Page 130 of Valley Girls
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.”
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.
