“No, right now, I’d literally be getting a chartered helicopter and going to a spa to get the fuck away from you.” Petra snapped her fingers. “Adeena’s right. You need to grow up. Even if I said the shittiest things about you—even though I made you feel like that. You should have talked to me. Asked for help about France.Anything.” Petra bit her lips tight and looked away. “You know what your problem is? Your problem is you want to do it all yourself, or it doesn’t count. That’s not the way it works, climbing or life. You hold all of us at an arm’s length. You aren’t honest—”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m telling lies about my life. I couldn’t possibly have experienced everything I said, right? Becauseyoudidn’t experience it.”
Petra glared at her.
Rilla gritted her jaw. “Let’s just get this climb over with.” They were too far from the summit to think about anything else.
“Great. Yeah. So excited,” Petra said sarcastically.
“I’ll lead,” Rilla snapped. Mostly because it was the only way to escape the two of them for a moment.
The afternoon heat hit the wall as she focused on the rhythm of the aiders.Step. Clip.Her brain fell quiet. The wind roared in her ears. She wanted to escape. To leave. But she was stuck on this thread, dangling between the place she’d left and the place she wanted to be.Step. Clip.
Rilla wrestled herself and the aiders around the edge and pulled the anchor off the Great Roof. It was one of the most recognizable and famous parts of the climb, and already she couldn’t remember anything but how she felt.
Dejected, she carefully set her anchors and gave Adeena a thumbs-up. Belaying was also rhythmic—pull, take, lock, feed out. Adeena’s long hair blew like a raven’s wings in the wind and the swallows and baby falcons twittered around them. The line connecting her and Adeena became shorter with each movement. The lines running to the gear and Petra, laying against the rock.
She’d pursued it. She’d gotten it. But all she’d wanted from the beginning was a thing she didn’t have—a sense of community, a place to belong, and love that couldn’t just give up. In climbing, it felt as if, for a moment, there was someone she trusted, someone who trusted her. It didn’t feel that way; itwasthat way. Except for now, again. She was in the same place she’d begun. And would be again, she saw that now.
“Over halfway,” Adeena said
Rilla nodded. “I’ll haul. You can belay.”
“You sure?” Adeena asked.
She wanted the punishment of the hauling. The agony. “I’m sure,” she said.
While Adeena belayed, Rilla pulled herself up and down the thread, hauling the bags up, pushing herself until everything cried for relief, and then she was crying. In her harness. She put her head to the rock and sobbed. She’d come this far and was still alone. She was connected,literally, but cut off. Walker had done the same. Thea ...everyone.
Her tears stained the granite until she had no more water left for tears and wiped her wind-burned cheeks and finished hauling.
No one said anything as they began to the next pitch. And for the next two and a half pitches there was nothing but the sound of the wind, the occasional shouts of other climbers, and the talking of sparrows and falcons nesting on the wall.
They paused only to take a few photos at the Glowering Spot—the Valley so far below it was unreal. Rilla could barely believe anything but this wall existed, and all she wanted was to be done with it.
Lunch was her last avocado and summer sausage, sitting in the middle of what smelled like a giant urinal on the Camp 6 ledge. Not that they particularly smelled better.
“Why do boys have to ruin everything?” Adeena grumbled, finishing peeing into her container. “If you can pee on a rock, you can pee on plastic. And then the one seat here wouldn’t be disgusting.”
The men from the other day were below, catching up. Rilla shoved her food in faster, not wanting to be overtaken. “Ready?” she asked through her last mouthful.
They were only a few pitches from the end, but the granite that towered above them seemed as if it would truly never end. The rest of her life would be lived here, trying to get somewhere she’d never find. Rilla worked the aiders, relaxing in the exhaustion—the relief of having her brain rest, even if it came at the price of her trashed body.
The next section involved tensioning off a piece into a corner, where each piece she placed seemed small and not great, and she was so tired she didn’t even care when the memory of thezzziptried to taunt her. Finally, she reached the anchors and the pitch was done.
She hauled again while Petra belayed.
This time, it felt easier.
They had just managed to delicately move around thedeath block, as Adeena called the house-sized boulder ready to peel off and kill, when the yelling started.
Rilla looked down, straining in her harness to see what the commotion was. “Do you hear that?”
Petra looked with her. Adeena scanned above them. “Check your gear. Maybe they see something wrong.” Everyone automatically touched their knots and harnesses, fingers traveling to the anchors.
“I think they’re calling for help,” Petra said. “One of us should rap down.”
They looked to Adeena.
