Page 4 of Valley Girls
“This is summer employee housing,” Jonah said. “Not like the fancy ranger houses.”
She thought of her cot in the attic, shoved in between the storage boxes, and nodded. “Why is it called HUFF?”
“They used to throw hot coals off the top of Glacier Point right there.” He pointed to the trees and Rilla lifted her chin. Unease rippled through her chest to see the massive wall looming over them, smoky gray and shadowed in the late afternoon light. It was bigger than anything she’d ever seen.
“They called it the Firefall.” He snorted. “They stopped doing that in sixty-eight, but this is still called housing under Firefall. Or HUFF for short. Rilla, say hello to everyone. Everyone, say hello to Rilla.”
Rilla tore her eyes away from the cliff, to a circle of people in camp chairs all staring at her. An open bag of chips and hummus sat in the middle of a piece of beige carpet laid in the dirt.
Rilla swallowed and lifted her balled sweatshirt fist in a wave. They were all older than her—college age. She tried to look mature and experienced. When they asked her where she was working, she shook her head. “I live here.”
“Like permanently?” A girl leaned forward. “Really?”
Rilla shrugged. “For now.” She didn’t know what would happen. How long Thea would tolerate her. The breeze stirred her ponytail, and she shrugged, throat tight because she had no real answer.
“Where are you from?” Someone asked.
“West Virginia,” she said quickly, thankful for a question shecouldanswer.
Another snorted. “Wow, I didn’t know they had pretty girls in West Virginia.”
Should she react to that as a compliment or an insult? It felt like both. Rilla’s smile stayed frozen in place, as she pretended she hadn’t heard it. “Do all y’all work here?” she asked, sitting in the chair Jonah pulled up for her.
Everyone nodded, staring back at her with the unmistakable look of standing in the warm house and looking out at the person left in the chill.
Alone. A shiver ran up her spine. It was a feeling of emptiness in the air where she kept clutching to find something that she’d always thought would be there. A sudden expansion of a room, where she expected to find a wall, a door, something to hold on to, but the dark kept going.
“So, what’s West Virginia like?” a boy with an Australian accent asked. “Is it like theBeverly Hillbillies?”
Jonah rolled his eyes and reached for the chips. “This is how Brock is seeing the country, by getting drunk and asking people the most offensive things about their state.”
But Rilla didn’t care. Everyone’s eyes were on her for a moment, and she wanted to make the most of it.
“West Virginia is not like theBeverly Hillbillies,” she answered. “It’s like theBeverly Hillbilliesmeets theFast and the Furious. With trucks.”
A flicker of laughter ran through her audience. But she was only getting started. “I know this guy, right. His name is Depraved. No, that’s his actual name. Yeah, that’s a different story—how Depraved got his name. He buys wrecked trucks, like wrecked titles, and fixes them. Three years ago, he bought this wrecked duck boat from World War II. The kind that can go in water and land ...you know.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, that’s not the story. The story is he had this snake.”
Out loud in California, she made it funny and real as she told the story of Depraved and his big python, Samwise, that often sunned itself in the window of his souped-up Duck Truck, eventually surprising some boys from her high school who tried to steal the truck-boat as a prank. Rilla’s eyes danced, her hands leapt, and she pulled the story up and down in a bright rhythm that melted the chill of being an outsider and brought her into the center. It gave her a sense of power, and the warmth of an audience chased away the chill of being alone.
Their laughter made Rilla laugh, and once she started laughing, she laughed so hard she slid down in her chair and wiped tears from her cheeks. She’d paid her way with a story—for the night at least—but deep inside, the feeling of shit and shame grew, as if their laughter was another insult and compliment. Everyone had made fun of Depraved’s Duck Truck for years, but when Rainelle flooded last spring, Depraved drove down and spent an entire night ferrying people to safety. Rilla closed her eyes and wiped her tears, remembering the sound of water in the streets and the scared faces of the Monroes as they sat, wet and dejected, clutching the only belongings they could hold in their hands in the back of Depraved’s Duck Truck.
And suddenly, Rilla wasn’t sure whether she was laughing or crying.
A cute boy with dark curls, dimples, and an honest-to-god French accent passed a joint in her direction, and she shoved down her feelings and reached for the familiar unlacing of all that had been cinched tight the last few hours of sobriety. “California has the best weed,” she said through her grin, knees pulled up in the chair. Someone handed her a beer and she opened it and held it between her knees.
Jonah laughed and took the joint. “That’s the altitude. Careful with it. It’ll wear off in a few weeks.”
Now that her stomach was full, spine unlaced, and the sound of something like friends rang in her ears, Rilla noticed how it didn’t smell like West Virginia, but like something newer and less complicated. The wind sang a song of dry dust and pine. It pushed into her bones and blood, and urged her onward—into somethingalsonewer and less complicated. As soon as she found her way back to Thea’s house, she was going to start again. Tomorrow would be better. Less terrifying. Rilla would start over, for real this time.
She abandoned her broken chair to wind herself along with the music in the cute French boy’s lap. His green polo shirt wrinkled in her grip. His curls smelled like girl’s shampoo. His hands braced her thighs. It felt so good to be touched. To be wanted.
Night fell and the little canvas neighborhood moved along at its own pace—people were dancing, laughing, ,moving in and out of the circle as they finished the hummus, did laundry, and went for showers. The screen doors to the canvas tents swung back and forth in perfect cadence with the mountain wind.
After Jonah left to shower, Rilla bummed a smoke and wandered away, spilling out of the line of tents to stand under the trees and away from the crowd. A few tourists passed on the path, carrying shower caddies and toothbrushes for the bathroom. They didn’t notice Rilla or the slivers of light coming from the row of tents just beyond them. She lit the smoke and the cold wind caught in her chest, wrenching her out of the warm haze.
The dark felt enormous. The granite wall behind her even more so. The trees moved in the wind, as if they would shift and crush her without ever hearing her cries. At home, she was a villain. Here, she was nothing. This was a mistake. A horrible, wretched mistake.
Thea.She’d be home by now, wondering where Rilla was. Digging for the map in her pocket, Rilla unfolded it and squinted, trying to simply find her place.
