“I can’t climb that,” I say.
“Stop it. You will,” he says bluntly.
“I’m not you.”
“No, but you’ll die here if you don’t climb.”
“That’s nice.” I snort.
“It’s a fact.”
“There are no facts,” I shout. I feel trapped and unsure. “You don’t know any more than I do. We could be saved in an hour or end up dying on that cliff because of your stupid facts.”
Paul’s eyes heat up. And then they cool.
“Die, then. It’s of no consequence to me. I’m not going to sit here and wait to die; it’s not my style.”
My heart dries and crumbles in my chest and the tears start to well up. A big, sad lump sags inside my throat. Coldhearted bastard. I hate him. I hate him more than any being I’ve ever met in my life, including my father, who I’ve hated since the day he abandoned me. I point to the top of the cliff.
“Don’t leave me, Paul,” I sob. And then fall to the snow on my knees. He stands over me for a minute as I cry.
“You want me to take you back to the cabin?” he asks.
I nod yes.
“I’m not doing that. That’s what the fucking shrinks do, isn’t it? Enable you? That’s what you call it, right? Well, that’s fine in a hospital, where they feed you and take care of you. But not here. Stasis is death.”
I hear Old Doctor’s voice echoing in Paul’s. I stop crying and look up at him and then back at the mountain.
“That invert, I can’t do that.”
“You’re only afraid of what you’ve never done. You’ll do it.”
“I’m not afraid; I just can’t imagine it’s possible.”
Paul looks up to the point in the wall where it pops out. “That thing? Oh, that’s easier than walking. You can walk, right?”
Sarcasm. That’s the answer-a stupid joke. How is it that a boy can go from amazing to jerkhead in a single second?
“I’m going first, so if I fall and die, you can feast on me until help arrives.”
He says this with a smile.
“I don’t like jerky.” So lame, but I had to say something.
“Insulting me won’t change anything.”
I stand there defiantly. He doesn’t say anything and then he looks up to the mountain, like he’s thinking about the climb. But just when I’m thinking I took him down a notch or two, he fires back.
“Don’t think I don’t know your little secret too, Solis. You’d rather give up and be a victim than fight and lose. Easier to cry on daddy’s shoulder, isn’t it?”
“Screw you,” I shout. “My father’s dead. And he was a piece of shit, like you.”
I push past him. I can’t look at his face. I stare up at the inverted top, trying to will my courage up. I feel like I’m marching right toward the end of my life. How will I ever make it to the top of the mountain?
Why try, I think. Old Doctor’s voice echoes in my head: “Because that’s what we do. We impose meaning on life.”
Inside, something else is bothering me. That word, victim. Like a little dagger, Paul stuck me with it. I hate it, but I feel some truth in it. Fuck him-what does he know about it!
“Let’s go,” I say as I brush by him and walk toward the slope.
Chapter 21
We don’t speak as we stand at the base of the climb. The weather is just above zero but overcast and the cloud line hovers just above the valley. I feel the sun bearing down from behind the clouds; it casts a slightly ominous light over the valley. The wind pushes us a bit, but there’s no snow, except what’s kicked up. We couldn’t ask for more pleasant conditions, at least by mountain standards.
At the base of the wall, I look up to the top and realize that even the distance we crossed to get here hasn’t diminished the steepness and length of the climb. I want to look over at Paul and cry or beg him to turn around, but I push down the impulse. No more crying in front of the Bastard, which is how I will think of him from now on, I decide. I can’t give him that satisfaction.
“Listen,” he finally blurts out after playing with the ropes for what seems an eternity. “I’m going to lead us up. This is your rope. Run it through your belt loop.”
I grab it and pull the rope through my back loop and tie a knot.
“If you fall, that won’t hold you,” he says.
I look at him with a so-tell-me-what-to-do-dipshit stare.
“Pull it through the front and loop the rope around all the loops, like a belt. Then re-loop the last one and tie off a couple of knots. That stitching will hold you. You’re like a feather anyway; it won’t take much.”
Well, at least he noticed! I loop, tie, then nod.
“Let’s do it,” he says, putting up a fist bump.
“A fist bump,” I say. “I’m going to die and you want me to fist bump.”
He looks sheepish for a second and then says, “Sorry. Just trying to inspire you. Remember yesterday. You were amazing. Be amazing today.”
I look up the mountain one more time to assess my situation. Because the wall in this section is steep, there’s less accumulation of snow. That could change in a couple of months, but I’m starting to see the wisdom of Paul’s choice. After about one hundred feet of steep hiking, there’s a fifteen-to-twenty-foot climb to a small ledge.
Once we make the ledge-and that is if I can make the hundred-foot hike up the icy side of the mountain, followed by the short wall climb-I can see there’s an inversion of maybe ten feet that juts out as if Nature herself put it there to prevent all those who have entered this valley from ever leaving. Once over that, we will be off the valley ledge and on the mountain again. From there, maybe- maybe — it will be easier for someone to find us.
Paul hands me two one-foot-long sticks, maybe an inch thick, that have been whittled to a sharp point on one end and left untouched at the other.
“For climbing this first bit. Watch me.”
He jams the right-hand stick into the snow, which is thick and icy but not impenetrable. His boots are better suited for climbing in snow with their sharp steel toes, and he kicks them into the mountain as well and then jams his left-hand stick a foot or two higher. He starts moving up the mountain, one limb at a time, with slow but remarkable precision.
He turns back and looks at me.
“Come on. Use my toe holes, but make your own stick holes. You’ll be fine.”
Simple. Just replicate a trained soldier up a mountain. I start to question the validity of this decision. I start to question this whole euphoric feeling I’ve had since crashing, the adrenaline rush that has picked me up and carried me several times over the last forty-eight hours.
“Come on, Jane. I can’t go any higher without you moving behind me.”
As a kid-before my father died-I was invited to birthday parties at indoor climbing walls, and I was always drawn to the heights. I was a natural climber and was exhilarated by what I considered the most death-defying climbs. All that went away after he died. I take a breath and try a technique I learned at another hospital from a woman named Dr. Morris, who liked to say, “Visualize who you want to be.” I amend her words and try to visualize my younger, more daring self. I watch my younger self dance up the wall like a spider, light and sticky.
I poke my left toe into Paul’s first toe hole, leaning my weight against the mountain, simultaneously slamming my right-hand stick into the snow above me. The slope is gradual and supports my body, and the sticks Paul made add balance and grip. I pull up my right boot and find his toe hole again. Holy Jesus, I’m climbing. Don’t look down, I tell myself. Don’t look down.
He moves quickly and with purpose up the first fifty feet. Halfway up, he stops and looks down and gives me a thumbs-up. I nod in the most imperceptible way, instinctively, because any energy not going into this climb is wasteful.
Turning back to the mountain, he moves five to seven feet to the right, hand over hand, foot to foot, sideways instead of straight up. When I reach the spot, I see a large splotch of rock-hard ice. It is frozen runoff water from the overhang above it. I shiver for a second, wondering just how far back that ice goes and fearing that the overhang itself could be completely covered.