Page 72 of Valley Girls
Rilla nodded and took a sip of the coffee to hide her awkwardness. It was bitter and hot and softly nutty, and perfectly balanced the bite of the peppers and the sweet brown sugar and sage sausage.
Caroline appeared over the edge of chairs. “Hey, guys!” she said with a wave.
Rilla looked into her cup. Her stomach flipped nervously.
“We didn’t save you any food,” old guy announced.
“I ate at the house. Sorry I’m late, it took a while for the car to leave.” She yawned and smoothed her hair. “I still need to pack up. My stuff is here.” Her gaze flicked to Rilla. “You ready? Did they feed you?”
Rilla stood hastily, still holding her plate and cup. “I’m ready. Thank you. The food was amazing.”
“Here girl,” old guy said with a chuckle, taking the things out of Rilla’s hand. “I got you. Calm down.”
Caroline readjusted her sunglasses. “Okay, let’s get going. Before it gets too hot.”
Rilla followed Caroline around the side of Walker’s tent where she opened a Rubbermaid container of gear and started pawing through it and handing things to Rilla to hold.
Rilla had her few things she’d been able to buy, but Caroline supplied the bulk of the gear. When she’d been climbing with Petra, Petra supplied it.
Her chest warmed and with her belly full of food and the camp alive and humming, she couldn’t remember a time she’d ever been this sober and this nervous. It was worse than the slow slog to the base of Half Dome. Then, she had nothing to lose. Not really. Now she had some semblance of a community. And what if she killed Caroline? Or injured her? Dropped her? Took her hand off the brake to scratch her nose? What if she dropped the ropeagain? It wasn’t hot yet, but Rilla started sweating anyway.
Caroline turned the pile of messy gear into a meticulous, Instagram-worthy, orderly spread on the picnic table by Walker’s tent. The cams and nuts were arranged by size and color. The carabiners arranged by length of webbing sling. More odd bits of carabiners and strange pieces that looked like they did the same thing as a cam or a nut, but weren’t either, were laid out beside a few long stretches of looped webbing Caroline had called daisy chains.
Alongside that, Rilla’s stuff was added in, her helmet and chalk bag sitting beside Caroline’s. The few pieces she’d borrowed from Petra combined with the few pieces she’d been able to buy.
Caroline added water and two apples, a bag of jerky, two little cups of canned fruit, three mashed date bars, leg-long ladders made of nylon, belay devices, rope, and a few other things Rilla didn’t recognize.
“Do you know how to aid?” Caroline asked.
“Um.” Rilla flushed, leaning on the edge of the table. She knew aiding is what you did to get through blank, unclimbable faces on long climbs, but Petra and Adeena had never climbed anything with her that they couldn’t free-climb—with gear placed along the way.
“There’s some 5.10 climbing on this route. I don’t know where you’re at or what you’re good at, so if you can’t free-climb it, I’ll show you how to aid.” Caroline handed Rilla a slightly crumpled printer paper of inked lines and x’s with the name written in block letters at the top.
Rilla stared. She couldn’t make sense of the drawing as being a climb; but that’s what it was—a map of sorts. A wandering line of x’s and several notations of grades ranging from “3rdclass” to “5.8 C2 or 5.10 C1, which meant with or without aid” and arrows pointing meaningfully to other lines. She didn’t know what to make of it, but she looked at it carefully all the same.
Caroline filled a little bag of trail mix from a giant Ziploc and added it to the pile before making a second.
“So, this here indicates a roof.” Caroline pointed to a bit of straight line. “These x’s indicate bolts. The double x’s means there’s two bolts at the anchor of the pitch. And this is an arête.”
“A what?”
“It’s a corner that comes out to a point.” She put her hands together in a triangle, pointed at Rilla. “You’ll see when you’re climbing.”
Rilla went back to studying the map, trying to impress it into her mind, and not replay Caroline dancing up Doggie Diversions in her head. Her stomach churned. Ever since that first day at the Grove, she hadn’t even dared to dream of climbing with Caroline. And she didn’t want to—not now. Not when Rilla knew how bad she was. If she messed up today, she could hurt Caroline. Or worse, lose the tiny bit of trust Caroline seemed to have in her.
Twenty Three
The late morning light filled even the shade with clarity and brightness. Rilla stood not far from where Thea wandered somewhere, writing parking tickets and giving directions to an endless line of cars and visitors. But facing the wall, she was alone. In the emptiness. In the silence. A speck on the sea of granite towering above. It was she and her—“On belay,” Caroline yelled—partner, the one she desperately wanted to impress. She was only following Caroline on this first pitch, but afterThe Great Rope Incident of Last Week, Rilla didn’t feel confident about anything. She eased out a breath and wiped the sweat off her hands before dipping her fingers into her chalk bag off her waist. More chalk. More chalk solved everything. “Climbing,” she yelled.
“Climb on,” came the reply.
The ledges to reach the bolt before the pendulum were an easy scramble. At the bolt, she carefully unclipped the carabiner from the rope, then from the bolt, and replaced the gear on her sling.
“Got the draw?” Caroline yelled.
“Got it.” Rilla’s gut clenched as she looked out over the Valley. Where Caroline had to run back and forth to work her way across, Rilla would just have to swing over. She didn’t realize what that meant until this moment—looking sideways across the sloughed granite—but as the follower, she would be swinging over to the next piece. The one she couldn’t see. The oneCarolinehad placed.
She clenched her fists and took slow, deep breaths. Caroline was obviously a fantastic and conscientious climber. But depending solely on anyone other than herself felt uncomfortable. Depending solely on a person she was intimidated by and wanted to like her, somehow even worse. Maybe Walker was right—the more she cared, the safer it should be, the more she shied away from it. Oh god. What did that say about her on a personal level?
