Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  “Oh baby, come here.” He pulled her in against his chest, arms wrapped over her shoulders, squeezing her tight. His skin was cool from the water and she buried her face into him, letting the tears just run their course as he stroked her hair. Fuck that it was embarrassing. Walker made her feel like it was okay . . . that she was safe. And somehow that made her cry a little harder.

  “What it is?” he asked. “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. I . . .” She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s not nothing. Back at home, before I came out here.” She took a deep breath and sniffed. “That complicated boyfriend? We . . . fought.” Somehow, it felt so shameful to say it out loud. She shrugged. “It’s catching up with me, I guess.”

  “Fought? Like, he hit you? Is that why you came out here?”

  She nodded, biting her tongue to keep from explaining it wasn’t like that.

  He ran his fingers through his wet hair and sat on the log where they’d laid their shirts. He patted the space beside him. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  Rilla sat down, stretching her legs out on the sandy dirt. “Thanks.”

  He leaned into her.

  She rested against his shoulder and sighed. The sun shifted into the deep gold California haze—with the tinge of campfire and food on the dusty breeze.

  And suddenly, she was okay. More than okay. Rilla kissed his shoulder and sighed happily. “Thanks.”

  His fingers tightened on her side, sinking into her skin. They were still smudged from his drawing.

  “Why don’t you want anyone to see your art?” she asked.

  His chest tightened under her. “They’re private. And it’s not art.”

  “But they are so good. They are. You don’t want to share them ever?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I like doing it for me. Maybe, someday . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe someday, it will be something that let’s me stay outside and working for myself. That’s really what I hope it will do. Make just enough money, my way, to be able to work on things I love. Maybe travel some more.”

  “More?” she asked in surprise, thinking of Caroline’s Instagram. “Don’t you guys go all over the world?”

  He shook his head. “No. No. I don’t go. Caroline does. We share an apartment in Denver in the winter, but she’s not there very often. I work as a guide there.”

  “Oh. I had no idea.” Of course, that made sense, she just hadn’t thought of it. “So you guide in the winter and work here in the summer? Do you want to keep doing that?”

  “I love this job. It’s been such an amazing summer . . .” His smile was wide and genuine—a smile for himself. “This is my dream.”

  She smiled. “Mine too.”

  “Hey,” he said.

  She tipped her chin up to look at him.

  He smiled. “I like you.”

  “Like me like me?” she teased.

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Pretty much.”

  She was still smiling when he kissed her.

  Thirty Four

  Rilla kept climbing, borrowing Petra’s static rope and setting it up, early in the morning by herself, on top-rope with two mini traxions—a kind of pulley system—to self-belay. She soon got used to the fear of being alone, and the only drawback was she had to stop every once in a while and pull the slack as she went. She kept to easy climbs where she could work on movement—trying to mimic the grace and power Caroline had without anyone watching. Remembering Tam and the hikers, she often found herself checking and rechecking the locking mechanisms, her rope, the anchors, and any fixed gear she passed.

  Most of the gear she depended on was still Petra’s, and every time she looked at her few pieces mingling in, she thought of Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time” and cringed a little. She was saving for a rope, but then she’d still need most of the gear she used. One mini traxion was over a hundred dollars, and the setup required two. She spent a week self-belaying before Petra needed her rope back, and Rilla had to stop.

  In order to climb The Nose, Rilla needed to climb every day. She needed the experience of touching a lot of rock, figuring out a lot of problems, and doing it enough that when she got on The Nose, nothing but the view and the sequence would be new. Unwilling to wait around when she could have been climbing, Rilla forced herself to go to the bulletin board outside the ranger shack. Scanning the scraps of paper looking for a climbing partner, she crossed her arms and dug her fingers into her skin. The papers all had names and campsites. Some of them had ratings of what they typically climbed. Rilla looked for someone who could climb around a 5.10. It was where she felt most comfortable.

  While she looked, a thin boy with an undercut and long braid came to the board and pinned up a paper.

  She glanced him over. “You need a partner?” she asked quickly, before he left. At least this way she wouldn’t have to do the awkward walk into someone else’s campsite.

  “Yeah. Do you know someone?” he asked.

  She supposed it wasn’t obvious. “Me. Are you looking to climb now? I’m ready. I don’t have a rope though.” Wait. She needed to ask other things. “How long have you been climbing?”

  He shrugged, looking her over.

  Rilla felt the sudden urge to pull down her shorts. They were cut-offs, not technical fabric or spandex everyone else climbed in.

  “A few years,” he said. “You’re a climber?”

  She nodded. “I live here.”

  “That’s awesome,” he said. “How long have you been climbing?”

  “This summer, but I’ve gotten a lot of time in.”

  He smiled. “You know, I think I’m looking for someone with a little more experience. Thanks though.” And with that, he walked off.

  Rilla’s cheeks flushed and the heat prickled over her scalp. She wasn’t as experienced as Adeena or Caroline, but she was a good partner. She knew what she was doing. Was it that she didn’t look like a climber, even now? Would he have said that if she’d been a boy? Stomach churning, she trudged out toward the parking lot. She couldn’t muster up the courage to ask anyone else and be rejected. Looked like she wasn’t climbing today.

  At the far edge of the parking lot, Rilla heard someone call her name. Turning back, she looked around.

  “Hey! Wait up!” Caroline shouted, waving her hand. She had a huge pack on her back and carried another one.

  Rilla ran back. “Need help?”

  “Sure!” Caroline handed off the bag in her arms. “But don’t drop it. There’s like a million dollars worth of lenses in there.”

  “Shit.” Rilla looked down. “I don’t know if you should trust me.”

  Caroline chuckled.

  “How’s it going?” Rilla asked.

  “Hot and gross and annoying.” Caroline groaned. “I kept thinking because we’d be higher up, it’d be cooler. I didn’t count on having to go up and down a million times. I think I’ve lost like ten pounds just from the sweating.”

  “How has it been? Climbing with Celine?”

  “I’m not really climbing.” She shrugged. “Ascending and hauling. But it’s really cool to watch the photographers and Celine and how they work together while she’s climbing. She’s been working on the route on a rope this week. I think she’ll finish up and go for it at the end of the week. If she feels good.” Caroline readjusted the straps. “I don’t know. It’s cool. Petra still pissed?”

  “Madder than a rooster who lost all his hens.”

  Caroline snorted and shook her head. “I feel bad. But . . .”

  But no one would have asked Petra anyway, was the thing Rilla felt they both would say but didn’t. Rilla looked down. “Is there sexism in climbing?”

  Something she said must have been funny, because Caroline started laughing so hard she had to stop walking. She bent and braced herself on her knees, still laughing.

  Rilla raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t a joke.”

  “I know,” Caroline asked. �
��You just . . . oh.” She stood and wiped her eyes. “Yes is the answer.”

  Rilla readjusted the lens bag and looked around at the tourists staring.

  “Do you know what happens when I pose for a climbing photo and I’m wearing a sports bra and tight shorts? Or, god forbid, a bathing suit?”

  Rilla was silent, falling back in step beside her as they entered Half Dome Village.

  “A thousand people leave comments about whether the aesthetic of my body pleases them—a body that is a tool to take me where I want to go. A hundred people email me their opinion that I am setting women back a hundred years by trading sex appeal for attention. Ten people actually write think-pieces that are published online or in print about the same thing, but adding in how the values of climbing are being lost in today’s generation. How no matter their opinion on what I did, I am a symptom of the sickness that is plaguing this culture. When Hico does it—nothing.” She sighed. “Everything a woman in the public eye does is a disaster. Adeena was in Rock and Ice in a hijab, and the amount of shit she got for that . . .” Caroline rolled her eyes. “It was in the millions. Because Huffington Post picked it up. She was wearing it because she was around her family that day, and Adeena is one of the most respectful people I know. But god forbid a woman make her own decisions about how she conducts herself, or bridges her cultures, or deals with her faith. What a thousand men have done, one woman can’t do without being a symptom or a symbol.”

  Rilla’s shoulders sagged, feeling put in her place. “Oh.”

  Caroline snorted. “Yeah.”

  “Well. That’s . . . yeah. Gross.” Rilla didn’t know what words would make sense after that. But then, suddenly, it came to her. “I’m sorry that happens to you. If it means anything, that’s the thing I admire most about you. That you are just yourself and also a climber. It makes me feel like, in some way, I can be Rilla and a great climber.”

  Caroline smiled. “Thank you. I appreciate hearing that.”

  “Have you been to Pakistan with Adeena?”

  Caroline shook her head. “I’d love to climb there with her someday. That’s how she met Hico—that Rock and Ice shoot. They asked her to bring him. That sort of bugged me—that Adeena, a hugely talented climber—wasn’t enough of a draw on her own, but it was good for Adeena’s career overall. I think Adeena feels that way too.”

  “I don’t know why I thought this was all this paradise where none of this went on. I feel very naïve all of a sudden,” Rilla said.

  “Because on the rock, it’s not real. It all falls away when you climb. On the ground, it’s different.” Caroline stopped and reached for the bag. “If I didn’t love climbing so much, I’d never be able to deal with the bullshit on the ground. Thanks for carrying the lenses.”

  “Have fun,” Rilla said.

  Caroline laughed, heading into the woods. “Pray I don’t die from heat exhaustion.”

  Rilla turned back, taking her time through Half Dome Village to see if anyone needed a break from their work for a few dollars. She fished a condom out of a toilet, removed a troop of baby mice from a cabin, and bought Thea a cold Gatorade before heading out into the heat to find her.

  She looked so miserable, in the only patch of sunlight coming through the trees, waving cars through the intersection with Yosemite Village, that Rilla felt guilty. It wasn’t her fault, but it somehow made her remember all the ways she’d let her sister down. She was climbing, even though Thea had forbidden it. The WANTED posters for the stolen plaque had made it onto the doors of the store and cafeteria in Half Dome Village, and her homework wasn’t even remotely finished, while Rilla held hope Thea would realize the GED test was the simplest solution.

  Thea spotted Rilla and stepped out of the intersection, letting another ranger take her place.

  “Will you just look into me taking the GED?”

  Thea rolled her eyes. “You can’t use it—”

  “I’ll keep working. Just please consider it.”

  Thea shrugged. “Fine. I’ll look into it.”

  “I brought you this,” Rilla said, handing over the sweating bottle.

  “Aw . . .” Thea unscrewed the top. “Thanks.”

  A thousand prickles of guilt stabbed her chest, but Rilla just nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  •

  The next morning, after Thea had left for work and Rilla was working across the bottom of the Camp 4 walls, partnerless, Celine emerged out of the brush.

  Rilla jumped away from the wall, brushing off her hands guiltily. If she had hated climbing in front of Caroline, she definitely didn’t want to be caught by Celine.

  Celine only said, “Good morning,” politely.

  “Morning.”

  Celine shaded her eyes against the early morning glare of light bouncing off the granite and looked upward.

  Rill stood awkwardly. Not wanting to climb, not knowing what else to do.

  “You’re the one from West Virginia, right?” Celine said after a few minutes.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Caroline said you only started climbing this summer.”

  Blushing, Rilla nodded. When would she stop being new?

  “How exciting. What a wonderful place to begin a journey,” Celine said. She tucked back a strand of her hair and looked up. “I’m just looking at this route here. Have you climbed it? Henley Quits?”

  Rilla glanced upward. “Uh, yeah.” She had. She had led it, even. Blood rushed to her fingertips and she bit down on a smile. “It’s fun.”

  “Mind belaying me on it?” Celine asked.

  Rilla’s eyes widened and she looked down at her gear. Really? “Sure.” Be cool, Skidmore.

  And even though she stood on the ground, carefully minding her rope as Celine quickly moved up the ever shrinking crack, Rilla felt like yelling to anyone who might hear, “I’m belaying Celine Moreau!”

  It was only after, when Rilla lowered her, that she understood why Celine was Celine.

  Methodically. Quietly. With a strange sense of balance and poise, she unclipped her harness and turned again to the wall.

  Rilla stepped back, confused.

  Celine turned to the wall and raised her hands. And while Rilla watched with an unhinged jaw, Celine proceeded back up the climb. The rope limp beside her, the only sounds were the birds and the gusts of wind in the trees.

  “Wow,” Rilla breathed when she returned to the ground. “I don’t think I could ever,” she started before snapping her jaw shut.

  Celine smiled. “You shouldn’t. Unless you know you can.”

  “How do you manage that risk?” Rilla asked, still in awe.

  “For me, it’s not a risk like it is for most people. I know what I’m capable of. I know my limits because I’ve pushed every one of them on the rope. To go off the rope, it’s because I know I can physically, and the mental challenge is all that’s left.”

  “But you could die!” Rilla said.

  “Of course I could. And so could you. We shouldn’t fear what might happen. We should fear what we want and might not do because of fear.”

  Rilla laughed. Then, without thinking, she leaned on the rope and blurted out, “Why didn’t y’all ask Adeena to haul?”

  Celine blinked twice and her forehead creased. “Adeena is the Pakistani climber, yes?”

  Rilla nodded, her words catching up with her. She looked down, embarrassed. “Yes. She’s from Pakistan. She climbed Everest when she was fifteen. I’ve learned so much from her. She’s one of the best climbers and teachers in the Valley.”

  Celine smiled. “I only met her that one morning. She sounds wonderful. I’m so glad to see you girls all supporting one another.”

  Rilla frowned, wanting to ask if she’d known Gage except that he was Hico’s partner. The quietness of it was what bothered her most—the shadow that seemed like it would never be caught and dealt with. Even now, what could she say? Get to know some girls? Celine probably knew plenty. Walker was right. And so was Petra. So was Ce
line. And Adeena. It seemed just when Rilla was over one mountain, there was a whole range of challenges ahead to navigate. Complicated and uncharted.

  “Thanks for belaying me,” Celine said.

  Rilla looked her in the eyes and nodded.

  “Want to take a turn?” Celine wiggled the rope.

  Rilla looked to the wall and to Celine. This was life, she realized. From now on there would be no final resolution that led her into truth. It would be a series of this—shadows she had not seen and gods who were less bright, less high. Finish one pitch and another remained ahead.

  “Yes,” Rilla said, stepping forward to tie-in.

  In some magic of early morning light, when she climbed the route, she felt her breathing and her body sync into a place she didn’t know existed—where everything worked and sang together beautifully, and the world existed in that moment just for her and the glory she felt.

  Thirty Five

  After the photography crew left and the circus subsided, Celine and Andy’s wedding became the thing everyone talked about at the Grove and in Camp 4. They’d been given things to do at the event—treated like family as an honor to the community of climbers who became family everywhere.

  Two days before the ceremony, Rilla told Thea she was going on a camping trip, and just didn’t tell her it was camping on a wall. The climbing was easy. Rilla wasn’t there to learn the climbing. She was there to learn the logistics in preparation for The Nose.

  Adeena and Petra taught her to pee into the air, or into a container to pour out away from the belay, and shit into a container, while in a harness. Rilla learned how to set up a portaledge and sleep in her sleeping bag on the small nylon cot hanging off the side of the wall, while still in a harness.

  No one was on her period, but Adeena showed her the easiest way to change a tampon or menstrual cup—which some climbers used, apparently—midair. It was a task much simpler than she’d expected.

  It was not glamorous or cool, but if Rilla wanted to climb The Nose—if she wanted to climb like them—she’d have to learn to live on the rock. They made it easy though. The two girls somehow made Rilla laugh as she hung ass out in the air, trying to relax enough to pee. And when she learned where to lash the waste container in the anchors or pack it in the pig, so she wouldn’t drop it, and it wouldn’t touch anything else.