Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  There were no sirens, but she followed a passing ambulance anyway, out of the woods and into the meadow below El Cap. The massive cliff stood in shadows. Only the tip-top of Half Dome held light now. And a dark haze seemed to creep out of the trees.

  She edged to Lauren. “What’s going on?” Rilla asked. Even Ranger Miller was there, looking like he was actually doing work as he talked with other rangers and then spoke into the radio.

  “They’re doing a rescue.”

  Rilla looked up. The dusty orange-and-cream granite was darkening and if she squinted, she could spot tiny stars of light beginning to dot the cliff—they were each climbing teams, she knew that. But which one . . .

  “Where is it?” Rilla asked.

  Lauren pointed. “See under that big shadow.”

  Rilla put both hands on her forehead, straining, trying to see. There was nothing but dusky granite.

  Her pulse raced in her neck. Who was on the wall? And who had been sent to get them?

  “Everyone’s gone for this? What happened? Do you know who?”

  “I don’t know. We have a broken arm from a dropped haul bag. Half of us are here. Half are split between some hikers missing in Tenaya Canyon. And a turned ankle on Four-Mile Trail.”

  “Shit,” Rilla breathed.

  “When it rains, it pours.” Lauren’s radio bleeped. She turned away and answered. “Thea’s coming over,” she said. “Hang around. We might need bodies for Tenaya Canyon.”

  Rilla startled, but Lauren didn’t seem to notice. Hang around? As in, to be useful? She wasn’t useful. To anyone. But suddenly, she wanted to be. Her pulse pounded in her neck and she nodded to Lauren, a sense of purpose flooding her body and rooting her to the meadow.

  Rilla moved in the grass, pushing through the dry stalks until she came to a man with binoculars. “Can I borrow those for a second?” It was nearly impossible to spot climbers on the wall without binoculars.

  The man pulled the glasses away and blinked, but he handed them over and pointed at the wall. “Right there, below the big flake.”

  Rilla’s hands shook as she put the binoculars to her eyes and blinked. The wall came into focus. Empty. She moved it, slowly, scanning, straining her eyes in the fading light. With every second she couldn’t find them, it felt as if the possibility it was someone she knew increased.

  “Here.” The man moved the glasses.

  A thin trail of rope came into focus. At the bottom, two figures in shadow.

  She couldn’t tell who it was.

  Overhead, a chopper thumped. She pulled down the binoculars and handed them back to the man, tipping her chin to watch the chopper fly overhead. Its belly was white and the grass shuddered around her.

  “Rilla,” Thea called.

  Rilla turned and headed back through the grass to her sister, standing in a sloppily tucked shirt and a ball cap. Lauren was beside her.

  “What were you doing today? Any climbing? Hiking?” Lauren asked.

  Rilla gritted her teeth. “No,” she seethed.

  “She can come with me,” Lauren said to Thea.

  Thea blanched.

  Go where?

  “She needs to go home and do her homework,” Thea said.

  “I’ll watch out for her,” Lauren said. “It’ll be good.”

  Thea softened. “Well, okay.”

  What? Thea just gave in like that? Rilla had never seen that happen. Ugh.

  “Rilla,” Thea said. “You can go with Lauren, Walker, and Kamika. They need a body. Listen. You do what they say, okay? If you don’t, you’ll put everyone’s lives in danger.”

  Rilla glanced between Lauren and Thea. “Okay?” She’d heard of climbers who were around Yosemite being used as volunteers in SAR events when they needed extra help, but she’d never thought she’d be included in that.

  “Go get some boots on, and pack a daypack for yourself,” Lauren said. “Pack a rain jacket, food, water, headlamp, extra batteries, and a basic first aid kit. Go as fast as you can and meet me at the trailhead for Mirror Lake. We’re just going to hike up to the start of the canyon, but it’ll be dark and tough terrain.”

  “Okay!” Rilla turned and ran off across the Valley.

  Within twenty minutes, she’d changed, packed her bag, and started running through the early twilight to meet Lauren.

  “There you are,” Lauren called as Rilla huffed to a stop. Walker stood behind her, and a young ranger whom Rilla only knew as Kamika. “Okay. We’re looking for a hiker, male, age twenty-five. Medium height. Name is Mike. He was wearing . . .” Lauren peered at her notebook in the last bit of light. “Ugh. Red shirt. He left Olmstead Point yesterday.” Lauren flipped over her notebook. “He was last seen leaving the Olmstead Point trail to head into the canyon. Rangers have entered from there, but so far haven’t found anything. We’re basically doing a containment search. We’re going to be hiking up to the entrance to the canyon—only a few miles past Mirror Lake, but a talus field they might have gotten stuck in. After that, we’re going to hold tight at the canyon output and wait for the rangers from Olmstead Point to join us.” She flipped her notebook closed and pulled her headlamp onto her forehead. She glanced at the group. “Ready? We’re in teams.”

  Rilla’s heart thumped in her throat, like the first time she’d started across the Valley for Half Dome. And the first time she’d gone with Caroline on lead. She tightened down the straps of her backpack and slid her headlamp on her head.

  “Walker, you’ve got Rilla,” Lauren said. “And I’ll be with Kamika.”

  Rilla swallowed and looked to Walker, but his face was serious, watching Lauren. “We going off the trail at all?”

  “No. Just sweep the left and we’ll do the right side. We’ll take turns calling. When we get to the talus field, we’ll spread out a little more.”

  “What do I do?” Rilla asked quietly.

  “Just walk in front of me,” Walker said. “Make sure you look into the woods to your left and on the trail in front of us for the hikers. Go slow. That’s it.”

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  He turned and looked to Lauren. “We good?”

  She put her thumbs up. “Let’s do this.”

  They started into the woods, on the wide path leading to Mirror Lake. Tourists were still out and walking, and Rilla scanned every person on the path and the stands of trees and looming boulders for anyone who might have wandered into the woods.

  Lauren called out their names occasionally, especially when big clumps of people came by. But by the time they hit Mirror Lake and Half Dome rose straight above them, there were only a few tired-looking stragglers, and none of them were the hiker they were looking for.

  “All right, we’re going off-trail,” Lauren said, veering off into the brush in the twilight. She radioed a similar update.

  Rilla followed Lauren’s pace—slowing down when she found herself a few steps ahead, picking up when she fell behind. At first, it felt as if she’d surely miss the hiker—it’d be just her luck. But she fell into a rhythm and soon there was nothing but the dim trail. Walker’s body moved behind her. Lauren and Kamika to her right. They moved as one unit, as a team, as the trail ended and they began picking their way through the rocks and brush—slowing even more to carefully sweep the rocks and call out.

  “Listen,” Lauren ordered them as they broke out of the woods. A river bed opened wide before them. It was almost dark—that deep purple haze of evening and all the light gone from Half Dome.

  Perched on a boulder in the dry riverbed, Rilla stopped with the others and tilted her head to the wind. Straining to hear its cries.

  Nothing came.

  “At least the sky is clear,” Walker said.

  “One less thing to worry about,” Lauren agreed.

  They crawled around a boulder bigger than Thea’s house, breathing hard, but quietly sending their headlamps around them.

  “Canyons have their own strange forces,” Lauren said. “I never like a call into
Tenaya. To me, it means I’m going after a body.”

  Rilla tried not to shiver in the dark as they worked their way to the far edge of the Valley and the walls of granite began to close in on them. The night became darker. The stars were only a strip above them. A faint trickle of water caught on the wind, and by the time Rilla was certain they had to be halfway through the canyon, they stopped at the edge of a dark pool. “Well, we’ve reached the start,” Lauren said.

  Rilla tilted her head and the small burst of light of her headlamp swept up a wall of granite with a dark, narrow gash in the middle. From the darkness, a strange sound came—water, but water as Rilla had never heard before. It echoed, like the sound was liquid and dark.

  “He has to come out somewhere along here,” Lauren said. “If he’s coming out.”

  It wasn’t wide—just a rocky sweep between the big walls of granite on either side and the rocks rose higher in front of them. A thin waterfall poured over and pooled in the middle.

  Rilla sat and clicked off her light, relieved after her long night and long day to be sitting. Her gaze flickered to Walker, in the dark. He’d spent most of the night with her, knowing he’d have to do something like this.

  “Are we still supposed to be looking?” she asked him quietly.

  He turned off his light. Lauren had a large flashlight sweeping across the narrow valley as she talked on the radio, but the darkness seemed to suck it in, not illuminate anything.

  “We’re at a choke point,” Walker said. “It’s narrow enough here if anyone comes through, we’ll see.”

  Lauren nodded. “Most people only think of something like a grid search—which is actually the most ineffective way of searching. In all the places between here and Olmstead Point, the only way they can come through this point is by coming right here.” She swept her light across the waterfall and the rocky hillside between the granite cliffs. “So, we send a group of searchers on the other side. Experienced canyoneers. They sweep the inner canyon and we make sure no one leaves.”

  “It feels weird,” Rilla said. “The canyon is there.”

  “Some people say it’s cursed,” Lauren said. “The army killed the son of Chief Tenaya to incentivize the Ahwahnechee from the Valley. And the story is, he cursed the canyon. But I think the earth just hangs on to the memory of injustice and revisits it on people. No one can escape the past, not even the land.” She flicked on her headlamp. “All right, you guys stay here. Call if you see anything.”

  Lauren and Kamika disappeared across the tight gorge, but their lights bobbed along. If she strained, she could just make out their shadows.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said to Walker. Hating herself even more that when someone else’s life was on the line, she was still thinking about her fight with Thea.

  “Shoot.”

  “Am I . . . Am I . . .” She swallowed, trying to find the courage to ask. “I know I’m out of my league. I know I’m new. But am I still . . . a gumby?”

  He laughed. “No. You’ve been new, but you’ve never been that. You’ve always been smart and careful. Even when you had bad habits from Petra, you fixed it right away, Caroline said. You are trusted.”

  “Am I inexperienced?”

  This time he didn’t answer right away. “Yes and no. But I think we all have to nurture a feeling of inexperience. It can keep us safe and cautious. But without letting it make us overly afraid. I think. And yeah, you haven’t had as much experience as some. But more than others. Most people would not have progressed as fast as you have.”

  She nodded. It didn’t really help like she thought it would.

  In the quiet, the day and her fight with Thea come roaring back to her. She couldn’t give up climbing. Climbing had given her everything else. It had brought her here, helping, useful. It had left her beside Walker, as something like an equal. It had even pushed her to do the homework she’d gotten done—not enough, but something.

  She’d have to disobey Thea and continue to climb. She’d have to keep it a secret. But she didn’t see any other way. Losing climbing felt like losing the only thing about herself she liked, the only thing that had value.

  Rilla pulled her knees to her chest and stared into the dark, waiting and hoping that the lost hiker would emerge out of the night.

  Thirty Two

  They sat there all night. Rilla fell asleep, curled up with her backpack on the cold rock, dreaming strange, lucid dreams. She woke to the rich smell of coffee on the dry wind. Opening her eyes, she looked into the clear shade and the sun touching the cliffs high above her.

  “Youth,” Lauren said bitterly. “You can sleep anywhere.”

  Rilla frowned. “You mean me?”

  Lauren laughed.

  “Coffee?” Walker asked.

  Rilla pushed up, pawing at her hair to try and tame it into something passably cute. She nodded and took the blue speckled mug of coffee he pulled off the burner and handed her.

  “Did they make it out?” Rilla asked.

  “The rangers are in the inner canyon. The SAR team had to wait for light. We should be here until the afternoon,” Lauren answered. “On our way back, if they haven’t been found, we’ll do another sweep. But, I imagine we’ll find something today.”

  Rilla sipped the hot, bitter liquid, closing her eyes as the steam hit her face. The air was dry and her face felt puffy. “Did they say who was on El Cap yesterday?” she asked.

  “Some climbers,” Lauren said. “They’re all right.”

  Walker glanced at her. “It was Tam and Avery.”

  Rilla froze. “But they’re okay?”

  “We don’t know how it happened, but somehow their haul bag came unclipped and it hit Tam on the way down. Broke her arm pretty bad.”

  “There’s such a thing as a not-bad arm break?”

  Walker screwed up his face. “The bone came through the skin, I heard.”

  “Oh.” Rilla looked at the coffee. She’d sat at Tam’s campsite yesterday, all while Tam had sat up on El Cap with her bone coming through the skin. “She’s going to be okay?”

  Walker patted her ankle. “She’s going to be fine. It happens. You try and do everything you can to minimize the chance of it happening, but it still can happen.”

  But Rilla sipped her coffee, certain it would not happen to her because from this point on she’d be so careful. More careful than she’d ever been. And it wouldn’t happen to Walker because he was so experienced. And it wouldn’t happen to Caroline because she was just as experienced as Walker, but better. And it wouldn’t happen to Petra, because Petra didn’t do anything she couldn’t handle. And it wouldn’t happen to Adeena because Adeena had climbed Everest. And . . .

  Lauren’s radio bleeped, a loud squawking sound that shattered the stillness. She picked it up.

  Located in the inner canyon. The only thing that followed was a number that began with ten.

  Lauren lowered the radio and exhaled.

  “They found him. He’s dead,” Walker explained.

  Rilla’s stomach dropped and they all looked away in silence.

  It wouldn’t happen to her. She clenched her fists tight. She would be so careful. She wouldn’t go into places she didn’t know. She would be safe. She would think twice and do once.

  It wouldn’t happen to her.

  Thirty Three

  Rilla knew something was different when she walked into Camp 4 later that week, and all the climbers seemed to be trying to figure out which way to look over their coffee, and all the non-climbers were rubbernecking and confused.

  She found Adeena, Petra, Hico, Gage, Caroline, and Knox sitting in a line on the bear boxes at a newcomer, Abby’s, campsite, trying very obviously to look casual. Abby and her partner, Langston, sat in their chairs, eating cereal out of mugs, also trying to look cool.

  “Um. Hey y’all.” For a second, she heard the West Virginia in her voice and was surprised. Is that how she always sounded?

  “Morning,” Abby said at the
same time as Langston lifted his spoon, and Adeena and Petra said hey, Caroline said hey girl, and Hico, Gage, and Knox nodded, sup. All at once and hardly at all.

  Rilla put her hands up. “What the hell?”

  “Celine arrived,” Caroline said, tilting her head across the camp. “With a Nat Geo crew.”

  “And Andy Thomas.”

  “Who?” Rilla asked, tapping Gage on the shoulder and waiting for everyone to slide down the bear boxes, creating space at the end for her to plant herself down.

  “How do you not know who Andy Thomas is?” Petra asked.

  Rilla frowned at her, trying not to blush.

  “Andy Thomas is that guy who’s famous for free soloing. He’s an amazing climber,” Caroline said. “Almost as good as Celine.”

  “Want some cereal?” Adeena shook a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats in her direction.

  Rilla shrugged and extended her hand for the box. “Sure.”

  “What are we looking at?” Rilla asked Gage, grabbing a handful of cereal.

  “All the way at the end. They’re in two campsites all on their own.”

  Rilla shifted straighter, peering over the tops of the other campers waking up, pulling out breakfast from their bear boxes, and lighting the morning fire.

  Through the people, the trees, the brush of wind on the glimmering morning dust, the far end of the camp came into focus.

  It was mostly men—maybe ten to two. Similar looking to the climbers she saw all the time, except less . . . grungy, and with better equipment.

  “Which one is Celine?” she asked Gage.

  “The brunette in the blue jacket.”

  Rilla looked her over carefully. Celine had all of Caroline’s ease and grace, but in a shorter, rawer body like Adeena’s. Her hair was thick and long, tied back in a low ponytail. Her face looked like the manifestation of the articles always popping up online about how to be more like a French woman—not quite beautiful, but interesting.