“The dirtbags rule!”
He started toward the car, but his father’s snort of disgust stopped him. “Put on a shirt, son. Is this how you walk around—half-naked?”
The dirtbags, shirtless apart from Megs, laughed.
Genuinely angry now, Mitch yanked a shirt out of his pack and pulled it over his head. “Happy now?”
“Watch your tone!” Uncle Frank snapped. “You scared your poor mother half to death messing around on that cliff. What were you thinking?”
“We made history.” Mitch stashed his gear in the trunk.
“The history of stupid stunts, perhaps.”
Mitch ignored his uncle’s insult, looked back at Megs.
She was standing now, the grief of the world on her face.
He blew her a kiss. “Remember the promise.”
She nodded, her lips curving in a sad smile.
He climbed into the car.
His father started in on him right away. “You need to get your head on straight. If you want a girlfriend, there are plenty of nice girls at Stanford, girls from good families, girls with the sense not to camp in the wilderness with a bunch of men. First this rock-climbing nonsense, and now you’re hanging with loose women.”
Mitch snapped. “It’s fine with me if you think climbing is a waste of time, but you willnotsay another unkind word about Megs. She’snotloose. She’s sixteen and a virgin, for God’s sake! Not another word about her. Do you understand me?”
“Don’t talk to your father like—”
“Shut up, Uncle Frank! Jesus! This doesn’t involve you!”
“Don’t you raise your voice to your elders, son, or—"
“Or what? You’ll disown me? Maybe I’ll disownyou.” Mitch didn’t care what his father said. “I’m an adult. I can make my way in this world without you. I’d rather climb than go to school anyway. There’s only so much shit I’m willing to take from you and Mom before I decide it’s not worth it. You leave Megs out of this. Got it?”
They drove all the way to Stanford in silence.
Megs flippedto the back of the journal and found all of the letters she’d sent him during those ten long months. She read through a few of them, smiling at the teen angst that radiated off the pages. Then she tucked them away once more.
“I still have your letters, too. I think they’re in a shoebox in my closet. I checked the mailbox at the lodge every day that fall. If there was a letter from you, I was happy. If not, the entire day sucked. There was no in-between.”
She’d stayed in Yosemite until the weather had turned, putting up new routes with Dean, Gridwall, and the others. Then she and Dean had driven down to Joshua Tree National Park, where it was warmer. She’d applied for a job cleaning rooms at a hotel in Twentynine Palms, but then something had happened that she could never have imagined.
“We were in camp, getting ready to climb, when a man in a Porsche drove up and asked if I was Megs Hill, the girl who’d free climbed Half Dome. I thought the dirtbags were going to beat the shit out of him at first.”
The man turned out to be François Charbonneaux, the famous climber from the 1950s who’d first climbed the Regular Northwest Face. He now owned an outdoor clothing company and was quite wealthy. He’d offered Megs and Dean five hundred bucks a month just to wear his line of clothing when they were climbing.
“I thought he was insane, but Dean knew who he was. He negotiated the deal for us. The next thing I knew, I was wearing all of this hip climbing stuff. That was the end of waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. François came back to Joshua Tree to climb with us. He brought a photographer and did a photo shoot for a catalog.”
That had been Megs’ modeling debut and her first sponsorship. François had wanted to offer Mitch the same deal, but Mitch hadn’t been there. He and François had connected the following summer.
“I was able to climb full-time, but it wasn’t the same without you. Dean and the others were good, but they weren’t you. I suppose it’s like having the perfect dance partner and then having to dance with someone else. It works, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Her seventeenth birthday came and went, the dirtbags sticking a lit match in a bran muffin as a treat. That winter, Megs had pushed herself until her taped fingers bled, demanding more of herself, teaching herself new climbing moves and techniques.
“It wasn’t really about climbing. I was just trying not to miss you.”
Then Christmas had come.
