I spend the next ten minutes trying to find my clothes, passing people with my arms over my chest. Trying not to cry. But tears build, and the hurt of the whole situation weighs on my chest like a brick drifting to the bottom of the ocean.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
I just want to go home.
< 18 >
RYKE MEADOWS
I take off my helmet in the parking lot, switching off the ignition on my bike, and I notice Sully’s forest-green Jeep parked by the Information Center. I dial his number, quickly putting on my climbing shoes and tying my chalk bag around my waist.
The wind blows hard today, the trees rustling together in Bellefonte Quarry. It’s not so fucking bad that I can’t climb. The sky is clear, and that’s more important.
An incoming storm can fucking kill me.
The moment the line clicks I say, “You flirting with the receptionist again, Sul?” Last week, I had to drag him out of the Information Center before dark clouds rolled through. He was leaning over the desk with his mop of wavy red hair, throwing out the cheesiest fucking pickup lines to Heidi, a blonde twenty-something girl at a community college nearby.
“Now look who’s slow,” he says. “Mission accepted and completed an hour ago, man. Late, late, late should be your first, middle and last name.”
“Did she reject you again?” I ask, heading towards the sheer side of the cliff.
“Not this time. I have a date on Saturday, so every naysayer can suck my balls.”
I smile as I pick up my pace into a run. I don’t want to be that fucking late. He’s going to solo climb beside me, placing gear up the rock face as he ascends, and then he’ll have to repel back down to clear all of it. Free-soloing doesn’t have any of those luxuries. I have powder chalk and my fucking shoes.
That’s it.
A gust of wind ripples the brown water that runs through the quarry. I’ve climbed most of the traditional routes you can in Bellefonte. But before I leave for California, Sully wants me to climb the first route I’ve ever free-soloed before. As some sort of last fucking hoorah in case I die.
So I rode three hours out here. It’s not far away considering the places I’ll travel to for this sport. If I’m not hanging out with my brother or with Daisy, I’m climbing. Finding really good rock faces is hard in Pennsylvania. There aren’t many routes higher than 200 feet.
And one of the three I plan to climb in Yosemite is 2,900 feet. I’ve been flying out to California the past year to train with Sully, using trad gear—with him always as the lead.
I’ve trusted him with my life too many times to count.
We had to path out my course, and even though it’s all planned out—climbing all three rock faces with a harness and my childhood friend—it’s still fucking terrifying to do it without both. No amount of confidence can extinguish that lingering fear. It’ll always be in the back of my head.
I reach the bottom of the flat rock face within another minute, my breath even. I look around, and I don’t see Sully’s ratted blue shirt he wears with his khaki shorts. His pasty white skin is almost always burnt from the sun. “Where the fuck are you?” I ask him, pressing the phone back to my ear.
“Vanished with magic. I’m a descendant of the Weasley clan. I got powers.”
He was never proud to be a redhead as a fucking kid until Harry Potter. I remember meeting him at six-years-old at Rock Base Summer Camp and he was scrawny and quiet. That fucking changed fast. “You’re fucking cute today,” I tell him.
“Because this is a special moment,” he reminds me. “Look up.”
I crane my neck, my eyes grazing the flat limestone, and then I spot Sully waving at the top of 120 feet of ascension. “You climbed without me?” I frown. “I thought you wanted to do this together?”
“That was the plan until I got here.” His legs hang off the cliff. “I was just going to scope out the face, but I saw weeds and dirt in the cracks. I cleaned the route for you on my way up.” I can almost see him shrug. “I didn’t want you to die in Pennsylvania on a hundred and twenty foot ascent. If Ryke Meadows is gonna go out, he’s gotta go out big.”
“Thanks, man,” I say with as much appreciation as my voice will allow. If I climbed and found loose rocks in the cracks and handholds, it would’ve been a bad time. I’m thankful for a friend like Adam Sully, especially after all my college ones were shit when I became famous.
Sully never really cared. He doesn’t even mention it that much. We met at summer camp, climbed together, and we’ve done it ever since. Some months I don’t see him since he backpacks a lot, skipping college. For cash, he’s a climbing instructor at a gym. When we meet up, it’s like no time has passed. It’s like we’re at summer camp again, picking up right where we left off.