Page 78 of Valley Girls
Rilla looked up, eyes wide.
If this tree and frog could be places no one thought they belonged, maybe she could too.
*Allen Steck,Camp 4, Steve Roper, 133.
Twenty Four
They walked back into Camp 4 at sunset. Dirty. Covered in a thin film of dried sweat and dust. Rilla’s fingertips were rubbed raw. Her palms blistered and cut from the last pitch of shuffling her way up on lead. All she wanted was to take off all her clothes and go bury herself in the Merced.
Of course, when she walked into the campsite, Walker was leaning back on the picnic table with his radio sitting by his arm. He looked up, gaze flickering over the length of her in one quick glance before he swallowed and looked away.
A tremor of excitement fluttered in her stomach, and her exhaustion was forgotten.
Caroline took her pack and handed her another gallon of fresh water.
“Just in time for dinner. I’m almost done,” the old man said from where he worked over a camp stove on the end of the table and a pan set over the fire.
“They’ve returned,” Adrienne said, pushing out of the screen door of one of the canvas tents. “We were starting to get worried, but then we remembered you were with a newbie.”
“That newbie,” Caroline loudly declared, dropping her hands onto Rilla’s shoulders and pushing her forward for the crowd, “took a zipper fall on the last pitch and got right back on it. Like a champ.”
It wasn’t something anyone would brag about, but she recognized the praise Caroline was giving her was for having the tenacity to go on and not tap out. It was praise meant for a newbie, but she couldn’t help but give a salty, dusty, cracked grin, and try very hard not to look at Walker, though she was dying to know what his expression was.
“Oh. Yeah. Right on.” The old man smiled. “Did you have fun or have you sworn off it forever?” He looked at Caroline. “That’s the true test. If she’ll do it ever again.”
“Let’s go right now,” Rilla said, her voice cracking halfway through. “Whatcha got?”
Everyone laughed. But differently than anyone had laughed at her before. And she hadn’t even known there was a difference until right that second.Thiswas the way she wanted to prompt their laughter—not because she said things that made people uncomfortable.
“I gotta get a ride back up to the Grove,” Caroline said, sinking into a chair with her water. “Any good calls today?”
Hoping it wasn’t too obvious, Rilla gingerly sat on the other end of the picnic table beside Walker.
Walker said, “Someone fell into the Merced.”
Caroline grimaced. “Did they come out?”
Old guy nodded. “Took over an hour.”
“Your sister came over,” Walker said to Rilla.
“She was doing the rescue?”
“We put her on the line, since she’s trained for it.” Walker nodded. “We needed extra people, with the current so strong.”
“She’s okay, right?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, as if there was never any question. “I bet she’s pretty pumped. The person might even make it.”
Rilla smiled, happy to hear something went right for Thea.
No one even asked if Rilla wanted a plate. One was just handed to her, overfilled with fried potatoes, softened and charred onions and cloves of garlic, eggplant, and corn, a piece of battered, fried fish, and a soft roll that looked familiar to the ones Jonah stole from the dining hall.
“That hiker we brought off Half Dome the other day gave us the fish as a thank-you,” old guy said as Caroline lifted her phone high and took a picture.
Rilla hadn’t thought she even had an appetite until she inhaled the char-grilled smell. The others chattered away and the campground swirled around them, Rilla leaned on her elbow, forcing her aching muscles to move from her fork to her plate to her mouth.
“Tired?” Walker asked quietly, leaning back on his elbows.
