Page 20 of Valley Girls
Who you been fucking already ho?
Skidmore never dies.
Lolololol you look so high.
Rilla swallowed and turned the phone dark, putting it facedown on the floor. A sweaty, sick feeling clamored on the edges of her ribs and into her throat. The people she knew were still commenting on her social media, but wouldn’t return a text, like they were all relieved distance would do something they hadn’t known how to do themselves.
Deep down, she hated that they weren’t wrong—that she had been partying, that itwaseverything they’d thought. Butshewasn’t.
Right?
The waterfall whispered outside, and she closed her eyes, rolling her shoulders to try and loosen the aching muscles. The pool from yesterday shimmered in her memory. The way everyone had gathered—dirty, weird, and oh-so-stupidly cool and older. If she were someone like that, it would prove everyone at home wrong about her. It would show she was meant to be something bigger all along. No one back home knew what she was capable of.
Doubts pinged somewhere in the back of her brain. But Rilla ignored them, pulling on leggings, a football T-shirt from home, and her sandals. She somehow had to find Petra and become a climber. Rilla quickly shook out her hair, did her eyeliner and mascara, and left the phone facedown on the bed.Fuck you people.At the last minute, she doubled back to pick it up—just in case Thea called.
Out in the Valley, it was almost as if Rilla imagined yesterday. No one looked familiar. The Valley, while small in square miles compared to the surrounding wilderness, was still huge and full of strangers. If Petra and the others couldn’t stay there, where did they stay?
Rilla walked the same path she’d followed Petra and Walker along the day before, scanning each passing face for someone she recognized.
Along the road, a ranger SUV passed and hit its brake. Rilla slowed, thinking it was Thea. In the rearview, she locked eyes with Ranger Dick Face.Not Thea. The SUV began to reverse.
Hurriedly, she turned off the path into the woods. Let him get out and chase her. He’d have to burn calories. Her heart raced, and she kept glancing over her shoulder. But he didn’t follow.
Walking all the way across the Valley to the cafeteria in Half Dome Village, she found Jonah serving corn instead of mashed potatoes. They shared a cigarette outside on his break, but he still had most of his shift to go, so when he went back inside, she aimlessly set off the way she’d come. After crisscrossing the meadows, she found her way back to the path, on the far edge of the parking lot of something labeled “Camp 4.”
A long line of people waited in front of the ranger shack, snaking its way through the rows of cars. Most were young. Everyone was fit, thin, light on their feet, older, cooler, and unlike her. Beyond them, a whole little village of tents and cold campfires spread under the trees.
Rilla crossed her arms over her chest and pretended she did not feel like a heavy-pawed bear, with her un-toned arms and normal-as-fuck body, bumbling past a flock of birds aching to take flight. A sick feeling unspooled in the bottom of her stomach. Maybe she should just go back to Thea’s and try to find her schoolwork. She had been a disaster atrealclimbing anyway.
The late afternoon sun was high, and dust and chatter billowed up under the whispering cedars. Her skin tightened with each step. She told herself she was looking for Petra, but she kept catching herself scanning for a six-three, muscled cowboy in weird track pants with good forearms.
Her phone buzzed and in her hurry to get it out of her pocket, she flung it onto the dirt. Oh shit. If she broke it the first day she had it—
She picked it up, relieved to see it was fine. The text was from Layla, finally.
Who is this?
Rilla,she replied.
(typing)
Rilla’s stomach tightened.
Oh. Hey.
Hi. How is everyone? I made it to Cali.
Cool.
Rilla’s chest seemed to be cinching tighter.
Hey that stuff with Curtis was totally blown out of proportion,Rilla typed. It was hard not to regret ever hooking up with Curtis in the first place—with the amount of grief it had caused them both. But he’d been a football player, hot, and he had made her less of a joke. Until now.
K.
I mean ... it was just an argument.
No response.
