Page 77 of Valley Girls
Rilla did a double take. “That uh ... is not what I expected you to say.”
Caroline laughed. “I can’t ever walk past here without thinking about it. I was in such a rush and so sick, it was all I could do to get my pants down. I just had to pray there was no poor soul walking below.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know!” Caroline shook her head and gave a little shiver. “I shit into the air!” She laughed. “I was so embarrassed at the time. Now it’s just kind of funny and horrifying.” The ocean of streaked granite and blue sky reflected in her sunglasses. “Did you climb in West Virginia?”
Rilla chewed her apple and stared out at the massive view. “No. I didn’t know anyone that climbed at home. Plus, like, I’m a Skidmore.”
“What does that mean?”
She probably shouldn’t explain. If she’d been on the ground, she would have remembered this truth was not what she wanted anyone in California, least of all Caroline, to know. But up here, things felt different. She unscrewed her Nalgene and took a drink, looking up at the shadowed parts of the white granite cliff. “You know that family back home in Ohio that like ... lives by the railroad tracks and has trash in their yard and rides a four-wheeler to the store because they have DUIs—you can get another DUI that way, sidenote—and they’re always in trouble and their kids are always in trouble, and all the other parents are like yeah, I don’t want you hanging out with that kid and if you play in their yard you are never allowed inside the house?”
Caroline squinted with one eye open. “Mm-hm?”
“That’s a Skidmore.” Rilla dropped her water bottle and pulled her T-shirt straight down. “This is actually my mom’s T-shirt from the strip club dollar Thursdays.”
Caroline squinted at the shirt. “Southern X-Posure?” She looked confused. “Oh, I get it!” She laughed. “I hope she taught you some moves. Always good to have a career to fall back on for extra cash. Stripping seems like an international sort of skill.”
Rilla snorted.
Caroline unfolded her legs. “Well, so what?”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Rilla said, hearing her mom again at the bus stop. Girls like her didn’t get chances like these.
“None of us are.” Caroline laughed and leaned back. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but where you come from is part of what makes you,you. When I first left Ohio and started traveling for climbing, it was amazing, but also overwhelming. When you wake up every day wondering how you got there, even if it’s in a good way, it’s exhausting. But, the thing is ...” Caroline paused a moment, staring out at the Valley. “I don’t know. At first it felt like I didn’t belong, like everyone would figure it out and send me home. But then I realized, all those things that made me afraid I didn’t belong were all the reasons I was there in the first place. Everyone has a different path.” She glanced at Rilla. “I’d go in your house,” she said confidently. “I’d probably live next door.”
Rilla smiled and tucked the apple core into her small trash bag. She wanted to hug Walker for giving her something so valuable as this climb with Caroline. The ease and elegance of Caroline’s style seemed less a threat and more just part of Caroline.
Rilla’s smile was real, her position on the wall was earned, and it didn’t matter if she was special, or mediocre, or boring, or a Skidmore, because right now it felt like she had climbed above all that.
“Here, let’s take a picture,” Caroline said, fishing a camera out of her bag. “Your first lead multi-pitch!”
Rilla leaned in and smiled wide.
Caroline shaded her eyes and looked. “Cute.”
“Can you take one of me with the view? I don’t have any pictures ... I want ...” She gulped and forced herself to keep going, since she’d started. “Just to prove to everyone I’m not out getting wasted all the time. Which is definitely what they think I’m doing.”
Caroline waved her hand. “Say no more. Want one of you climbing too? I can rig it up and ...”
“No. No.” Rilla flushed. “I just. I’m just being petty.”
“It’s not petty. It sucks when people assume the worst.” Caroline stood, pulling out some slack in her rope to have freedom of movement on the ledge. “Here, stand back off the anchors and we’ll get the background.”
Rilla leaned back, weighting the anchors and smiling. She gave a big thumbs-up, but then it felt dumb, so she put her hands down on the rope. It was awkward—to have Caroline Jennings taking pictures of her. She looked down, trying not to seem embarrassed. The ground was far away, but she barely noticed. “Okay, thanks,” she said, pulling back onto the ledge.
“I’ll text them to you tonight. They look good. The light is nice.”
“It’s crazy that a tree can grow this far off the ground,” Rilla said, tipping her head into the simmering blue afternoon and the wavering shade patterns across her face, still feeling awkward about the photos and rushing to move on. Even though Caroline seemed fine, she couldn’t help but hear Petra’s derision about Caroline’s photos in her head. All she wanted was to shove itoncein everyone’s face back home.
“Back in the fifties some naturalists tried to get up here to see what kind of tree it was. They put in a bunch of bolts and gave up,” Caroline said, over bites of her apple. “A group of climbers made it up here, and reported back that it was a Ponderosa. They looked farther up and said it was ‘a real opportunity for future rock engineers’*, but no one climbed above this point for the next twenty-six years.”
Rilla twisted and looked up the wall. It was surprising to see how vast it looked still—especially after spending all day climbing to this point. It hardly looked like they’d made any progress at all. “Engineers? That’s a weird way to describe it.” Watching Caroline felt like art.
“The majority of climbers that made this Valley what it is, were white-boy engineering majors from Stanford coming down here on summers and weekends. I mean, the guy who said that was a German major, but same diff.” Caroline brushed some dirt off her pants and stuffed the apple core back into her plastic bag. “So yeah, engineers. Because clearly the future of climbing was full of white-boy Stanford engineers.” She caught Rilla’s eye. “Definitely not a skinny girl from southern Ohio.”
Caroline offered her a fruit cup, warmed from the sun and liquid sweet. She savored the soft peaches, leaning against the wall. In the silence and the wind, a tree frog began its song in the boughs above them.
