Until It Hurts to Stop

  I mentally rehearse everything I’ve learned in first aid about treating snakebite. Then, to distract myself, I get out my guidebook to fungi and look up a crimson-topped mushroom growing near us. “Russula,” I tell Nick. “‘The sickener.’ It’s poisonous.”

  “Are you suggesting we feed it to the snake?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m sure he’ll open wide for us.”

  I love that name, “the sickener.” It leaves no doubt what the mushroom does. What I find especially interesting are the entries for some of the other mushrooms that say, “Edibility unknown.” It’s hard to believe there are mushrooms nobody has ever tried yet.

  Not that I’m planning to be the first.

  “That snake’s not going anywhere,” Nick says. “Maybe I can get a long stick and move it.”

  “No way.”

  “Most times when they bite people, they don’t even inject venom.”

  “Oh, brilliant, Nick. That’s very comforting. I can’t believe I thought about—” I choke myself off just in time. I’ve almost said I can’t believe I thought about kissing you. I’m so used to joking with Nick about whatever pops into my head that I don’t know when to shut up.

  “Thought about what?” But he’s looking around for a stick and doesn’t notice that I don’t answer him.

  I can see I need to take action here before we both end up stretched out lifeless on the ground, puncture marks in our legs. “All right, let’s try going around him. Up the cliff.”

  “It’s not a cliff,” Nick says again. As if calling it something else will make the climb easier.

  We scramble upward, using our hands as well as our feet. The rock scratches our fingers and blunts our nails. It’s impossible to keep my fingers and toes away from every cranny that could harbor one of our snake friend’s relatives, so I plow ahead, straining my ears for any hint of a rattle. Grit wedges itself under my nails. Step-by-step, we angle back toward the trail. The snake still rests in the middle of the path behind us, and that is where Nick and I leave it.

  “Do you think that snake was a sign?” I ask Nick.

  “A sign of what?”

  “That we shouldn’t climb this mountain.” In fact, it hasn’t

  been a day of good omens at all, first with Nick’s father and now the snake.

  “You know what it’s a sign of, Maggie?”

  “What?”

  “That snakes live around here.”

  In junior high, when I was desperate for any measure of control, I searched for omens everywhere. If the first crocus of February opened, if the cafeteria had my favorite enchiladas for lunch, or if we got to run a mile in gym class instead of having to play team sports, it was good. Cold rain, the piano getting out of tune, and a hole in my favorite shoes were all bad signs.

  I stopped hunting for omens when I realized that none of them ever predicted how harsh Raleigh and company would be on any given day. A good day was when they ignored me. A bad day was when they came after me. But it was dictated by nothing I could see or control. Nothing I wore, said, ate, or did seemed to have the slightest effect. Only Raleigh’s whim.

  But every now and then, I still catch myself doing it, trying to predict good or bad luck.

  Clouds shroud the sun. The air on Eagle Mountain is heavy, moist, with a tinge of mildew. Mosquito clouds hover in a couple of soggy spots along the trail. We spot some red and golden leaves, but most of the forest is still green.

  “Ever wish you could live out here?” Nick says.

  “Sometimes.” This was especially true in junior high, when I wanted to drop out of school and move into the forest. I imagined living on fish, squirrels, berries, and mushrooms. And even though I’ve always known on some level that it wouldn’t work (Who do I think I am—Davy Crockett? How would I catch and skin a squirrel? What if I needed antibiotics or an appendectomy?), I still daydream about getting away. “How about you?”

  “Yeah, all the time. You know, we could do it. Fish and hunt and harvest wild plants. Sleep on pine needles, and only get up when we feel like it.”

  Trust Nick to name the lack of an alarm clock as a chief perk. But I can’t deny it’s a great daydream. If we were slightly crazier, we could probably talk each other into it. For a few days, at least.

  But the reality is, it rains and snows out here. And there are certain things I’d rather not live without, like hot showers. “You’d miss basketball, though,” I say. “And coffee.”

  “True.” He grins. “Guess I’ll stay in civilization after all.”

  As Nick and I climb upward, the sky darkens and the air thickens. Everything smells of mushrooms now, the forest getting damper and cooler by the minute. The cloud ceiling presses down on us.

  “You bring your rain gear?” Nick asks.

  “Of course.” Perry drilled that into us. Nick and I would no more forget our rain gear than we would forget our hands and feet. But I keep remembering that line in the guidebook: Several areas of smooth rock are exceptionally steep and should not be attempted in wet weather. I picture us skidding down a wet rock slope, bones cracking along the way. We’ve hiked through rain before, but that was on flat ground with plenty of traction. Rain must turn the slanted, featureless rock of Eagle’s higher slopes into a water slide.

  We sniff the air, gauging the closeness of the storm. This is the decision point, our last chance to turn back. If we go up this next section, it will be better to keep on and go over the top, descending the White Arrow trail, rather than come back down this side.

  “What do you think?” I ask Nick as we inspect the pieces of blank white sky between tree branches.

  “I say we go up. There’s no thunder, and it’s not raining yet.” He scratches his jaw. “But it’s up to you.”

  Sweat collects under my shirt, slimy on my skin. I cup my hands, as if I can feel the weight of our choices: Go on. Turn around.

  It’s hard to break this upward momentum, hard not to feel like a failure for doing it. When I think about descending now, the part of my mind that still speaks in Raleigh Barringer’s voice says, Why leave so early, Maggie? Can’t handle it? I hate the vision of myself that her voice conjures up: weak and cringing and awkward, as if I deserve everything she ever said.

  But it’s more than that. I think of Perry’s blissful grin in his summit picture, and I want to know what that feels like. I want to reach the top.

  I catch Nick’s eye. He says nothing, only waits for my decision. “Yes, let’s keep going,” I say, and he smiles.

  Here the mountain gets steeper, the rocks bigger. We’re using our hands most of the time now, scaling boulders. Sometimes we hit stretches of bare stone, and we inch upward, finding the ripples and cracks and knobs that form footholds. In a couple of places, where the slant is near vertical, wooden ladders have been bolted into the rock.

  The trees around us get shorter as we near the bald top of the mountain. A breeze lifts the hair away from my neck and hisses in my ear. A wet drop splats against my cheek. When five minutes go by without another, I start to relax. And then the second drop hits me.

  “It’s raining,” I tell Nick.

  “I k now.”

  We stop to pull on our rain suits. The fabric is supposed to breathe, but with my skin already sweaty and the air turning liquid, there’s no escaping the moisture. I make sure the pit zips and the front zipper are open, and continue to claw my way up the cold, wet rock. It’s different from the flat-ground hiking we’ve done before, because there’s this whole new dimension to deal with: the vertical. Often the span of a step seems impossible, a gap my legs can’t possibly cover, but I reach and I stretch and I cover it somehow. Other times, I’ll stop at a rock outcropping, clueless about how to scale it, but I learn to pick out the dimples and shelves I can use to help myself up.

  Nick’s above me, his long arms and legs pulling him upward faster than I can go, but he waits for me at every convenient ledge. We’re both panting, our skin shiny. Our stomachs rumble, but we don’t
stop for lunch, though it’s after twelve.

  I try not to look out over the valley too much. As long as I focus on the rock beneath my feet, the tree branches jutting over the trail, I’m okay. But when I glance at the drop-off, the view whirls and the sky wheels around me; the mountain seems to fall away from beneath my feet. I fix my eyes on solid rock again, and the world clicks back into place.

  When we break out above tree line, the full force of the rain slashes into us. We retreat into the trees again. Huddling below the signs that say: alpine zone—watch where you step and elevation 4,000 feet—no camping beyond this point, we gasp to catch the breath that the storm has stolen from us.

  “Wow,” I say.

  Nick wipes rain off his face.

  “This might not be the best idea we’ve ever had,” I say. “You think?” he says, and then we’re both laughing, the

  laughter a relief valve for the nervousness just underneath.

  As we move back onto the trail, the rain blasts us, soaking into every crevice: the opening around my face, the narrow gap around my cuffs, the zippers I opened to let in cool air.

  The top of Eagle Mountain keeps receding. I think each bump in the terrain is going to be the last one, only to top it and find another one higher.

  But in spite of the pounding rain and the ache in my legs, we’re making progress. My own strength is getting me up this mountain. I scale boulder after boulder, joy welling up inside me.

  Nick points out a circular metal survey marker under our feet, and suddenly I realize we’ve reached the top.

  There would probably be a view on a sunnier day. Now I see vague humps of fog-blurred hills and trees below us, but mostly it’s like being inside a cloud. I’m as wet as I can get, with my jacket and pants plastered to my skin, and water dribbling down my face.

  Nick wraps his arms around me, and I hug him back. “Welcome to Eagle,” he says.

  “Beautiful weather we’re having.” And for a minute we savor the summit, this giddiness of having nowhere higher to go.

  “You’re soaked,” he says in my ear.

  “So are you.”

  He rubs his wet cheek against mine, laughing softly. At that moment, while we cling to each other, I don’t mind the rain. It dissolves the boundary between my body and the world, the boundary between Nick and me.

  eight

  We find the White Arrow trail on the other side of the mountain and start our descent, clambering over slippery wet boulders. In the steepest places, I sit and scoot down crab-like with my butt, hands, and feet all touching the rock. I couldn’t care less if the Sitting Crab isn’t a graceful position— I’m not about to break my neck.

  I skid once on a wet leaf, and my stomach leaps onto my tongue, but I grip the jutting edge of a boulder to stop myself from hurtling down the trail. As much as I just want to get home where I can dry off, I force myself to go slowly, to concentrate on each step. Perry has told us that most mountainclimbing accidents occur on the way down, and I believe it.

  “Think it’ll rain today, Maggie?” Nick asks.

  We go to Nick’s place, but nobody is home to celebrate our victory. We peel off our outer gear in his kitchen, leaving it in a soggy lump next to the door, and climb rather squishily up to his room. I face the picture and the map of Crystal, thinking: I bet I could climb you, too.

  “I should’ve brought another change of clothes,” I say, pulling my shirt away from my skin. I’ve changed into dry socks and shoes—I always have extra socks when I hike—but I might as well have gone swimming in the rest of my clothes, which didn’t dry much in the two hours in the car. The clothes I wore yesterday are dry but dirty.

  “You want one of my T-shirts?” Nick tosses me a gargantuan piece of fabric I could use as a tent.

  “Thanks. I have never been this soaked in my life.”

  “Me neither.” He laughs and tugs at the bottom of my shirt, pretending to wring water from it. I bump against him and squeeze the bottom of his shirt the same way. We’re both still full of the mountain. I try to step away, but he’s holding on to my shirt.

  “Nick, you should let me change.”

  “No, I like you the way you are.”

  “Very funny.” I try to toss my head, and my hair moves as one wet mass. “I’m probably carrying a gallon of water in my hair alone.”

  He twines his hand in my hair. “That’s a good survival strategy—carry extra water up here so you won’t dehydrate.”

  “Yeah, this brain of mine is always working.”

  Usually, the only person who touches my hair is the girl down at The Mane Event, who always asks, “When’s the last time you had this cut?” in a tone implying I’ve dragged my head through a swamp before presenting it to her.

  But Nick does not ask me when I last cut my hair, or whether I want a shampoo, or if I want a conditioner treatment to save my raggedy ends. His hand stays in my hair, the fingers moving as if to massage my scalp.

  We’re breathless from laughing, but there’s something else in the way we’re staring at each other now, something electric and scary and delicious. His eyes search my face; his throat moves as he swallows.

  He bends forward, and his mouth touches mine. He pauses, waiting for something—my reaction?—but I don’t know what to do now that this is actually happening. Finally, I engage the gears in my brain, almost hearing them grind. I tilt my face up toward his and kiss him back.

  He’s not like Carl.

  For one thing, Nick kisses slowly enough for me to feel it. And he opens his mouth. I concentrate on the point where our tongues touch. Heat spreads through me, and though his mouth feels a little strange, wetter and softer than I would have guessed, I don’t want him to stop. He strokes my hair, my shoulder. He kisses my neck and I arch my back, startled by his tongue against my skin.

  His mouth finds mine again. I shiver because I’m not used to being this close to anyone, especially not for this long, but I don’t break away.

  This is what I’ve wanted. Yet some small part of my brain hangs back, asking: What happens next? What does this mean? My thoughts fragment, sliding and crashing into one another, their jagged edges catching. Still I keep kissing him, one hand holding on to the dry shirt he gave me, the other gripping the damp shirt he’s wearing.

  “Nick! Are you home?” his mom calls from the stairway, and her voice jolts Nick and me apart. Now that his tongue is no longer in my mouth, I have no idea what to say, where to pick up.

  “Maggie, I—” His voice is hoarse.

  “Um, I should go,” I say, my blood running hot and cold, heart jumping up against the roof of my mouth as if I’ve had way too much caffeine. I need to think. I need to breathe. I need—

  I’m out of the room, jogging down the stairs with a quick “Hi!” to Phoebe. I escape into the gray September afternoon.

  It has stopped raining, which is a good thing because I have a two-mile walk home. Also I realize, several blocks from Nick’s house, that I am still holding the shirt he gave me, but I have left behind my overnight bag, boots, backpack, and rain suit.

  I pass through the center of town, the strip with the drugstore and the real-estate office, the gas station and the funeral home. There’s also a rectangular park with a war memorial and a bronze statue of the town founder holding his fist to his chest in what is supposed to suggest his intense love for the town, but always makes me think he’s having a heart attack.

  I head west, trying to digest what just happened with Nick, but all I’m able to do is knead his T-shirt. I replay the kiss endlessly: his hands in my hair, his mouth sweet from the trail mix we ate in the car, his tongue on my neck.

  At last I reach my own street, a row of 1950s flat-roofed boxes. I’ve often wondered if it was the fear of annihilation by hydrogen bomb that led the builders of my neighborhood to create all these concrete-walled bunkers, with windows so deeply recessed that our living room stays dark even in the middle of a blazing summer day. And on cloudy days, like today,
it might as well be the inside of a closet.

  I’m glad for the darkness, though, glad that both my parents are out. I curl up on the couch and press my cheek against the rough weave of brown-rust-gold plaid. This is the couch I come to when I’m sick. This is where I used to lie every night in junior high, worrying about the next day’s tortures, trying to gather myself. Counting down to weekends, to vacations, to the end of the school year.

  Now I take refuge on the couch again. Only this time, I’m not miserable. This time, I’m thinking, So this is what it feels like to get what you want.

  Mom and I eat dinner alone, since Dad’s working late at the power company. The storm must’ve caused outages somewhere; bad weather usually earns him overtime. When I was little, and he talked about the endless demands of “the grid,” I pictured it as a huge beast—like a lion, incredibly powerful and always hungry.

  We microwave a couple of trays of food and eat in the living room. PBS has a special on, featuring famous moments from all the old movies Mom loves.

  During the pledge-drive break, she mutes the TV. “I need your college list, Maggie,” she reminds me.

  We’ve been talking about this list a lot lately. Mom wants us to visit schools this year, so I’ll be ready to apply early in my senior year. She’s been planning my college education since I popped out of the womb. Not that I mind, on one level. Whenever I go with Sylvie to visit Wendy at the university, I revel in the library, the giant bookstore, the wide yards where people sit reading or arguing about things like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And though there are plenty of beer cans strewn around, college seems like a place where it’s okay to admit you have a brain.

  I’ve already decided that I want to live away from home, and that I want someplace strong in math and science, but where I can also take music as an elective. Maybe a big school, where one small clique can’t rule the campus.

  But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Wanting to go to college isn’t the same as filtering the flood of information, figuring it all out, reading about the majors and degrees and activities and requirements, making the choices. If I could snap my fingers and be transported to the right school, it would be one thing, but what if I choose wrong? What if I pick the wrong major and realize I hate what I’m studying, or discover that the professors are boring and out of touch, or learn that there are no jobs in the field? What if I end up at a place ruled by people like Raleigh and Adriana? What if the school is too big and I just feel lost?