Leaving Everest Read online

  Pasang slid his bowl to the right so Luke could take his customary place next to me. Thank goodness I’d already finished my dal bhat because there was no way I’d be able to swallow food right now.

  Dad had a million questions for Luke: what he was doing here this season, how college was going, and which climbs he’d done in the Cascades. I quickly learned he was in Tengboche because he was going to be guiding for Global Adventurers, the largest and most expensive commercial outfitter on Everest. They would have forty clients climbing this season. Forty!

  I was still too overwhelmed by Luke’s sudden presence to fully follow the conversation, especially as he and Dad threw around terms like Bugaboos road trip, drinking age, master’s thesis, concert, and internships. It wasn’t just that he was suddenly here, it was also that he’d changed so much.

  Down-table, Pasang watched me expectantly. He smiled shyly, wanting me to share his excitement over the presence of his accomplished big brother. I gave him a grin, and he turned back, satisfied.

  Sensing the exchange, Luke glanced over at me. I was suddenly conscious of how I’d look to him after he’d been in college for two years, surrounded by real American women, like ^Olivia200x^, who were beautiful, refined, and feminine. Now he’d know the truth that his old buddy had never been one of them. Self-consciously, I touched my hair, which was still damp with sweat from the trail. As that picture in Vertical View proved, I was a tomboy at best.

  In the village common below, children’s voices rang out. School was over for the day. Word must have gotten around that Dad and I were in town, because a whole group of children were at Mingma’s door within minutes, begging me to come play soccer.

  I quickly agreed because I needed the excuse to get away so I could process my thoughts and not act like a total weirdo around Luke.

  They clamored for Luke to come, too. I silently groaned. He looked over at me, as if making sure I didn’t mind, but he must have seen that I did because he said, “I have sahib lungs now. I wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

  The kids found this hilarious. There were taunts all around. I couldn’t help laughing, too.

  “Okay, fine,” he said in Sherpa. “I’ll be down when I’m done eating.”

  Although it was the kids he was talking to, it was me he was looking at, and the fleeting wistfulness in his eyes before he changed his expression made something stir deep inside me.

  Chapter Three

  So Luke was suddenly back in my life, in real life. For the duration of the two-month Everest climbing season, anyway. This was good. But my Circ-fantasies—and my feelings for him—had to stop.

  He and I had a chance once, but the earthquake had taken that away. He’d moved on, and that had to be okay. Officially, we’d never been anything but buddies anyway.

  It didn’t take long, chasing the red and blue soccer ball back and forth across Tengboche’s central terrace with the laughing kids, before I was back to normal again. I was still acclimatized to the altitude from the most recent expedition with Dad, but even so, keeping up with the speedy kids had me short of breath and sweaty in no time.

  Some of the younger kids dropped off to the sidelines to watch, and the game got even faster. Luke came down and joined the opposite team.

  “So it looks like I caught you,” he said as he moved in to guard me.

  It was a direct reference to our #YCCM Circs. I practically tripped over my own feet.

  “Well, if you think about it,” I stammered, “you were in Tengboche before we got here, so technically I caught you.”

  Luke snatched the ball away from me with a sly smile, just his left dimple showing. Ugh. He’d said that to throw me off, and it had worked perfectly. His team scored a goal.

  When the ball got back to me, I kicked it over to the fastest boy on my team, but Luke intercepted, running the ball out to the left. I sprinted to catch up, planting myself in front of him.

  “So why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I asked to distract him.

  He attempted to maneuver the ball, but I blocked him.

  “If I told you, then it wouldn’t have been a surprise,” he said.

  “What kind of answer is that?” I said, taking a swipe at the ball.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said, lunging in the opposite direction, passing the ball to one of the girls. We slammed together. I stepped back. My ponytail swung twice, then settled against my head.

  Our eyes locked, and I felt the full force of an emotion I didn’t have a name for, an emotion that was magnetic, mournful, and uplifting all at once.

  Girlfriend, I reminded myself, and then I turned and ran down the field.

  We played for a while longer, but this kind of exertion at Tengboche’s twelve-thousand-foot elevation is no joke, especially while wearing heavy hiking boots. Besides, there was a group of early-season trekkers in front of the monastery coming our way with their cameras.

  Luke and I exchanged a look. It was one thing to let loose and play with the kids when it was just us but quite another to do so with a tourist audience.

  “I’m going to get pulmonary edema if I don’t take it easy,” he said to the kids, moving off to the side and doubling over to catch his breath. “I’ve got to call it quits.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  The kids protested when we left, but they wouldn’t have much time before they were called home for chores anyway. Luke and I headed toward the path that led to his house.

  “So, Nanga Parbat,” Luke said as we walked. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. It was in a magazine. I just saw the article today. How weird is that?”

  “I know. That’s how I knew.”

  My face grew hot. He’d seen that horrible picture.

  “You knew before that,” I pointed out. “I took a Circ from the top.”

  “A Circ in which you failed to specify that it had been the Gray Spider route, which has not been repeated in the winter since Rosso Messina’s ascent in 1981, and that you did it without oxygen. You and Greg are very deservedly in the magazine for that.”

  His voice! I’d forgotten how sexy it was with that hint of British accent from his years in boarding school.

  “So how long are you guys here?” he asked.

  “Just tonight, and then we’re getting back on the trail. You?”

  “I have a few more days. I’m waiting for the Global Adventurers clients to hike in from Lukla, and then I’m doing the rest of the Base Camp trek with them.”

  When we reached his house, we didn’t go inside, automatically continuing upward to the low wall of a potato field where we used to play cards when we were kids.

  “I’m surprised you’re missing college to be here this season,” I said.

  “It was a special circumstance. One of Global’s teams is all University of Washington professors and researchers. I’ll get six credits while I’m here, and the rest I can make up with online summer classes in between Rainier trips.”

  “That’s good.” I loved walking next to him, hearing him talk. The simple fact of being near him made my insides glow.

  “Did you know Doc Teresa’s climbing with the UW team?”

  I nodded. Dad had mentioned it a few months ago. She was a guest lecturer in high-altitude medicine at UW, and between that and fifteen seasons working in Everest ER, she’d gotten a wild hair and decided to climb the mountain this year.

  Luke and I sat on the wall, looking out across the familiar view. He took off his hat and ran his hand through his jet-black hair.

  “Are you getting excited?” he asked.

  “Yeah, we have a couple of repeat clients this year, and that’s always nice.”

  “No, not for the season. I meant college. You’re leaving as soon as the climb’s over, right?”

  “Actually, I’m not going.”

  Luke sat up straight, as if stunned. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  His eyes narrowed. “But Greg said you were flyi
ng out June tenth.”

  “I haven’t told him yet. It’s only official as of two days ago. And, please, don’t mention it. I mean, I know he won’t care, but I should be the one to tell him.”

  The creases from his dimples had completely faded, and there was so much there in his eyes. Too much. I had to look away.

  He was silent. We both were, and it wasn’t like the comfortable silences of old times. The dozens and dozens of miles on the trails. The cumulative days and weeks and months of killing time together in a tent at Base Camp as we read, listened to music, and watched movies.

  That look he’d given me…I realized what it was. Disappointment.

  It didn’t sit well on a belly full of dal bhat churned up by high-altitude soccer. I could understand his point of view, though. Look at all he’d accomplished already and where he was headed in life, yet here I was forgoing a college education to continue tagging along with Dad like a failure to launch.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. I was deliberately choosing to stay put. Sure, I yearned to have the permanence of a physical place I could call home instead of living out of my backpack year-round in tents or hostels. College could get me the kind of job where I could afford a house, but I’d have to give up my dream of the Top Five. I’d lose the mountains altogether, and in the end, the mountains were my life. My salvation.

  Now that my time with Dad didn’t have an expiration date, I would be able to help him grow Winslowe Expeditions. I had tons of ideas. Once we got settled in at Base Camp and things were less hectic, I’d tell him about my college decision and my plan to try for a sponsorship, and then I’d ask him to put me on the official guiding staff this year so we could eventually work toward running two expeditions at a time.

  I glanced over at Luke, who was looking out at the stunning profile of Ama Dablam, the distinctive, Matterhorn-esque mountain east of Tengboche. Still, he said nothing. As a distraction, I swirled my toe in the dirt at the base of the wall.

  For the hour we were with the kids in the village this afternoon, it had been nothing but exertion, fun, and laughter. The story of how we’d always been. But it had taken only a few minutes alone together to reveal that it wasn’t us anymore.

  Pasang was outside now, over in the adjacent pasture, gathering dried yak dung for tonight’s fire.

  I hopped off the wall.

  “Come on,” I said with a bonus shot of enthusiasm to mask my dejectedness. “We should go help him.”

  By dinnertime, so many people had stopped by Mingma’s house that it was as packed as a trekking lodge. After we finished dinner, the group naturally divided by gender, with the exception of Pasang, who stayed with the women. A little girl from soccer earlier claimed my lap, and I was more than happy to oblige, as she was warm and soft and smelled like the fresh-baked pastries her grandma brought.

  It was nice to be there with the women, but the pastries and laughter were only a partial antidote to still being unsettled from this afternoon. Even over all the noise in the house, I could pick out the lilt of Luke’s flawless English.

  I turned a little so I could see him across the room. My eyes automatically went to his mouth: a mouth that rippled like an elongated W and gave him a default expression of amusement and contentment unless he was specifically feeling something different. I was convinced this was why people always took such a quick liking to him. His mouth was this way now, as he sipped from a glass of chang, the Sherpas’ homemade beer.

  What would it be like to know him in America? In what would have been my life? And was now his life?

  It was ironic that I knew every high point he’d been on in the last two years, yet I knew absolutely nothing else about his life at UW. Though our Circs had been frequent, they were completely impersonal.

  I sighed. That was a lie. For me anyway.

  The Circs hadn’t been impersonal at all. Maybe I hadn’t ever written anything other than #YCCM, but because of our game, I’d included him in every one of my summits, even on Nanga Parbat when I shouldn’t have spared the time to take a picture let alone record a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree video. Because of our game, I was on the constant lookout for high points wherever Dad and I happened to be, and I had assurance that even as far apart as we might be, he had not forgotten me.

  Luke and Dad were deep in conversation about something now, and I wished I could hear them. They had been close long before I came to live with Dad. In one way or another, Dad had been trying to save Mingma’s family ever since his CPR had failed to revive her husband. The life insurance for climbing Sherpas back then was worthless, and to help, Dad had given Mingma the job as head cook during Everest seasons. He’d also managed Luke’s education, and would have done the same thing for Pasang, had Pasang been at all interested.

  I turned my attention back to the women who wanted me to show them my latest Thailand pictures. Dad and I went to Railay Beach every year on a low-budget rock climbing trip, and my pictures were pretty much identical to any other year, but the ocean was a novelty in landlocked Nepal, so I pulled out my phone, and everyone gathered around.

  By the time I finished, the men were standing up to leave, and the cute little soccer girl, who had not budged from my lap all evening, was fast asleep on my shoulder.

  Pasang set up his bedroll on the floor once everyone was gone. Dad was doing the same; he always liked to sleep by the door where there was a steady draft of fresh air. I popped my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack, quickly claiming the spot between Pasang and the wall to make sure Luke and I didn’t end up next to each other.

  The more I thought about his disappointment in me, the more it hurt. If I could just get through tonight, Dad and I would be back on the trail first thing tomorrow, and I’d have plenty of time to recalibrate myself before Luke arrived in Base Camp with his Global Adventurers clients.

  I went to the sink to brush my teeth and wash my face. When I turned around, Pasang was sliding his bedroll to the right and waving Luke over to the open spot.

  Oh no you don’t.

  Too late. To Pasang, modus operandi was that Luke and I always slept next to each other, just like we always sat next to each other at the table.

  Suddenly the house was too warm and the smoke from the fire too pungent. I stepped over Dad, who was bunching his fleece jacket under his head as a pillow.

  “I’m going out for some air,” I said.

  I walked around the side of the house to the milk-nak corral and settled onto the stone fence, intending to stay out there long enough that Luke would be asleep when I sneaked back in.

  The smallest of the naks, a black and white spotted girl, drifted over to me. It was Tinkerbell, who I’d bottle-fed as a calf my third year here and continued spoiling every year after that.

  I didn’t know if she knew me from anyone else now that Dad and I came to Mingma’s house so infrequently, but it seemed like she did. She sniffed my legs and pockets.

  “Sorry, lady. No treats tonight,” I said.

  She rested her chin atop the wall, suggesting I scratch behind her ears as a consolation. I complied.

  I hadn’t grabbed my hat or gloves on the way out, and it was brutally cold outside. It always was at night in the Khumbu Valley, no matter the time of year. I slid off the other side of the fence so I could snuggle into Tinkerbell’s neck. Her fur was not as soft as it looked, but it was warm, like a buffalo coat.

  Being out here, under the stars of the endless universe, gave me perspective about Luke. In this itinerant life in the mountains, people were always just passing through. Perhaps he was destined to be one of them instead of a fixture. It wasn’t the end of the world. I still had Dad.

  Tinkerbell bobbed her head, encouraging me to keep scratching her ears. “Okay, friend,” I said. She snorted in reply, and I laughed.

  “Still spoiling the work animals?”

  Luke.

  He leaned against the fence. The stray dog, which had followed him around from the front, sat at his feet. The
only sounds were the dog’s tail thumping against the wall and an occasional whiffle as the naks shifted around in the pen. Luke was so close that I could detect a bit of his sunscreen scent from earlier today. I wanted to move even closer.

  The quiet between us once again felt okay. It was the dark that made the difference. It acted like the pinhole of a camera, limiting the focus to one thing at a time and making everything else less intense.

  “Why wouldn’t you go to college?” he asked.

  Never mind about that pinhole.

  “It wasn’t right for me.”

  “But Townsend College had always been your plan.”

  “It had been the plan, but it was never my plan. It just took me a while to realize it.”

  He shifted his weight. “That doesn’t make sense. It would have been free because of your grandpa working there.”

  “It wouldn’t have been free, just a big discount. And it’s private. The part that was left would have still been a lot. Especially considering that college doesn’t make sense for me, even if it were free.”

  “Why not?”

  “First of all, I don’t even know what I want to major in. Speaking of, Mingma told us you changed your major. You’re going to medical school now?”

  “That’s true, but you’re changing the subject. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know what you want to major in. Lots of people start out undeclared.”

  There was a twinge of desperation in his voice, like he was trying to convince himself that I hadn’t turned into a total dunce.

  “Townsend College is a great school,” he continued. “Port Townsend is practically in the Olympic Mountains, and you’re just a ferry ride from the North Cascades, which you would love. They’re not as big as here, obviously, but they’re technical and uncrowded. It’s gorgeous there with those wet forests…”

  Yes, I knew the forests in western Washington with their dense ferns and the huge pine trees jabbing high into the sky. I knew how dark and cold those forests could be, especially when the fog rolled in, further obscuring the impenetrable, razor-wire blackberry thickets. The fog and blackberry thickets blocking my way back to my grandparents’ house that terrible night ten years ago. Back to their house in Port Townsend. The house where Amy, my mother, had been living ever since she was released from prison last winter.