Page 29 of Valley Girls
“Exactly.” He poured the milk.
She made a face and took the latte outside.
By the fifth day, she’d given up—on homework, magic, and hope.
Guilt and loneliness mired her in misery—where the only cure was more misery and Pop-Tarts from the store in Yosemite Village. She sat in a dark attic on her phone, stalking people at home on slow-ass Internet. Hating herself. Hating everyone else. Making herself sick on Pop-Tarts because no one was around to tell her to stop. Until suddenly, Adeena knocked on the door.
“We’re going climbing!” Adeena announced as Rilla hid behind the door, blinking and shielding herself from the intense sunshine like a vampire fresh from death. “Don’t worry, I’ll ease you into it. Bring water and wear comfortable shoes. I’ll come back before sunrise tomorrow morning. I need to catch my ride.” Adeena waved goodbye.
Rilla was so excited she’d been invited to climb with Adeena, she almost forgot it was an activity she’d just spent five days convincing herself she wanted no part of. A pit of nervousness grew in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to chicken out. Before going to bed, she laid out layers of clothes and stuffed her backpack with water and an extra sweatshirt. It took her three hours to fall asleep. She managed to wake up, dress, and slip outside with peanut butter toast before Adeena arrived in the early hours before dawn, Petra in tow.
“Long story,” Adeena snarled over a granola bar as she glared at Petra’s headlamp light. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she doesn’t kill you.”
“I am a fantastic climbing instructor,” Petra said as she stabbed a plastic spoon into an open packet of instant oatmeal. “I worked at a gym in Burbank.”
“No. No, we shallnotdo this.” Adeena stalked off. “Call me when you lead a team up the Trango Towers.”
“You didn’tleadit.” Petra’s eye roll was visible even in the headlamp glow. “Come on,” she said to Rilla over a mouthful of oatmeal. “You’re going to like this.”
Rilla slung her backpack onto her shoulders and followed, afraid to say anything in case it would be wrong. It was hard to tell what she could say to either girl that would endear her, especially when she didn’t understand why they argued or what they were even arguing over. It was like waiting for the beat to start dancing, but always somehow missing it.
They started across the Valley toward the sheer, shadowed face of Half Dome looking off into the distance—a dark wave, frozen at its steep crest. Her breath hung as a silver cloud and she shivered in the purple dark as she followed the gentle bobbing of Petra’s headlamp. This was it.
Her stomach flipped in sudden nervousness. She was going climbing.
“BELAY ON.”
Between every two pines
is a doorway to a new world.
—John Muir
Nine
Rilla spent the first two and a half hours staring at the backs of Adeena’s and Petra’s contrasting ponytails as the sun crept high along the mountain ridges. Adeena only came to Petra’s shoulder, but their pace was the same. Fast.Up.So much hiking that Rilla forgot to be worried about climbing, and got pissed she’d been tricked into exercise.
A huge group of college-age hiking boys clustered on the stone steps carved out of the gorge around Vernal Falls, taking photos of the roaring falls and white water surging down the narrow ravine. Rilla would have wandered off the path and died somewhere in the land of well-defined biceps, ugly-ass wraparound sunglasses, and “brah” if it weren’t for Petra yanking on the shoulder strap of her backpack and pulling her along.
“Down, girl,” Petra said.
“It’s just ... it’s so pretty,” she sputtered, and looked back at the boys. “Sniff.”
Adeena laughed.
Rilla tried not to look back.
Unfortunately, that meant she was focused on how much her legs hurt, how thin the air seemed, and the weird flashes behind her eyes like she was crawling her way into goddamn Mordor.
The trail wound up a deep gully, and the wind caught great tufts of mist from the falls, dusting the rocks with mist-heavy emerald moss and Rilla in a layer of sparkling, bone-chilling wet. At the top, Rilla slowed, her hand clutching the railing for support, thinking they’d surely pause to catch their breath.
Nope.
The two girls dropped back and matched Rilla’s pace, but they didn’t stop.
By the time Rilla staggered to the top of a second waterfall, she was somehow pouring sweat and still freezing from the first waterfall. “I’m out of shape,” she wheezed, figuring it was better to admit it than pretend her death wasn’t happening, as if she could hide it. Out of shape and wet. Both Adeena and Petra were dry, she noticed. The bright, technical fabric of their shirts had released the waterfall, while Rilla’s cotton layers clung to it.
“Yeah. You are,” Petra said, biting into an apple.
