Page 145 of Valley Girls
He flicked the edge of the paper to her pack. “Are you backpacking through Europe?”
“Oh, um.” She swallowed. “Climbing. Um, I’m meeting some friends to climb for the summer.”
His eyes lit. “I was a climber once.”
She smiled awkwardly. “Um. Cool.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the loudspeaker announcement for the gate boarding to Milan. “That’s me,” he said, when it finished.
She nodded, eyeing passersby and chewing on her bagel, trying to look at everything all at once and not seem as if this was her first time in an airport. It was LAX, so there could even be celebrities, which seemed totally surreal.
The man folded his paper and stood. “Climb hard,” he said.
“Oh.” Rilla’s smile was involuntary and wide. “Thank you!” Rilla waved goodbye as he rolled his suitcase away.
Her phone buzzed—Thea checking in that she’d made it through security. Mom sending a picture of Roosevelt staring at a dangling French fry.Because France.The next text said.Get it?
Rilla texted a reply and leaned back in the wide airport gate seat, chewing her bagel and careful not to let her bag and elbows spill over to the woman sitting next to her.
Her bag between her feet, the setting sun flushed crimson over L.A. outside, she waited for a place she couldn’t believe she was about to go to.
A place she’d never been.
