Page 15 of Valley Girls
“Yeah. No. I ...” She licked her lips. “That was my first time.”
“Oh, was it, Walker?” Hico smirked and nudged Walker without looking. “Her first time.”
Walker turned, a smile half-cocked, but when he saw it was about her again, he narrowed his eyes before looking away.
“No. I’m uh—”What should she say? Shit.She hadn’t thought this through at all. Rilla looked at her feet in the water and thought for something that would keep her safe from revealing desire and failure and the edge of desperation she tasted in her mouth. “When juvie is too full in West Virginia the judge just asks where you want to go.” She shrugged. “So, I picked Yosemite.” She studied the cliff as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen.
“When juvie is too full?” Hico laughed, then abruptly stopped. “Wait,juvenile? You’re under eighteen?”
A flush of heat washed up her neck. Oops. “I’ll be eighteen in a month.”
“Oh, you’re a baby. What have you been doing that got you into trouble, baby Rilla?” He patted her shoulder.
Rilla wanted to bite his hand like an agitated dog. The last thing she wanted to do was even hint at what had happened to get her kicked out of West Virginia. She fixed her eye to him over her shoulder and coolly replied, “I murdered someone.”
He froze, confused.
She winked and stood. “Nah, I’m kidding.” She lunged for the closest string of words that would obviously be a ridiculous lie. “I smuggled cocaine over the border in carrots. Code Name: Cocaine Carrots. Canadian, obviously.”
Walker’s gaze flickered to her, expression impassive.
Hico laughed. “People,” he addressed everyone. “The next route you put up, please name it Code Name Cocaine Canadian Carrots.”
Rilla’s skin itched and tightened as everyone looked at Hico, then her. She couldn’t read their expressions. She inched toward Petra, who stood with Gage on the far edge of the shin-deep lip that surrounded the water. They were studying a section of the cliff that rose out of the water, half-heartedly pulling themselves out before dropping back onto the shelf.
The problem, it seemed to Rilla, was obvious—the air was cool and the water wasice. Like, it had melted sometime in the last week. Her feet were already numb, and the wind raised chicken skin on her arms. If you started climbing, you’d have to go for a swim. There was no other way to get down off the thirty-foot block of rock.
Rilla didn’t knowrock climbing, but she sure as hell knew friends around a swimming hole. At home, they’d head out with coolers and inner tubes on Summersville Lake—spending their afternoons floating around, scampering up to ledges of sandstone, or tops of massive boulders, and diving back into the crystal-cold water. To Rilla, the space betweenrock climbingand climbing up a rock was enormous. She was terrified and intimidated of this formal thing with ropes and rules and packs of gear Walker had shown her, but she wasn’t afraid of cold water.
“What’s at the bottom?” Rilla asked, eyeing the deep blue water just beyond her toes.
Petra swung around. “A cold swim. I don’t. It’s deep enough to dive off the top.”
“Well, then there’s nothing to worry about, I guess,” Rilla said, stretching for the rock. Her limbs were unsettled and uncomfortable; and if she didn’t moveright then, she was going to self-destruct. If she fell, she’d just fall into the water, and if she made it to the top, she could just jump off. All things she knew.
Petra backed away in sloshing steps, and the hum of conversation went quiet behind her.
Adrenaline hit. With it, peace.
Rilla exhaled and pulled herself out of the water, bare feet scrambling for purchase on the granite. It was slick. Slicker than the sandstone at home. But with the adrenaline and the knowledge that she was paying her way again, except this time with an action, she gritted her teeth and scrambled—nearly springing to holds in an effort to just get it all over with. Her breath came hard. Her heart pounded in her ears. She pulled herself over the next ledge, clutching fistfuls of soft grass.Suck it, Walker. But triumph didn’t hit. Her legs shook and her arms felt like they’d been poured into concrete. This was a terrible idea to climb hungover. She was going to throw up.
Crawling on all fours, she managed to get away from the edge before heaving her Gatorade into a patch of wildflowers.
Take me home, country roads.
That stupid John Denver song rang in her ears, tauntingly, and she remembered she should have been at school right now. If she hadn’t messed everything up, she’d still have her friends, her mom would still be there with hangover cures and mild annoyance, and Roosevelt, her chocolate Lab, would still be licking her face while she slept on the couch. Suddenly, she was crying. Big, wrenching sobs like she was still throwing up. The breeze caught her hair and she opened her eyes on the view. She jerked upright and gasped.
She was so fucking high.In the air.
Between the hike and the little scramble, she’d risen so incrementally, Rilla hadn’t realized how far she’d come. The tops of the pines were far below, and over the edge, the wall swept sheer and warm to sudden death. The edge itself seemed to shimmer with its own forces of fate. She pulled away and her back slapped on the granite that continued to rise overhead.
Holy shit.
She closed her eyes on the height—on the feeling of her body untethered and adrift. Her heart raced against her ribs. It was quiet all around and inside. Blessed quiet. The ache in her chest eased. She tipped her head against the rock and closed her eyes to the sunshine. And in the quiet, her thoughts formed clearly enough for her to hold on to them.
She would come down off this cliff, and find a way to keep moving. She didn’t want to go home and see the pity in everyone’s eyes. Pity that she’d been sent away. Pity that she’d come back the same. She had to prove everyone wrong—Thea, her mom, all her friends back home, even these climbers below. She had to prove she wasn’t what everyone thought, and could be what they didn’t expect. If she didn’t, she’d lose everything—any home, any family. She couldn’t change the past, but she could change herself. And by changing herself, her future would have to follow.
Rilla opened her eyes, setting her shoulders and standing to her feet.Details later. Big picture now.
