At home when Sam’s dad calls, she says she can’t talk because she is studying for her final. Even after the exam, she carries her Earth Science book everywhere. It’s like a shield.
At Freeda’s, she turns the pages and stares at all the diagrams and photographs—but mostly she reads about the Rockies. They are the result of plates colliding. They are igneous, and they are ancient—what’s left of prehistoric islands.
Whenever the door opens, she is afraid her dad is back to order pizza, but it’s never him. He felt bad for barging in. That’s what he tells Courtney. He wants to see Sam—but he doesn’t want to put her on the spot.
Courtney sits with Sam on the couch and says, Just hear him out. He wants to tell Sam how he missed her.
Sam says he already did.
He wants to tell her how much he regrets losing so much time with her.
Sam says, Uh-huh.
He is working on a farm.
Sam says, That’s nice. She imagines little pigs with corkscrew tails.
Courtney says she can see how Sam might be upset.
Sam says, “I’m not,” but she doesn’t want to talk, or see her dad for any reason. She doesn’t really want to see anyone. Not Halle. Definitely not Kevin. Instead of climbing at the Y, she sits at home in air-conditioning. She gets a 92 and very good! on her exam, but she doesn’t show it to Courtney.
Her mom says, Let me cut your hair, but Sam says no.
Her mom says, You’re starting junior year and that’s the most important year.
Sam says, Thank you for reminding me.
School starts, and Sam walks to class, and she walks home, alone.
Corey is off with new people, so she hardly sees him juggling in the halls. Halle is away at Andover. Even Noah plays hockey every afternoon. Courtney works until six, so Sam is alone with her thoughts, which are not about her dad or Corey or school or really anything around her. They are all about the people she can’t see—Declan and his girlfriend.
On Facebook Declan’s girlfriend is beautiful with dimples and her name is Ashley. She goes to the University of New Hampshire and she skis. Does she climb too? Sam isn’t jealous. How could she be? She is just wondering.
Practice starts two weeks after school begins. What will it be like this time? Will Declan critique her, the way he did before? Will he drive her? Sam is taller and stronger. Her arms are hard. Her eyes are sad. What will he think when she climbs for him again?
Her dad sends her a letter in the mail. It’s on lined notebook paper and the writing is thick black print. Sam I still owe you an apology actually a lot of them. If I could just talk to you if you would let me. You are my— At this point, there is a tiny drawing of the sun, the moon, and stars—and maybe a comet. It could also be a spaceship. It is hard to tell.
Sam leaves the note at the bottom of her locker, and her textbooks crush it down. Precalculus and U.S. History and Spanish and American Literature and Biology. She likes the weight of all those books. She likes the way people ignore her, because it gives her time to count the days and hours until she can climb again.
She sees Declan as soon as she walks in. Even though he is at the far end of the gym, she recognizes his stance, his legs apart. The gym is giant, crawling with climbers, but everywhere he goes, she senses him.
When he gathers everyone, he picks up right where he left off, except that this year he divides the team into two practice groups because there are so many kids. It’s not like one group will be better or worse. They are still one team, and the groups are equal, and they will switch off drills. Declan takes one group and Toby takes the other.
Sam holds still as Declan calls names from a list. She doesn’t want Toby’s group. It’s true Toby has been at the gym for longer, but she coaches all the younger kids. How can the groups be equal? Nobody believes that, and nobody believes the groups will switch off either.
When Declan calls her name for Toby’s group, she looks at him in shock and silent protest, but he ignores her.
She climbs with ten other girls and Toby, and he doesn’t even glance in her direction.
As soon as practice is over, she packs up and changes shoes. She is never coming back. She is never going through that again. She is almost out the door when he asks if she wants a ride.
“Okay,” she says, as though her heart’s not racing.
There is sand on the floor of his white car and all between the seats. It’s still summer weather in September. They are both wearing shorts and T-shirts. The sun is beating down, and she brushes sand off her bare legs.
He starts driving, and the wind is whipping through the open windows, and they don’t speak. It would be embarrassing to whine about Toby’s group. And she would feel dumb asking, How were the Rockies? She doesn’t know what to say, and so she tells him, “My dad came back.”
She has no idea why she said that. Her dad is the last thing she wants to talk about. She wants to start over, but she can’t, because she’s crying.
“Sam!” He takes the next exit and pulls off onto Cherry Hill Road and parks the car in a crunch of gravel. “What happened?”
It’s very still. The air is hot. She is afraid to say more, but she does anyway, because it turns out Declan is the only one she wants to tell. She has been waiting and waiting. “He was gone almost a year and now he’s back.”
“Your dad who used to whistle at the meets?”
She is watching his face. His dark eyes can be hard or mischievous or playful. Now they’re just surprised. He doesn’t seem so much in his twenties. He’s more like a kid now, and she’s the older one. She is the one with more experience, or at least, more pain. “He has a new job.”
“That’s good, right?”
She tries to explain. “No, because he does this every time and it won’t work! He starts out good and then he disappears.”
They sit there together, and she thinks, Do you know what I mean? Do you have any idea what I mean? It helps to tell him, but she can’t read his face, and she can’t have anything she really wants, a kiss, a caress, a return to what happened when he looked at her for real and touched her. She can’t ask about that either. They never spoke about it then, and they can’t start now. Everything is unsaid between them.