“Can I sleep over?” Sam asks her dad, the next Saturday she sees him.
“I don’t think your mom would like that.”
“Yes, she would!” The October sun is shining, and they are driving to a real climbing gym called Boulders. “Please? With Noah? She really needs a break.”
He smiles, but then he says, “I have a gig in Salem.”
“I can play with you!”
“Then you have to practice.”
Sam flops back in her seat and her dad laughs. She has already started drums, accordion, and ukulele—but she only likes playing with her dad. It’s the same with magic. “Please, Dad.”
“Okay, this is gonna be cool,” Mitchell says as they pull up. “This is a whole open house for kids.”
The gym is huge. It’s a million stories high, all decorated for Halloween.
There is face painting. There is a popcorn machine like at the movies. There is soda in designated areas. There is music, and there are kids running everywhere.
First your parent or guardian signs the waivers. Then you write a name tag for yourself and stick it to your shirt. After all that, you line up for shoes. Sam hands over her sneakers and borrows size two climbing shoes. They are the opposite of elf shoes. They have long toes pointing down.
“Where to?” Mitchell asks.
There are walls and towers everywhere, but also lines. The shortest lines are for the little walls. These walls are so small you don’t need ropes. If you fall, you land on blue gymnastics mats. “That’s just for little kids,” says Sam, but her dad tells her no. These are the bouldering walls.
The good thing about bouldering is when you fall off you can jump up and try again right away. You don’t have to glide down and wait your turn to get strapped into a harness all over again.
It’s weird. There are handholds, but the wall juts out at all angles, so you’re never climbing straight. You hold on tight and use your fingers and your toes. You can see the floor, but if you touch the ground, you’re out. Sam tries and tries one certain wall. It’s like a puzzle. Actually, it’s better than a puzzle, because you are the missing piece. She jumps and tries and jumps and tries until her arms start hurting and her fingers cramp. She is surprised, and then she starts getting upset, because she can’t make it to the top.
She flops down on the mat.
“Okay.” Her dad stands over her. “This is where you keep getting stuck. Think where to reach.”
She skootches over on the mat and looks up at the spot. A green hold, a bumpy place, a ledge that’s red.
One of the Boulders STAFF comes over. “Hi, Sam.”
She is surprised the STAFF already know her name. Then she remembers her name tag.
The STAFF says, “My name is Toby. How’s it going?”
“Good.” She is still lying on her back. At first, she can’t tell whether Toby is a boy or a girl. Toby’s hair is short as a boy’s, but her voice is like a girl’s. Probably she is a girl. Her body is small, but she has muscles all over.
“Have you tried the other walls?”
“No.”
“You might like those.”
“No, I like this one.”
“It’s tricky.”
“That’s okay.” Sam is afraid Toby will say this one is for older children, so she scrambles up again.
Toby offers her a bag. Sam thinks it’s popcorn. Then she realizes it’s white chalk.
Sam dunks her hands so that they’re white, and then she tries and tries again.
Her dad and Toby watch together now.
“Almost!” her dad calls.
Toby says, “Push off with your left foot.”
She’s to the point where she can climb to the green hold in just two seconds. It’s the red ledge she can’t reach. She grazes the outcropping with her fingertips.
“Ohhh, almost!” Toby cries.
“You can do it,” her dad says.
She falls, and they are both talking at once.
“Great effort,” Toby says.
Her dad says, “It’s okay, Sam.”
It’s not okay. Her arms are too short! She can touch the ledge, but she can’t grab it. She wants to kick the wall, but Toby says, “We have a kids’ team, Little Boulders. Eight and under.”
The team meets on Saturdays, and there is a fee, but there are also scholarships. You should have your own shoes, but for now you can borrow from the gym. The team is for fun, but they also compete and train for higher levels. Toby started out that way and now she climbs in high school.
Mitchell says, “Wow, what do you think, Sam?”
She is still glaring at the wall.
“You’d really learn something on a team,” Mitchell tells Sam in the car.
“Like what?”
“How to solve problems.”
“What problems?”
“You’d learn how to climb that boulder.”
“I know how to climb that boulder!”
“You’d learn strategy! You’d have coaching!”
“But you’re already my coach.”
“You’d have real coaching, so you’d know what you’re doing.”
“I already know what I’m doing.” Sam frowns into the side mirror. Her eyes are annoyed, not pretty like her mom says, her forehead white under her short bangs.
Mitchell honks his horn, because a truck just cut them off. “Asshole!” He forgets to cover Sam’s ears. They are running late to Jen’s Halloween party and his phone is ringing. He flips it open and Sam hears her mom.
“Hello?”
“Good news!” says Mitchell. “They want Sam on a team!”
“Where are you?”
“They have scholarships. They meet on Saturdays.”
“You’re driving her to Newburyport every Saturday?”
“Sure!”
“Uh-huh. And what about when you’re not here?”
Before he can answer, Courtney’s words fill the car, because is he thinking she will do it? Did he forget she works on Saturdays? Jen cuts hair and Jen’s husband Steve is at the shop, and Courtney watches their baby, Madi.
Mitchell hands Sam the phone and her mom is still talking. “You’re an hour late.”
Mitchell says, “Tell her we’re on our way.”
“We’re on our way.”
Sam holds up the phone and her dad grins, because even now, Courtney is still talking. But then he stops himself and puts on his serious look while he is listening.
“Your mom is one hardworking lady,” he tells Sam after she hangs up. “I respect the heck out of her.”
“Heck?” Sam giggles, because what’s heck? She’s never heard her dad say heck before.
“Hey,” her dad warns, like don’t get smart, but she knows he doesn’t mean it. She can be as smart as she wants. The point is they have to work together.
Mitchell guns the engine and turns up the radio, while Sam reaches into the back seat for her black witch hat. She ties on a black salon kimono and pulls up her striped socks to look like witch’s stockings.
They are speeding down the highway, and Sam can feel the music in her elbows and knees and even underneath her feet. Her dad shouts, “Great costume, by the way.”
“I made it last night,” Sam shouts back.
“What?”
“I woke up because I had a nightmare.”
He turns down the music. “You know what’s good for nightmares?”
“Staying at your house.”
“You have a one-track mind.”
“I can’t sleep!”
“How come, Sam?” She doesn’t answer, but he says, “What’s going on?”
She thinks maybe she won’t say, and then she thinks maybe she should—but she’s afraid. “I started it,” she says at last.
“Started what?”
Then she tells him how she’s scared Jack will come back. She describes how Jack smoked and how she wouldn’t move, and he picked her up and she fought him—but she doesn’t say she bit his arm. She tells how Jack threw her out the door, and her dad turns the music lower and lower as she talks, until at last he turns it off.
She looks over at him and his eyes are bright and dark. He seems like someone else; his arms are tense.
“Dad?” she says, but he won’t talk at all.
When they arrive, the yard smells like smoke and burgers and damp grass. Courtney is a cat with little black ears. Noah is a tiny lion. All the neighbors and relatives are there, including Noah’s grandma and grandpa and even Jack.
“Hi, sweetie,” Jen tells Sam. Jen’s husband Steve did all the decorations. Fake cobwebs, tombstones, ghosts hanging on the porch—but Mitchell doesn’t notice any of it. He walks straight through the yard.
“Fucking asshole!” He shoves Jack so hard that Jack staggers for just a second before he shoves Mitchell back.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s happening!” Jen rushes over.
Grandma B. is holding Noah.
“What, are you drunk?” Courtney screams, but Mitchell doesn’t hear.
Jack rises up like he will smash him, but Mitchell has an animal inside him too. He is a panther; he is so strong and fast.
The two of them are flying at each other and Noah is crying. Jen swears she’ll call the police, and Steve tries to separate them. He grabs Mitchell’s arm, but Mitchell throws him off.
Jack’s lip is bleeding. Blood soaks his shirt. He doesn’t care. He opens Jen’s cooler and kicks it, so a waterfall of ice pours out. Then he grabs a beer and smashes it on Mitchell’s face.
Sam’s dad doubles over gasping. His nose is pouring blood, but he keeps punching, hitting, and Sam is screaming, “Dad, Dad!” because this is her fault. She told on Jack.
Courtney is begging them to stop, but they don’t listen. They are on the ground, rolling in the grass. Jack is heavier and stronger, but Mitchell is wild. He’s got his hands on Jack’s face and his thumbs in Jack’s eyes—and it takes Steve and his brother and his cousin to pull them apart.