Valley Girls

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  Rilla gritted her teeth. “You’re fucking delusional. You aren’t that good of a climber. We’re gonna run out of water.”

  Petra’s cheeks got redder.

  “Rilla,” Adeena said softly. “It’s fine. We can figure something out.”

  Petra glared at her.

  Rilla rolled her eyes. “Let’s bivy under the roof. You can climb it first thing in the morning. At dawn.”

  “That’s another night on a portaledge.”

  Rilla shrugged. “The ledge doesn’t have room anyway.”

  They all looked longingly at the packed gravel ledge. Solid ground.

  “All right,” Petra said. “You’re hauling though.”

  The wind died in pitch twenty-two. And the heat crept in. Sweat gathered under Rilla’s helmet as she slowly worked her way up on lead, to the base of the Great Roof.

  The hauling felt like a personal punishment, and Rilla got more pissed off the harder it became. Petra was finishing eating by the time she was done and Rilla had nothing to look at but the satisfaction on Petra’s face. She kept trying to swallow back her anger and pettiness. Her guilt. But it flavored everything. She choked down a piece of sausage and cheese and some water and ignored Petra, staring across the Valley as the stars lit the sky.

  •

  What day was it? It was her first thought when she woke before dawn.

  It was day four. They were supposed to be done today, but they had only reached halfway. And Petra wanted to free-climb. Rilla rolled upright and shouted, “Petra, get climbing or I’m leading.”

  Petra slept on.

  All her anger flooded back. But it was hard to remember the start or end of her reasons. It was like a fire licking out of control. She peed into her container, emptied it away from the belay, and clipped it back onto the gear. “Let’s go, Petra. Adeena can belay. I’ll pack.”

  Adeena sat up groggily. “I need so much coffee. I hate this climb,” she moaned. “I want a shower and a real bed.”

  Same, Rilla thought.

  •

  Two hours later, they were still waiting for Petra. Not for her to climb, but for her to realize what everyone else already knew—she wasn’t that good. She was capable. Knowledgeable. Competent. But not great. She wasn’t Caroline. She wasn’t Adeena. She had not free-climbed The Nose.

  Rilla crossed her arms and looked out over the Valley in her sunglasses. Waiting and furious. She hated that Petra couldn’t see herself realistically . . . hated more what that annoyance might say about herself.

  Finally, Petra gave up and came down for the aiders. She was dirty, and scrapes covered her knees and elbows and thighs and even her cheek, somehow. She’d wrestled with herself and had to face the truth.

  Rilla’s stomach turned. “Well, thanks to you, we’ll be lucky if we get to the summit by midnight.”

  “What is your problem?” Petra shouted.

  “I’m fine. I’m not the one up there trying to free-climb The Nose,” Rilla scoffed.

  “I cannot believe you, of all people, are here shitting on people’s dreams.”

  “Oh my god, what the fuck crawled up your ass and hatched?” Rilla yelled.

  “Guys,” Adeena said.

  “Shut up,” they both yelled.

  Rilla immediately regretted it.

  “You’re the one who never climbed before this summer. Now look at you. You’re on the fucking Nose. Why the fuck are you being a bitch about me just trying this.” Petra started crying. “And failing.”

  “Hey. You’re fine. It’s been a hard couple of days,” Adeena said, rubbing Petra’s shoulder. “Rilla’s probably just exhausted.”

  “Yeah. I’m exhausted,” Rilla said flatly. “I’m also white trash and no way am I going to France, right Petra?”

  Petra and Adeena looked confused.

  “I overheard y’all talking,” she said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Did we say . . .” Adeena frowned. “Something that wasn’t true?”

  Rilla flushed, her cheeks feeling crispy from the blush and sunburn and windburn. “Oh, I’m going to France.”

  “Is that what you’re all upset about? Grow up,” Adeena said, in as a close a thing as Rilla had ever heard her snap.

  “You can’t say that shit about me.”

  “Oh, the shit that’s true?” Petra said.

  “It’s not true. I’m not only that. You made me sound like I’d . . .” steal from her. Which Rilla had. To prove what? She closed her eyes and tried not to cry.

  “No one is saying you’re only that. No one is saying you’re this forever. It’s just right now this is what you are. You get pissed at Petra for trying to climb something way out of her range, and you’re too scared to even try the shit you can do.” Adeena exhaled and crossed her arms. “You’re not the first or the last. Even if you don’t go to France, you’ll go someday. Get the fuck over yourself, Rilla. You’re not that special.”

  Rilla and Petra stared.

  “I’m ready to climb,” Adeena said. “I don’t want to be doing this anymore.”

  “I stole your watch. And pawned it,” Rilla said to Petra. Immediately, a tension she hadn’t known she had dissolved. Replaced by misery, when Adeena and Petra stared at her.

  “Are you serious?” Petra asked. “You . . . stole . . .”

  Rilla blinked. “You have no idea how much shit is attached to me. Hearing y’all say those things was my worst nightmare come true. I came three thousand miles hoping to never hear someone talk about me that way again. I spent all summer doing everything . . .” She had to take a breath. “Everything. To make everyone see me differently.”

  “No one saw you the way you see yourself,” Petra said. “Why would you take that?”

  “I couldn’t take the tub.”

  Petra didn’t laugh. “Fuck, Rilla. How am I supposed to trust you now?”

  Rilla bit her cheek. “I just wanted to prove to you I could make it to France. That I was worthwhile.”

  “People come and go all the time. People can’t do stuff because of money all the time. If we all had money, we’d be . . . fuck, I don’t know . . .” Petra looked around. “I’d be at a spa right now.”

  Rilla rolled her eyes. “You’d be in Yosemite. The place every climber wants to be.”

  “No, right now, I’d literally be getting a chartered helicopter and going to a spa to get the fuck away from you.” Petra snapped her fingers. “Adeena’s right. You need to grow up. Even if I said the shittiest things about you—even though I made you feel like that. You should have talked to me. Asked for help about France. Anything.” Petra bit her lips tight and looked away. “You know what your problem is? Your problem is you want to do it all yourself, or it doesn’t count. That’s not the way it works, climbing or life. You hold all of us at an arm’s length. You aren’t honest—”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m telling lies about my life. I couldn’t possibly have experienced everything I said, right? Because you didn’t experience it.”

  Petra glared at her.

  Rilla gritted her jaw. “Let’s just get this climb over with.” They were too far from the summit to think about anything else.

  “Great. Yeah. So excited,” Petra said sarcastically.

  “I’ll lead,” Rilla snapped. Mostly because it was the only way to escape the two of them for a moment.

  The afternoon heat hit the wall as she focused on the rhythm of the aiders. Step. Clip. Her brain fell quiet. The wind roared in her ears. She wanted to escape. To leave. But she was stuck on this thread, dangling between the place she’d left and the place she wanted to be. Step. Clip.

  Rilla wrestled herself and the aiders around the edge and pulled the anchor off the Great Roof. It was one of the most recognizable and famous parts of the climb, and already she couldn’t remember anything but how she felt.

  Dejected, she carefully set her anchors and gave Adeena a thumbs-up. Belaying was also rhythmic—pull, take, lock, feed
out. Adeena’s long hair blew like a raven’s wings in the wind and the swallows and baby falcons twittered around them. The line connecting her and Adeena became shorter with each movement. The lines running to the gear and Petra, laying against the rock.

  She’d pursued it. She’d gotten it. But all she’d wanted from the beginning was a thing she didn’t have—a sense of community, a place to belong, and love that couldn’t just give up. In climbing, it felt as if, for a moment, there was someone she trusted, someone who trusted her. It didn’t feel that way; it was that way. Except for now, again. She was in the same place she’d begun. And would be again, she saw that now.

  “Over halfway,” Adeena said

  Rilla nodded. “I’ll haul. You can belay.”

  “You sure?” Adeena asked.

  She wanted the punishment of the hauling. The agony. “I’m sure,” she said.

  While Adeena belayed, Rilla pulled herself up and down the thread, hauling the bags up, pushing herself until everything cried for relief, and then she was crying. In her harness. She put her head to the rock and sobbed. She’d come this far and was still alone. She was connected, literally, but cut off. Walker had done the same. Thea . . . everyone.

  Her tears stained the granite until she had no more water left for tears and wiped her wind-burned cheeks and finished hauling.

  No one said anything as they began to the next pitch. And for the next two and a half pitches there was nothing but the sound of the wind, the occasional shouts of other climbers, and the talking of sparrows and falcons nesting on the wall.

  They paused only to take a few photos at the Glowering Spot—the Valley so far below it was unreal. Rilla could barely believe anything but this wall existed, and all she wanted was to be done with it.

  Lunch was her last avocado and summer sausage, sitting in the middle of what smelled like a giant urinal on the Camp 6 ledge. Not that they particularly smelled better.

  “Why do boys have to ruin everything?” Adeena grumbled, finishing peeing into her container. “If you can pee on a rock, you can pee on plastic. And then the one seat here wouldn’t be disgusting.”

  The men from the other day were below, catching up. Rilla shoved her food in faster, not wanting to be overtaken. “Ready?” she asked through her last mouthful.

  They were only a few pitches from the end, but the granite that towered above them seemed as if it would truly never end. The rest of her life would be lived here, trying to get somewhere she’d never find. Rilla worked the aiders, relaxing in the exhaustion—the relief of having her brain rest, even if it came at the price of her trashed body.

  The next section involved tensioning off a piece into a corner, where each piece she placed seemed small and not great, and she was so tired she didn’t even care when the memory of the zzzip tried to taunt her. Finally, she reached the anchors and the pitch was done.

  She hauled again while Petra belayed.

  This time, it felt easier.

  They had just managed to delicately move around the death block, as Adeena called the house-sized boulder ready to peel off and kill, when the yelling started.

  Rilla looked down, straining in her harness to see what the commotion was. “Do you hear that?”

  Petra looked with her. Adeena scanned above them. “Check your gear. Maybe they see something wrong.” Everyone automatically touched their knots and harnesses, fingers traveling to the anchors.

  “I think they’re calling for help,” Petra said. “One of us should rap down.”

  They looked to Adeena.

  “All right.” She flipped her Grigri closed. “Double-check me.”

  Rilla and Petra silently studied the setup. Knots. Rope. Everything closed. Knot at the end of the rope.

  “Check me,” Petra said, offering her belay setup to Rilla and Adeena.

  Again they checked.

  They were tired. Worn down. The simplest mistake would be easy to make and could be completely catastrophic.

  Adeena headed down, leaving Petra and Rilla to look over the edge, trying to figure out what was going on.

  The afternoon sun burned her face and Rilla reached into her bag to smear more sunscreen on. “Want some?” she asked Petra.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I don’t blame you. Feels kind of useless right now,” Rilla said.

  The radio crackled and Adeena’s voice came through. “Come down.”

  Rilla and Petra looked at each other. Did she mean for them to go down there?

  “It’s another group across from them. Leader fell. He’s unconscious. They called—” The radio cut out.

  Rilla looked at Petra. For a split second it was totally still—the intensity of everything overwhelming. Then they sprang into action. Petra started setting up the rappels. Rilla dug through the pig for the bottom—finding their phone. The emergency number for Yosemite was taped on the back.

  Rilla stuffed the phone into her pocket and checked Petra’s rappel. Even after they both checked, they stood there, unable to start the descent. The fear felt like a viscous thing, a wall keeping them from moving.

  “We’re good,” Rilla said.

  “Check again,” Petra said.

  “Knot,” Rilla said, pointing and going through it out loud. Petra nodded and took a deep breath. She did the same for Rilla.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  Simultaneously, they lowered, leaving their gear fixed to the rock.

  Below, the group and Adeena were starting their way across. “It’s the boys,” Adeena shouted, eyes wild. “I see Hico’s socks. Rilla, I think it’s Walker.”

  Rilla had never felt such a panic and terror and hatred of climbing as she did just then. That he was only a few feet away, but she was stuck, on this rock, in her harness. That they couldn’t call 911 and immediately get him to a hospital. She swallowed and forced her fear into a ball. Putting it aside so she could move, she handed the phone to Petra. “You call. Let’s go.”

  Rigging a line and managing to traverse across the face, they found the boys. Walker lay on a portaledge, in his harness, and limp. He looked asleep. Except for the blood. His helmet was cracked.

  “Fuck, Rilla. I’m so sorry. Caroline is going to kill me,” Hico said.

  “He’s alive?” Rilla asked Hico.

  He nodded, lips tight. “His breathing is shallow, but he’s breathing. He fell but it was from rock fall. Just a little . . .” Hico made a ball with his hands. “Knocked him right out.”

  They could hear Petra talking behind them.

  Everyone stared at the portaledge soberly.

  Blood covered his face—from his mouth and nose, Rilla thought. And his arm was folded onto his chest looking wrong and unnaturally white. The feel of his fingers against her skin flashed into her mind and she swallowed a sob.

  “They’re going to send the chopper for a short haul,” Adeena said.

  Everyone took a breath.

  Rilla clipped into the runner and tensioned herself out, careful not to jostle the portaledge. She reached for his neck, amid the blood and gore. Under her fingers, he was cold and his pulse beat shallowly. All the pages of Thea’s Wilderness First Aid ran through her head—the ones she’d read when avoiding her homework. She peeled off her shirt and used it to apply pressure over the gash on his arm. She went back to his pulse, staring with dry eyes at the watch on his bent arm to time it. Trying not to think of the hikers. Trying to think, like Tam, maybe it was just a broken arm. How had this happened to Walker?

  “He needs to be covered,” she said. “I think he’s in shock. His body temperature is falling.”

  Hico jumped into action, pulling a sleeping bag from their pig. She took it and spread it over his shoulders.

  They were all quiet, staring out at the view of the Valley, scanning the hazy afternoon sky for signs of the chopper. What if there were crosswinds? What if this happened again, while they took him to the hospital? What if . . . what if . . .

  Rilla closed her eyes
and tried to shut off her thoughts. She checked his pulse again and it seemed weaker. What if they didn’t make it in time? There was nothing she could do for him.

  Walker’s eyelids flickered.

  “He’s awake,” she said.

  Everyone straightened.

  He met her eyes and tried to say something, but nothing came out. His eyes had a lost and dazed look—and even though he was awake, she was afraid it wasn’t any better.

  “Shhhh . . .” she said. “You’re okay. The helicopter is on its way.” She touched his blood-spattered jaw and gently patted his skin, careful not to accidentally move him. If he moved a lot or got panicked, he could hurt himself more. “Stay calm, they’re almost here. I need you . . .” Her voice broke and she swallowed it. “I need you to be a dick to me some more.”

  The afternoon light deepened, and the wind died. Rilla was never so happy to be sweating as she was just then—the rescue team should have no problem getting there.

  Finally, almost forty-five minutes later, they heard the thrum of the chopper and Adeena pointed it out as it rose from the meadow.

  Rilla held her breath, watching the copter as it came closer and closer, feeling Walker’s pulse faintly beat under her fingertips. It wasn’t like she could keep him alive by counting the beats of his heart, but it felt like maybe she could anyway. It felt like it would hurt to stop.

  She started humming. Trying to keep calm.

  “Get a figure eight on a bite,” said the guy from the other party on The Nose who’d followed them down. His group sprung into action, getting an anchored rope ready.

  They all lifted their chins as the chopper flew above them and the two people dangling from the long line beneath the belly gently swung lower.

  It was Adrienne and the old man. Her face was set and hard, but worry was in her eyes.

  Rilla wanted to cry. She moved away, traversing back to Adeena and Petra as Adrienne took over. It was all a blur as she deftly wrapped Walker in a red bag that kept him prone and secure, clipped him to their line, and motioned to the people in the helicopter.

  The wind of the blades beat against her helmet, but Rilla watched in a stupor as Walker was gently lifted away, Adrienne holding him still. Adrienne met her eyes and then . . . they were gone.