The Art of Holding On and Letting Go

by Kristin Lenz

“Mi madre,” I said, gesturing to my mom. I held out my bare wrist. “I lost our bracelets.”

  The woman nodded again, then chose a tagua nut bracelet similar to the one I had before, with ivory and chocolate and caramel–swirled beads. She slipped it on my wrist, then studied Mom for a moment.

  Her hands hovered over the colorful beads then settled on a bracelet nearly identical to mine. “Buena suerte para una madre y su hija. Ustedes deben permanecer unidas.”

  I slowly translated the words in my head. Good luck for a mother and daughter. I looked to Mom to see if she understood the rest and was startled to see tears in her eyes. She fingered the beads on her bracelet.

  “Don’t they look old and weathered, like they really could bring good luck?” I said.

  She sniffed and smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “We better get back. Mr. S. will have dinner ready soon, and I want to study his maps of Mount Chimborazo.”

  “Gracias,” we said to the woman. The word didn’t feel so carefree rolling off my tongue anymore. It felt foreign and heavy.

  Mom lit the lantern in our room. The candle flickered and cast a warm glow around us. It almost felt like we were back at home, safe and snug in our cabin in the woods.

  I offered the bed to Mom. “I’ll sleep in your sleeping bag.”

  “Thanks. My back could use a nice mattress for a change.”

  She took off her shirt to sleep in a tank top; bruises covered her arms and back. Much worse than she’d ever had from her climbing falls.

  “Mom!”

  She twisted to examine her back. “I know. I hit the snow hard and slid quite a ways. But nothing’s broken.”

  I stared at the large, mottled brown and purple bruises.

  “Don’t worry, it looks worse than it feels.”

  I snuggled in the down bag, glad I had offered Mom the bed. She lay on her side, propped up on her elbow, and looked down at me.

  “I need to go back to Chimborazo tomorrow and meet your dad,” she said.

  I began to think of what I’d need to go with her. If we stayed in one of the huts, I’d need my own sleeping bag. If I needed to trek farther up the mountain, I’d need a warmer coat, waterproof gloves. I already had my harness, but I’d need ice crampons, an ice ax. We didn’t have extra money to buy a bunch of new gear for me, but maybe Mr. S. had some things I could borrow.

  “Mom, didn’t you say you and Dad and Max were roped together?”

  She nodded.

  “So what happened when the avalanche hit? Did you all get pulled down together?”

  “We did. And that’s how I got all these bruises, but I tried to stop myself with my ice ax, a self-arrest. Your dad too.”

  “But what about Max? If he was struck by the avalanche and couldn’t stop himself, wouldn’t the rope have pulled you and Dad with him?”

  “I don’t know exactly what happened, just that at some point my ax dug in, and I was able to stop.”

  Mom was quiet for a moment. “The rope was still attached to me and your dad, but it was severed after that. The other length of rope had disappeared.”

  A horrifying thought crept into my mind.

  “Maybe it severed over a rock or something?” I asked.

  “You’re not even thinking in a moment like that, it’s pure panic and reflex, you’re sliding and twisting, caught in a roiling monster … the rope—”

  “Dad might have chopped the rope with his ice ax?”

  Mom gazed at the flickering lantern. Shadows lurked on the wall.

  “He won’t leave the mountain. He blames himself for letting Max go. He’s determined to find him.”

  “But if he hadn’t cut the rope,” I said, “you and dad would have disappeared too.”

  “But we’ll never know for sure. And that’s what’s killing your dad.”

  Because he blames himself for killing Uncle Max. But he saved himself and Mom.

  “Or Max severed the rope himself, to save us. I need to go back and help your dad,” Mom said. “And I need you to go stay with Grandma and Grandpa while your dad and I figure all this out. I rescheduled your flight to Detroit for tomorrow morning.”

  I sat up in the sleeping bag. “What? I’m not leaving now. I’m going with you!”

  “I know you want to be with us, and I don’t want to leave you again. But you don’t have the experience for Mount Chimborazo. Not where we need to go.”

  “Fine, then I’ll stay in one of the huts and wait for you.”

  “Cara.” Mom said in her warning voice.

  “Or I’ll stay here with Mr. S. I could help him with the other guests. I’ll do dishes, whatever.”

  My voice rose higher, but Mom’s remained low, steady.

  “Cara, I’m really worried about your dad. He’s not himself. We’ve lost other friends before, but not like this, not like Max. Max is like his brother. Mine too. I need you to be safe and taken care of, so I can focus on getting him home.”

  “You just want me out of the way!”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Just like when you went to Denali. You shipped me off to Michigan then too.”

  “That was a different situation. You were younger then, and you didn’t seem to mind going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

  “Well I did,” I snapped.

  Mom sighed. “I didn’t expect you to be upset about this. I thought you would understand.”

  “I understand that you almost died, and now you’re going back on that mountain without me. What if something happens to you!”

  The candlelight waned, and the shadows on the wall grew bigger, darker. I burrowed deeper into the sleeping bag. Uncle Max was like my second dad. That massive, cold mountain had swallowed him alive.

  “I just survived one of the worst possible accidents,” she said. “I’m not taking any chances with my life, or your dad’s. I want to go home as much as you.”

  “Promise?” I whispered.

  “I promise.” She opened her arms, and I crawled into bed next to her. “We’ll all be home soon.”

  11

  I curled up in the window seat, hugging my knees to my chest, and gazed out at a sea of clouds. The pilot announced we were at an altitude of twenty thousand feet and climbing. Almost as high as the summit of Mount Chimborazo.

  Everest may be the tallest mountain in the world, but the summit of Mount Chimborazo is the highest point on Earth through which the equator passes, the farthest from the Earth’s center.

  “See, the Earth is spherical,” my dad had explained once. “An oblate spheroid. It’s squashed at the poles like a beach ball that someone sat on, bulging at the equator. So, a mountain rising up out of that bulge is higher and closer to outer space, closer to the Moon, closer to the Sun.”

  What would it be like at the top of the mountain, the thin air squeezing your lungs, the lack of oxygen suffocating your brain cells, the wind clawing at your clothes? To be at the top of the mountain, looking down at the clouds. The earth hidden below, your only view the snowcapped peaks of other mountains wreathed with clouds. Would this new land be so startling, so dazzlingly surreal, so consuming that you’d forget about the earth below? Was the power and freedom so transforming that you could forget how to descend back to the life you lived before?

  Was that what compelled Mom and Dad and Uncle Max to climb higher and higher peaks? And now that we’d lost Uncle Max, could my parents come back down to earth and stay there? Could I?

  PART II: MICHIGAN

  Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

  —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  12

  A folded note fell out of my locker, and I bent down to pick it up. White notebook paper, slanted messy writing, in pencil.

  Then another note three days later.

  Now it was a Friday, my second week of school. The bell rang for lunch, and I drifted along
the river of students toward my locker. I spun the dials on the combination lock and popped open the door. This time I was ready. I snatched the third note midfall.

  I unfolded the paper, my pulse quickening with each square after square after square. Same messy scrawl, but this time written in blue ink.

  I glanced around the hallway, expecting someone to be watching. The river flowed toward the cafeteria, shouting, jostling, giggling. I turned back to my locker and stared at Dad’s postcard of the llama that I’d hung on the inside of the flimsy gray metal door. If only I could step right through into another world. Back into my own world, back to the mountains.

  My parents had made up their minds. Uncle Max was gone, the official search was over, but still my parents hadn’t returned. And they wanted me to stay with my grandparents.

  In Detroit. Motor City Ugly. No mountains, no rock climbing, no life. It didn’t matter that I had rarely attended school before, or that I wanted to be anywhere but here.

  I didn’t think anyone at school knew about me, that I was a rock climber, or what had happened in Ecuador. Why would people in Detroit keep up with climbing news? The climbing blogs had followed our story, but the national news didn’t care about a mountaineering accident on a remote South American volcano. I hadn’t even heard of Mount Chimborazo before my parents began to plan the trip. Yet someone here knew who I was. Either that, or some sci-fi freak was stalking me. Planet Granite?

  The river trickled to a stream. A guy and a girl each dressed all in black swept past me.

  “I could kill you,” the girl said, playfully shoving the guy.

  He mock-stumbled, careening off a locker. They rounded the corner and disappeared.

  I grabbed my lunch and headed for the front doors. I jogged down the hallway, rounded the corner, and stopped. It was raining. Pouring. I had been cooped up in this cinder-block prison all morning, waiting for my lunchtime escape. Now what was I going to do? Thunder rumbled in the distance, rain pounded the sidewalk.

  So far, I had managed to avoid the cafeteria. It made no sense that I could scale cliffs without an ounce of fear, yet one glace at the lunchroom filled me with dread. For a moment, I considered marching right out into the downpour. I’d stomp through puddles all the way back to my grandparents’ house. Maybe Grandma would say I looked like a drowned rat, take pity on me, and let me stay home the rest of the day. Yeah right.

  Lightning cracked the sky. Thunder boomed. I sighed and trudged toward the cafeteria. I took a deep breath and paused just inside the doors, scoping it out. I didn’t recognize anyone. The faces blurred together, one massive group. Their voices roared and echoed in my head. Finally, I spied an empty table and beelined smack into a lanky guy wearing basketball shorts. I let out an embarrassingly loud oomph as his elbow squashed my lunch bag against my chest. It fell to the ground, and we both crouched at the same time to retrieve it.

  Crack. Our skulls collided. Oh my God! I clutched my forehead, the pain stinging my eyes. I squeezed them shut and sunk to one knee.

  “Ow, ow, shit, oh man, sorry, ow, are you okay?” He dropped to one knee too, clutching his own forehead.

  I met his gaze, but I couldn’t speak. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

  His mouth curved into a lopsided grin, and he half-laughed. “I’m such a klutz. Seriously, are you okay?” He touched my shoulder.

  I nodded and tried to half-laugh with him, but it sounded more like a whimper. Oh my God. The contents of my lunch were dumped onto the floor, and I started stuffing everything back into the torn paper sack. Sandwich, apple, carrots, cookies, and yes, even a juice box. Grandma was a very thorough lunch packer.

  “You’re in my Algebra II class,” he said.

  I recognized him, too. He played basketball; I’d overheard some girls whispering about him, but I didn’t know his name. He was average tall, not basketball tall. Brown wavy hair and hazel eyes.

  “Mmm, Oreos. Can I have one?” He shook the baggie of cookies and grinned. His cheeks were flushed with two pink splashes.

  “Um, sure?”

  “Awesome.” He took one, popped it into his mouth, and helped me gather the rest of my lunch.

  He dipped and knocked his shoulder into mine as we stood up. “Nice running into ya, Cara.”

  “Yeah.” I opened my mouth to say something else, but he was already gone.

  The roar of the cafeteria came rushing back at me. I clutched the torn paper sack with both hands to stop it from spilling open again. The empty table I had seen before was now full. Figures. Thanks a lot, Basketball Guy. I forced myself to walk among the tables until I spied another empty spot.

  I sat down and pulled everything back out of my lunch bag. Grandma packed it for me every day, and every day until now I had carried it back home to eat during my lunch hour. It was a protest of sorts. A way to show Grandma and Grandpa that I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t belong here.

  Three Oreos minus one. He knew my name. My face flushed as I pictured our crash, and I caught myself wincing then grinning, sitting at this table all by myself. I glanced around, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I stared out the window at the curtain of rain, twirling my ponytail, wishing I had brought a book. I pulled out my phone; only a sliver of red battery left. I usually didn’t care that I had an old crummy phone, but now I wished I could scroll through posts and pictures like everyone else.

  Dark shadows fell across the table. One minute I was all alone with my bologna on white, the next I was surrounded by vampire kids dressed all in black. A glob of gluey bread stuck in my throat.

  They swooped down on the chairs around me, stared for a never-ending minute, then dug into their food and chattered away as if I didn’t exist. I was bug eyed. My faded jeans and forest green T-shirt were all wrong for hiding in this jungle.

  One of them smiled at me. The same girl who had passed my locker earlier. Bright white teeth through lips painted purple black. She wore a long black sweater over a floor-length black skirt. She looked like a witch wearing combat boots, minus the tall pointy hat. Her hair was the same deep purple black as her lips, and her eyes were rimmed with a heavy black line that tilted up at the corners.

  “You’re Cara, right?” she asked.

  How did everyone know my name? I nodded and tried to smile, but I couldn’t stop staring at her hair. It was actually a really pretty color.

  The guy she had wanted to kill in the hallway had squeezed onto the bench next to me. “What’s the matter? They don’t have goths in California?”

  He used the same hair dye as the smiling witch. Was that eyeliner? A dimple flashed in each cheek as he spoke, softening the vampire effect.

  “Shut up, Nick.” The girl pegged him with a grape straight to his chest. “I’m Kaitlyn,” she said.

  “Kaitlyn, you are such a sophisticate,” Nick said with a fake English accent.

  Kaitlyn wrinkled her nose at him and said to me, “Everyone used to call me Katie. Now I go by my real name, Kaitlyn.”

  I had twirled my ponytail into a knot. I tugged, and untangled my fingers.

  “So what do you think of the Motor City, California Cara?” Nick asked.

  I shrugged and nibbled on a carrot stick. I was sure he didn’t want to know what I really thought.

  “You’re a long way from the mountains, baby. But you’ve got rock climbing right in your own backyard.”

  I inhaled a carrot chunk, gasped and coughed. Mystery note writer revealed? I could understand how word had spread that the new girl was from California, but how did he know I was a rock climber?

  “Leave her alone, Nick.” This time Kaitlyn’s grape dinged him on the cheek. And that’s when I noticed her hand. She had a thumb and a half of one finger, maybe two? But the rest of her hand was deformed. It was almost hidden by the long sleeve of her sweater.

  Don’t stare. Don’t stare.

  “Hey, watch it.” Nick brandished a french fry at Kaitlyn like a sword.

  Another grape zoomed pa
st his ear. He reached across the table and snatched a stem of grapes. “Bring it on!”

  Nicks’s first throw barely missed Kaitlyn’s forehead. She yelped and ducked and then scooted off the bench as Nick jumped up and hit her square in the back. Kaitlyn tossed another grape over her shoulder, and it bounced off the table into my lap.

  “Sorry Cara!” she yelled, laughing, as Nick raced after her.

  My first cafeteria food fight. I picked up the grape and popped it into my mouth. Kaitlyn and Nick ran up another aisle of tables, and there was my basketball player. Tall and smiley, carrying a tray loaded with food. I held my breath for a second, thinking that Kaitlyn or Nick were about to crash into him. He held his tray higher as they darted past, then slid onto a bench next to his friends, unaware of my eyes burning a hole in his back. I flushed and couldn’t help smiling. Just a little.

  13

  The rain had stopped by the time school was out. The sun was shining, but the air was humid, heavy and thick. It coated my hair, clogged my lungs. Twigs and broken branches littered the sidewalk. Soggy leaves had been plucked from their trees and washed toward the street.

  Up ahead, I spotted Kaitlyn and Nick in an old station wagon, waiting to pull out of the student parking lot. As a canary-yellow Hummer passed by, Nick’s arm shot out of the passenger window, middle finger raised. They turned in the opposite direction, not noticing me, and were gone.

  What was that all about? There was something rebellious and defiant about Nick flipping off the Hummer that matched my mood. Hell yeah, screw you, gas guzzler.

  I continued on my walk home, passed the pin oak, the shaggy hickory, the locust, and a new friend with elephant-ear leaves and dangling seedpods like giant green beans. Last week, I had carried one of the leaves home to ask Grandpa what it was.

  “A catalpa tree. And it will be loaded with the sweetest smelling blossoms next summer,” he had said.

  I passed under a maple with brilliant red leaves on only one limb. The rest of the leaves held on to their summer green. I felt kind of like that tree. One small part of me was pushed into this new life, but the rest of me, most of me, was stuck in the past, trying to hold on to my old life.