Rilla made a face. “Oh. Thanks!”
“No problem.” Lauren grabbed her Stetson and backpack. “Time to go save people from stupidity.”
Rilla shook Walker’s shoulder. “Hey. I’m hungry. Take me to breakfast.”
He grunted.
She licked his ear.
He bolted up. “What?”
Laughing, she stepped over him. “Be quiet. I’m going to put actual clothes on. You’re taking me to breakfast.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he gasped, clutching his ear as she left. “Don’t do that again.”
A sense of power—way too evil for whatever the hell time it was—flooded her veins, and she had to muffle a giggle in the hall. Quietly, she climbed up to her attic and pulled on a T-shirt and sweats over a pair of shorts.
Thankfully, Thea hadn’t made an appearance by the time she got outside.
Walker sat on the steps, his dress shirt unbuttoned. He leaned on the railing, asleep.
“Breakfast. Now.” She smacked him lightly on the top of the head.
“I need clothes,” he said. “And I prefer the first way you woke me up.”
They walked over to his tent and Rilla tried to look like she’d not . . . in the . . .
“How’s it going?” Adrienne asked, pouring granola over her yogurt. “Is Walker up this early? I thought with a day off, he’d be asleep still.”
“I’m hungry,” Rilla said.
Adrienne shoved a spoon in her mouth. “I’m late for a meeting,” she said over the food. “See ya.”
Walker biked them across the Valley in the early morning light, to the cafeteria, where they filled their plates and coffee cups and sprawled out on one of the gleaming tables.
“Want to go climbing today?” Walker asked. “With me?”
She smiled, dumping hot sauce on her hash browns. “I guess you’ve earned it.”
“I mean. I can keep working toward it,” he said hastily, a twinkle in his eye.
She laughed and mixed her food with a fork. Before she said anything else, someone ruffled her hair. “Look what the Valley churned up,” Hico said joyfully, sitting beside Rilla and grabbing the hot sauce off her tray. “You two disappeared last night.” He eyed them both. “Some emergency I missed?”
Rilla snorted and didn’t look up.
“You know. There’s always something in Yosemite,” Walker said.
“Mm-hm.” Hico twisted in his chair. “Dude, over here.”
Gage slid his tray in beside Walker. “The girls are here too. I saw them come in.”
Sure enough, in a few minutes, a sleepy-looking Adeena, Caroline, and Petra appeared at the table.
“The Valley girls themselves,” Hico said. “Good morning sunshines.”
“Like, why are you, like, so awake?” Petra said in a fake accent.
Adeena busted out laughing. “I have never heard you talk like that. When I was little, I thought that’s how all girls in America talked.”
Petra salted her eggs and pushed her tray out so she could lean on her hand while eating. “So, what were you two up to last night?” She pointed her fork between Rilla and Walker.
Rilla glanced at Walker.
Walker shrugged. “Nothing.” He leaned over and stole a sausage from her plate.
Petra pretended to stab him with her fork, and looked to Rilla. “You two together now?” she asked.
Rilla waited, breath tight in her chest.
“We’re eating breakfast together,” Walker said. “If that’s what you mean.”
Petra smiled a small smile at Walker’s evasiveness—like a satisfactory little curl she couldn’t control.
Rilla hid in her coffee cup. She was starting to hate Petra’s competitiveness. Petra didn’t even like Walker. Everything in her stomach turned sour, and she pushed away her plate, trying to look like she didn’t care.
“Please stop asking my brother questions about his love life while I’m eating breakfast,” Caroline said, not looking at any of them. “You’re ruining my food.”
“We were talking on the way down and decided it’s a great Middle Earth day,” Caroline announced, pushing back her hair. “It’s supposed to be a hundred today, so it’s either that, or I’m going to Tuolumne.”
“What’s Middle Earth?” Rilla asked.
“It’s the inner falls of Yosemite Falls—you can’t see it until you’re inside,” Gage said. “It’s so beautiful. It’s literally like you’ve been dropped in New Zealand or a Tolkien book or something.”
“You coming?” Petra asked Walker.
He nodded. “Sure.”
Rilla didn’t know how she felt, but she knew she felt something. She stood with the others, taking her tray back and trying to shake off the awkwardness that had crept up and ruined her breakfast. There was nothing wrong. Nothing at all.
•
Caroline free-soloed up Sunnyside Bench—something Rilla hadn’t even thought Caroline would do. Once Petra saw Caroline did it, she followed suit, leaving the taste of unease in Rilla’s mouth as she watched her disappear up the cliff. Petra could do it, Rilla was fairly certain. But she trusted Caroline to make a better decision on risk than Petra did.
The rest of them simul-climbed up Sunnyside Bench—a new experience for Rilla. It made the easy route go quickly, as they were all attached on the same rope. Gage went first and placed the protection. Walker went last and cleaned it. Everyone else climbed along in between. In that way, they ran up the cliff quickly, laughing and joking as if they were all out for a walk under the brilliant sun.
At the top, Caroline and Petra sat under a tree in the shade, waiting and looking more relaxed together than Rilla had ever seen. The slabs wore down into a faint trail and she fell in step behind the others as they all headed single-file along a great granite terrace, toward Yosemite Falls.
It’d been hot and not rainy, and the falls had become a steady, thin trickle, plummeting well over a thousand feet from the upper edge. The gray and tan-streaked cliffs ran each direction as far as the eye could see. They had spent two hours climbing out of the Valley and had barely made it off the floor. She kept looking up at the falls, at the glisten of the splash of water on granite, squinting under the intensity of the sunshine.
“It never gets old,” Petra said, raising her arms up as the trail wound down to a wide opening at the bottom of the falls. Thick green manzanita bushes flattened and puffed in the wind in between the smooth granite boulders and slab. The trickle of a thousand-foot waterfall turned into a glassy creek slipping around the boulders and falling over the rounded edge of the shelf. Beyond the shelf, the water dove into a narrow fissure—a slot canyon—that kept falling toward the Valley floor.
“We’re going down there?” Rilla asked, equally scared and excited. It was a clear, beautiful day and she was with a team; but she would never forget that hiker in Tenaya.
“Down there is Middle Earth,” Caroline said.
At the top of the shelf, chains were bolted to the rock—shiny and well-kept—clearly waiting for their ropes. They pulled the ropes, put on their harnesses, and began dropping down into the canyon on rappel, one by one. When it was Rilla’s turn, she started off and then paused to drink in the full sight of the still stunning waterfall. She’d listened to this fall every night. She’d seen it when she didn’t know what she was looking at. And now she stood right beneath it.
Walker stepped in front of her, grinning. “Yo, Rilla.” He snapped his fingers. “Focus.”
“I was admiring the view,” she said.
“See ya in a bit.” He waved.
Over the edge, the main falls slipped out of view and she followed the short, bulging wall to the bottom, joining the others in a shrunken pool walled in on all sides by the rock. The far side of the walls were water-polished and Rilla shuddered to think of standing here in the spring, when the falls were rushing at peak, and this pool would be covered in fathoms of tumultuous water, thrashing at itself to get over the next edge. Wa
rm fingers gently touched her spine, and the shiver looped around itself and spun into a warm, aching hook that dropped to her toes as Walker gripped her shoulders.
“You cold?” he asked.
She smiled and spoke over her shoulder as they trudged through the pool, their packs floating alongside them. “No. I was thinking about the water being high.” And how fast and powerful it would be churning through this arm-width channel.
“Oh. Yeah. That is a scary thought. Wait for me, I need to get the rope.” He turned and pulled long stretches of the rope down over the drop, and coiled it back up to carry over his muscled shoulder through the waist-high water.
Out of the first pool, they walked along the thin stream of water still flowing, deep in the heart of the falls, past the stacked shelves of white granite, being careful not to slip on the granite, to another set of anchors before a drop. It was like being on an amusement park ride. Rilla waited in line, laughing and talking and enjoying the scenery until it was her turn. Walker followed last of all and pulled the ropes.
Over the next edge, she followed a sheer, long drop to a pool of blue-green water.
A narrow stream of sunshine funneled through a long granite hallway, lighting it as if it were sun pouring into the open doors of a great granite cathedral, refracting off the pool of emerald-blue water at the bottom of the long cathedral walls.
In the shaded corner of the wall, the water rushed as a stream of white froth, and lower, it washed over her, cooling her sun-warmed skin with tiny droplets of icy mountain mist.
At the bottom, she pulled herself off the rope and stepped into the rush of the water, standing on the rocks and letting it gush over her head just to feel part of the whole thing that surrounded her.
Shivering, she slid back into the pool and swam down the narrow cathedral pathway, bobbing toward its wide-open doors and an unmitigated sliver of stunning green and empty space of the Valley. Like she was tucked into some secret, lush paradise. The water was clear and green and perfect. The sun was bright and warm. The breeze, clean. Flipping onto her back, she treaded water and watched as Walker lowered himself and slid into the water.
He pulled the rope, kicking and swimming backward. The water rushed in great sparkling droplets as his arms moved. She’d never wanted to touch someone so badly as she did right then. But she knew it would not be enough and she didn’t know what the answer was for that. It’d always been enough before. She hadn’t known it wouldn’t until he hadn’t said anything at breakfast. It felt like she’d betrayed herself.
They all arranged themselves, spread out on the rocks at the end of the pool, lying back in the sun and passing around the beer and the bag of chips and Adeena’s bag of apples she’d hauled up. They were a sweet treat. The light traveled across the granite and Walker’s arm was beside hers on the rocks, and it felt like the only thing in the entire world that mattered was his bare muscled arm brushing hers. She didn’t even feel guilty; the longing was so great and all-consuming. She could live with this. They were alone and above the crowds, and she needed nothing more from life than a handful of chips, a cold beer, and this afternoon in Yosemite Valley.
They moved farther down, loose-legged and dopey, as if they were all high, but still able to scramble over the massive, river-smoothed granite boulders to the top of the rounded boulder looking out over a twenty-foot drop into another pool.
Caroline tossed the rope first, and then jumped into the deep, clear water. The edge of this pool pushed up against the view of the open Valley and the haze of blue-emerald trees like a massive, natural infinity pool.
She jumped feet first into the blue pool, and felt the water rush past as Walker jumped beside her.
Above the surface, he grinned at her, gaze flickering ahead before he pulled her close and kissed her.
Rilla melted against his wet skin, against his hot mouth. It was wonderful, but when she pulled away a sick guilty feeling flooded her stomach—like when she’d message Curtis and she knew she shouldn’t. But this was Walker—and he wasn’t that at all. She looked at him, pulling the rope down with long stretches of his arms and it felt like everything they’d done together that summer was all in one feeling. She loved him. And he didn’t love her. He didn’t want anyone to know they were hooking up.
It felt like the rawness of her feelings was alive on her face, and she dipped under the surface to try and wash them off.
When she resurfaced, she was in control—but still with the echoes of it all in her chest. She loved him, and he didn’t love her.
He flipped his backpack over and held it toward her. “Hang on, I’ll tow you.”
She grabbed on to it and kicked easily as he swam them both for the rocks at the edge of the pool. She loved him.
What was she going to do? How could she make him love her?
They sat in the sun with easy smiles, drying off before beginning the next rappel over the next set of falls. Anywhere in the world these falls wouldn’t be little, and they’d be stunning all on their own; but here they were just another beautiful thing in a string of beautiful things. Water shot out in a graceful arc, crashing down the granite. Rilla hung back, waiting for Walker on a boulder above everyone else. She lay back and closed her eyes.
“Is Rilla planning to come?” Caroline asked.
Rilla’s ears perked up, suddenly awake and straining to listen over the sound of rushing water.
“No,” Petra said.
“I doubt it,” Adeena said. “She still doesn’t have a full rack.”
“I think she’s still messed up with school too.”
“Usually climbing helps people figure shit out. Rilla’s just . . .” Petra trailed off and Rilla couldn’t hear if she said anything next.
“She’s young still,” Caroline said.
“Her home life is a disaster,” Petra said. “Like with jail and drugs and super white trash. Her mom was in a long-term relationship with two men, and one of them left. So, it was like a dad leaving. Except it wasn’t her dad, it was Thea’s. Walker told me.”
Rilla’s face burned. Walker told her?
“Oh, I didn’t realize,” Adeena said. “Like a polygamist?”
“That’s marriage,” Petra said. “She wasn’t married to either. It’s more like polyamory. Where you’re in love with more than one person at a time,” Petra explained.
“Climbing probably is the first time she’s done anything, like, in the larger world,” Hico said. “It takes a lot of guts to do that.”
“Yeah, going to France would be a huge thing. Too much, too soon,” Petra said.
“She’s got time,” Caroline said.
“She could do it,” Adeena said.
“Even if she could, it requires money,” Petra said. “And that she doesn’t have. She’s still using my gear. I should probably get that back before she thinks I gave it to her.”
“Yeah, her stories about West Virginia are . . . confusing.”
“Like, lying about it confusing,” Petra said. “Do we really think her mom was a stripper? It’s all a bit much. I think she likes the attention.”
“I don’t know . . . she’s young,” Caroline said. “I don’t think she’s lying, but . . . ”
Rilla had never known as much agony as she felt right at that moment, where all her worst fears had materialized as real from the mouths of people she most idealized. It was standing in a dry canyon and a sudden torrent of water unleashed and drowned her. One second she was fine. The next, there was no escape. It was over.
Tears sprung, bitter and hot. And she turned back and jumped into the water until it closed over her head and she imagined the steam rushing over the top of the water as it cooled the misery and heat of being alive and turned her into iron. She imagined she was the mountains, fresh and new and cooling into granite.
She rose to the surface just long enough to breathe and feel the sun against her eyelids before returning to the cold glacier water.
She heard Walker’s voice calli
ng before she understood his words. She felt his body move the water around her. His fingers on her waist. She kicked away and up.
“Rilla,” he said as they surfaced.
Her name sounded odd in his mouth. Like she had the sudden urge to scratch it out and forbid him from ever saying it again.
“We’re going,” he said.
“I’m coming,” she said, and kicked for the rocks at the edge of the pool.
She finished the rappels in silence, at the back.
No one seemed to notice.
Thirty Seven
The only revenge was to prove them all wrong. Or at least, that they, like home, had underestimated her. Yes, she might be what they thought. But she was more. And could be capable of more. Celine had seen that. Celine had climbed with her! She could go to damn France if Petra could.
Petra was right about one thing though: Money was an issue.
“You can always find money,” Jonah said, after rolling a blunt and listening to her vent as they sat on the granite couch, overlooking the Valley.
Rilla finished holding a tight breath of smoke before blowing it out and handing it back to Jonah. “Life doesn’t let me find jack shit.”
He rolled his eyes. “You sound hangry. Did you eat?”
“I ate,” she muttered, elbows on her knees. “I’m not going to care about this. I’m going to get revenge for this.”
“That sounds an awful lot like caring.”
She turned to him, eyes narrowed. “Well, you’re being super helpful.”
Jonah shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
She exhaled and looked out over the Valley. Everywhere she could see, she had memories of climbing with those people. Memories that felt ruined and tainted by what she’d overheard. “My mom said I could come home.”
“To West Virginia? I thought you didn’t want to go back?”
Rilla shrugged. “I miss it. Sometimes.
Jonah was quiet for a moment. He sniffed and looked away. “It’s shitty to hear the things we are afraid everyone is saying. And shitty that they didn’t think you were being honest. But I mean, have you talked to them about it?”
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