This is my chance to say that I need to leave. To stop things right here and now. But I still need to tell him about the picture and the Senator’s threat.
“I know a great place,” I say instead. And it feels more inevitable than wrong. “It’s not far.”
***
Morning five. I woke up in agony in my tent again at the Moir Camp. It was my calves, mostly—and my thighs and my feet. And my ass. Even my eyeballs hurt. We’d gone uphill for hours on day three, in blistering heat, and the resulting muscle pain had just stuck. There were also many, many downhills that day, which made no sense. I mean, weren’t we supposed to be climbingup? When we’d arrived at the Shira Plateau camp at the end of that long day, though, it had all been worth it: Kilimanjaro had finally come into view. But then, another thought:Oh my God, we’re not evenonthe fucking mountain yet. Staring at the snowcapped mountain rising impossibly from the grasslands, I’d still felt more elated than discouraged. It was breathtaking.
And I’d since learned that we were, technically, on the mountain even then. That’s how massive—wide as well as tall—Kilimanjaro was.
Now, more than a day of climbing later, I unzipped my tent to snow sparkling in the golden glow of the newly risen sun, dusting the ground and the tops of the bright-red tents, like sugar sprinkled over gumdrops. My breath was a white cloud as the cold rushed at me, burning my face, and yet I’d been sweating in a tank top when we’d arrived at the previous camp. They’d even cautioned us not to take a nap in our tents in the late afternoon there because we could get heatstroke. In the shadow of Kilimanjaro, even the temperature was a living, breathing thing.
I climbed out of my tent, relieved that I’d managed to stay so warm overnight, thanks largely to the mattress pad that kept me a few inches from the hard, frozen earth. In the end, Kito had suggested that perhaps the valve was closed, making it hard to inflate. He was correct.
I felt the sharp tightness in my chest as I yawned in the early-morning light. It was getting harder to breathe, but sneakily. I hadn’t noticed the day before until I tried to exert myself, jogging ahead to pee behind a large boulder as I had done the day before.I hadn’t gone more than a half dozen quickened steps before my heart felt like it was going to explode. I’d needed to bend at the waist for a full minute until the feeling passed.
But aside from that and a persistent, mild nausea, I was holding up pretty well with the altitude. More than 13,500 feet now. Still more than 5,000 left to go. And with the increasing altitude, every foot now felt like three. Emotionally, I didn’t feel different yet. But there was still a ways to go. Still time. And maybe it was not so much a transformation I needed anyway. Maybe I just needed to become the woman who could forgive the girl who hadn’t made different choices.
I heard the clank of silverware and low, muffled voices as I approached the kitchen tent. I froze when Van barked:
“Yes, I’m fucking serious!” And then a bang, like a fist on a tabletop, followed by a rattling of dishes and glassware. “You all are my initial investors. You’re part of the IPO. Period.”
“We don’t need the money, Van,” Richard said. “It’s yours. You built this.”
“You think you’re the only one who likes to do things the ‘right’ way, Richard?” Van’s voice was choked with rage. “The only one who’s an upstanding citizen?”
I was afraid to move for fear that they would realize I was listening. But I was also unable to tear myself away.
“That’s not what I meant,” Richard said calmly. “And you know it.”
Then Scotty responded, and very sharply—I caught only the end: “I just want to say again I disagree.”
Richard laughed angrily. “You just disagree because you’re worried about Hilary’s Bergdorf bills! You’re not thinking about what’s best for Van.”
“Fuck you, Richard,” Scotty said icily. “Seriously, fuck you and your smug bullshit.”
Then a whisper near my ear. “What are you doing?”
I startled, clamping a hand over my mouth so as not to scream. When I turned, Brooks was literally in my face.
“Sorry,” I said. “They were all just, um, having a disagreement and I…I didn’t want to—and then I kind of got stuck here listening. It sounds pretty heated.”
He glanced toward the tent. “Ah, Van’s restaurants in Atlanta. He’s selling the chain, and they’re taking them public. Fortunately—for my sake and the rest of the early investors’. I don’t know what they’re even arguing about. It’s done.”
“Yeah.” I nodded as I backed a step away from him.
Brooks noticed, staring down at my feet, then meeting my eyes intently, too intently. Like he could see the shameful truth of me.
“Don’t worry—I won’t tell anyone you were eavesdropping,” he said. “But now you owe me.” And with that, he disappeared into the tent.
A joke—it was a joke, and Brooks was awkward, I told myself. But there was no denying the uneasy feeling in my gut as I followed him inside, where we found Richard, Van, and Scotty eating in tense silence.
Brooks slapped Van playfully on the back. “Why’s everyone so grumpy?”
“No one’s grumpy,” Van said grumpily.
Richard and Van glanced away from each other. “Hey, Encyclopedia, why don’t you go run a couple laps around the block?” Richard said. “Calm yourself down, son.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Richard,” Brooks said, but his tone was light.
