Page 21 of Valley Girls
Rilla bit her lips tight.
Nothing.
Do you have his new number?Rilla texted, stomach hurting.
(typing)
Rilla bit her thumbnail and stared.
The response was one word.No.
Rilla stuffed the phone in her pocket, not feeling any better for finally having made contact with someone. The path circled around toward the road, and her steps slowed. All she wanted was to call Curtis, drive out to the river, and make out in his truck. The past forgotten. Everything erased. Maybe it wasn’t good, but it was something she’d actually had.
A passing car slowed, the window rolling down. Rilla turned and blinked away the moisture in her eyes, pretending not to see it. The last thing she should be doing is giving directions to a clueless tourist. But the car stopped and Petra’s white-blond hair peeked out from the driver’s seat. “There you are,” she called, as if Rilla had made a date and stood her up.
Rilla swiped at her eyes.There she was.Like magic.
“You coming?” Petra asked, patting the seat. “You can sit up front. Backseat’s full.” She jerked her thumb toward Hico and Gage crammed into the backseat with huge packs on their laps and a plastic storage container set between them. Hico sat with a spaced-out expression in a cut-off hoodie. On the other side, Gage, with messy hair and a buttoned-up plaid shirt, looked half-asleep. Both boys’ limbs splayed in exhaustion.
“I can’t be out too late,” Rilla said, ignoring that Thea had also told her not to leave the Valley.
“We’ll bring you back.” A car behind them honked. “Come on,” Petra hollered.
Hoping she wasn’t about to do something Thea would disapprove of, Rilla jumped in—catching the door as they sped away under the pines.
Seven
Thiswas what she’d envisioned when she thought of a new life in California.
Rilla draped her arms and head out the open window, hair whipping in the wind. A massive tower looked over them—a sun-drenched monolith of peachy granite that stayed firm in the sky as the trees moved past in a blur.
“What is that?” Rilla breathed, jaw unhinged.
“El Capitan,” Petra said, with reverence in her voice.
The overstuffed hybrid doggedly huffed up Big Oak Flat Road, driving out of the Valley, into the late afternoon shadows as it fractured thick beams of dazzling gold over the ridgeline. Beside them, the massive walls fell away toward the bottom, where deepening purple shadows gathered over the Merced, as if night crept up from the ground.
Rilla leaned farther out, trying to see around the car to catch a glimpse of the foaming water at the bottom. Instead, she noticed the sheer face of Half Dome reflecting the sun, the streaks of snow still at the top, and how narrow and deep the Valley was—like a tight scar cut into the wide mountains behind her. The prow of El Capitan sat as a guard over the entrance. Things she hadn’t seen, at the bottom. Things that could only be seen moving up.
And then it all went dark.
Rilla pulled away, tasting the stone and earth of the tunnel wall. It hit her—she had just gotten into a car with virtual strangers who were all older than she was. She didn’t even know where they were going. She should have been more cautious.
“This is my new gumby,” Petra said to the boys, patting Rilla’s shoulder. “After yesterday, I have to try and make a climber out of her.”
Rilla smiled and slid back into her seat, heart in her throat. “What’s a gumby?” she asked, hoping it wasn’t bad.
“Someone who is new,” Petra said.
“Someone who is new, doesn’t know what they’re doing, has no common sense, is not super coordinated, and is liable to fuck everything up,” Gage said from the back.
Rilla shot him a look over her shoulder. “What did I do to you?”
He laughed. “Don’t let Petra bullshit you.”
“I meant it the way I said it,” Petra said. “She’s new, like we all were once.”
It was one thing for Rilla to think she could become a climber like them, sitting in the attic with quiet fury gathering in her blood. It was another thing to sit here feeling very young and lumpy andnew.
