Page 38 of Valley Girls
Adeena stepped ahead and didn’t say anything else.
“Anyway,” Petra said to Rilla. “Climbing pretends it’s not competitive. But it is.” She stepped over a fallen tree. “How did you end up here with your sister?”
Whether it was the way they’d all climbed together, Rilla trusting them as much as they trusted Rilla, or the exhaustion starting to dull her defenses, Rilla opened her mouth, and wearily confessed the truth.
“I got in a fight.”
“With your mom?” Petra asked.
Rilla stepped over a fallen log and shook her head. “Not my mom. It was with my boyfriend, but it wasn’t like you’re thinking.”
“Oh, Rilla,” Adeena said, stopping abruptly, mid-trail. Her look was so concerned, it made Rilla cringe.
Petra frowned. “What?”
“No. No.” Rilla took a deep breath, trying to slow her heart. “That’s what I mean. It wasn’t like that.” She closed her eyes, willing her heart to calm, but behind her eyes it was red and violent and she heard herself scream and Curtis’s arms grapple after her. Her eyes burst open. “No,” she repeated. “It wasn’t like that. I started the fight and it was all mutual. Yes, we got out of hand. Both of us. And in the school parking lot ...” She sighed and resumed walking. The two other girls had no choice but to follow as Rilla explained. “So, it blew up into this whole thing. They took us both to jail, and then wanted me to press charges. I didn’t though, because it wasn’t like that. No one would listen.”
Adeena shook her head, eyes down.
Petra’s face was smooth—her eyes free of that private judgment so many people had when they looked at Rilla. “So, you came out here? After that?”
Rilla nodded, following the twisting trail. “My mom called Thea, I guess. First time in my life my mother’s overreacted to anything. I mean, it would have been fine. It was over. But ...” Rilla shrugged. “That’s what happened.”
“Well, it’s good you’re here now,” Petra said, linking arms with both her and Adeena and pulling them close. “Both of you.”
“Tragedy can birth new beginnings. I lose sight of that sometimes,” Adeena said softly.
“I’m nottragictragic. Just tragically dumb,” Rilla said.
“No. You are neither,” Petra said, so confidently Rilla felt it must be true.
“You helped that man today,” Adeena said.
Rilla shrugged. “It just happened that I knew a little about it, is all.”
Adeena shook her head. “It doesn’t always work like that. You did great today. You should feel proud.”
And Rilla did, a little. Somewhere deep inside. It was a spark that was highly likely to be snuffed out, but it warmed her for the moment.
The afternoon shifted into evening, flooding the cedars and the snow with beams of light so thick she could taste it. A coyote ran across their path, looking at them over its shoulder like it was rubbernecking at an accident. It shook its shoulders, mangy gray fur shivering, and slipped soundlessly into the trees. In those moments, she forgot about her agony and only remembered what a privilege it was to exist in this wild, cruel world.
Then Petra grabbed the back of her pack and pulled her along.
She ran out of water in Little Yosemite Valley, and Adeena showed her how to fill her water from the Merced and make it drinkable with tablets.
The sun sank behind the mountains. Darkness unspooled in the trees. They passed the place they’d turned off the trail in the morning, and even Adeena and Petra seemed tired. The same canyon walls bore different shadows and their steps wound eternally down. Rilla stumbled through the mist, soaked again in the heavy clouds of silver.
In the purple alpenglow, they finally hit the paved trail. And in twilight, Rilla’s numb body staggered back into the Valley.
It had been amazing. But she wasnevergoing to do that again.Never ever.
Ever.
Twelve
The pulse of hot shower water on her shivering, tight body was as pure and raw an ecstasy as Rilla could ever imagine. The sound of her cot sighing as she crawled in and lay, stomach down, in the soft flannel sheets and fleece blanket, another.
The white Christmas lights she’d strung in the rafters glowed softly, making the dark attic warm and pleasant and dreamy as the waterfall roared outside her window. She closed her eyes and her body felt as if it still stood on that little ledge on Half Dome, viewing the waterfall from across the Valley. She was grateful. Deeply grateful. For every bit of pain that had brought her to this moment of knowing how grateful a person could be for the simplest of things. This raw aching that looped back into delight that was the most pleasure she had ever experienced. And ...
