“Here, want me to do it?” Rose is by my shoulder, already zipped and buckled and pulled together. Of course.
“I’m fine,” I mutter.
“I know you’re fine, but do you want a hand? We should be moving in ten—”
“Dammit, I can do it!” My voice is louder than I mean it to be. Immediately the hot itch of frustration—with my laces, with Rose for being ready, with my shitty night’s sleep—mixes with a wave of embarrassment that only makes it worse.
“Okay.” She smiles, a real Rose smile, to let me know she’s not mad. “Come get me when you’re ready.” She walks away, disappearing almost immediately in the darkness.
I sigh, and some of the anger drains away. It’s only a stupid bootlace. I take another deep breath, or whatever passes for a deep breath at 10,000 feet. The edginess fades more, and I’m grateful, for the millionth time, that I have a best friend who knows not to bark back at me when I’m being an asshole. It’s fine. I’m fine. This is where I want to be. Another deep breath, and I go.
The darkness presses in on all sides as we stand in our tiny group. Our tents and gear are packed up for us to pick up on the way down; looking back there’s no sign we were ever here.
“Ready!” I say, and I make my voice sound energized. “Sorry for being a ferret, Rosie.”
Rose gives me the thumbs-up. “Apology accepted. I know the feeling. Two a.m. is a great time to be home, sound asleep in my awesome bed.”
Maya sighs. “Enough with the martyrdom, Rosie.”
“The journey is the reward. Yah, I know. Got it.” Rose’s voice is clipped and pissy, and I roll my eyes. Obviously I’m Team Rose, but sometimes she still acts like a sullen eleven-year-old around Maya, and it’s getting old. “Let’s get this party started, okay, boss?” I say and start walking.
Rose follows, and we head up, headlamps bobbing in the darkness. Four thousand two hundred feet above us is the summit. Crampons crunching into the hard snow, we begin to climb. It’s quiet except for the stomp of our boots and the heavy sound of my breath in my ears. I slept with my iPod in my sleeping bag to keep the battery alive, and now I turn it on, letting the music amp me up for this climb. Loud guitar chords blast into my ears, drowning out all other sounds. I try to forget Rose’s crankiness, Maya’s frustration, and Dad’s nagging and let my body take over.
In the darkness I can barely tell white snow from dark rock, but even so, the movements are automatic. The tread of Rose’s footsteps in front of me marks our time. I pull out my earbuds and tuck them into my collar, and there’s only the scream of the headwinds and the blackness of a mountain sky above us.
We stomp along the glacier until we get to the ledges that give our route, Gibraltar Ledges, its name. The giant Gibraltar Rock looms over our shoulders on the right, and the darkness of the rocky ledge drops down on the left. Dawn’s barely beginning. This is the technical part, requiring ropes and real climbing, and the adrenaline starts to thrum as I contemplate the route. Rose and I stop to add extra layers to protect us from the winds that will try to rip us off the mountain as soon as we round the edge. We tie ourselves together, leaving plenty of slack rope, then double-check our ice axes, extra line, and helmets before starting up. Dad and Maya are still behind us. Maya must be feeling like crap because they’re moving slower than ever.
“You ready?” Rose asks, her voice muffled beneath her mask. “We’ll head up until Camp Comfort, which, if I remember, is the most poorly named spot on the mountain, then take a break. Okay?”
I nod, glad I can’t see her face beneath her goggles, helmet, and mask. I know from her voice she’s still in a shitty mood, and I can feel myself tense up in response, can feel my jaw working and my neck tightening against my shoulders. I try to roll my neck, make myself smile to see if, as Dr. Jimmy always says, smiling actually changes your mood. Shaking my arms and legs to warm them, I start up after Rose.
After a few minutes I stop, my body held tight against the rock. “Rosie. Check out the view.” I can’t pull my eyes away.
The sunrise, crazy beautiful, is blazing hot orange and pink and red, striping the sky and glinting off the far-distant ocean.
“It’s gorgeous.” She smiles and shakes her head. “Ridiculously gorgeous.”
I bat her with my mitten. “Right? Worth the trip?”
She rolls her eyes but nods. “Yes, Mom, it’s always worth the trip! That’s why I’m here instead of in my delicious bed. Anyway, we should keep moving. Lots of cautionary tales about rockfall and seracs crashing down on this chute.” She starts to climb again.
I follow, and soon we’re alternating between steep, hard-packed snow pitches and small level stretches that give us a chance to catch our breath. Dad and Maya eventually catch up to us as we rest at Camp Comfort, which is comfortably out of the wind but still icy and miserable. Displaying my usual expertise and skill, I drop my mitten trying to get a cough drop.
“Tate, for God’s sake,” Dad says, his voice tired, like it’s too much work even to yell at me.
“It’s fine! It caught on the lip of that serac, so you’re in luck,” Maya says, trying to be cheerful, as always.
I resist the urge to tell her how lucky I feel and start down the snow to reclaim my mitten. While I’m walking, a gust of wind knocks my helmet off the spot where I parked it and sends it hurtling down toward me.
“Oops! Better grab that while you’re there,” Rose calls. “Anything else you want me to drop, so you don’t have to make a separate trip?”
I give her the finger with my mitten-less hand and retrieve all my gear. “Sure, sure,” I say, huffing my way back up to them. “Make fun of the loser. Typical.”
Rose shoves me, and I shove her back, while Maya looks at the view and Dad looks disgusted. Time to go.
“Okay, Captain. Let’s tag this bad boy and get down. I’m hungry,” I say, and Rose agrees.
Waving to the others, who are still fixing crampons and dicking around with their ice axes, we start to climb.
Shoving the earbuds back into my ears, I start up behind Rose. She’s a splash of yellow high above me already, but I’ll catch up quickly. I’ve got almost six inches of reach on her, so she never stays far ahead for long. I adjust my ice axe and dig my right crampon into the crusty snow, pushing off. Crunch, shove, crunch, shove, crunch…The snow shifts between crunchy and soft, making it hard to know how much pressure to use. Twice my foot slides loose, but I catch it before I shift my weight. Soon all that’s in my brain is the smash and thrash of the music in my ears and the pause, step, pause, step of my feet. Up ahead the spot of yellow stops as Rosie waits for me on the edge of the glacier. The wind’s unbelievable, howling and screaming around us. I give up on the music again and rip the earbuds out. The iPod will be dead before I get back anywhere that I can hear it.
“How’s it looking?” I ask when I’m close enough to shout in her ear.
She shrugs. “Not great. We’re going to need to tap dance through this crud. That warm week really screwed with the glacier.”
She’s right, as usual. Even from here I can see the crevasses, some two or three feet across, some only a few jagged inches, all standing between us and the finish line. I nod, resigned. I hate this part, when there’s no vertical, just these little old-lady steps and stopping to check the integrity of the ice every few seconds. It’s barely climbing. Give me a chute any day. Still, it’s my job to look on the bright side. “Sure, but a little more of this and we’ll be at the summit crater. And from there…the summit!” I throw my arms up like a champion, and she laughs.
We push forward slowly, and the impatience moves through me like an itch. Jimmy always tries to get me to notice how my body’s turning on me, siding with my ADHD brain, by making me take short breaths or hunch my shoulders or clench my fists. He’s all into yoga breathing and stuff, which does kind of help, although I laughed my ass off the
first time he lay down on the floor and told me to try belly-breathing. Anyway, I try it now, or at least as much as I can at 13,000 feet.
Doesn’t work.
My footsteps get faster, and sure, they’re probably too fast for this crap we’re skating on, but I need to get off of this, need to get somewhere where I can climb, or stop, or anything but this. Moving faster still, I glance up for a second to see how far ahead Rose is.
I take one more step without looking down.
Chapter Seven:
Rose
April 6
Lukla, Nepal
9,380 feet above sea level
“Did you know this airstrip was on the Discovery Channel’s special on the world’s deadliest places to fly into? It was number one.” My voice sounds weird, even to me. “The landing strip actually runs uphill to help the planes cut their speed, but it stops right against the mountain. I guess takeoff is the worst, right? I mean, thinking statistically—”
“Rose. Shut the fuck up. Please. I’ve never puked on a plane, and I would really like to keep my record.” Tate doesn’t look at me.
The Soviet-era plane, which only seats around sixteen people and gives a definite impression of age—with duct-taped upholstery and a ripped, sagging ceiling—is bouncing badly. Making things worse—much worse—is that out one side of the plane, the mountains are reallyreallyreally close. Like, reach out and touch them close.
Next to me, Tate squeezes his eyes shut.
“You okay? You never get sick. Are you—”
“PLEASE!” His voice comes out kind of as a yelp.
I shut up and place a mint in his hand, which he puts in his mouth without opening his eyes.
“Sorry. That helped,” he says finally.
“You’re doing better than those two,” I say, gesturing toward the back of the plane, where two New Zealand women, trekkers who are going to some monastery, are wailing and shrieking.
“At least Luc stopped yelling ‘Ahhhhh merdemerdemerde!’ a few minutes ago,” I say. Luc had been ridiculously excited about the whole roller-coaster effect.
Tate sighs, dropping his head on my shoulder. “I’m going to be really happy to get off this plane.”
But when we finally land, staggering off the plane onto the cracked concrete, he doesn’t look much better. I feel fine as soon as my feet are on the ground. We are only at 9,000 feet, barely an altitude gain by Himalayas standards, and we’re officially in the mountains. Peaks surround us on three sides, glorious and huge, sending long shadows over the tiny airport. As with every climb, the bureaucracy takes forever, and we’re ushered inside while Finjo and the other guides deal with five hundred pages of permits and paperwork. Tate slumps on a bench.
“I’m fine,” he says, anticipating my question. “Just glad to be off that stupid plane. And ready for a nap.”
I hand him my water, and he gulps it down while I stare around me. Finjo and his minions are all huddled in a corner. In fact, now that I look up, every single Nepali and a few Western guides are in that corner too.
“What’s going on?” I poke Tate, who is leaning against me while I tickle his arm.
“Mmmmm?”
“Wake up. Seriously. Do you think something’s wrong? What if the permits aren’t ready? Doesn’t that happen sometimes?”
Jordan, who also looks a little pale from the flight, stands up. “I’m sure the permits are fine, Rosie. Let’s not assume the worst. I’ll see what I can find out.”
I stare around at the tiny room. “Not much of an airport, is it? I want a Starbucks.”
Paul looks up from his book. “Actually, there’s apparently a fake one, right here in Lukla! I read about it in the guidebook.”
We are laughing over the response I would get if I ordered a grande no-foam skim mocha latte when Jordan’s voice breaks through the room.
“Jesus Christ! How bad is it?”
Everyone turns to stare. I am halfway across the room, Tate right behind me, when Paul calls us back.
“But—,” I start.
“Wait. Let’s hold tight,” he says, and maybe it’s his professional therapist voice, but we all do what he says.
Voices buzz like swarms of wasps, rising to high pitches and dropping again, but I can’t understand any of it. My stomach twists, and the Dread shows up, hungry. Could there be news from home? Were there messages waiting for us?
Finally, Finjo and Jordan walk over. With them are Dawa, Asha, and Bishal, three of the other Sherpas who’ll be guiding us up the mountain. No one is smiling, not even Finjo, whose Cheshire Cat grin is his most constant feature.
“So.” Finjo rocks back on his heels, looking around. “There has been a very bad accident. A tragedy. The Icefall Doctors—the group of Sherpas who set all the fixed ropes up the route to the summit before we arrive—they have encountered an avalanche.”
He pauses, and no one says anything. No one wants to ask the question.
“There are two confirmed dead, several more still missing,” he continues finally.
“Oh no.” On cue, my eyes fill. I swipe at them, frustrated. I have what Tate nicely calls overactive tear ducts, welling up at Christmas specials, musical numbers sung by children, and weddings of complete strangers. But this time it’s real. This time my tears don’t count enough.
Finjo nods. “Those whose bodies can be found are being brought down now for cremation and funeral. And the search effort is still ongoing. It is a very hard thing, a very sad thing.”
No one speaks, and there is no sound except for my sniffling. I bite the inside of my mouth, hard.
Finally Yoon Su speaks. “This is a terrible tragedy. I’m so very sorry to hear of these deaths, and I will pray for them.” She pauses. “But now I have to ask. Is there reason for us to reconsider our expedition? This is a very inauspicious beginning.”
I feel Tate twitch against my shoulder and put a hand on his arm. I know without him saying anything what he’s thinking; it’s blazing bright in his eyes. People died. How can it be about us? But I can’t pretend to be shocked. Climbing Everest requires big stakes, big money, and a very short window of time to reach the summit. It doesn’t stop for anything.
Finjo nods like she’s asked a reasonable question. “You are correct to ask. But as you know, we will take almost two weeks to acclimatize as we trek up to Base Camp, and even more time will pass before we are on the fixed lines. The Icefall Doctors will continue their work—”
“Once they find the rest of the bodies, I guess,” Tate mutters. I can feel him vibrating with something—rage or sadness—against me.
Finjo continues as though he hasn’t heard. “And by the time we need them, the fixed ropes will be perfect. This tragedy, it was an accident of nature. There was no wrongdoing, no way to know. The storm that arrived, it was not expected.”
“But there will be all kinds of accurate weather-forecasting technology up there when we arrive, n’est-ce pas?” Luc says, speaking for the first time. “God rest the souls of those men, but when our asses are hanging on those ropes—excusez-moi, Rose et Yoon Su—I hope you will have only the best weather tools.”
Tate pushes past me and runs out the door to the airstrip. Falling to his knees, he throws up in the dirt.
* * *
—
Inside, everyone’s discussing the news. There are delays, of course. Two of the guides, Dawa and Mingma, turn out to be cousins with one of the Sherpas killed on the mountain. Also, the funerals are being held tomorrow in the village that we’re supposed to get to the following day, so there will be no rooms for us. I walk to find Tate crouched over, swigging water from his bottle and spitting into the bushes.
“You okay?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
He shrugs. “Fine. Queasy from the flight, I guess.” He stands up, stretching and wincing. Around us,
the village of Lukla is going about its business: more flights with trekkers and climbers arriving, Nepalis lining up against the fence, offering their services as porters and guides. Overhead a massive bird wheels and dips against the almost navy-blue sky. It is post card–beautiful, with jagged mountains in the background and picturesque prayer wheels along the trail in front of us.
“Yeah. It was pretty bad,” I say, but I don’t know if I’m talking about the flight or the accident.
Tate turns to look at me. “You okay? I mean, with all the…” He pauses. “Death? Jesus. That sounds grim.”
I make myself nod, quick and sure. “Yeah. Of course. You know me. Waterworks. It’s sad, that’s all.” Despite my best efforts, my eyes fill back up. “Sorry. God, I’m ridiculous.” I wipe at my face.
“Rose,” Tate says, pulling my hand down. “A bunch of people just died. Dawa and Mingma lost their cousin. It’s not ridiculous to cry when you hear that these poor bastards, who are paid fuck-all to do the hardest and most dangerous job on the mountain, lost their lives so we can have an adventure.”
It feels like he slapped me. Heat floods my face, and I pull back. “Is that…Do you think we’re selfish? Like we have no right to be here? Because my mom spent a ton of time making sure she found a Nepali-owned expedition, one that pays fair wages and offers women equal opportun—”
Tate puts his hands up. “Stop! Rose, I’m sorry. You’re not selfish. And Maya’s probably the best person I know. I didn’t mean that. It’s really fucking sad, that’s all.”
I sigh, long and deep, and lean against him. “Yeah. It is.”
He bends down toward me. “Here. You’ve got a big smudge of dirt. Right…here.” He reaches forward and presses his fingers against my cheekbone. His hand is gentle and cool on my hot cheek.
Why is he still touching my face?
Above All Else Page 5