Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  He shook his head. “Your five fell out,” he said, reaching down and putting the money back into her hand.

  She looked at the crumpled bill and her buzzing thoughts narrowed down to something clear and sure. She could find a way to make money in the Valley. She could do her schoolwork and figure out how to climb. She could pack her own snacks and learn fast. She could prove to everyone, she was something. For the first time, the thought of the impossible was more excitement than dread. Fear, but with longing. The future unknown, but with potential that had not been there before.

  It wasn’t a question of if she could succeed. It wasn’t a question at all.

  She could try.

  Stuffing the five back into her sock, she took the lighter, relit the weed, and put her elbows on her knees. And as another cloud slid its shadow over the Valley, she let her thoughts do the same—let the sorrow and fear and hope skim the surface of her mind so that in five minutes when she was done, she could stand and go down into the Valley and begin.

  “CLIMBING.”

  When people say, “It can’t

  be done,” or “You don’t have

  what it takes,” it makes the task

  all the more interesting.

  —Lynn Hill, first person to free-climb The Nose (5.13+) on El Capitan

  Fifteen

  Rilla pumped her legs as fast as she could.

  Heavy boots thumped behind her. “I know where you live,” Ranger Miller—Dick Face—yelled.

  Rilla risked a quick glance over her shoulder.

  He was gone. The only things behind her were ogling tourists, clutching bags and children closer.

  Shit. He’d caught up faster than she expected.

  Rilla’s side hurt and her lungs drew sharp, but she turned and doubled her speed. Her sneakers flapped on the asphalt, sending shocks up her bones as she hurtled through Half Dome Village. She hopped curbs. Pitched right. Left. Right again. Around tourists. Past Andrew, the pool boy, who paid her three dollars to clean out the filters of all the disgusting shit that accumulated from heavy use of the heated pool. He was laughing.

  “Shut up, Andrew,” she spared a precious breath to holler as she glanced at the road and made sure she wasn’t going to get run over by a bus, a clueless European driving an RV through America, or any of the tourists rubbernecking out the windows. All clear.

  Run. Run. Run.

  She had to beat him.

  The road behind her, she kicked up gravel and bounded into the meadow. The wooden planks of the meadow path beat a new rhythm against her feet. Ahead, a tall stand of dark pines clustered along the Merced. The gray granite Royal Arches rose high above them as a backdrop. The way it looked right here was almost as if she could hold out both hands and touch either side of the Valley. An illusion. All she needed was to get to Thea’s before Ranger Miller got there. If she beat him, even by a hair, it would be fine.

  Quick as a flash, she entered the trees, hopped off the planks, and kicked up pine needles and dirt behind her in tufts. The sharp cedar air seared into her lungs. Golden light filtered through the trees, enticing anyone who wandered through to slow down and breathe deep. But Rilla sped past.

  She slowed for the rocks at the river’s edge, and waded through a shallow part of the Merced, straining her thighs against the current of the water. Her foot slipped and she slowed nearly to a walk. She couldn’t afford to fall—not in this frigid water, with deeper, darker currents farther down. God, it was hard to run through a river. This was a first in an escape route. She pressed on, and it became shallower, licking at her ankles, until she was just soggy sneakers on the bank. Up the other side, she redoubled her speed and crossed the road.

  Someone honked.

  Rilla kept running, her shoes squelching in the dirt.

  Now running on the opposite side of the Valley, she turned and ran west, with Half Dome at her back. She knew the long impenetrable wall bordering her side of the Valley for all its names now. She knew them from paging through the guidebooks with Adeena and Petra, looking for easy climbs they could top-rope before the sun slid into night. Maybe one day, though, she might know the walls by touch.

  Rilla wove around the Benzes and Caddys waiting for the valet at the four-star hotel sequestered behind a grove of oaks in a meadow under the cliffs. Almost home. Almost.

  She drew sharp breaths through her nose. The sweat stung her eyes. Was that a siren? Her ears strained over her heartbeat.

  Shit. It was.

  She hurdled the bushes into Yosemite Village—past the little store, the firehouse, the jail she’d spent the night in—and flew through the mulch of the cultivated beds around the visitor center and administrative offices. There were more tourists here, near the waterfalls and most food options. She dodged a clustered Japanese family with a baby in a buckled carrier and construction workers pushing wheelbarrows, slipping back into the woods. Almost. Almost. She was going to throw up. No. She was going to make it. Tightening her fists, she pushed the last bit of energy she had into her feet.

  Finally, the edge of her meadow.

  Ranger Stafford stood outside, grilling in the front of the house with his twins in a kiddie pool. He shook his head as she passed, turning his back as if he didn’t want to see. Leena and Lamont, his twins, stilled in the pool, waved and laughed.

  Rilla would have laughed if she didn’t have a stitch in her side and her heart about to explode out of her chest.

  That was definitely a siren following her home.

  Shiiiiit!

  With all that she had left in her legs and lungs, she sprinted through the dry grass for the back of Thea’s house and lunged for the rusted fire escape.

  Her sweaty hands slipped on the rungs, but she made it to the back roof, and jumped for the window. She clutched the edge and let her legs do the work—sneakers pawing at the siding and pushing her up. Three weeks ago, when she first moved here, she couldn’t have done this. Maybe escaped, but never have gotten back inside. She grunted and groaned, pulling herself over the edge and into the narrow window opening. She couldn’t fade now.

  The siren sounded like it turned into the meadow.

  Shit.

  She fell onto the floor in a greasy, sweaty, gasping heap.

  Home. But she hadn’t beaten him yet. Still on the floor, Rilla kicked her sneakers off. Ripped her shirt up. She crawled onto all fours. Closed her eyes. Her heart slammed against her ribs—calm down, calm down, calm down.

  Her clothes rested where she’d laid them out and she leaned against the bed as she wrestled into them. Tanktop. Gym shorts slipped over sweating skin. New socks. The same things she’d worn to lunch with Thea and Lauren. Rilla yanked out her ponytail, and her face felt like it was on fire.

  The siren stopped. He was here.

  Come on. Come on. Her fingers trembled as she scooped ice out of the cooler under her cot. Rubbed it over her face. Neck. The bright red splotching on her thighs. Oh god, she had to stop breathing so fast. Her side cramped. She fought nausea. Grabbing perfume, she sprayed a cloud and wiggled-slashed-rolled through it as she plopped on the floor, opened her books, and tucked her hair behind her ears.

  Made it.

  Her heart beat so loud, she couldn’t tell if it was in her ears making her head swim, or if it was the sound of Ranger Dick Face’s knocking. She waited, ears straining.

  “Rilla?” Thea shouted from below.

  Rilla took a deep breath, willing her heart to steady. Calm. Calm. She’d been studying the last hour. These ridiculous problems in trigonometry. She rubbed the pencil across her fingers, the lead smudging her calluses. “Just a second.” Shit. Her voice sounded ragged and just the reply had used all her air.

  Slowly, she stood. Fighting the dizziness. Her face was hot, but not actively sweating like under her hair, thanks to the ice and her clean, cool tank top. She had this. Escaping in a small town was a thing she knew as well as she knew anything.

  Carefully, she descended the ladder. Walked
down the hall. A confused, slightly annoyed expression arranged on her face. “Yeah?” she asked Thea.

  Ranger Dick Face stood sweating and red in the door.

  She couldn’t resist. “Why are you so sweaty?”

  His face contorted with rage. “Come with me, you little monster.”

  Sixteen

  Thea leaned back, glaring in that way Rilla found especially chilling when it was directed at her. “Excuse me?”

  Dick Face blinked, a flash of panic crossing his eyes.

  “What has she done?” Thea demanded.

  Lauren sat up and leaned her elbows on the back of the couch, to watch.

  “She was selling . . .” He had to stop for air. “Water bottles. At the bottom of.” He put his hand up and braced himself against the door. “Vernal.” Gasp. “Falls.”

  “Do you need to sit down, Reid?” Lauren asked. “Or would you like some water?”

  He glared at them each in sequence, taking off his Stetson and waving it over his red face before gesturing to Rilla. “I got you. I saw you. I know it was you. There’s no way out of this one, Thea.”

  Rilla widened her eyes, then made them normal. She didn’t do innocence nearly as well as irritated injustice. She folded her arms. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t lie to me,” he seethed.

  “Oh god, you’re like a bad parody of yourself,” Thea said, coming back with a glass of water.

  He took it. “I saw her. It’s done. Over.”

  “I don’t know who you saw, but I’ve been upstairs since lunch doing trig.”

  “Bullshit,” he said over the water glass.

  Thea turned to Rilla, dead-eyed and irritated. “You been selling water bottles at the bottom of Nevada Falls?”

  Rilla kept her face still. “Nope.”

  Thea’s eyes got narrower. She knew.

  Lauren snorted and turned back around. Rilla resisted glaring at her.

  “I came home with her from lunch,” Thea said. “And she went upstairs to do schoolwork. Reid, I haven’t . . . seen her come through here at all.”

  “She obviously went out a window.”

  Rilla groaned. “Are you kidding me? What do I have to do here? Even if I’m studying, you’re somehow figuring out a way to get me into trouble. You’re why people hate cops.”

  Thea held up her hand. “Rilla, you’re not helping.”

  Ranger Dick Face’s face was red as a rooster. “You. Can’t. Escape.”

  A shiver ran up Rilla’s spine, like she had, for a moment, looked into the red, sweaty face of all her worst fears, but she tightened her arms around herself to hide it.

  “Reid. Come on. You can’t do it this way,” Lauren said from the couch. “The fact is, you’ve got two rangers who say she’s been in her room the last three hours. A girl who isn’t sweating and breathing hard. A girl who says she wasn’t there. And you.”

  Rilla wanted to hug her. But she just tried to look innocent.

  Thea leaned against the door. “Yeah, are you saying she ran back here faster than you?”

  “I drove partly,” Dick Face said defensively.

  “You’re only proving the point.”

  “Well, there was traffic.”

  Lauren groaned. “Come on, man. We have one day off together, and you’re killing it.”

  Ranger Dick Face shook his head, stubborn and snarling and disgusted.

  Rilla knew she’d won. “Can I get back to my homework?” she asked. “I’m almost done with this stupid unit.”

  “Aha!” he exclaimed, pointing his finger at her. “Mistake. You never want to get back to schoolwork.”

  Rilla glared at her sister. Could Thea just stop talking about Rilla at work?

  “Yeah, get upstairs,” Thea said before swatting at Dick Face’s finger. “Reid, knock it off.”

  Rilla turned for the hall and her face split with glee.

  Nailed it.

  She climbed the ladder and crawled across the floor, over the incomplete trigonometry and dirty clothes. Lying on her back on the cool wood planks, she breathed deep of relief. Her left hand brushed the edges of Thea’s, June’s, Lauren ‘s, and Jessica’s storage boxes. Her right hand was under her cot. But she was exultant. She’d done it.

  Pulling the wad of money out of her sweaty sports bra, she peeled apart the damp fives and ones. Fifty-two dollars.

  It had been warmer the last week, almost hot at midday, and Rilla had carted a big bag of ice-cold water and soda bottles a mile up the trail toward Half Dome. The vending machine in the outhouses had broken, and based on the crowds in the Valley, she had hoped the water fountain wouldn’t be much of a competition. It wasn’t. She’d sold out within forty minutes. It helped that it was a Saturday and there were crowds everywhere, even for the water fountain. Two bucks a pop to sweaty, tired tourists and she was looking at a gross pile of sweaty money. A perfectly acceptable amount to go toward another piece of gear.

  The ladder creaked.

  Quickly, Rilla stuffed the money under her cot, inside the sheet. She’d go to the outdoor store as soon as Thea was finished with her and Ranger Dick Face ended his shift at 4 P.M.

  “Well, you’re grounded,” Thea announced, ducking under the eaves.

  Like Thea could enforce a grounding. “Can you even stand up in here?” Rilla asked.

  Thea had the decency to look embarrassed. “So, that’s why you needed those drinks at Walmart last week.”

  “I have no idea what Dick Face—”

  “Don’t call him that,” Thea snapped.

  Rilla rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what Ranger Miller is talking about. I’ve been doing math.” Rilla gestured at the open homework. One of her notebooks was folded back weird from when she’d crawled over it.

  “And all that thumping five seconds before Reid knocked?”

  “One of my legs had fallen asleep.”

  Thea sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What on earth do you need money for?”

  Rilla frowned, her throat automatically tightening. She was currently, technically a high school dropout . . . rock climbing would be the last thing Thea would think she’d care about. If Thea knew Rilla was taking these risks to earn money for gear, she’d probably forbid the whole thing. And always, the fear that Thea would send her home to West Virginia shimmered behind their words. If Thea didn’t want her and Mom didn’t want her in West Virginia . . .

  “I outgrew my clothes,” Rilla said. It was true. “I don’t have anything for summer that fits.” She’d been climbing every afternoon for two weeks with Adeena and Petra in the short slabs near the Valley floor, running with Jonah in the evening, and eating her fill for all three meals. She felt stronger, lighter, but nothing she brought out west fit—it was all too small.

  Thea’s face contorted. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  Rilla blinked, not expecting the emotion on her sister’s face. “I, um . . .”

  “Honey, we can get you some clothes.” Thea sank onto the cot, tucking her hands in between her legs.

  Rilla shifted nervously. “But, I’m already eating . . . and living here.”

  “Rilla! It’s . . .” Thea took a deep breath. “It’s not a big deal. Next time we go into town. Can you make it until then?”

  She nodded, feeling guilty. It was hard to ask for more when Thea had already given her so much.

  “How’s homework going?”

  The guilt deepened. “Good.”

  “You don’t want to be held back.”

  “No shit,” Rilla muttered to her knees.

  “You’re smart.” Thea smoothed the covers of Rilla’s bed and shook her head. “Stay outta Ranger Miller’s way. He is a dick. And he will eventually get you.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Mm-hm.” Thea eyed her. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be,” Rilla said. “I’m doing good.”

  “You look better than when I got you, that’s for sure. I kno
w it sucks to not fit your clothes, but you have more color and you look less exhausted.”

  Rilla shrugged. A tan and some sleep not on a bus would do that.

  Thea looked at her like she was waiting for Rilla to say something. Again.

  But Rilla didn’t have anything to say. “Sure.”

  “All right . . .” Thea sighed, and went back downstairs.

  Rilla heaved a relieved sigh, before rolling over to her elbows and trying to do trigonometry. Her phone sat on the floor, just under the bed. Dark and quiet. No one knew her number, but no one from West Virginia had asked. The stab when she remembered wasn’t the same sharp desperation she felt at first. Now, it was more a deep, raw ache. Like something healed over on the surface, but festering somehow below.

  She copied one problem into her notebook, before getting irritated at the soft, blunt, unsharpened pencil. If she was going downstairs, she might as well sharpen all her pencils, so she wouldn’t be interrupted next time she started her schoolwork.

  It took twenty minutes to find all the pencils she’d brought. She’d forgotten she put them in with her toiletries. It had made sense when she packed, she was sure.

  Downstairs, there was an old-fashioned pencil sharpener screwed to the side of the kitchen cupboards. Rilla dropped her handful of pencils onto the counter, and shoved the first one into the machine.

  Whirr. Whirr. It sang a rusty song that reverberated in her teeth.

  She pulled it out. It had barely sharpened.

  Shoving it back in harder, Rilla sighed and resigned herself to the task. Only a little bit more and she could maybe squeeze in a climb before she had to babysit for Ranger Stafford and his wife’s twins, across the meadow, that night. The fifty-two dollars burned a hole in her pocket. From experience, she needed to spend it quick, or she’d end up spending it wrong; but fifty-two wasn’t quite enough for the shoes she needed. Everything else, she could borrow a little longer. With shoes, she could climb the many massive boulders, for practice, without needing other gear.