Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  An hour. Maybe. She kept her eye to the narrowing sky above the mountains and kept the pedal toward the floor as much as she dared. After another stop to fill the coolant, she climbed back into the truck as it began to rain.

  She was almost there.

  Almost.

  She entered the start of the Valley. The road dimmed. The rain drummed in her ears. The river beside her rose and roared and foamed.

  Why had she done this stupid drive? It felt as if the shoulders of the gods twisted and turned, trying to swat her off like she was an invisible gnat that tickled their shoulder blades.

  The windshield wipers flicked angrily back and forth. The river rose. She leaned forward in the seat, eyes glued to the road, speed down to under twenty miles an hour but it felt fast. The water seemed all around her. The edge of the river rippled up along the edge of her sight. Reaching.

  Her pulse thumped in her throat. Hands sweaty on the steering wheel. Almost there. Almost there.

  Water rushed down the wallows of the hills. Across the river, the hill rushed with it. Rilla yelped, pressing the pedal to the floor as a chunk of thick mud crested into the river and sprang upward to her side of the river. Too fast. She was too fast. The water was too fast. The road was too fast. She slammed on the brakes and the back end skidded behind her, fishtailing in a hydroplane. The river seemed to reach for her. The mountain was pressing against her, pushing her off the road.

  The truck stopped, half off the road, facing the river.

  Fingers shaking, she unbuckled and got out. The rain drummed on her head. Her heart pounded; she was sick to her stomach. She couldn’t do this. What had she done? This was punishment for revenge. She put her hands on her knees and bent, water dripping in a long stream off her nose and over her lips. She was almost there. She just needed to keep going and everything would be fine. Get back in the truck. She stared at it for another few minutes, willing herself to get back in and keep going. If she kept going, she’d make it.

  If she kept going . . .

  Rilla straightened and got back into the truck.

  •

  The rain had lightened to a drizzle by the time she pulled into the meadow in the Valley. She wanted nothing more than to rub her ticket to France in Petra’s face, but the rain had sobered her up and left her empty. Thea wasn’t home. No one was.

  In the silent house, safe and sound, it felt like a hollow victory. Particularly given what she’d had to do to get there.

  She got in the shower, hoping to wash off the guilt. The sight of the hill rushing into the river and the water spinning around her in the truck flashed as the shower hit her back. The drive was over. She had done it, and she had fifteen hundred dollars to her name. She pulled back her hair and took a deep breath.

  No one was home yet, and after getting out and dressed, she grabbed Thea’s Wilderness First Aid and sat on the porch with a box of cookies.

  She’d only been out there ten minutes when Walker came up the steps. “Hey, girl,”

  She froze. She’d been avoiding him since Middle Earth as best she could, but somehow it had only been making it harder.

  He smiled, bending down to kiss her.

  She twisted away, pretending she hadn’t seen.

  He frowned and pulled away. “What’s up?”

  She shrugged and studied the page—the words going to nothing. Shit. Why today?

  He sat on the floor and folded his legs. “Are you okay?”

  “Nope,” she said, turning the page. The next page didn’t make sense either. But she’d been stupid—stupid to allow herself to trust another person and . . . why had she thought she could have feelings about him? Confide in him? Love him? He should have been nothing but a friends-with-benefits.

  She’d gotten attached to everyone. And they all sucked.

  She flipped another page, fingers trembling.

  Walker took the book out of her hands. His tone was serious and made her think of the day in the river and how happy she’d been to be cared for. “Hey, what’s up?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Nothing. I made a mistake is all. I’m just . . . I’m.” Her face burned. Her eyes watered.

  “Did I do something?”

  “Nope. You didn’t do anything.” She wasn’t trying to be vague, she just didn’t want to admit how she felt.

  “Rilla. Talk to me.”

  “I misunderstood you is all. I misunderstood everyone.” She sniffed and threw her arm over her face. “I just thought. I thought we were . . .”

  “Oh.”

  If she’d harbored any hopes she’d misunderstood, they were dashed to utter destruction in his quiet, sad oh.

  “It’s fine. It was all new and exciting to be here. I got confused.”

  “I really like you,” he said. “I think you’re awesome.”

  She tightened her arm over her eyes. “You don’t have to—”

  “I thought we were just going to have fun. Climb and hang out. I’m going back to Colorado in the fall. And you . . . I mean.” He bit his lip and didn’t say anything, blue eyes tight with worry. “Who knows where you’ll be?”

  She swallowed and swiped at her eyes. “Yeah. That was fine with me,” she lied. “I just didn’t think you’d deny that to everyone.”

  “I don’t like people to know my business. Petra—”

  “You told Petra my business,” she snapped. “And I wasn’t saying you had to tell them your business, but like . . . I didn’t expect it to be a secret.”

  “I’m not trying to keep it a secret.”

  “You made me feel like shit. You told your friends things I’d told you in confidence. I don’t want to do anything with someone who makes me feel like shit afterward.”

  “Rilla . . .” He sighed. “You’re overreacting.”

  She pushed up, eyes narrowed. “Oh, okay.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “Get the fuck off my porch, Walker.”

  “Rilla . . .”

  She looked him dead in the eyes., going for broke with nothing to lose. “The worst part of this shit? You made me think you wouldn’t leave me hanging on a wall, with your thumb up your ass. It was too easy. Too good. You fuck head.” She swiped at her tears. “Dummy me fell in love with you. I should have known the first time I climbed with you that you weren’t any good.”

  Twin spots of red jumped into his cheeks and his eyes flashed. Without a word, he turned and strode off into the meadow.

  An incredible sadness filled her chest as she watched him go.

  •

  The next morning she had to go to the principal’s office with her pile of undone work and the sloppy pages of things she’d completed.

  “I want to drop out and take the GED,” she said as the principal made a face and peered at a soda-stained page of math work.

  The woman put down the paper and looked at her over the edge of her glasses. “You realize it’s not the same as a high school diploma.”

  Rilla shrugged. “It lets you do the same thing.” Get out of school.

  She shook her head. “A GED is for someone who cannot go back to high school and finish. It’s never going to be a high school diploma, and it will always tell an academic institution that you were unable to complete school and instead had to take this option. Now, that can be just fine for some people, when it’s their only option. But that isn’t your only option. So, why are you intent on limiting yourself?”

  “I’m . . .” Rilla started to argue and then snapped her mouth shut.

  The principal sighed. “This work is more than halfway done. We have another two weeks until school starts. I might be able to make this work. It’ll mean extra work for you, even as we start. It probably means you won’t graduate until next summer. But I don’t think you should take the GED. I think you can finish.”

  Rilla looked at her hands. “I’m going back to West Virginia and taking the GED.” As soon as she finished The Nose.

  “CLIMB ON.”

&nb
sp; From the depths of the

  struggle comes one relief: to

  run out of options. The going

  gets easier when the only thing

  left is to just get going.

  —Josie McKee, YOSAR veteran, wilderness medicine and rescue

  instructor, alpine and big wall speed climber. McKee climbed

  The Nose solo in 23.5 hours, seven Yosemite big walls in

  seven days, and holds five Yosemite big wall speed records.

  Thirty Nine

  Rilla stood at the bottom in the dark, her borrowed jacket zipped to her ears as a light breeze touched her face, and the black oaks quivered behind her. The ground that El Capitan rose from felt alive, with a beating heart deep down in its granite belly that thundered through her feet and pulsed in her ears. The stars were still out. The moon was waning and blue.

  It felt like she’d come full circle. She lifted her hands and began.

  They climbed, the first two hundred feet un-roped. Familiar from the many treks to haul the gear they’d need and stash it farther up the climb. The wind picked up and the sky lightened to purple. It was easy scrambling, but the higher Rilla went, the more aware she became of the trees, and the sky, and the start of the biggest thing she’d ever done.

  They began up some crumbly rock, into a wide corner crack. The climbing wasn’t hard, and feeling well, they climbed easily in a quiet rhythm. At the top, they set up the anchors on the bolts.

  Rilla led the next pitch, into a left corner, using a little tri-cam to slip into the crack, double back a piece of webbing, and clip herself it. The movement felt easy and fluid, and it filled her with confidence—almost as if she just watched herself do something she’d never expected. She swung over to another crack, moving up to the bolts.

  As the sun rose bright and clear, they reached Sickle Ledge, where they had stashed their haul bags—the pig, Adeena grunted, lifting hers. The wind whipped against their skin, and the sun was so bright off the white granite she squinted even behind her sunglasses. After hauling everything to the ledge and making sure anchors were secure and untangled, they sat three across, legs sprawled on the thigh-wide ledge, and dug through the bag for food. Rilla chewed on a few pieces of jerky and a nutrition bar. After some water and waiting to let another group get off the ledge as they hauled things for their climb the next day, they stood and began to push on toward their first night bivy.

  On the next pitch, a burst of wind caught the rope at the end, yanking it toward the flake.

  “Nooooooo!” Adeena yelled.

  “I got it.” Rilla yanked harder. The rope pulled up just before catching.

  “Crisis averted,” Petra called.

  The climbing was easy. The sunshine was hot and the wind cool. They pushed on at a pace that made Rilla feel like there would be no way they’d spend four days on this rock—half of it was already done? Rilla kept tipping her head and trying to match it to the route map, but she felt sure they were way ahead.

  “The Nose,” she scoffed. “The Nose is going down.”

  The Nose was going down. Until it was time to haul the pig—the huge bags lashed to the rope that carried all their food, gear, and water—up to them at the top of the pitch.

  Goddamn it, why had she thought they would go fast? Sweat drenched her shirt and the sun broiled her shoulders, and her lips and mouth became so dry from the wind she kept sucking down water, which made her have to stop and pee, and then wind caught her pee and splashed it on her hand and . . .

  “Goddamn it,” Rilla snapped when the pig got caught again as she hauled it up. Hauling required her to pull and walk a length of rope down the wall, and then, holding the tension, slide the ascender back up. It was a constant fight. Her fingers were continually in danger of getting smashed into the gear on the up, and her thighs and stomach straining to pull down. Impossible when the bag got stuck. She leaned down and wiggled the line.

  “It’s your lead,” Petra called.

  And just like always, it switched back to being glorious.

  Rilla led. Then Adeena. Then back to Petra for the pendulum over to the start of the Stovelegs. Rilla’s neck ached as she watched Petra lower out. “Why is it called Stovelegs?” she asked Adeena, eyeing the long, straight crack of pitch seven, eight, and nine-ish.

  Adeena adjusted her sunglasses. “Before this was first climbed, a climber—working on the route with Warren Harding—went to a scrap yard to find something he could use for protection in the cracks. This was the fifties, so there wasn’t much. He found some legs from, like, a woodstove, and shaped them into a piton that would fit this crack and be easy to carry. It’s been the Stoveleg crack ever since.”

  “Lower me,” Petra yelled.

  Rilla shifted the hard candy in her mouth, trying to rewet it. The afternoon light waned. Hopefully Petra would be quick on lead. She tipped her chin again, shoulders screaming from the hauling and the sun.

  Petra’s long legs furiously pumped against the rock, the gear clinking and her silhouette against the sky. She swung, hopped over the rise, and reached.

  “Got it,” she called.

  Rilla exhaled and peeled a clementine she’d meant to save for farther up. “I’m just going to eat all the food now, so I don’t have to haul it,” she said to Adeena.

  Adeena laughed while she kept feeding out rope for Petra in the Stovelegs.

  When it was Rilla’s turn to climb, she ended up aiding. On the ground, fresh, she could have climbed it. But after a long day of climbing and hauling, she was so exhausted that the aiders were hard enough to manage.

  In the evening, they reached Dolt Tower, a natural ledge wide enough to sleep on. By the time they hauled up all their gear and got everything sorted into a mess of anchor webbing, gear, and haul bags, the light was nearly gone.

  They pulled their sleeping bags out and collapsed onto the ledge, exhausted.

  “It always seems so easy,” Adeena said. “And then I start and, ugh. I forgot.”

  “I am so sore,” Petra moaned. “But so far, so free.” She pumped her fists to the sky.

  Rilla opened one eye and looked to Adeena, who seemed to be thinking the same thing. There was no way Petra could climb the whole route free, but . . .

  “I’m hungry,” Adeena said, sitting up. “I’m going to pray and then make some oatmeal.”

  After a meal of oatmeal with fruit, brown sugar, nuts, and more water, they brushed their teeth, spitting toothpaste into oblivion, and curled up in their sleeping bags.

  The light faded and the wind whipped the dark and the stars came out. Even though Rilla had seen the stars before, seeing them here, from the edge of a sleeping bag with her harness digging into her legs and sides, Adeena’s knees in her back, and Petra’s elbows in her boobs made the stars seem magical and new. She closed her eyes, a smile on her face, and remembered the first day of climbing—with Walker, and how it was horrible and how nothing had changed, except that she was here now. But then she heard Walker and his “oh.” And she heard the way they’d talked about her and her past. No matter how long she looked at the stars, she heard it in her head. The wind sharpened until it stung tears from under her closed eyes.

  In the morning, she was feeling better. Sore, a little swollen and weird, but better. “What pitch number are we on anyway?” Rilla asked, grateful for Adeena’s mountaineer coffee pour-over skills as the rich, sweet scent of coffee tinged the dry wind.

  “Lucky thirteen,” Petra said, sitting cross-legged and looking over the edge.

  The sky was blue and boundless, streaked with the pink gold of sunrise. Rilla rubbed more sunscreen on her burnt face and used the remaining lotion on her hands to smooth back the flyways as she finger-combed through her knotted hair and re-braided it. She ate a packet of tuna and an avocado with salt and hot sauce packets she’d stolen from the dining hall. It wasn’t the most satisfying—she could have used a huge plate of French toast with bacon, grits, and gravy, and a glass of whole milk alongside her co
ffee. But the tuna made her feel strong and ready to climb again, and the avocado made her feel something like full. She packed her sleeping bag and the three of them organized their gear, took down the portaledge, and studied the route map one more time—looking over the ten pitches they were slotted to do before bivying at a spot named after Camp 4.

  Petra was tying in to lead, when there was a sudden crack, like thunder and lightning at once. All three of them jumped. Rilla looked automatically to the sky, but Adeena and Petra yanked her tight to the wall as something roared past.

  Rilla blinked and watched, her mouth open. A person. It was a person in a red suit and he fell. Her heart stopped beating. A red plume billowed out behind him, pulling him up below as he gently finished soaring to the ground.

  “Damn BASE jumpers,” Adeena said. “I about peed myself.”

  Petra laughed weakly. “I totally thought something had come off. Ack! I’m awake!”

  Rilla’s heart resumed beating—faster to make up for lost time. “Oh, my god,” she said, still staring at the person floating to the trees.

  They watched until the jumper landed in El Cap Meadow, and then they turned back to the wall and began the rhythm, branching off pitch fourteen to wait for Petra on the Jardine Traverse—the route variation you took when you were trying to free-climb.

  On the ground it’d seemed harmless, but now Rilla knew there was no way Petra could free-climb The Nose, and waiting for her to struggle through left Rilla annoyed in a new way. She’d spotted Petra pulling on gear, but couldn’t say anything while Petra was climbing. Her neck ached from twisting to look up.

  “I don’t know what she’s doing,” Adeena said at one point. “But it’s not free.” It was the closest they came to talking about it.

  Climb.

  Ascend.

  Haul.

  Curse the haul bag for getting stuck.

  Curse everything.

  Get the haul bag up.

  Begin again.

  The sun rose high and bright. Halfway through the morning, Rilla pulled on a thin, long-sleeved shirt because she couldn’t imagine how any more sunscreen was going to help against the sunshine trying to burn her off the face of the earth.