Rose calls back to Dad. “I saw your email. Do you have all our flight details for Kathmandu yet? I still haven’t really wrapped my head around how soon it is.”
“Final flight info arrived a few days ago. We change planes in Seoul. Our flight to Seoul leaves early. I think it leaves at seven, which means—”
“Ugh, we have to get there at five in the morning! Which means getting out the door at four. That’s brutal.”
“Sorry, Rosie, we need to be there by four thirty or so,” Dad says.
“Well, that’s. Just. Wonderful.” Rose makes her voice extra cranky, and we laugh.
“Weeks without a shower? No problem. Dehydrated food? Check. Hanging from a cliff face? She’s good. But no waking up early…. That’s our Rosie.” Dad turns to Maya. “When they were younger, did you ever need to separate them in the mornings? When Rosie used to sleep over, I’d have to take Tate out to play in the park because otherwise he’d bug her until she either cried or punched him.”
I do an accurate impression of my younger self: “Rose; hey, Rose; hey, Rose, are you awake? Hey, Rose, are you awake? Hey, wake up! Are you awake? Oh, sorry, did I wake you?”
Rose laughs harder than the joke deserves, but the mountain air is like a drug to her. She’s always sillier, quicker to laugh and relax here. Her laughter makes me relax, reminds me that I want to be here, even with Dad’s constant comments on my disappointing academics. My sunglasses fog with sweat, while the cold air works its way through my gear. I remember hanging upside down from the top bunk, trying to see if Rose’s eyes were open, if she was up and ready to play.
She and Dad fall behind, talking logistics, while Maya and I keep moving.
“You doing okay?” Maya asks. She says it like maybe it’s not the first time. She pauses, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I smile down at her. Thank God for Maya, my other mother, who always insists I’m as amazing in every way as Rose. Even though we all know Rose is another species altogether.
“Oh yeah. Spacing out, that’s all,” I say. I don’t tell her that—truth?—I’m trying to figure out how many more days of school we have before I’m finally done, able to take off for Nepal, able to leave high school and all its constant, stressful bullshit behind forever.
Maya nods and grins.
“Camp Muir straight ahead! Let’s camp above it. Should make the summit push easier.”
I look back. Rose’s sunglasses are hanging around her neck, and her face mask is pushed down.
“Wait for me!” she calls. “I want to find a good spot for our tents.”
I wait for her to catch up, her cheeks red with cold, her mouth muffled back under her mask. But even so, I can see she’s looking a little tired.
“Uggggggh…everything is already sore! Remind me why we do this?” she asks.
I don’t answer but start moving toward the camp. “Race you!” I say, knowing she can never resist a challenge.
“No fair! You have longer legs and you’ve been standing still waiting for me.” Even as she’s complaining, Rose is kicking into gear, her strong legs pushing off and her arms reaching to pole through the snow.
I laugh, then laugh harder when Rose grabs on to the back of my jacket and glides along the snow, letting me pull her. We are both barely able to breathe by the time we land in a pile, but Rose is laughing, and I’m glad. Glad to be here with Rose, like always.
Chapter Five:
Rose
April 5
Kathmandu
4,600 feet above sea level
It’s our last day in Kathmandu. Tomorrow we pack up and leave the luxurious Hotel Shanker, leaving behind hot showers and fresh fruit that we can safely eat, saying goodbye to real pillows and a refrigerator in our room. We’ll fly out to Lukla, a tiny airstrip in the mountains far from any roads, then we’ll start walking, acclimatizing to the altitude as we trek through small villages and outposts until we get to Everest Base Camp. The trek itself is easy. We just walk on a dirt trail, and if it weren’t for the altitude, it would only take a few days. But we have to move slowly and take rest days, helping our bodies adjust. Not that we’ll ever really get used to the thin air above Base Camp. If a person were dropped on the top of Mount Everest with no acclimatization, she’d be dead in three minutes. Moving slowly and letting our bodies adjust to the reduced oxygen is our best chance at reaching the top.
We’ve met the two other people on our team, though team’s not really the right word. We’re not a unit working together so much as six people who have all decided to climb Everest with the same guide. They seem fine, but it’s still weird…I’m used to climbing with people who are pretty much family, not strangers.
Anyway, Yoon Su Rhee and Lucien “Luc” Cartier are with us now. They’re both young, probably midtwenties, which is why Finjo put them with our group. Yoon Su is Korean, though she speaks English with a posh British accent. She also informed us she speaks French, Italian, German, and Mandarin. She is shorter than me and probably thirty pounds lighter, gorgeous, and completely intimidating. Luc reminds me of a Texas cowboy by way of France, with a bandana around his neck and several days of stubble. He grew up in a small ski town in the Alps but from the sound of it has made it his life’s work to travel the world and climb mountains, funded by family money. He’s almost as big as Tate and speaks English with a strong French accent that, embarrassingly, makes me think of nothing so much as Pepé Le Pew, the skunk from the old cartoons. He and Jordan threw down with a macho-but-friendly discussion of summits tagged, routes explored, and gnarly near misses survived. By the end of our first dinner, they had officially bonded.
Today we’re heading to a Buddhist stupa, and Finjo ushers Yoon Su, Tate, and me into one taxi, following behind in another with everyone else. Soon we’re rolling through the garbage and chaos of the streets, horn honking wildly. I try to pan my phone out the window, but the bumps are so bad it flies out of my hand onto the floor of the car.
“Do you think the horns work extra hard because the brakes don’t work for shit?” Tate asks, bracing against the seat as we slide to the side of the car. Our driver merges into packed roundabouts by going full speed and holding his hand on the horn. We haven’t been hit yet.
“Don’t talk. I’m too busy trying not to panic,” I say. People say climbing is scary, but it doesn’t scare me. I’m in control, setting the pace. Not like in a car, where I fly around at the mercy of our driver and every other person on the road. I don’t even like it when Tate drives, but this…This makes me wish Tate were at the wheel. “This must not be as dangerous as it seems, right?” I try to stifle a scream as we round a corner and nearly hit the stopped traffic in front of us.