Page 85 of Valley Girls
“Oh my god!” Rilla shouted, pounding her fists on her knees. “Why am I so awkward? I’m gonna shut up now.”
Adeena laughed. “You havegotto give yourself a break. I’m sure there’s plenty I don’t know about West Virginia.”
“I’m not a good representative of West Virginia,” Rilla said. “I’m basically the stereotype everyone there hates anyway. Everyone else probably knows Pakistanis are South Asian.” She was careful to pronouncePakistanilike Adeena did.
“I’m not sureIshould visit any time soon.” Adeena said with a chuckle. “But I do hear the New River Gorge is nice.”
“It’s not like everyone thinks,” Rilla said. “I know what y’all think. It’s not some totally backwoods, shitty, racist state. Some people are assholes, but that’s everywhere, right? People are nice, we’re just ... not ... I don’t know. It’s beautiful. And has the nicest people. I miss it so much.” She looked down. “I hate feeling like this.” This awkward urge to defend the place she’d come from, against things that might be true for some, but were not true for all. “Do you miss Pakistan?”
“Always. It’s my home. But I have complicated feelings about it.” Adeena smiled with understanding. “I didn’t mean to make you feel shitty about where you’re from.”
Rilla ducked her head. “It’s okay. Sorry for being a tool.”
“You weren’t!” Adeena said. “Now, if you’d been shitty after I corrected you, then you would have been a tool.”
Rilla smiled. “Glad I wasn’t shitty.”
“Me too.”
Rilla unscrewed the cap on her water as the wind gusted. “You’re a good teacher with the aiders. I appreciate it. A good teacher makes all the difference.”
“It’s only what I want to do for the rest of my life,” Adeena said. “So I’d better be good at it.”
“Not climbing for the rest of your life? Teaching? Is that what you’re going to school for?”
“I’m in school for an MBA. What I really want to do is run a nonprofit to teach girls to climb. Girls at home ... girls everywhere ... need something like climbing in their lives, I think.” She stretched her arms in front of her. “Climbing taught me I own this body. I own my mind. It gave me a safe place to grieve and grow and want something beyond the life I had. I am lucky to have this opportunity—this gift. This is a privilege not afforded to most people.”
“Yeah ...” Rilla bit her fingernail absently, terrified to take those feelings and apply them to herself. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
Adeena smiled. “Same.” She glanced at her phone. “Err ... Petra just texted. She’s wondering where we are.”
“Are you going to tell her we’re climbing?”
“I’m going to ignore the text. We can just meet her at Camp 4.”
They ate their apples and chucked the cores, watching them sail through the deepening afternoon shadows into the abyss. No sound accompanied their disappearance.
The sky shifted to the dark purple and hot pink of alpenglow, and they lowered out and began the short hike along the base of El Cap, back to Camp 4.
“Dee!” Ajeet’s shout echoed as they picked their way through the scree.
Adeena and Rilla both looked up, into a group of climbers in the Alcove, taking turns on a swing that someone had hung from bolts on a climb arching over the slanted ledge.
“Hey,” Adeena called back, and they crawled up the slab, looking out over the Valley and the sloped green-carpeted walls and gray gullys facing them.
A line of dusty climbers waiting their turn waved and introductions were made.
“You going to swing?” Ajeet asked Rilla. Ajeet was the climber who had prayed over her first meal at the Grove.
“I ...” She watched as a climber clipped the hanging carabiners to their harness and leapt off the ledge—because of the overhang of the arch, the rope swung out into the wide open, before swooping back under the ledge. It took three others to pull the swinger back in to unclip.
“Sure,” she replied.
When it was her turn, Adeena clipped her into the swing. And with the lock of the carabiner’s gate, her heart jumped in her neck. What if this time, it broke? This tiny piece of string she was going to bounce on. She had to trust that the rope would hold for her, just the same as it held for everyone else. Clutching the rope, she jumped.
As the wind rushed to greet her, she laughed with joy.
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