“Good,” he yelled back. “Because we’re about to climb up it.”
Kyle pointed to a small pathway with some steps. Not some steps… All the steps in the universe. They wound up and up till they disappeared into mist – like the top of the Magic Faraway Tree.
“We’re climbing up the waterfall?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that.”
A massive huge Homecoming grin.
“You will love it, I promise.”
As we began to climb, I quickly discovered why it was called the Mist Trail. The spray from the waterfall covered the path – making the steps slippery, my hair drenched, my T-shirt soaked through. We were, actually, literally climbing up the side of a waterfall and I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
“This is awesome,” I yelled backwards at Kyle, so he could hear me over the roar of the water.
“Just wait till we hit the sunlight.” He pointed to an even steeper bit of the trail above us. My calves ached and I could barely talk I was puffing so hard. We climbed in a comfortable silence, stopping occasionally to catch our breath, or just to look down at how far we’d climbed.
“Almost there,” Kyle called, “only ten more yards.”
“That’s actually pretty far when you’re going up vertically.”
“Wait for it.”
We emerged from a tree-covered part of the trail into the brightest sunlight. There was another stone staircase to climb, carved right out of the rock. It ran up right next to the gushing water.
I stopped so suddenly Kyle bumped into the back of me in a comedy way.
“Oh my God, Kyle,” I whispered. “It’s…it’s… Is this heaven?”
There were rainbows everywhere – dozens of them. As the sunlight hit the mist, it flung them out in every direction. It was like standing in a paintbox. The steps led right through them, so you climbed through rainbow after rainbow to get to the summit. I’d never seen anything like it. My brain went quiet, like it needed all the mental space necessary to commit something so magical to memory. I wondered if I could paint it. If I’d ever be able to translate this onto paper with my watercolours.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I heard a click. I turned away from the view, to see Kyle holding up his phone. “Sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t resist taking a photo.”
Was I in it? Had he taken a photo of me? I really wanted a photo of him. He was three steps lower than me, right where a rainbow ended. There was no pot of gold, just this guy, this really nice guy, who had taken me to a land of rainbows. I wanted to kiss him so much right then that I almost couldn’t stand. I couldn’t stop looking at him. The way his face was lit up by colour, how his toned arms were painted red, orange, yellow. That. Bloody. Smile. Why wasn’t he mine? Why wasn’t I a Melody?
He stared right back. And I dared myself to hope…to hope he’d take a step up…to make me a main character in a book, rather than a secondary one, the sort who gets kissed in rainbows.
But he just coughed and put his phone back in his pocket.
“Come on, we’ve still got a lot of climbing to go.”
My heart sank with disappointment – but when you’re me, you get quite used to boys not kissing you when you want them to. The view helped heal the wound. I stepped onto a slippery stone and walked into more rainbows.
I could see why Kyle had wanted us to come here alone. Every other step provided a different viewpoint, a different explosion of colour. It was lovely to stop and drink it all in, without having to queue in a line of tourists to get your photo taken on the prettiest rock. It felt like ours, like it was created for us.
I’d even forgotten to be upset that this was obviously a charity trip, rather than a romantic one. I was just filled with gratitude that I was alive, that I could see this, that the world allowed such beautiful things to exist. And I thought, Why would anyone get drunk? Why does anyone need anything like that to escape the world, when the world is its own antidote?
When my calves and eyeballs couldn’t take much more, the path turned off into a forest, and the rainbows faded into nothing. I sat down on a log to rest my aching legs, and twisted my T-shirt to drain out the water.
“You like it?” Kyle asked, sitting next to me. His wet arm touched mine; I saw goosebumps erupt instantly, my ginger arm hairs springing to attention.
“That was incredible.”
“We’re almost at the top.”
“Good. I don’t think I can go much further.”
One last staircase took us to the top of Vernal Falls. I leaned over the guard rail and my stomach flipped on itself as I stared down at the sheer drop and the roaring tirade of water disappearing over it. I handed my phone to Kyle and asked him to take my photo, which he did. Then he pulled out his phone and took another of me, in one of his confusing acts, which I was getting used to. I found it too churny, being at the top, so we walked along to “Emerald Lake” – a gorgeous calm body of water that glowed like a gemstone, and sunned ourselves dry on the warm stones baking in the sun.
I used my soaking wet hoody as a pillow and leaned back onto it – closing my eyes and enjoying looking at the pink of the inside of my eyelids and how the heat felt on my face.
It was then that Kyle kissed me.
He leaned over and gently put his lips on my lips, casting my face into shadow. I kept my eyes closed, hardly moving.
My first kiss, my first kiss, my first kiss.
Hang on, what was going on? Why was Kyle kissing me? I opened my eyes, just as he pulled away, staying close enough so our noses were touching. He delicately drew a line from the top of my forehead, down my cheek, and under my chin. My face tingled at his touch. I looked up at him, so confused…
Do I say something? Does he say something? What happens after you randomly kiss someone? I didn’t know the etiquette. I went to touch my own lips, to check they were real, to check they’d been kissed. As I did, I brushed hands with his…and, oh, the electricity. We were touching hands, and it wasn’t because we were doing some stupid dance at camp, but because he was choosing to touch my hand and I was choosing to touch it back…and…and…
…we were kissing again.
Every worry I’d ever had about kissing – Would I be good at it? Would it be awful? – vanished the moment Kyle’s mouth fell on mine. Instinct and just a hunger for him guided me. I found myself wrapping my arms around him, stroking the back of his neck with my fingers just so I could touch as much of him as possible. All I could hear was the distant roar of the waterfall below us, all I could taste was him. The sun warmed the bits of my body which weren’t shadowed by Kyle, creating a prickly heat as it dried. All I could think was how good it felt…
… Until I thought, Why?
I clumsily broke off the kiss, turning my head to one side.
Kyle kept kissing me, showering kisses on my arm, my neck… I closed my eyes, trying to enjoy it but thinking…
Why why why why why?
“Kyle?”
He kissed just under my chin.
“Yes?” he half-murmured.
“Why are you kissing me?”
He stopped, his mouth hovering in mid-air.
“I…I…”
He pulled away and sat back, so he was next to me. There was a gap between us, and I suddenly felt really sick. I was ruining it. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just…just… I didn’t understand. “Because I wanted to, I guess,” he said. “Why? Do you not want me to kiss you?”
I ran my fingers through my damp hair, fluffing it out. Not sure if I could look at him.
“Yes, I do… But…but…I’m not sure what’s going on?”
“I really like you, Amber,” he said.
The words sank in slowly, like sugar dissolving in a mug of hot tea. He really liked me? What? But he was a boy. Boys didn’t like me. They liked my friends, or other girls in my class, or girls who looked like Melody. Never me. It was never me. Especially boys who looked like Kyle.