Page 83 of Valley Girls
“No,” Adeena retorted. “Why? Do you think so?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I was asking.”
Adeena frowned, then shrugged. “We’re good.”
“I still can’t believe you two didn’t know each other before you showed up for the summer.”
“I knew enough people around the Valley. I knew if it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be stranded.”
“Still.” Rilla picked her way around a loose boulder. “Do you live close to your family here in the States?”
“My aunt and uncle are like fifteen minutes from where I live now. And I’d visited before.”
There was a trace of defensiveness in Adeena’s tone, and Rilla clamped her mouth shut, worried she’d said something wrong or assumed something she had no right to assume.
“Petra makes you feel like she’s in control of things,” Adeena continued. “I actually didn’t think for a second there’d be a problem, because she’s always seemed so genuine and confident. But, I mean, it’s also the community. Climbers help each other out.”
“Petra does make you feel in control.” But sometimes Rilla wondered how much of it was simply a need for Petra to control a situation.
Adeena didn’t say anything else. She tipped her chin to the wall, scanning for the start of their climb, and Rilla followed her lead.
When they scrambled up the slab to the start, Adeena pulled out the aiders and unraveled them from the cordelette they’d been packed with.
“There’s a rhythm to aiding,” she said, the sun bathing her in amber and highlighting in her dark hair. “Efficient aiding makes all the difference in how long something takes and how tired you get. But it’s not the same as climbing. The better you get at the rhythm, the faster you can move through those sections.”
Adeena pulled out some gear and spent the next fifteen minutes explaining how Rilla would use the aiders. “Always make sure it’s clipped to the daisy chains, okay?” she finished.
Rilla stared dumbly, trying to cram Adeena’s instruction in her head. She dusted her hands with chalk. “I’m going to free-climb. Or attempt to. This tiny face crack stuff is my weakness.”
Rilla stood with the aiders in her hands. “I don’t even know ...”
“All right, let’s go!” Adeena said, clapping her hands together and looking at the wall as if she was psyching herself up.
Rilla guessed she’d just figure it out. She clipped the aiders to her harness and her helmet to her head and shrugged.
In the same way chimneys had felt awkward and arêtes had felt unclimbable, the first run up the aiders felt frustratingly slow and terrible. Nothing in her body seemed to know where to go. Nothing seemed natural. She cursed and sweated and her neck and shoulders and legs ached by the end of the first pitch.
It was supposed to be faster—but Rilla swore she could have climbed it in half as much time. But this new thing was different than all the others. Now she could remember how that chimney felt and how the arête seemed impossible. She remembered failing and flailing. And she remembered working until somehow the rock relented and everything became easier. Her body had muscle memory of failing. Her mind didn’t panic, because it had been there before. This was normal. This was how she learned. She gritted her teeth and pushed back her helmet and looked upward to the boundless sky and kept on, knowing in her heart the terrible awkward feeling of failure could be sweated out and left behind.
She tried to find a rhythm. Repeating it over in her head like a song to keep time to—left step, right step, left step until you’re as high as you can. Click your heels.No place but home.Smear toe.
Reach.
Clip to the new piece.
Unclip your last ladder.
Then clip your rope.
Place a piece. Check to make sure it’s solid.
Start again.
Left step, right step, left step. High. Click. Smear. Clip this. Unclip ladder. Clip there. Clip that. And again.
Left step. Right step ...
Pulling over a roof, Rilla’s stomach suddenly bottomed out. Fear rippled up her spine.
