Chapter 5
Clementine
“Twenty-nine thousand eight hundred sixty-six dollars and forty-two cents,” Gran says, peering over the rim of my laptop.
She spins it around to reveal the spreadsheet it took her a week to make, the one wrangling up all my debt.
A soul-crushing, bright-red grid glares up at me from her kitchen table.
It sits there on the screen like a final curtain drop, and all I can think is, this is what my early twenties bought me. Not freedom, not a career, not even a pair of working knees.
Just debt.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“We have to face this head-on.” Gran nods sternly. She used to be the bookkeeper for the lodge and a bunch of small businesses around town, and now she’s here, calmly confronting the financial apocalypse I dragged into her house.
Meanwhile, I’m hyperventilating into a mug of chamomile tea.
“Are you sure this is the number?”
“Yes, but it’s just a number,” she says. “And numbers can change.”
I let out something between a laugh and a sob. “I’d rather rip the skin off my feet and go en pointe raw than deal with this.”
“Paying off debt feels that bad, I’m not going to argue with you.”
Gran’s always been more like a mom to me than my own mother.
Mom’s a history teacher at Concord High, and every summer break she’d ship me here while she spent money she didn’t have on trips around the world.
I love her—I still call, we still talk—but Gran’s the one I go to when something really breaks.
She’s the steady one, the problem-solver.
The one who never makes me feel like too much.
Why couldn’t I have inherited her accounting brain and not my mom’s shopping-to-fill-a-void brain?
“Did you deduct the payment I made last month? I think I put a hundred toward Chase. Or maybe it was Amex. I don’t remember.” I rifle through the stack of printed bills spread across her homemade quilted tablecloth.
“Clementine.” She reaches over, stilling my frantic hands. “I triple-checked it.”
Five cards. Five promises to myself that this time would be different.
“It shouldn’t even be possible to owe this much when I basically live on Trader Joe’s butter chicken and ramen,” I choke out.
“And it’s not even glamorous debt. No Paris vacations, no designer handbags—” I wince.
“Okay, maybe two. But they were from The RealReal. Mostly it’s just…
rent. Groceries. Late-night Ubers when the trains seemed too sketchy.
Makeup I couldn’t afford. Seamless orders after rehearsals.
Physical therapy for my ankle that I had to pay for out-of-pocket. ”
“That’s how it goes,” she says.
I press my palms over my eyes, but the number is still seared there.
$29,866.42.
Alaska used to be the only place where I could breathe. Until I was fifteen and stopped spending summers here because I had to stay near San Francisco to train. Another thing dance took away from me.
I hadn’t been back until Grandpa’s funeral three years ago. Now I’m here again, a week post-meltdown, calling the old garage apartment my new home.
“The sickest part?” My voice cracks. “Half of this isn’t even what I bought. It’s interest! Why the hell do they let eighteen-year-olds sign up for credit cards without explaining APR?”
“Because the system’s broken,” she says.
“‘It’s free money!’ the lady at the bank said. Maxed out Chase? Open Amex. Hit the cap on Bank of America? Hello, Sephora card. Fifty bucks off and a birthday gift just for signing up. Of course, I said yes. Who wouldn’t want a free mascara that dries up in a week?”
“It’s okay. You’ve got the job at Got Wood?, so you’ve got some breathing room now.”
“Breathing room? Fourteen dollars an hour doesn’t feel like breathing room. I’m making less than I did in a single season as a soloist.”
“You may have made fifty grand last year, but the city is expensive, darling. Your rent was over half of what you were getting paid. It just isn’t manageable.”
I look at the math on the spreadsheet. If I live extra frugally, with just groceries, gas, a phone bill, and maybe the occasional blush, maybe I could make it work.
Or I can just pick up another job to pay my debt off faster. Lenni’s looking for someone to clean out the dog pens at the sledding center. Five a.m. starts. My debt would thank me. My nostrils might not.
“But look.” Gran leans over, tapping a column highlighted in green. “If you pay twelve hundred a month, you could pay this all off in three years and have a little nest egg.”
Three years! Three years of handing strangers boxes of nails at Got Wood?, of funneling every single paycheck into a hole I dug swipe by swipe.
I spin my head to face her. “It’s Mom’s fault, you know.”
My mother never passed up an opportunity to swipe her credit card on self-worth, even if it had a 22% APR. I hated it. I hated the cycle of a dopamine rush to guilt-ridden downfall I watched her go through my whole life.
Then, I became her.
Gran raises an eyebrow. “Nice try.”
“Okay, maybe it’s not entirely her fault. But it would be easier if it was.”
She rubs the side of my face. “I do wish your mama hadn’t taught you that shopping was how you patch a hole in your life.”
I straighten my spine. “It was just how she survived.”
And I learned it too well.
After rehearsals, I’d be wrung out and scraped raw.
I’d go straight to that little thrift shop near Fifty-Sixth, the one with the creaky floors and the wrap skirts sorted by color.
The owner knew me. He’d set things aside—shoes I didn’t need, coats I couldn’t afford, dresses I’d never wear.
I told myself if I could just find the right piece, the perfect version of myself, maybe I’d feel better.
And sometimes, for a little while, I did.
That was the high. That was the hit. A swipe here, a reward there. A hundred became a thousand. Then five thousand. Then ten. Once the debt hits a certain point, it’s really easy to keep saying, What’s another couple of charges?
Now here I am.
“I wish I could take it all back.”
“A Lennox never takes the easy route.” Gran says it like it’s scripture.
I flop into my chair. “My life is over.”
Gran slaps her hand on the table, voice firm enough that my shoulders jolt straight. “We are not doing this. You already emailed the company to let them know you’re taking the season off. You’re going to figure this out.”
“I am,” I whisper. “Are you sure you don’t want to enter Wild Trails with me? Twenty grand sure would be nice.”
Last night, I came home from work, slammed the flyer on her table, and announced I was going to win. Since yesterday, I’ve basically harassed every semi-fit person who’s walked into Got Wood?, and they all have partners already. Or they ran away from me.
I even made a sign for the town bulletin board, but I haven’t gotten a single call. Just the debt collector, ringing me again.
All I can hear, over and over, is declined, declined, rejected.
“I asked my quilting group,” Gran says, “but between the arthritis and the hip replacements, I don’t think the girls are up for it.”
“Damn.” I groan, dragging my hands down my face. “Any calls to the house phone? I listed it on my flyer.”
“No, but it’s only been twelve hours.”
I sigh. “What else do you think I can do? Rob a bank? Start an OnlyFans? Sell my left ovary on the black market?”
Her brow lifts.
“I’m joking.” Maybe. “What I really, really need is a Wild Trails partner! I wish Yura was still here; she’d probably join me.”
“Her parents still live down the street. She comes home every Christmas, always asks about you.”
Yura was my best friend every summer I spent in Alaska.
I saw on Instagram that she’s off in Anchorage, working as one of the best sports physical therapists the state has to offer.
When we were kids playing pretend, she was always the nurse, the teacher, the mom.
I used to envy how sure she seemed of herself, like she was born knowing who she’d be.
Maybe one of these days, when I don’t feel like a total embarrassment, I’ll drive down there and say hi. It’s been nine years since we last saw each other, but every time we did, it was like no time had passed. Hopefully it’s still like that.
“Well, I’m glad I’ll get to see her in a couple of months. But that still doesn’t help with me winning this damn competition. I need that money, Gran.”
“The twenty grand isn’t even guaranteed. You’d have to win, then split it. And, honey, you haven’t hiked since you were half the size you are now. Who even knows if your old boots fit?”
“Don’t underestimate me. I have the drive. I just need the right person.” I grab my phone. “There has to be some desperate, lonely sad sack in this town who wants a partner.”
“Fine. If you’re set on this, maybe check Tinder.”
I gape. “What do you know about Tinder?”
“A woman can only be in a cold bed for so long, Clementine.”
“Gran!”
She just smirks into her tea while I download the top three dating apps.
If seducing my way into prize money is what it takes, fine.
Desperate girls do desperate things. While the apps load, I glance out the window to catch low clouds pressing down, smoke curling from the lodge chimney like it’s judging me too.
The words of the guy who ambushed Alec yesterday ring in my ears: Man, if you’re competing, we should just pack it up and go home.
“Speaking of desperate, lonely sad sacks…” I sit up straighter. “I might have an idea.”
Gran side-eyes me. “More unhinged than telling me you’re opening an OnlyFans? Because I do know what that is, darling.”
I groan. “I don't want to know how you know that. Anyway,” I press on, “what about the man who bought Grandpa’s lodge? Alec Hastings. What do you know about him?”
She glances at the photos of Grandpa on the wall. There’s the one of him in flannel at their fifty-year vow renewal. Another with me on his shoulders. If losing dance hurts this bad, I can’t imagine what losing the love of your life is like.
“Not much. Your grandpa liked him. Said he and his friend reminded him of himself when he was young. Stubborn, hungry, and just reckless enough.”
I always knew the lodge would eventually be sold.
When I was eight, Grandpa said he was ready to retire, and it still took two years before someone finally bought it.
For the five summers after that, I used to sneak in whenever I visited.
No one was ever there. By the time I stopped coming at fifteen, most of the furniture had been sold off.
Gran still kept up the garden, though. They never knew if the new owners would actually use the place, but I remember Grandpa just being glad he didn’t have to clean it anymore.
Now I’m excited to see what it looks like after all these years, to see what he’s done with it. It’ll be nice to find it fixed up again.
“Well, Alec came into Got Wood? yesterday—”
“Oh, so that’s the man Cody said was drooling over you.”
“That is a textbook HR violation. Please shut down the small-town grapevine immediately.”
“I got you that job!” she scolds.
“Doesn’t mean you get to use it to spy on me.”
“It does when there’s romance involved.”
“This isn’t romance! This would be a strategic alliance,” I insist. “Apparently, he’s a big deal in the climbing community.
Someone even recognized him in the store.
If I can get him to partner with me, I might actually have a shot at winning.
But there is one teensy, tiny problem.” I wince.
“He said he wasn’t doing the competition. ”
Gran laughs, full-bodied, like I just told her the sky was green. “When has a Lennox ever taken no for an answer?”
I stroke her weathered hands.
She’s right. If I can land Alec, win Wild Trails, and pay down even part of my debt, maybe I could breathe again. Maybe I could save a little. Maybe I could go back to New York with a budget in hand and beg NYCB to take me on for the spring season. People make comebacks all the time. Why not me?
“Right!” I whisper, but the kitchen doesn’t answer. So I push back from the table, grab my jacket, and chirp with way more confidence than I feel, “I’m going to march over there right now before work.”
Gran arches an eyebrow. “Darling, it’s six a.m.”
“Then he’ll appreciate my determination.”