Her parents are screaming. They don’t hug each other, but they are jumping up and down. Her dad doesn’t tell her, Climbing is falling. Her mom doesn’t have to say, You tried.
After that day, Sam starts training for real. She squeezes rubber balls. She stays late at the Y. She climbs everything that she can find.
When she is eleven, she wins a Boulders scholarship. A full ride, her mom tells Cousin Jen and Steve, not just financial aid.
Steve tells Sam, You keep climbing like that and you can get into the Marines. Courtney says, No way. My kid is not going to the Persian Gulf. But Steve tells Sam, “You know what SAM stands for? Surface-to-air missile. You’re exactly what they’re looking for.”
When Sam turns twelve, she almost makes the cut for regionals. At thirteen, she graduates from Bigger Boulders. She and Halle are advanced now and their shirts aren’t blue but green. They practice Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
That year Sam wins seventh place in bouldering at her new level, which is great for someone new. Then when she is fourteen, she wins fifth. She is as tall as Halle now and she is strong—not just a string bean.
Mitchell comes with Courtney and Noah and they all go out for sundaes to celebrate. “Life is good,” Courtney says.
Mitchell says, “Amen to that.”
“I’m proud of you,” says Courtney, and she is talking to him, not Sam.
At that moment Sam looks up from her banana split and she wants to say Sh! Don’t jinx it. She worries when everybody is so calm and happy. But her dad goes to meetings and he is working every day. Instead of going to the Y, Noah stays at school for Extended Day, and Sam walks to see Mitchell at the Garden Center.
“Let’s see your hands,” her dad says. “Okay, those are some calluses.” He mists ferns in the greenhouse, and he shows her how to feed the orchids. He is good with plants. It’s what he needs right now.
“I found a wall,” she tells him.
“Where?”
“Behind St. Mary’s.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not really.” The wall is actually the back of the brick church. It’s got a good foothold, and then a concrete windowsill.
“Does your mom know?”
She shoots him a look, because what does he think? Then her dad mists her face. “Dad!”
“Be careful,” Mitchell says. “Your mom’s a stickler.”
Sam says, “Next year is high school and that counts for college.”
Mitchell smiles, but he says, “Hey, I had a strict mom too.” Mitchell’s mom, Samantha, passed on before Sam was born. She was a tough cookie and a teacher. Sam is named after her, but not exactly. Sam’s whole name is Sam, because she is her own person. “But I appreciate Samantha now,” says Mitchell. “She made me read, even though I didn’t want to.”
“How?” Sam is surprised. Mitchell hardly ever does something against his will—and he usually can’t remember so far back.
“She would read me a story and she would read and read, until just at the most exciting part, she’d stop.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I begged her! ‘Keep going!’ But she wouldn’t listen. She would leave the book there on my bed.”
“And then what?”
“What do you think?”
“You threw it on the floor.”
“Yeah, you know me.”
“But then you read it?”
“Yup. She knew me too.”
By now Sam’s dad has read so many books, he is almost like a book himself. He knows Greek and Roman history and antique cars and the life of Houdini and World War II and The Lord of the Rings. He knows other things too. He can tie any kind of knot and play any kind of card game. He can look at the sun and tell you what direction you are walking.
He’ll look at a house and tell you when it was built. He has a dream house by the ocean, and Sam has one too. Sam’s is Craftsman style with windows for the view. Mitchell’s is Victorian with a widow’s walk. “That’s where I’ll live,” he tells Sam. “When my ship comes in.”
A ship is a metaphor. It’s a dream. When your ship comes in you can do anything. You can live in a tent. You can walk around the world. You can climb mountains. Someday he and Sam might climb the White Mountains. Money is one thing, but you can be rich in other ways—like magic. Magic will show you what’s invisible; it will dissolve material things. “Magic is dialectical,” Mitchell tells Sam.
Sam says, “What does that mean?”
“Magic makes you question what you used to believe and believe what you were questioning.”
“You’re so crazy,” Sam says, and he laughs.
He is a little crazy, but nothing is ordinary with him. A rock is not a rock just lying there. It traveled with the glaciers sliding over the earth and gouging out the valleys. Pick up that rock. Look closely. There are pieces of quartz and sparkling mica—but most people don’t see them.
Every time they walk together, they collect rose quartz and white quartz. Someday Mitchell will get a rock tumbler to polish them for jewelry. This is just one of his ideas. He and Sam will learn to sail. They will also have a workshop for designing games and puzzles. When she was little, they started drawing a map of imaginary places. Right now, it’s on notebook paper, but the real thing will be on vellum and they will use pigments from the earth like azurite, lead, gold, verdigris. It’s going to be a one-of-a-kind artwork and they will sell prints—but it will take time because they keep adding countries, islands, and enchanted woods.
Middle-earth and Rivendell and Gondor.
Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood hides out with Little John and Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlet, the youngest, who fights with one sword in each hand.
Earthsea where you have to think about the consequences of every spell.
Ithaka where Odysseus arrives home and kills everybody who has been eating his food and stalking his wife. Everybody thought he was a beggar, but no. Don’t judge by appearances.
In January, Mitchell and Sam go to the museum in Salem. There is a Chinese house, and art from India, and even feather capes from Polynesia.
“Hawaii. That’s where I was born,” says Mitchell.
“No way!”
“Yup.”
“How were you born there?”
“The same way everybody else gets born.”
“You’re Hawaiian?”
“No, we just lived there.”
“Did you go to the beach?”
“I guess so. I was just a baby. My dad was stationed there.”
“You never told me that.”
Her dad shrugs like it’s not a big deal that he’s from the other side of the world, just like the feather capes and fishhooks carved from bone.
“This is the end of the road,” Mitchell tells Sam. It’s like this. Connecting the oceans is a whale road. The whales started it, swimming back and forth. One end of the road is Salem and the other end is over in Lahaina.
“Can we go to Hawaii?” Sam asks, even though she knows the answer.
“Yeah! Probably.”
The thing is—her dad would take her. She knows he would, and once they got there they could go camping on the beach. Sam could bring her tent, so they wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel. “But you can’t skip school,” Mitchell says.
“You did!”
“And look where I am now.”
“In a greenhouse?”
“In recovery.”
“How long do you have to be in recovery?” Sam asks.
“Forever,” her dad says cheerfully.
“You’re never done?”
“Hopefully not.”
“Do you like meetings?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Well, people just take turns telling about their lives and what they’re going through.”
Sam feels bad for him. He is interested in the whole world, and now he is trapped forever listening. She tells her mom, “It sounds so boring.”
“Yeah, well, boring is good,” says Courtney. “With your dad, boring is exactly where you want to be.”