Chapter 5 Griffin #2
He could have offered a word. Sketchy? Shady? But he didn’t want to let her off so lightly, in case this really was an elaborate stalker ploy. Here he was, about to climb down a gully in the middle of nowhere, on the basis of a pretty stranger’s sob story. What would his mom say to that?
“You showed the cop my picture?” he said.
“He laughed and told me who you were. Anyway,” she declared, as if the question over The Precipice was resolved—and in his mind, it was not.
She was withholding crucial details. He could see it in the way she averted her eyes, in the hint of panic there.
“It’s not the climbing I’m worried about—I haven’t thought enough about it to get worried. It’s…” She swallowed.
It was what she might find at the bottom.
“Why don’t you stay here? I’ll go down.”
She shook her head. “She’s my sister.”
Griffin didn’t have a sister or a brother, but he’d once had a friend who was the next best thing.
He could read the pain in Lana’s eyes—or maybe he was just feeling his own, old regrets.
He instinctively went to touch her shoulder but pulled back.
You definitely never touched the normies.
Most people he got a solid read from in seconds.
This woman? She was contradictory. And sure, most people were once you looked closely.
A good actor could fake the catch in her voice, even the glassiness in her eyes.
But her body language didn’t lie—the way she seemed on the brink of breaking when she spoke of her sister but visibly reassembled, a hundred micro-movements rolling up from her spine to her jaw to her eyes.
The nervous twitch at the side of her mouth, there and gone in a split second.
The way she mostly maintained eye contact, as if she were okay with him seeing into her soul, but then whipped away her gaze if she felt him getting too close to …
something. The way her skin was a barometer—pale one moment, flushed the next.
Those were subconscious movements, hard to fake.
She was either a brilliant actor who should be in the next Christopher Nolan film, or she was telling the truth—except when she was blatantly lying. Huh.
“Who did you lose?” she said suddenly.
“Sorry, what?”
“You said you knew what it was like to lose someone.”
She’d googled him, and didn’t know that?
Griffin never googled himself, because nothing good came of knowing what people said about you, but he imagined that incident would pop up.
When your famous best buddy overdoses next to you and you’re too far gone to even call an ambulance, it tends to get mentioned. “I don’t talk about it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” It wasn’t clear if she was apologizing for his loss or for bringing it up, but either way, she meant it.
“Let’s do this, before we lose the light.”
The first part was simple enough—the sandstone formed natural steps—but it would get tricky as the rock morphed into smoother granite.
Lana clung to the rope, relying on it too much.
A minute or two in, she almost swung off the side of a block of rock and he had to catch her around the waist. He let go the second she found her balance, but they were left fighting for space with a small tree growing horizontally from a fissure.
He could smell her perfume, soft and floral.
“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “It’s not Cliffhanger.”
She looked at him blankly.
“Sylvester Stallone?”
She opened and closed her mouth, on the verge of a confession. “I don’t watch movies.”
“At all?”
“I’ve seen one or two, but I never really got into them.”
“One or two … this year?”
“One or two, ever. I mean, not literally ‘one or two,’ obviously,” she conceded, reading the shock on his face. “I’m being hyperbolic. I really mean five or six? Though that was before last weekend, when I… Okay, maybe a dozen, tops.”
“Wait, you’re saying, you don’t go to the movies, you just watch at home? That counts. A good film’s a good film, even if you watch on a phone.”
“No, I mean, I don’t watch movies at all. Or TV. I like books.”
“So do I, but a film is a whole other experience. How about I go over this next bit and help you down?” He lowered himself to the next obvious perch in the rocky cliff and tested its weight.
“You can’t possibly get as much depth in a film. Plus, it’s like I see a film in my head while I’m reading. I’m not seeing the words so much as a whole world. I love that.”
It still sounded like nervous chatter, but she seemed to relax when her mind was on something abstract, like the knots. “Have you never even watched an adaptation? Back out over the side and I’ll guide you.”
She clung heavily to the rope as she came over, and he had to grab her before she swung face-first into the boulder. The maneuver left his arms around her, her back grazing his chest. Again, the perfume.
“I … I did once watch a movie version of one of my favorite books. Vivi begged me to.” Lana turned, contained within the cage of his arms. It put them in an even more intimate position, but she didn’t react, deep in thought.
“The heroine pouted all through it.” Lana did an adorable imitation with her pale pink lips.
Griffin stepped back and his boot slipped, dislodging loose rock.
He grabbed a fern growing from a crack as he found his footing.
Turned out he was the one who needed to watch his step.
“Plus, she was whiny. In the book, the character is not at all whiny. And they changed other things. It was not at all the way the book looked in my head. If I love the book I don’t want to spoil the pictures in my head, and if I don’t like the book, why bother?
I have nothing against movies—they’re just not my thing.
I don’t do documentaries either—I prefer nonfiction books. Holy crap, I am babbling.”
She was worried. He got it. “A good adaptation can add layers to your understanding of the book. It doesn’t have to take anything away.
And there’s so much subtlety and nuance in film—in a good film.
Just not the films I’m in. How about TV?
” He navigated over a boulder and down to a granite ledge. “You watch TV?”
“I did watch the first season of Gods and Mortals last weekend, to see what an extra did.”
“Not to diss the project I’m currently dedicating my life to, but it’s not life-changing art. If that’s the only TV you’ve watched…”
“Don’t sell yourself short! Popular entertainment is a powerful medium. Have you heard of a show called The X-Files?”
“Yes. Yes, I have. Same again,” he said, beckoning. “As you climb over this bit, try to keep three points of contact with the rock at all times—like, two hands and a foot. Move only one hand or foot at a time. Slow and controlled.”
“What about the rope?”
“Let it hang. We’ll need it more for going up. You got this.” She didn’t look convinced. “You were saying? The X-Files?”
“Apparently there’s a character called Diana Scully?” She started down, following his hand and footholds. He helped guide her feet into the right places, as she didn’t have the reach.
“I know who you mean.”
“They did a study, and they found that women who watched that show in their youth were more likely to go into STEM careers, because of that character.”
“I did not know that.”
“Stories don’t have to be highbrow to touch people, to make a difference.
” Her voice strained as she lowered herself.
“Your show has massive reach. Given how many people are watching, the themes of resilience and loyalty arguably have a more positive impact on the world than The Atlas of Lost Roads.”
“Than what?”
She reached the ledge and turned to face him.
He was close enough to count the tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip.
“Life-changing literary masterpiece no one has heard of. Not that a book needs to be a bestseller to be worth writing. Stories want to be told. Even in The Precipice, there’s that scene where the boy realizes he’s no longer just a taker in the relationship with his older brother, but he has something to give, too.
That was a genuinely touching coming-of-age moment. ”
“So you have seen it? You said before you didn’t watch movies.”
“Ah, I…” She tried to step back, and again he had to catch her waist.
“Listen, Lana, I’m happy to help you out here. But something you should know about me? I hate being lied to. You indicated before that you hadn’t seen it, now you’re saying you have. Which is it?”
“I watched it Wednesday night, in the hostel.” The side of her mouth did that little tweak. “Someone was playing it on the TV.”
“Really,” he said doubtfully.
“Okay, fine, it was me playing it on my laptop.” She spoke with a strange defensiveness. “Just to see. That’s all.”
That was closer to the truth, but not the whole truth. He released her waist but kept his hands at the ready, in case her conscience tried to sacrifice her again. “To see what—how bad it was?”
“Something like that.”
“Lana. The truth, or I go no further.”