’s not realistic.”
If I’m going to lust after any guy, it should probably be Luis. He’s warm and open and not too hard for me to talk to. We both like music; he moves as if he always hears it playing inside his head. He has smooth skin, full lips, an easy smile.
But he’s too gorgeous, with a perfection that has no rough edges to grab on to. Nick is more average looking: dark hair, brown eyes. Neither ugly nor swooningly handsome. So tall that he sometimes doesn’t know what to do with his knees and elbows—though that’s mostly indoors. Outdoors, he’s always at home. On the trails or a basketball court, he fits.
“Dad, it’s not the money. . . .” Nick taps the mattress. “I mean, it’s not just the money. . . .”
Not that I should be lusting after him, either. It could derail our whole friendship.
Looking for distraction, I reach over the side of the bed, dig through my backpack, and find my mushroom guide.
I’ve always found mushrooms more interesting than birds or insects or anything else we see on the trails. Maybe it’s the fact that some mushrooms are edible, and others can kill you— it’s that wild contrast, that sense of risk. There’s also the fact that mushrooms stand still long enough to let you identify them. Unlike, say, birds.
“It has nothing to do with Mom,” Nick says. “Don’t—” He stops abruptly, holds the phone away from him, and stares at it. “Oh, go ahead, take that call,” he says to the air. He clicks off the phone and drops it.
“That sounded like fun,” I say.
“Sometimes I wonder how a guy as smart as he is can keep pretending I have an Ivy League future.”
“Why do you think you don’t?”
“You’ve met me, right?” He takes the book from my hand, his fingers brushing my skin, and flips through the pages of the guide. I’ve shown him its mushrooms before: some edible, some poisonous. “Are there any in here that make parents see reality?” he says.
“There should be.” Unable to forget the worst part of my day—homing in on it the way you poke at a sore spot—I say, “And there should be one to send Raleigh Barringer back where she came from.”
“Yeah, I heard Sylvie mention her. I’ve seen her around. Is she one of the ones who—”
“Yes.”
Nick and I didn’t go to the same junior high, but our moms are nurses at the same hospital, and he met me during the Raleigh Years. He knows I used to daydream about feeding Raleigh toadstool stew.
“I know what you could use,” he says. He rests the mushroom guide on the bed, gets up, and pulls his backpack out of the corner of the room. He sets it beside the bed and opens the zippers. Its compartments gape, ready to be packed. “Just keep thinking about Saturday.”
It’s a sign, a promise. In spite of my doubts, I can’t wait to set my feet on the trail. Our eyes lock long enough for an awkward silence to build between us, and then we both look away. A thrill rises in me, part fear and part joy, sparked by that look, and the open pack on the floor, and the knife in my pocket.
four
After a birthday dinner with my parents (my favorite roast chicken; Mom singing loudly off-key after a single glass of wine; Dad carrying in the coconut cake he picked up at the bakery), I go up to my room and call Sylvie.
“Hey, Maggie—can you tell me why cotangents are important? Will I ever need to know this again?” She s
ighs. “I’m drowning in homework.”
“So am I, but I’m putting it off as long as possible.” “Well, I’m trying to get through this so I can go out with Wendy. I haven’t seen her in a week.”
Wendy is Sylvie’s girlfriend. She goes to Hollander University and is about a thousand times more sophisticated than I am. She never looks sloppy, even in sweats. She already knows three languages, thanks to her family’s globe-circling lifestyle, and is learning a fourth. She knows where to stay in Nairobi, how to navigate the streets and canals of Venice, what to eat in Buenos Aires, and what the exchange rate is in Mumbai. Once when Sylvie and I visited her dorm, she was lying there reading a book about the global causes of economic inequalities—and not for a class, either. Just because she wanted to.
I know I should let Sylvie go, but I linger on the phone. I want to ask about Raleigh, who is apparently now on the yearbook committee with Sylvie, but the questions pile up in my mind, unasked. How long has Raleigh been back from Italy? Has she mentioned my name, and if so, what did she say? How many allies is she gathering around her this time?
I’m scared of the answers. I need to know—it’s a matter of survival—but I don’t want to know. At the very edges of my mind, I still hear Raleigh’s screech.
“Is something wrong?” Sylvie asks.
“No . . .”
“Well, I should go. Once I figure out what a cotangent is, I can go meet Wendy.”
“Say hi to her for me.”
When we hang up, I take out Nick’s knife. Opening it, I admire the gleaming blade, beautifully sharp even if it is only two inches long. I work the miniature scissors. Then I touch the polished stone and the silver links of the necklace around my neck.
My parents gave me gifts, too, of course: sheet music and money, both of which I wanted, and clothes, which I didn’t especially want, especially the ruffled shirt Mom says I can wear “someplace dressy.” Since I will not be hosting state dinners or signing treaties any time soon, I doubt I’ll find the right occasion for it. But the necklace and the knife are special because they’re from people who aren’t required by blood to give me anything. I cradle the knife in my hands, feel its weight, and touch the necklace again. Somehow it comforts me that both gifts are made of metal. They seem more permanent that way.
I go downstairs to try out the new music on the piano. I used to play every day in junior high, filling the house with waves of sound. I pounded out my anger and my fear of the school halls.
My playing has dropped off in the past couple of years, though. After I started high school, playing felt less urgent, harder to make time for. Last year when my old teacher stopped giving lessons, I didn’t even look for a new one.
It takes a lot of energy to bring music to life, and then to sharpen it, to master it. Channeling a complicated piece is like taming a tiger: you set all these sounds in motion. You start themes, establish a rhythm, and then you have to keep it going. You’ve unleashed a tiger in the room and now you have to use every note and rest to show off its power and beauty, while keeping it under control. If you slip, a claw swipes at your leg or slashes a hole in your wall. I used to release that beast every day and control it, put it through its paces.
High school has been calmer—or I’ve been calmer, I’m not sure. Now the tiger mostly naps in a corner of the room. But today I’m a little hungry for that feeling again, a little restless. I run through some old songs before trying the new pieces.
“Glad you like the music,” Dad says, touching my shoulder on his way through the room.
Although Raleigh Barringer has the same lunch period as me, I manage to avoid her for days. I sit with Nick and pretend that a protective barrier surrounds our table. If it’s one of the occasions when he prefers grunting and nodding to conversation, then I text Sylvie, who is usually at some club meeting. It doesn’t matter whether I have much to say. Just touching base with her reassures me. It lets me know I’m no longer alone, the way I was in junior high. It reminds me the world is bigger than this cafeteria.
the salad bar has mysterious brown things on it today, I text her on Wednesday. i have no idea what they are. nick dared me to eat one.
A minute later, I add: nick says he will eat one of the brown things if i do. i’m thinking there should be money in this.
And then: now nick says i shouldn’t want money. i should do it for the sake of adventure.
Sylvie replies: nick has a strange definition of adventure.
I laugh and show that one to Nick.
“She’s just finding that out?” he says.
Then Sylvie texts: you shouldn’t do it because if you have a bad reaction and go to the hospital, they’ll ask what you ate, and you’ll say: a brown thing. and they’ll say, but what was it? and you’ll have to say, i don’t know. and they’ll say, why did you eat something when you didn’t even know what it was?
I answer: you have a point. also, i don’t really want to eat a mysterious brown thing. even for adventure.
In this way, I’m determined to keep my own little world alive, as if the rest of the cafeteria doesn’t matter. Walling off Raleigh, pretending not to hear her even when she’s braying ten feet from me, is something I perfected in junior high. It’s strange how my stone-faced tunnel-vision abilities have come right back, though I haven’t used them much since the end of eighth grade.
This is how I used to feel every day.
Raleigh had so many followers in junior high; I never knew where the attacks would come from. But our high school draws students from two junior highs and two middle schools, so the old pool of Maggie-haters has been diluted. And in high school it’s not considered okay to beat up on the losers so openly. It reeks of trying too hard, of having no life of your own.
Even so—if anyone can figure out a way to carry it off, if anyone can stir an entire school against a single person, it’ll be Raleigh. Which means that I can never completely relax.
On Thursday, Raleigh catches me off guard in the hall between history and English. Somewhere behind me, she squeals, “I don’t belieeeve it!” I react instantly, fleeing from her voice, that piercing eeeee. Reaching the girls’ room, I glance under the stalls for feet. I lock myself in and press my forehead against the cold metal of the door—all this before stopping to think, before asking myself what I’m doing.
I’ve watched Raleigh flip her shiny, black hair, glide down the school halls with her head up. I’ve heard her voice plenty of times since she’s been back. So I don’t know why hearing it now zaps me this way, fries my nerves.
It’s something about that note in her voice: the note of danger, the exact frequency of trouble. “She’s heeere,” Raleigh would call when I appeared at school every morning, signaling the start of the day’s attacks. “Oh, Maggieee,” she would sing out, and it was always the opening to an insult, a threat, or an order. “Oh, Maggieee, cover yourself, so your ugly face won’t make me throw up!”
I have to stop these flashbacks.
I belong here just as much as she does. I can’t crawl through the halls on my belly until we graduate. I only hope she didn’t see me running, that she didn’t catch the scent of my fear the way a shark smells blood in the ocean.
Slippery-palmed, dry-tongued, I force myself to open the door.
five
I’m in no mood to dissect a frog with Adriana Lippold this afternoon, but that is what I’m destined to do. Formaldehyde prickles the inside of my nose as we snip and slice silently, identifying the organs and drawing them on our lab diagrams. I’ve never thought of Adriana as particularly smart—maybe because of her obsession with makeup and clothes, or the way she always trotted around at Raleigh’s heels—but I realize now there’s no reason to assume she’s stupid. In fact, maybe the surgical precision she once used to dismantle my ego should’ve prepared me for her skill at cutting up dead animals.
“Wow, look how big the liver is,” she says.
“Yeah.” I’ve been thinking the same thing. At fi
rst, I thought the liver was the stomach, but the stomach is much smaller than I’d expected.
We exchange a few more remarks about frog anatomy. At one point I study her face, wondering what’s going on behind the frosting of blush and mascara and lip gloss. I wish I knew why she used to get such joy from helping Raleigh tear me apart, how she could’ve liked the taste of that poison in her mouth.
And I can’t help wondering if she and Raleigh are already plotting against me, starting up a new wave of anti-Maggie operations. Maybe they’ve just been waiting for Raleigh to get over her jet lag and gather her army of haters.
When Adriana looks up at me, I turn back to the frog, steadying my hands on the pins and scalpel. Concentrate, I tell myself. This is your job.
Maggie Camden, Amphibian Coroner. Sounds like a TV show nobody would ever watch. But I get through the rest of the lab.
Friday night marks my survival of another week of school. I sleep over at Nick’s so we can get an early start for Eagle Mountain the next morning. Nick’s mom is in bed when I get there, but Perry is watching a martial-arts movie and flipping through atlases.
Perry loves maps—not antique maps, but maps from fifty or sixty years ago, including road maps. He buys tons of them at yard sales. He frames his favorites and hangs them on the walls, even though Phoebe isn’t crazy about them. “Not another one, Perry,” she’ll groan. But I’m so used to them that an aerial view of Yellowstone Park will forever remind me of their living room, and an old road map of Nevada means we’re in the upstairs hall. Perry gave Nick the topographic map of Crystal Mountain that hangs on his bedroom wall next to the photograph of its summit.
“Eagle’s a good hike. I envy you,” Perry tells us now, taking his booted feet off the coffee table. One thing I love about Nick’s house is that you can put your feet up on the furniture whenever you want. Unlike at my house, where wood finish is practically sacred. This is one of Dad’s few annoying quirks— because he loves working with wood, he can’t bear to see it treated casually. We spend half our lives hunting down coasters to put under our drinks.
Until It Hurts to Stop Page 2