Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  Rilla blinked, fork midair. Was she that obvious?

  “I worked with him all last year. I mean, I’d say this to his face and he knows it—he goes through girls quickly. Plus, you definitely don’t need to be involved with anyone right now.” Thea raised her eyebrow. “Don’t you think?”

  Rilla’s pancakes now tasted like shame. “Sure. Yeah, totally,” she said, and finished eating in silence.

  Layla hadn’t replied yet.

  After breakfast, Thea left for work and Rilla went back to bed. She woke covered in sweat. This weather made no sense. Stripping off her pajamas, she sat on the floor in her underwear, staring at the seen receipt on Layla’s unanswered text. There were more comments on her Instagram.

  OMG, girl, you’re going to kill yourself.

  When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, huh?

  Who you been fucking already ho?

  Skidmore never dies.

  Lolololol you look so high.

  Rilla swallowed and turned the phone dark, putting it facedown on the floor. A sweaty, sick feeling clamored on the edges of her ribs and into her throat. The people she knew were still commenting on her social media, but wouldn’t return a text, like they were all relieved distance would do something they hadn’t known how to do themselves.

  Deep down, she hated that they weren’t wrong—that she had been partying, that it was everything they’d thought. But she wasn’t.

  Right?

  The waterfall whispered outside, and she closed her eyes, rolling her shoulders to try and loosen the aching muscles. The pool from yesterday shimmered in her memory. The way everyone had gathered—dirty, weird, and oh-so-stupidly cool and older. If she were someone like that, it would prove everyone at home wrong about her. It would show she was meant to be something bigger all along. No one back home knew what she was capable of.

  Doubts pinged somewhere in the back of her brain. But Rilla ignored them, pulling on leggings, a football T-shirt from home, and her sandals. She somehow had to find Petra and become a climber. Rilla quickly shook out her hair, did her eyeliner and mascara, and left the phone facedown on the bed. Fuck you people. At the last minute, she doubled back to pick it up—just in case Thea called.

  Out in the Valley, it was almost as if Rilla imagined yesterday. No one looked familiar. The Valley, while small in square miles compared to the surrounding wilderness, was still huge and full of strangers. If Petra and the others couldn’t stay there, where did they stay?

  Rilla walked the same path she’d followed Petra and Walker along the day before, scanning each passing face for someone she recognized.

  Along the road, a ranger SUV passed and hit its brake. Rilla slowed, thinking it was Thea. In the rearview, she locked eyes with Ranger Dick Face. Not Thea. The SUV began to reverse.

  Hurriedly, she turned off the path into the woods. Let him get out and chase her. He’d have to burn calories. Her heart raced, and she kept glancing over her shoulder. But he didn’t follow.

  Walking all the way across the Valley to the cafeteria in Half Dome Village, she found Jonah serving corn instead of mashed potatoes. They shared a cigarette outside on his break, but he still had most of his shift to go, so when he went back inside, she aimlessly set off the way she’d come. After crisscrossing the meadows, she found her way back to the path, on the far edge of the parking lot of something labeled “Camp 4.”

  A long line of people waited in front of the ranger shack, snaking its way through the rows of cars. Most were young. Everyone was fit, thin, light on their feet, older, cooler, and unlike her. Beyond them, a whole little village of tents and cold campfires spread under the trees.

  Rilla crossed her arms over her chest and pretended she did not feel like a heavy-pawed bear, with her un-toned arms and normal-as-fuck body, bumbling past a flock of birds aching to take flight. A sick feeling unspooled in the bottom of her stomach. Maybe she should just go back to Thea’s and try to find her schoolwork. She had been a disaster at real climbing anyway.

  The late afternoon sun was high, and dust and chatter billowed up under the whispering cedars. Her skin tightened with each step. She told herself she was looking for Petra, but she kept catching herself scanning for a six-three, muscled cowboy in weird track pants with good forearms.

  Her phone buzzed and in her hurry to get it out of her pocket, she flung it onto the dirt. Oh shit. If she broke it the first day she had it—

  She picked it up, relieved to see it was fine. The text was from Layla, finally.

  Who is this?

  Rilla, she replied.

  (typing)

  Rilla’s stomach tightened.

  Oh. Hey.

  Hi. How is everyone? I made it to Cali.

  Cool.

  Rilla’s chest seemed to be cinching tighter.

  Hey that stuff with Curtis was totally blown out of proportion, Rilla typed. It was hard not to regret ever hooking up with Curtis in the first place—with the amount of grief it had caused them both. But he’d been a football player, hot, and he had made her less of a joke. Until now.

  K.

  I mean . . . it was just an argument.

  No response.

  Rilla bit her lips tight.

  Nothing.

  Do you have his new number? Rilla texted, stomach hurting.

  (typing)

  Rilla bit her thumbnail and stared.

  The response was one word. No.

  Rilla stuffed the phone in her pocket, not feeling any better for finally having made contact with someone. The path circled around toward the road, and her steps slowed. All she wanted was to call Curtis, drive out to the river, and make out in his truck. The past forgotten. Everything erased. Maybe it wasn’t good, but it was something she’d actually had.

  A passing car slowed, the window rolling down. Rilla turned and blinked away the moisture in her eyes, pretending not to see it. The last thing she should be doing is giving directions to a clueless tourist. But the car stopped and Petra’s white-blond hair peeked out from the driver’s seat. “There you are,” she called, as if Rilla had made a date and stood her up.

  Rilla swiped at her eyes. There she was. Like magic.

  “You coming?” Petra asked, patting the seat. “You can sit up front. Backseat’s full.” She jerked her thumb toward Hico and Gage crammed into the backseat with huge packs on their laps and a plastic storage container set between them. Hico sat with a spaced-out expression in a cut-off hoodie. On the other side, Gage, with messy hair and a buttoned-up plaid shirt, looked half-asleep. Both boys’ limbs splayed in exhaustion.

  “I can’t be out too late,” Rilla said, ignoring that Thea had also told her not to leave the Valley.

  “We’ll bring you back.” A car behind them honked. “Come on,” Petra hollered.

  Hoping she wasn’t about to do something Thea would disapprove of, Rilla jumped in—catching the door as they sped away under the pines.

  Seven

  This was what she’d envisioned when she thought of a new life in California.

  Rilla draped her arms and head out the open window, hair whipping in the wind. A massive tower looked over them—a sun-drenched monolith of peachy granite that stayed firm in the sky as the trees moved past in a blur.

  “What is that?” Rilla breathed, jaw unhinged.

  “El Capitan,” Petra said, with reverence in her voice.

  The overstuffed hybrid doggedly huffed up Big Oak Flat Road, driving out of the Valley, into the late afternoon shadows as it fractured thick beams of dazzling gold over the ridgeline. Beside them, the massive walls fell away toward the bottom, where deepening purple shadows gathered over the Merced, as if night crept up from the ground.

  Rilla leaned farther out, trying to see around the car to catch a glimpse of the foaming water at the bottom. Instead, she noticed the sheer face of Half Dome reflecting the sun, the streaks of snow still at the top, and how narrow and deep the Valley was—like a tight scar cut into the wide mountains beh
ind her. The prow of El Capitan sat as a guard over the entrance. Things she hadn’t seen, at the bottom. Things that could only be seen moving up.

  And then it all went dark.

  Rilla pulled away, tasting the stone and earth of the tunnel wall. It hit her—she had just gotten into a car with virtual strangers who were all older than she was. She didn’t even know where they were going. She should have been more cautious.

  “This is my new gumby,” Petra said to the boys, patting Rilla’s shoulder. “After yesterday, I have to try and make a climber out of her.”

  Rilla smiled and slid back into her seat, heart in her throat. “What’s a gumby?” she asked, hoping it wasn’t bad.

  “Someone who is new,” Petra said.

  “Someone who is new, doesn’t know what they’re doing, has no common sense, is not super coordinated, and is liable to fuck everything up,” Gage said from the back.

  Rilla shot him a look over her shoulder. “What did I do to you?”

  He laughed. “Don’t let Petra bullshit you.”

  “I meant it the way I said it,” Petra said. “She’s new, like we all were once.”

  It was one thing for Rilla to think she could become a climber like them, sitting in the attic with quiet fury gathering in her blood. It was another thing to sit here feeling very young and lumpy and new.

  “Well, you couldn’t have picked a better place to start climbing,” Gage said, sun lighting his face as he leaned against the door. The sunglasses, coconut-scented tree air freshener, and ChapStick hanging on the rearview mirror tilted as Petra followed the mountain road. “It’s like going to heaven to become a believer.”

  Rilla looked back to the road ahead, hand open to clutch at the wind. Outside the window, the trees and brush were changing. The air was sweeter and cooler.

  Petra turned off the smooth asphalt to a dirt road. The car hopped and wiggled and squeaked; and the manzanita bushes flattened and puffed as they flew through the shallow valley, passing the few standing charred pines and cedars. The trees were so big and old, they’d managed to absorb the fire and remain alive, unscathed at their core. Great clouds of golden dust boiled up and rolled into the open window. No one moved to prevent it, they just accepted the gentle layer of dust settling on their skin. Maybe that’s why they all looked so tanned.

  Led Zeppelin blared, familiar and eternal.

  The sun deepened.

  Hico and Gage rattled in the backseat, expressions immovable.

  Rilla sank into her seat, feeling at ease for the first time since she’d arrived. Though they were surrounded by a ring of snow-capped mountains in the distance, the wide-open feeling stood in stark contrast to the immensity deep inside the Valley. For a place so huge, the Valley felt as if it could fold in on her at any minute. Here she was closer to the sky. Let loose and un-cinched. For one brief moment, she didn’t have to convince herself she was okay here—she simply was.

  They turned down smaller and narrower dirt roads to a dead end at a big house with nothing but trees and far mountains in sight.

  “Welcome to the Grove,” Petra said, turning off the car.

  “Wow,” was all Rilla could think to reply, not taking her eyes off the house as she unfolded her legs and crawled out of the dusty hybrid.

  The redwood-trimmed structure stood below the edge of the hill, in the midst of a clean forest of pines. In some ways, it felt like West Virginia; but when Rilla took a deep breath—expecting the pungent scent of pine and earth—there was nothing to smell. The scent of home was just a thread for her to follow, not a world to sink into.

  “My grandparents are traveling through Europe this summer, so they let me use it,” Petra explained, leading them onto a catwalk to the uppermost deck of the house.

  Rilla blinked. She knew rich people, but not people that rich. And their granddaughters didn’t look like this. Petra’s twin braids were sloppy and falling out, and she wore a pizza-printed tank top that looked so hideous the thrift store probably had given it away. Money did not look like that in West Virginia. But then, maybe there was a point where you had so much money you could afford to look poor.

  “It’s not Camp 4,” Hico said. “But it’s as close as we’re gonna get.”

  “Who even wants to be in Camp 4 anymore?” Petra said. “Bea stayed there at the end of her trip and said she was kept up half the night by a kid crying. And, oh my god, all the rules.”

  “I meant what Camp 4 was, not as it is now,” Hico said.

  “It’s still Camp 4,” Gage said. “Just . . .”

  Everyone seemed to silently nod in agreement to whatever Gage didn’t say.

  “What did it used to be?” Rilla asked, thinking of the birdlike line watching her huff past the ranger shack.

  “It used to be this,” Petra said with a spin to raise her hands to the roof. “Except, a short walk to climbing, instead of the drive.”

  “It used to be the climber’s campground,” Gage said. “Where people lived for months. Climbing, as we know it, was basically born there. There’s so much history there.”

  Petra stopped and turned back. “Get the other side, will you, Rilla? God, can you imagine the golden years of Camp 4?” Petra took one side of the container Gage and Hico were trying to carry along with their packs.

  Hico handed over his side to Rilla with a relieved-sounding “thanks.”

  The container yanked on her arm, much heavier than she expected, but Rilla gritted her teeth and kept her gait smooth, hoping no one could see her struggle.

  “I can smell the food from here. I’m starved,” Hico said, opening a sliding glass door.

  Fragrant spice, fried meat, and warm bread all mixed with the smell of a stranger’s home, enveloping Rilla like a cozy blanket. Though unfamiliar, it was the kind of smell that made Rilla feel at home. And hungry. Her stomach growled.

  “Rilla?” Adeena shouted from the kitchen. “Damn it!” She pounded her spoon on the edge of the pot and glared at Petra.

  Rilla remembered being introduced to Adeena the day before, but she was surprised she hadn’t noticed how short Adeena was. Somehow, she assumed all climbers were tall—with Petra and Thea, who were five-ten and change, and Walker, who was easily six-three. Both Gage and Hico were tall enough she just added them to the tall category. But Adeena was tiny—no taller than five feet and narrow framed, with thick, wavy black hair falling out of a ponytail, light brown skin, and wide green eyes. Not what Rilla expected either Pakistanis or mountaineers would look like.

  Adeena lowered her chin to Rilla. “Did she abduct you? This jackass stuffed you into the trunk to get you here, didn’t she?”

  “Ha! I told you I’d find her first,” Petra smirked.

  Rilla’s heart raced, trying to think fast enough to be clever and funny in reply. “Um . . .” She readjusted her grip on the container.

  “Dude. Tell me where this goes, or I’m dropping it here,” Petra said to Gage.

  Thankfully, everyone’s attention shifted from Rilla’s grasping for words.

  “Just dump it,” Gage said to them, pointing to the floor beside the door. “We didn’t sort anything out.”

  Rilla followed Petra, shuffling the container back toward the door.

  “He’s not fucking anything up in there, right?” Petra asked Adeena, sitting on a stool on the edge of the kitchen island.

  Rilla quietly joined her, careful not to knock any of the food or draw attention to herself.

  A white boy with shattered blond hair, a British accent, and long, lanky limbs frowned over the boiling pot he stirred. “Hey, my sister-in-law is Pakistani. That’s why we signed up for the same meal.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on him.” Adeena raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  He rolled his eyes.

  “We’re lucky I found her tonight,” Petra said. “Otherwise, we’d have to seduce her with Gage and Hico’s food and we all know how that would go.” Petra glanced to Rilla. “It’s not good,�
� she said in a low whisper.

  “I heard that.” Gage bellowed from the hall.

  Petra rolled her eyes.

  “This is really the only thing I can cook,” Adeena said. “And like, macaroni mix-ins. If my mother was here, she’d tell you I don’t actually cook this very well and I need more practice.”

  “It seems like you should be looking for a girl who can be seduced by granola,” Hico said from the couch in the living room beyond them.

  “If we can’t give her Walker, we have to give her something. Granola isn’t going to cut it,” Adeena said, shoving the wisps of her hair back over her forehead and studying the contents of her skillet.

  A snort of exasperation escaped the British boy.

  Rilla’s cheeks warmed. “Listen. I don’t . . .” she protested.

  Adeena and Petra looked at her, bemused, like go ahead and deny it.

  “Yeah, okay,” Hico said.

  “We all have our weaknesses, all right?” Rilla muttered.

  Both girls cracked up.

  “Don’t we all when it comes to Walker,” the British boy said.

  “Walker will sleep with anything thin and blond,” Petra said.

  Rilla tried to look like she didn’t care, even as her stomach sank. She searched the memory of Walker’s face, that intensity directed at her, but the memory was foggy—all she was certain of was how she felt under his gaze. “Are you guys search and rescue climbers too?” she asked.

  “Oh god, no,” Petra said. “We’re just dirtbags. Out of school for the summer, or trying to string together enough money to climb. Eammon usually lives in a van, but he’s upgraded this summer.”

  “I don’t know what to do with all this space. I’m going to be spoiled,” the British boy said.

  “But you,” Adeena said to Rilla. “You live in the Valley? And you don’t work there?”

  Rilla nodded.

  “How did you manage that?” Adeena asked.

  “By being the actual worst,” Rilla said with a laugh. She tossed her hair and put a little wickedness into her grin. She didn’t say anything more. Whatever they assumed would be safer than what was true.

  “It would be a waste if she didn’t climb,” Adeena said to Petra. “I have to take her.”