I gather myself, summoning every mental trick I’ve ever come up with: Breathe deeply and slowly. Take one step at a time. Pretend I’m setting my boots down squarely on Raleigh Barringer’s face.
I force myself to concentrate on the position of my hands and feet, on the ground in front of me. I pick my way up through the first section, finding the dimples and bumps in the rock. I test each inch of ground before I put my full weight on it, avoiding the least stable footholds. After the first few steps, I don’t glance down, but I know Nick is there below me. Spiderlike, I creep upward, occasionally bending forward to use my hands. This step, this step, next step, you can do it, you can do it, I chant to myself.
Vertigo shoots through me, a sickening downward rush. An inner voice screams, Get me out of here, Maggie!
I know how to counter that voice. Shut up! I tell it. You can do this! You are doing this!
My every handhold is a death grip. The rock leaves red dents in my skin. Sweat mats my hair to my head, collects under my jacket, and trickles down my back. But every step is a miracle, my feet doing what I thought was impossible.
Above the ledges, I find a wide, flat, mossy spot. I fling myself down on it, panting. Nick climbs steadily toward me. Tears fill my eyes, but I blink until I can see clearly again.
I’ve done it. I’ve passed my high point.
Nick grins when he reaches my mossy perch, and pushes his palm toward me, fingers spread wide. I slap his hand in triumph. We don’t even comment on what I’ve just done.
“What’s next?” I say.
We’re supposed to climb through a waterfall.
This is not what you usually picture when you hear the word waterfall. It’s not a sheer curtain of water pouring off a ledge. It’s a set of rocky steps with spring water burbling down them, just enough water to keep the rock wet and slippery. I would hunt for another way around if the trees and bushes on either side weren’t impenetrably thick, their branches weaving together, hemming us in.
“Oh, great,” Nick says, surveying it.
“Yeah,” I say.
It would be all right if the rocks we had to step on were flat
and stable. But they’re not. They’re angled; they’re pointy. Or they wobble, or the distance between one rock and the next is slightly farther than I can step. And every one of them is slick with leaves, mud, or moss. Nick and I slide and splash and curse, steadying ourselves on trees and rocks.
“What’d the guidebook say about this?” he asks.
“‘A tricky section that may be especially hazardous in wet weather.’”
“Lucky us, to climb the week after a tropical storm.” He yelps with laughter as his feet slide again. “Are we having fun yet?”
Gasping, grimy, we come to the last section before the top. This is a series of boulders set between wind-stunted trees. There’s nothing new or especially tough about it except that we know we’re close to the summit, and although we keep climbing, we never seem to get any closer.
Our progress up the rocks is slow. We want to dash up there, eat up the ground in a few leaps, but in order to keep from twisting an ankle—or cracking our skulls—we have to inch forward, balancing, sensibly securing each hold before seeking the next. I try to ignore the feeling that I’m mincing along like an old lady with hemorrhoids.
“I hate to say it,” Nick says, “but we might make it this time.” “Hey! Don’t jinx it.”
“Or we might be stuck in an alternate universe where we
climb forever without getting anywhere.”
The rock roughens my hands, but the hours of climbing have warmed me. I’m finally friends with this mountain, after the last trip where it spat me out like rancid food. I read the stone, swing my body into position, and move up, over and over again. Nick moves with no hesitation or fumbling, with an ease that’s almost magical, and I sense that he’s also found the rhythm of Crystal.
Another hiker puffs toward us, descending. “Heading up to the summit?” he asks. His face is red. His few strands of hair have all blown to one side of his head.
“Yeah. How is it up there?” Nick asks.
“Windy. It’s incredible. I’m guessing forty, fifty miles an hour.”
It’s our first warning that Nick’s prediction about the wind might be right. It’s hard to imagine, since we’re sheltered here, with only the slightest breeze making it past the neighboring peaks and through the trees.
But above tree line, there will be nothing to block the wind, nothing except our own strength to keep it from sweeping us off the mountain.
As promised, the wind picks up as soon as we break through the trees. I stop to twist my hair into a clumsy braid. Stray wisps blow around my face, but at least I won’t be blinded by my own hair.
Blazes painted on the rock, splashes of blue, lead us on a winding trail toward the top of the peak. The sun throws sharp shadows onto the ground. No longer surrounded by trees, we can see the land below us: other mountains, their trees puffs of green, red, and yellow; toy farms with patchwork fields; a silver ribbon of river.
The higher we climb, the fiercer the wind gets, rising from a whisper to a moan to a roar. It blasts us wherever the trail changes direction. It whips my braid around and makes our jackets snap furiously. Tears trickle from my eyes, but I’m afraid to let go of the rock long enough to wipe them away. Nick shouts something I can’t hear.
We claw our way upward, though I ask myself if we should stop. The hiker ahead of us made it—he didn’t get blown off the top—but this wind feels like the very edge of what’s safe. If it strengthens the slightest bit, it might blow us off.
We’re so close. The summit of Crystal is within reach. After fighting myself to make it this far, I’m practically there.
The wind increases with every step upward. My eyes leak water; my nose drips. I want to grab on to the mountain and just stay still for a minute, but I’m afraid to lose momentum. If I freeze like last time, who knows when I’ll be able to unglue myself from the rock?
My breathing gets wilder, a desperate panting. I follow Nick not only because I don’t know what else to do, but also because something deep inside me still wants to reach the top, to finish what I’ve started.
We arrive at a flat spot right below the summit. From a distance, Crystal’s top looks sharp and fanglike, as in the picture in Nick’s room. But up close, we find that the official top is a round hump of rock, exposed on all sides to the punishing wind. I sit with my back against the summit rock, feet planted on the flat ground. Nick yells, “Come on, Maggie!” in my ear, but I hold up one finger to say, Give me a minute.
He pushes himself up the bald curve of the summit rock, and then he’s there—on his hands and knees, but there. He lets out a howl of joy that I can hear even over the roaring wind.
I want to be there, I ache to be there, but the wind pummels me and steals my breath. It’s savage, relentless. Hysteria rises in my throat.
Nick waves at me.
I need to do this. I can’t stand the thought of failing—not now, so close. If Nick is up there, then it’s possible for me to be up there, too, right? It’s not really the wind that can stop me now; it’s my fear of the wind, my own twisted mind.
I crawl to the base of the summit rock.
I get as low as possible, to make it harder for the wind to blow me off. And I creep up that rock on my belly, clinging to it with every stone-scraped skin cell. Below me: solid rock. Above me: miles of empty air, stretching up to outer space, a vast nothingness where the wind wants to hurl me.
Nick reaches down to me, and I crawl toward his outstretched fingers. I hitch myself forward, inchworm-style, in what is probably the least graceful summiting of this mountain ever, but—
I’m here.
On the top.
Of Crystal.
I lie on my stomach, afraid that if I rise the slightest bit, the wind will peel me off and fling me from the mountain.
But we’ve made it.
N
ick touches my back. He might be laughing at the way I’m gripping the mountain, my face pressed to the stone, but I don’t care.
The power of wind and rock and air and sun flow through me. People talk about having a sense of forces bigger than themselves—well, this is it. Right here. All my life, I’ve never known, the way I know now, how small I am. A speck on the face of the earth.
Nick taps my shoulder and we crab-step over the top, the wind pounding us. We’ll take the orange trail down. Nick’s black hair flies in the wind. I brush a hand across my face to clear away the water running from my eyes.
The top of a mountain is only the halfway point. Gravity and the slope of Crystal pull on me. Heaviness and vertigo tempt me to plunge all the way back down to sea level. I move one step at a time, clasping rock wherever possible to keep me grounded, not airborne.
We stop just below tree line. The wind subsides, and I free my hair from its braid, pushing stray strands out of my face. “We did it,” Nick says, grinning.
“We’re not down yet.”
He laughs. Together we sink onto a mossy rock, legs sprawling, for a good rest. He paws through his pack and pulls out a chocolate-covered granola bar. I love those things. He tosses me one before I even have to ask.
I wash down the chocolate and oats with water from my bottle, thinking that this is my first meal on the other side of Crystal. The first food of “the rest of my life.” Would Nick laugh if I told him that? The way he’s rolling the food around in his mouth, relishing every bite, somehow I don’t think he would.
“Do you think today was worse than Eagle?” he says. “Well, Eagle was slippery, but at least I could stand up. Today,
I thought the wind would knock me right off the mountain.” He leans into me, lets his shoulder bump mine. “You did it,
though. I thought I was going to have to drag you up that last stretch, but you did it.”
I laugh. “I’m not proud about crawling, but you do what you gotta do.” I run my fingers through my knotted hair, trying to tame it, and some of it brushes Nick’s cheek. Smiling, he flips the strands back at me and bumps my shoulder again. I bump him back. Warmth floods me: the warmth of climbing Crystal, tasting chocolate, watching sunlight peek between tree
branches and dapple the ground. The warmth of being close to Nick.
I don’t have words for it, this happiness. I take his hand and squeeze it, as if I can get him to understand that way. But I haven’t thought this through, and I’m not prepared for the heat
that travels up my arm when he squeezes back. He’s still full of the summit, his skin sending off triumphant sparks. I trace his mouth with my eyes. Wondering what he would do if I leaned in now.
I angle toward him, not in an obvious kissing position but in what I think of as a “kissing-accessible” position. He doesn’t move away.
If anything, he leans a shade closer.
So I tip up my chin and touch my lips to his.
twenty-six
I hold my mouth against Nick’s for a full second, giving him the chance to draw away. He doesn’t.
Instead, he kisses me back, his tongue twining with mine. Guilt and fear boil in my stomach, but joy is there, too. The feeling that I’m finally making this right, that this time I’m not running away.
But in the back of my mind, I can’t help wondering if Vanessa was better at this than I am. If maybe she had special make-out secrets, which he misses right now.
It’s a long minute before he breaks away from me, gasping a little. “Where’d that come from?”
“I—” I brush my forehead, where sweat has sprung up, gluing wisps of hair to my skin. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”
He shakes his head. I can’t tell if he’s denying what I’ve said or trying to clear his mind. “Not a few weeks ago, you didn’t.”
“No, I—” I clear my throat. “Look, Nick. I only ran away that day because it threw me off when your mom came home. I didn’t know what to do. I was nervous, and I . . .” My heart pounds; my eyeballs throb with every beat. I’m floundering, but I can’t back out now. “It was exactly what I wanted. It was so good I couldn’t even handle it; I was too excited. But then you didn’t call me.” I swallow. “I figured you weren’t interested after all. That you’d made a mistake.”
“Oh,” he says. Blank. Neutral. I’m not sure he has digested my words yet.
“I thought, well—at least I could keep you as a friend. And maybe it would even be easier. Safer. But . . .” I try to laugh. It sounds as if a fork is stuck in my throat. “Turns out it hasn’t been so easy after all.”
It’s like my heart is sitting in the palm of my hand, pulpy and bloody, dripping onto the ground while I wait for him to reach out for it.
Or not.
He wipes his mouth. Then he scoops pebbles off the ground, holds them as if they’re tiny birds’ eggs. Flecks of mica glint in the sun.
“You did like me back then, right?” My mouth is so dry it creaks.
He makes a short noise, not quite a laugh. “Since the summer.”
“Why?” I whisper. Because even with the lingering feel of his kiss on my lips, I still can’t believe it. It’s Raleigh’s voice in my head: “No boy could ever like you.”
He shrugs. “When we started hiking alone, after Perry had to quit . . . I kept noticing how much I liked it. That it wasn’t just the trails—it was you, too. The way we got along, we always had fun. And I wanted to see you more and more . . . but I couldn’t tell if it was just on my side, or what.”
My stomach leaps. So he liked me even before my birthday, the afternoon in his room when I’d felt the first spark between us. I hadn’t been imagining the impossible.
“By the time we went to Eagle, I thought you felt the same way. But then you ran away from me, and you said forget about it.”
He opens his hand and lets the pebbles fall. “And then there was Vanessa.”
“Oh. Yeah. Vanessa.” I struggle to keep my voice even, not to squeak. “But that’s over, right?”
“I don’t know if it is. Not for me, anyway.”
It’s like a punch to the throat.
He gets up and walks a tight circle, watching his boots on the ground.
“Do you really like her, Nick?”
“Is that why you’re so interested now? Because she’s around?”
My eyes drop. I guess I know why he would think this. I told him I wanted to be just friends, nothing more . . . and then when he started seeing her, I couldn’t keep my jealousy from leaking out. But it’s hard to explain how tangled up I’ve been, this push-pull of fear and attraction.
“She’s nice,” he says. “She knows what she wants. She doesn’t play these head games with me.”
“I wasn’t playing games with you. I was confused myself.”
“If you say so.”
He steps toward me until his boots fill my field of vision. Mud clings to the toes and the edges of the soles. The laces look like he’s chewed them. The leather is creased but not cracked, the mesh parts grimy but intact. Nick uses his boots hard but he takes care of them, too.
“Nick,” I say, “this isn’t—I’m not being the possessive friend here, trying to get you to play on my swing set again.” I pull at the broad straps on my backpack. “Should I shut up? I mean, if you’re really not interested in me anymore—”
“I just—I don’t know. I need to think.”
He stands at a gap between the trees, staring out at the view. I gulp water, sitting alone on my rock. He kissed me back, just a few minutes ago, I remind myself, trying to draw hope from it. And it is hopeful. Until I realize that here we are, talking about Vanessa.
I need to tell him what she said about him. Even though I’d rather do anything else—I’d rather get stuck in an elevator with Raleigh Barringer. But it’s not fair to hold back. If he makes a choice, then I want it to be a real choice, not based on me hiding information from him.
“Vanessa wants to get ba
ck together with you,” I say.
He turns his head toward me, but I can’t read his expression. “She’s been wanting you to call.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me a couple of days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Isn’t it obvious? “Because I’m jealous, that’s why!” I squeeze the straps on my pack. “But I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
He walks over to his backpack and picks it up. “You ready to head down?”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He nods, buckling his straps.
“What do you—I mean, what are you going to—”
“Maggie, I’m going to concentrate on getting down this mountain. This is a lot to get hit with at once, you know?”
I hoist my pack onto my shoulders and fall in beside him. We don’t speak, which isn’t unusual for us, but this time the air buzzes with unsaid things.
twenty-seven
I get home to find a distraction from the whole Nick problem: my application to be a student member of the “Handson Conservation” program has been accepted. I can start by showing up at a park cleanup on October 27. There’s a sheaf of forms I’m supposed to bring with me: parental permission slip, insurance and liability form, medical form listing my allergies and medications. There’s also a list of equipment I need to bring, which is practically an inventory of the contents of my backpack. Reading it gives me my first stir of excitement, the same anticipation as preparing for a hike: sturdy boots, work gloves, hat, rain suit, water bottles (water will be provided) . . .
I print out the forms and bring them downstairs. Mom is sorting through a box of old clothes, including several extra Mid-Regional POWER T-shirts.
“Do you want one of these?” she asks.
I’ve never taken one before, but now my embarrassment over the logo seems silly. After being on the summit of Crystal, my threshold for self-consciousness has crept upward. “Sure,” I tell her.