Page 66 of Valley Girls
“Thea.” Rilla droned. Come on. “Theaaaaaaa.”
“What,” Thea said without moving.
“Can I go back to the house?”
“No.”
Rilla gritted her teeth. “Why?”
“You need to sit still and focus. You need to be making significant progress on your schoolwork,” Thea continued.
Rilla deflated. “What’s significant progress?”
“I need to see you working. Disciplined. With a stack of finished bigger than your stack of unfinished.”
Rilla narrowed her eyes and flapped her book in Thea’s face. “I’m halfway done with this book. Does that count?”
Thea didn’t flinch. “No.”
“I can do that at the house.”
“But you don’t. You know I found your mess the other day?”
“What mess?”
Thea counted them off on her fingers. “The pencils, the broken pencil sharpener, the drawer you dumped out, the garbage can you left without a bag, and you didn’t latch the bear box for the garbage you did take out. Thankfully, I followed your little mouse trail of undone crumbs and latched it before something got into it.”
Rilla frowned and looked out the window. She didn’t want to argue with the only person left who cared about her future or wanted her to do something. And she could do the work—shehad to. But hopelessness clawed at her throat, choking her.
She opened the door and got out.
“I said no. Where are you going?”
Rilla slammed the truck door and started off in the rain, without waiting for Thea to argue.
The park felt strange without people—foreboding, with its empty meadows and empty paths and the long string of bumper-to-bumper cars still leaving the park. Her feet were soaked, making her cold, and she headed across the Valley toward one of the stone bridges sure to still be above water.
The rain pattered on her hood and dripped down her arms. The clouds still hung heavy and foggy around the cliffs and she wondered if any climbers were still stuck up there in the storms. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself.
On the stone bridge, the river rushed muddy and thick with brush and bramble. Rilla leaned on her elbows and gazed over the edge, mesmerized by the lulling rush of water, current of rain, and dull roar of wind high in the mountains.
She pulled her phone out and hit the messages in Instagram, staring at the message from Curtis. She wanted to reply, but she shouldn’t have even sent the first message. It wasn’t lost on her that she didn’t miss him until she felt alone. Her chest squeezed and she stuffed the phone back in her jacket and closed her eyes. She’d only ever gone out with him because no one like him ever liked a Skidmore. He was hot, he was a running back on the football team, he was well-liked. He made her more than herself. How selfish could she be?
Behind her eyes, she focused on the picture hanging in the mountain store—the woman with her gaze fixed higher and bigger and bolder. But it kept getting replaced with the view of her feet, bracing the wall, and the rope disappearing between them. It felt like she was destined to fuck everything up. Her home. Her sister. Climbing.
Keeping her eyes closed, she straightened off the bridge and walked, splashing through the puddles by feel. The first few steps were easy. The next, harder. The farther she went, the more she knew she might not be going somewhere she wanted. That at any second she’d bump ... her eyes flew open and she was still on the path. Empty and forlorn in the rain. The road was empty, beside her. The river roaring and the falls pouring.
She walked through the meadow, past the emptied Camp 4 and the empty SAR camp under dripping tarps. Sometimes she closed her eyes and tried to see how far she could go. Mostly she walked with her eyes open. This place that was never seen so empty, and she got to see it.
El Capitan rose over the trees. Its head in the clouds, its prow emerging from the silver and diving into the pines. She didn’t know the way, but there must be one. Somewhere. And when a soggy pine-needle-covered trail led away from the asphalt, toward the monolith, she ducked into the trees.
The path wound and rose through the incline of scrubby oaks and soaked leaves that looked like rose petals wet underfoot. When she came out of the trees, she stood at the bottom of the white granite monster and looked up. The thrum of the mountain beat in her heart. The top obscured in the heavens. It felt, for one strange moment, as if she was standing on ... beside ... something alive and warm and singing to her. Like it could lift her limbs and she would float to the top, having finally reached something beyond herself.
The rain dripped in her eyes and rolled under her hood and dripped on her hair and she grew cold. But still she looked. Tracing the endless lines of its art. Its blank page littered with secret paths.
The rocks rolled to her left and she jerked away from the wall.
Walker stood under the trees. A look of understanding and knowing so thoroughly on his face it made her pulse beat toward him in a way she had never felt.
