The others follow. Three of the college boys, then Priti, who doesn’t need to use her hands at all. She uses her long legs to propel herself up from one rock to another. The remaining college boys follow, then Charu, who gingerly goes down on all fours, using her hands to help with the climbing.
Rudra looks back at me, at the (possibly) empty space behind me (unless there’s a bear waiting in the shadows of bushes for the right moment to pounce), and motions me forward, saying, “After you.”
I hesitantly survey the climb. It looks easy enough. Now, if I crouch right, like Charu did, I might just be able to do it. I grab a rock sticking out about a tenth of the way up the incline, using the support to pull myself up. I repeat the motion a few more times and, with a steady hold on the rocks, scale diagonally upward. There’s a crunch of gravelly mud behind me as Rudra starts climbing.
At the very top, I clutch a rock and hoist myself up... but it comesloose and tumbles out of the way, narrowly missing hitting Rudra in the face. The sudden loss of grip makes me lose my footing, and my foot scrapes the slope, sliding into empty air.
I let out a squeak, knowing, in those disastrous few moments, that I’m going to fall hard and injure myself and bleed out and possibly die—
A hand snakes around my waist from my left, holding me in place. I wince as my bare knee scrapes against the sharp ridges of a stone. Heat blooms, blood trickling out in ugly dots.
My foot flails for a second or two before finding a hold again.
“Just reach for that rock there,” Rudra says beside me, taking my left hand, which lost its grip on that dratted two-faced bitch of a rock. He guides it up, releasing it only when I’ve gripped one much more stable than the last.
The pain in my knee is sharp and piercing. But Rudra’s hand is on my waist again, diverting my attention, his fingers touching my bare skin where my T-shirt has ridden up underneath the strap of my fanny pack.
His hand is warm and steady, holding me with the assurance of a guitarist holding his instrument. I turn to look at him, and our eyes lock in the semidarkness.
“You steady?” Rudra asks, his voice soft. “You lost your balance there.”
“Yes,” I squeak, the near-death experience making me ramble. “Yep. Super. All cool. Never been better.”Stop talking. For the love of god, please stop.
“I’m going to need you to get to the top,” he says, motioning to the break in the rocky wall on his left, which reveals nothing but dark-green blades of grass and damp, monsoon-soaked mud. “I can’t climb until you do.”
I nod, trying my best to ignore the feeling of his hand cupping my bare hip and failing miserably. He grips my calf as I shimmy up the last bit, giving me a boost. The pads of his fingers elicit a tingly, tickly feeling as they touch the soft, thin skin right behind my knees, and it’s all I can do to not let it faze me.
I get to my feet, dusting dirt and tiny stones from my body, watching as Rudra edges himself to the middle, climbs, and joins me. He’s covered in dust and grime, and there are dark patches of sweat where his T-shirt sticks to his body, his hair coming undone from his bun, and yet, he smellssogood it’s unfair.
We both sit in the dirt for a few seconds, staring at each other in the flashlight of my phone. My mind goes back to the moment on the bus, his hands roving through my hair, his breath skittering over my neck and ear. I break eye contact first, getting to my feet, ignoring the sharp pain in my knee.
“Will you be able to walk?” Rudra asks, standing and pointing to the scrape on my knee.
“Yeah, it’s just a scratch,” I say. “I’ll clean and bandage it at the camp.”
“Guys, what the hell.” Priti materializes from the darkness between the trees, her hair wildly framing her face, flashlight bouncing around. Jalaj and Charu are right behind her. “Could you be any slower?” Priti glances down at my knee, noticing the scrape. “Wait, what happened? Are you okay?”
At first, I’m so startled that those words came from Priti’s mouth, I have no clue how to respond. But Rudra speaks up, saving me from the embarrassment of not being able to say a simpleThanks, I’m fine.
“She slipped. Didn’t fall, though.” He doesn’t say anything about how his hand grabbed me at the right moment, how it felt on my bare waist, how close we stood on those rocks together...
“We have first aid at the camp,” Jalaj says. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay,” Priti says, looking between Rudra and me. “So can we go now?”
“Yes,” I say, ignoring the twist in my chest, fighting the temptation to attempt to gauge Rudra’s expression.
The rest of the trek to the camp goes much better. I narrow the problem of my breathlessness down to my bra and swiftly unhook it when no one’s looking. I can breathe much better after that, so I’m not panting like a dog as much.
The night air gets cooler, and the sweat ices on my body, making me shiver as we ascend. There are multiple stops along the way, small hutlike constructions that Jalaj says are juice stands and chaat stalls run by the locals during the day. A wave of shame deluges me. The locals make this ascentevery dayto tend these stands. And they do it while carryingheavy stuff, like water cans, fruit and vegetable baskets, and jars of sugar and salt.
And here I am, struggling to make it up with an unhooked bra and a fanny pack.
“Ohmygod, look!” Digha calls out suddenly, making us stop in our tracks. My heart stutters, and I think that the bear has finally caught up to us and is going to rip me open on the forest floor—
Fireflies.
Above us, glowing against the dark shadows of interlocking branches, arehundredsof fireflies, flashing in perfect synchrony.
