Page 18 of Free Fall

I nod.

“It’s just… How will I live with myself if I’ve helped you prepare for this and then you—” He winces and the ropes shake from the force of it. “Look how far down it is, Dan. There’s no living through a fall.”

“You make it sound like that’s the worst outcome possible.”

“Isn’t it?”

“For me, maybe, but not for you. You’ll go on with your life. Jeanie will grow up. You’ll have other friends who are a lot less troublesome than I am. It’ll be fine.”

“It really pisses me off when you say things like that.”

“Why?” It’s a mystery to me why he thinks he’d care so much if I kick it. I’ve seen it with my own eyes so many times in my life. People move on. They promise you’re important to them, but then you just aren’t. Not in the end anyway. The world keeps spinning.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Rye won’t care at all if I take a plunge off the wall, but he’ll live. He’s lived through worse, judging by the stories he’s told me about his past, and I have too. All this drama around a little death. It’s baffling really.

“You know why,” Rye says, and takes off up the wall because it’s his turn to lead the pitch.

There are a lot of things I don’t know. I’m comfortable with a certain level of ignorance. And not knowing why Rye insists my death would be the worst thing ever is just another thing I’ll never comprehend. It’s fine.

I head up after him once he’s linked into the next bolt.

“Here’s the part where I’ll have to be really wary,” I say, running my hands over the smooth, slick, glacier-polished granite.

“Pfft.” Rye kicks off it, swinging out into the air and bouncing off the rock again. “Yeah, this part is murder, but that dyno…”

“You and that dyno. It’s not like I can’t nail it.”

“How? How can you ever be sure?”

“If I can do it a hundred times blindfolded without missing once, then I’ll be sure.”

“You can’t climb this wall a hundred times this season.”

Watch me, I almost say. But the truth is, I don’t plan to and I shouldn’t be defiant just to make a point. I plan to practice the dyno both up on the wall, like today, and off the wall at the climbing gym and at a low-to-the-ground boulder problem I’ve found with a similar dyno.

The dyno doesn’t scare me as much as the roof of the Heart. That thing juts out and, even though I’ve found a place with a strong crack to climb, and I can do the crux in less than five moves, I’ll still have to hang nearly upside down, gripping with just my fingers and toeholds, thrusting my hips up, fighting the weight of gravity on my back. It just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Way more than taking a short leap completely free of the wall, betting I can grab the hold across from me.

It’s weird how some things scare a person, and some things don’t.

I guess with the dyno, I figure if I don’t make the jump, then I don’t make the jump. But with the roof, I’ll have a chance to reallyknowbefore I go. I’ll be hanging on, scrabbling, trying anything to keep from going down. That seems worse somehow.

Ugh, that roof makes me sweat just thinking about it. And yet…

“Your lead,” Rye says, peering at me with his gray eyes that can twinkle like a sparkling sea or turn calm like the sky whenit’s flat and empty of clouds. Right now, though, his eyes are hard, a little anxious. I hate that. Climbing is supposed to be fun.

“Let’s not stress about it,” I say. “I’m not doing it any time soon. I have weeks of prep ahead. Months even. Maybe even years if I don’t feel good about my chances.” I chalk my fingers. “Look, I don’t want to die. I want to live. I’m not, like, suicidal or anything. So, I’m taking this seriously. I want to have every move mapped out. Sequenced. Like choreography. I want to know I can nail it—”

“You can’t know anything. It could rain—”

“There are satellite apps to watch the weather.”

“It could still rain. Meteorology is barely a science.”

“Hey now, be careful, you sound like me.”

“Look what you’ve driven me to!” Rye smiles, though, and takes a swig of water from his backpack. “I’ll stop. I know I can’t talk you out of this. It’s why I’m helping you. I guess, if you go down, I’d rather know I did my best to help you prepare than to think you did it all alone, without anyone on your side.”

“You and Peggy Jo make me out to be friendless. I’ve got friends.”