Before
Frankie
“Hello?” My voice is hoarse. “Please stop calling me. I’m not going to tell anyone about us. Just please stop.”
Silence. Followed by some breathing. A moment later, he hangs up. And then a text.
You know you can’t ignore me, right? I know where you live. I’d find someplace better to hide.
My hand holding the phone is shaking as I stare down at it. And then another message. This one with a new photo taken only hours earlier—of Richard and me outside the subway steps.
* * *
I dressed quickly in the pitch dark, tugging on two layers of long underwear under my hard-shell pants and fleece, then my down jacket and Gore-Tex shell, wool beanie, gloves, balaclava, glacier goggles.
And on top of it all, my warmest parka. It was impossible to breathe.
Sweat was already trickling down my spine.
But as soon as I emerged from the tent, I was glad for the layers. It was brutally cold, the wind howling and burning my small patches of exposed skin. No stars overhead now. No sign of the moon. Full dark. Barely 4:00 a.m.
It was a relief to make my way into the dining tent. Bakari, at least, was bright-eyed and excited. Van, Richard, Scotty, and Brooks, stone-faced as they ate breakfast, less so. Everyone was wearing hard hats. Before I could even inquire, Bakari handed one to me.
“You have on all your layers?” he asked.
“Yes, all of them.” I pressed a hand against my swollen chest as I looked at the hard hat in my hands. “I don’t feel the most…mobile.”
Bakari smiled and nodded. “Warm is more important for now. You can always take something off.” He nodded toward the food. “Eat quickly and then we will go.”
Once I was seated, he placed the helmet on my head, checking the fit as if I were a toddler. “Give me your light. I will put it on.” He adjusted the chin strap and secured my headlamp. “Perfect,” he proclaimed.
“Okay,” I said tentatively, both wanting and not wanting to know exactly what the helmet was for. “Great.”
“Kito will be in to check everyone’s numbers before we go.” Bakari clapped his hands together once, like a camp counselor.
“Does everyone else feel like garbage?” Scotty asked once Bakari had left the tent.
We all muttered our assent. I felt awful. Worse than the night before. There was no pretending otherwise, but I was trying to chalk it up to anxiety.
“I’ve got a pounding headache,” Richard offered.
“Little nauseous,” Van added, raising his hand.
“I ate so many antacids last night that the inside of my mouth feels like a chalkboard,” Brooks said.
We all laughed.
“So, what exactly is the Western Breach?” My head throbbed inside my helmet. “I know it’s late to be asking, but I’ve been trying to avoid thinking too much about it.”
“Yeah, probably too late,” Brooks said, smiling sympathetically.
“The Western Breach is the steepest part of the ascent, six hours of nearly directly vertical rock scramble.” The more he talked, the more excited he sounded.
Like a little kid describing a roller-coaster ride.
“Physically challenging and totally exposed. So, hope you’re okay with heights. But the real issue is the rockslides.”
“Rockslides?” I asked against my better judgment.
“Yes. Only question is whether the rocks actually come down on top of us. You got anyone back home you want to say your last goodbyes to?” Brooks laughed awkwardly. “I’m just joking, sort of.”
“Knock it off, Encyclopedia,” Van said.
“I’m just giving her the facts. She asked.”
“I did ask,” I offered. “And luckily there’s no one back home to call.” Had I said that for Richard’s benefit?
Good Lord. I needed this summit. I needed to focus myself. I was leaving that seventeen-year-old girl up there.
“Come on, Brooks,” Richard chimed in. “There’s a best-case scenario and a worst-case.”
“No,” Brooks said. “Facts are facts.”
Richard rolled his eyes. “Brooks, you sell ‘environmentally friendly’ chemicals for a living. Come on. You use facts to make whatever point serves you.”
“Sorry, Richard, if I don’t see the truth as a relative thing, like some people,” Brooks said, and there was a real edge to his voice.
“Come on, guys,” Van mumbled.
“Yeah, give it a rest,” Scotty added. “If I’m going to die, I don’t want to spend my last hours on Earth listening to you assholes bickering.”
“Okay, okay.” Bakari had stepped back inside the tent with Kito, pulse oximeter in hand. Their arrival instantly defused the tension; it was as if we all exhaled at once.
“Bakari, can you explain the Western Breach?” Richard turned to me and winked. “You’re good at being honest and calm.”
“Today is the most difficult part of the climb for two reasons,” Bakari said, sounding like he’d given this speech a thousand times before.
Meanwhile, Kito began checking our numbers.
“Several hours of a scramble—hands and feet on rocks. Very steep. It is also more elevation gain and much longer time climbing than the other days.”
“How much more?” I asked.
“A lot more.” Bakari smiled. “But slowly, slowly.”
“There are also rockslides, right?” Brooks added, knocking on his helmet for emphasis.
Oh, God, that’s what the helmets were for. I should have put two and two together, but it was like my brain kept spitting out unwelcome information instead of processing it.
“Yes,” Bakari said, but his tone was measured.
“The area we cross first today is a place where there have been rockslides in the past. Two climbers were killed—ten and fifteen years ago. And not with our company. Changes have been made to make the route safer for everyone. That’s why we leave so early. Before the sun rises.”
“Wouldn’t daylight be helpful?” I ask.
“Before dawn the rocks stay frozen into place,” Bakari said, as if this should have been obvious. “They cannot slide.”
“You’re serious?” I asked. “We’re counting on ice?”
“Nature is your friend if you accept that it is always in charge,” Bakari said, smiling. “It’s the way of the climb.”
“We have never had a client even need the helmets,” Kito added reassuringly. “We’ve never had a problem of any kind crossing the Western Breach. But it’s always correct to take precautions.”
Van pushed himself up from the table, his numbers fully improved and safely recorded, his red hard hat wobbling on top of his head. He reached to tighten it. “Let’s all just think positively. I’m living proof,” he said. “So, seriously, exactly how long is today?”
“It takes as long as it takes,” Bakari said, evading the question. He never wanted to tell us how long, or how far. It wasn’t the worst strategy—for hiking and maybe for life.
“We cross the breach, then have lunch at the crater,” Kito added. “And then we will see where we are. We may summit this afternoon.”
“Today?” Richard asked.
“You sound disappointed.” Bakari laughed. “We can have you hike extra if you like.”
“It does feel sudden,” Van said. “Personally, I was hoping for an epiphany, and it hasn’t gotten here yet.”
“Ah, second thoughts. I knew it.” Richard clapped Van on the back.
“Knew what?” Brooks asked.
“He’s changing his mind about the sale,” Richard said.
Van shrugged. “You got to follow your heart, right?”
“Goddamn idealist,” Scotty muttered, but good-naturedly. “Guess I’ll have to get rich the old-fashioned way—rifling through purses at the Racquet Club.”
“There is still time for inspiration,” Kito said with a genuine gleam in his eyes. “Once the sun is up, you will see things most people will live their whole lives and never see.” He smiled brightly as he handed me the oximeter.
I clipped my finger in and tried to relax. Breathe, breathe, breathe—it worked sometimes to make your numbers a little better.
Eighty-seven ox, 108 pulse. A tiny bit better. Not mandatory go-home numbers. But still, at sea level, I would be dead.
I pulled it off quickly. “Ninety and one-oh-five.”
When I looked up, Richard was eyeing me. I’m fine, I mouthed when no one was looking.
“Okay!” Bakari clapped his hands together again. “Let’s go!”
As everyone filed out, Richard put a hand on my arm, holding me back until the voices had drifted some distance away.
“Promise that you’ll say something if you’re not okay?” Richard asked. The concern in his eyes felt like a thing I could reach out and touch. “So I can do something—or have someone with actual skills do something.”
“I promise.”
Now we had a secret and a promise. Richard stared at me in silence. Finally, he moved his hand from my arm to my face. Held it there. For the longest time, I forgot to breathe. Then, Richard pulled his hand away.
“I’m sorry,” he said once to me and then again as if to someone else. “Sorry.” He sounded winded. And then he stepped toward the exit and was gone.
—
We were quiet as we hiked single file in the frozen darkness.
I tried not to notice my cheek tingling where Richard’s hand had been.
Or that my legs felt shaky. I focused instead on the path in front of me, but that wasn’t easy in the dark.
It wasn’t easy when the ground had shifted beneath my feet.
I knew it was supposed to feel wrong. And it did in my head. But not at all in the rest of me.
There were three more guides added for the rock scramble ascent over the Western Breach. They were interspersed among us, with Kito and Bakari at either end. Were they there to shield us from rocks? To catch us if we slipped?
It was very slow going over the rocks with only the headlamps, the glow at our feet no bigger than a flashlight’s beam. The more important guidepost was the person in front of you—sliding, pitching right, leaning left, slowing as they climbed, accelerating on a downhill.
We were all breathing hard as the terrain grew steeper. Even Kito, Bakari, and the other guides were audibly puffing. The only other sound was the crunching underfoot. With the effort, my headache had become a nail driving into the center of my forehead. No one was talking at all anymore.