Page 43 of Valley Girls
“Want to see something?” he asked.
“Sure. As long as it doesn’t involve a lot of hiking.”
“Oh, were you hiking?” He snorted.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, sipping the icy root beer and following him toward the woods. “I was actually climbing and hiking. Sixteen miles.”
He looked back, a mixture of impressed and genuine surprise on his face. “Priscilla Skidmore!”
Rilla couldn’t help but glow. “See?” She grinned over the straw. “I’m not always a stoner.”
“You did Half Dome?”
“Sure fucking did.” She skipped ahead, gleefully forgetting all about her aching feet. Her blood sang sharp and bright and if only—if only—everyone in her life could look at her the way Jonah had in that split second.
“Wow. That’s really incredible. You don’t need my help to run. If you can walk sixteen miles, you can go for a jog.”
“Well, it hurt a lot,” Rilla admitted. “I kinda swore I would never do it again.”
He laughed, leading her up a thin footpath. They wound through house-sized boulders that had sloughed off the cliff and crushed part of the camp, reclaiming tents and cabins to the crawl of the forest. It was quiet and cool. The sounds of the busy Valley fell away as if they were an hour into the wilderness. Her feet were sore, but the walking wasn’t nearly as painful as when she first started that morning, even when they reached the bottom of the wall under Glacier Point, and Jonah started up the scree at the base.
Still, her breath was heavy by the time Jonah stopped on a wide ledge.
“Oh,” she said with a smile, looking around her. They were level with the tops of the trees, and the deep blue sky was perfect and boundless. All the tourists, cars, and signs of life had been swallowed by the trees. She couldn’t even see the roads from this angle. There was nothing but the proud cliffs standing watch over the sweep of the Valley in each direction.
“Like the couch?” Jonah pulled a Baggies out of his shorts and began stuffing a bit of weed into the pipe on his lap, curled over to protect it from the wind.
“It’s a nice spot.” She sat beside him, pulling her legs up in the wallow of granite curved out of the wall. Resting her shoulders back, she stared at the stretch of the magnificent view.
At least Ranger Dick Face wouldn’t catch her up here.
She took the pipe and lighter from Jonah, and held the smoke so long in her lungs Jonah made a joke about whether she was still alive. But when she exhaled, everything loosened and unwound in her spine, and she wiggled her toes as the wretched feelings of failure and frustration slipped off her skin like oil on water.
A solitary cloud sailed across the sky—it’s shadow slowly sliding over the wall across the Valley. The granite swirled and arched, and her gaze lazily followed their lines in the sunshine. Thin shouts echoed from somewhere, whipped and distorted by the wind, and it was hard not to wonder where Adeena and Petra were today. Maybe they were climbing again, feeling relieved they didn’t have to haul her around.
Hey-o. Give me some slack,the wind cried.
She checked her Instagram, heart dropping when she saw Curtis had replied to her DM.Thanks for apologizing. I forgive you. How’s California?
“What’s wrong with your face?” Jonah asked.
“Huh?” Then she felt the glower etched into her expression and shook her head, tucking the phone away. Her face burned with shame to think if Thea or Mom or anyone knew she’d messaged him in the first place. She didn’t even love Curtis or anything, it was just—it was thathelovedher.
Got it,the wind said.
She blinked. “Did you hear something?”
“No? You seem distracted. I mean. Even more than usual.”
She frowned, scanning the cliff around them, beside them, below them. “I’m just ... I thought I heard a friend. A climber friend.”
“Climbers are all assholes.”
“Really? All of them?” She raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged.
“Screw you. I want to be a climber,” she admitted, hoping he wouldn’t laugh.
