All summer, Sam works to earn money for the move. Her mom is upset because she should take her last accounting classes to have a backup plan, but Sam wants cash. She is looking for a place in Amherst, and roommates, and a job there too.
Sometimes, she can’t sleep because the whole thing costs so much. Even with her student loans, she is not sure how she will pay for everything—like food. And once she gets a job, how will she find time for coursework? She could take fewer classes each semester, but that would mean more years in school. She sits up at night thinking Honors Earth. Petrology. What will that be like? What is Quaternary?
Justin says, “You’ll sleep better if you climb.”
She says, “I can’t,” because she is leaving in four weeks and she can’t miss work.
“Come on,” he says. “Come anyway.”
They go out to Red Rocks Sunday, carrying their mats. The air is thick with insects. You can hear the whole forest humming. The atmosphere is heavy when they find their boulder, the tilted one. It feels like it’s going to rain, but they climb anyway. Sam’s arms are slick with sweat, and her shoulders, and her back.
They take turns on the tipped boulder. They keep jumping up and falling, falling, falling, until the thunder starts. The storm is booming in the distance, and then right overhead. A minute later the sky cracks open. It’s raining so hard and fast that Justin takes off his hat and holds it upside down and it starts filling up with water.
Sam’s face is streaming. Her T-shirt is like wet tissue paper on her skin. When they walk back to Justin’s car their feet squish in their shoes. Their mats are waterlogged and hard to carry, but the rain feels so good.
The next time they come to Red Rocks it is dry. Sam climbs until her shoulders ache. Her feet scrabble against the rock, and her arms stretch until she thinks they’ll break, and still she fails, and so does Justin.
Two weeks before she leaves, Sam gives notice at the café and everybody signs a card that says Oh, the Places You’ll Go.
One week before, Ann gives Sam her pink African violet to take with her. And Halle’s dad insists on giving Sam a superlight barely used computer.
Halle’s parents say, You are on your way and we could not be more excited for you. Sam, you will do amazing things.
“No pressure.” Halle hugs Sam around the shoulders like, I’ll protect you from them.
Jen cuts Sam’s hair shoulder length at the salon. Courtney says, Finally! Jen says, You’ve gotta look professional, but in the mirror, Sam looks scared.
“Are you worried?” Courtney asks as they walk from the salon to the car.
“What do you think?” Sam says.
“I think you’ll figure it out.”
“I’d better,” Sam mutters. She is visualizing her loans.
“You can do it!”
“Maybe.”
“Are you worried you’re not smart enough? Because you are.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
They sit together in the car and her mom says, “Are you worried about Justin and the long-distance thing?”
“No.”
“What then?” Courtney asks.
“You.”
“Me! What are you worried about me for?”
“I just—”
“What?”
Sam forces the words out. “I just—I’m leaving you alone.”
“I’m not alone.”
“With Noah.”
“He’ll be okay,” her mom says, even though Noah is not doing great in school, and he can’t really handle other people.
“How are you going to watch him and work and do everything?”
“I just will,” Courtney says in that voice Sam recognizes: half nervous, half offended.
“But now it will be harder.”
“Listen, you have one job,” Courtney says. “You have to go in there and crush it, okay?” Sam doesn’t answer, so Courtney keeps talking. “You are a student, and you have to think like a student. You know the motto of Dean College?”
“What?”
“To the strong and the faithful, nothing is difficult.”
“Nothing?” Sam says. She is also thinking, You didn’t finish there.
“Are you listening? You are gonna get it done. And I’m going to be fine, because you know why? You know my secret weapon?”
“Determination?”
Courtney waves that away. “I have my whole life ahead of me.”
Sam doesn’t feel like Courtney has her whole life ahead of her. She feels like her mom can never stop, and that she’ll be working two jobs and watching Noah forever, but she says, “Okay.”
“I’m young,” Courtney tells Sam.
“Okay, Mom.”
“I’m thirty-eight!” Courtney is laughing now.
“What?”
“You’re hysterical,” says Courtney.
The truth is, Sam’s mom is flying. She can’t stop talking about how Sam is starting at U Mass. She tells all her clients. She even gets advice from one lady who used to work there teaching American history.
“But I’m not taking history,” Sam tells her mom.
“You know what? I’m gathering information,” says Courtney.
“Stop!” Sam pleads, because what if she comes back? What will her mom say then? And how will Sam face everybody?
The only place Sam can escape is on the boulder. Climbing, she holds on so hard her mind can’t wander. Falling, she can laugh at her mistakes.
At night she dreams she’s holding on with her right hand. She is dangling and her dad is whistling. She can hear him whistling closer and then he starts cheering. Come on, monkey! Now she flies up. She is floating, and her victory is shining like the sun. She is so warm. No cold, no doubt, no pain inside her.
“I have to go back,” Sam tells Justin in the morning.
They climb that day and the next, and then the third day, they climb with Sean, and Kyle, and Amber.
It’s supposed to be her goodbye party, so Sean brings Freeda’s pizza. Amber brings her special brownies. Kyle has enough beer for everybody, but Sam hardly drinks any. All afternoon she climbs and falls.
Sean lends Sam his extra-thick purple mat, but she gets bruised anyway.
“Hey, have some pizza,” Kyle says.
Sam doesn’t answer, because she’s got one good hold, and she can’t stop trying.
“Try the brownies,” Amber coaxes her.
The afternoon is cooling down and getting beautiful, and the others kick back where Bolt is playing in the ferns, but Sam keeps climbing and falling.
Sam drops onto the mat, but she is not resting, she is studying the way the boulder tips over the ground. The outside of the rock is smooth; the underside is tricky. You have to navigate that dark place and pull up from below.
Justin says, “At least drink water.”
But Sam is thinking, Is there a way to climb the underside in fewer moves? If she goes lateral and shifts her weight earlier, she will have more energy for the edge.
“Sam?” Justin asks.
She jumps up again, but she starts slipping. She chalks her hands and tries once more. Her shorts are muddy. Her thighs are bruised, her knees scraped up, her climbing shoes are dented from weird holds. It’s like the rock is molding them, and her sore feet too.
By evening the others barely watch her anymore. She is climbing underneath the edge and she is shifting her weight, swinging her body, feeling her way.
“Hey! Sam!” Justin calls out in surprise. She is half over, half under, on the lip of the boulder.
When she falls, Sean says, “That was cool.”
She’s up again, and she feels the wisp of a breeze on her bare arms. She climbs up and holds on to the edge, and feels with her feet where she can’t see, and then she reaches, and she tries to spring, but falls again.
She lies on the mat and looks up at the trees. Everything hurts, and at the same time, she knows. She’s solved the problem in her mind. The question is whether she has enough strength left to follow through. Her hands are burning. She stands and shakes out her arms. This doesn’t feel like life or death. She isn’t angry. She isn’t tense. She is just quiet.
Once again, she climbs, clinging to the edge and feeling with her feet. The distance seems so far. It’s so long and slow, and her own weight is so heavy. She feels like she is traveling the whole world, and she is far away. She hears voices, but she is barely conscious of Justin and Amber and Sean and Kyle. She is reaching and reaching, and then she is in that silent place, pulling up slowly. Scrabbling her feet, catching hold.
She is standing high atop the boulder, and everyone is shouting; Bolt is barking—but Sam is winded. It’s not like the dream where she was floating. In real life, joy comes in a rush, so fast, so sweet, she can’t hold on to it. She bends over, breathing hard, and what stays with her is the trying. Not the moment she pulled up, but all the hours falling.
She climbs down a little way and jumps the rest. She drinks some water and Bolt licks her knees, and Justin kneels and tapes her ragged hands. Everyone is talking except Sam.
“What were you thinking up there?” Justin asks.
“My dad,” she says, because she wishes he had seen her. She names the problem Dreamer. That’s for him.
The end-of-August air is warm, caressing, as they take the trail out. The world is blue, no longer green. The next day Sam and Justin will load her car and then they will drive out together so he can help her move. Justin will leave Sam there. He’ll come home early the next morning.
Amber says, “You’re gonna hurt tomorrow.”
Sam shrugs. “I’m hurting now.”
“Ice,” says Kyle.
Amber and Kyle are carrying the cooler filled with empty bottles. Justin has the empty pizza boxes, Hot and Delicious. Remember this, Sam’s dad told her once at Freeda’s, and she memorized the napkin holders and the stacked boxes and the shakers full of chili pepper flakes. Did Mitchell know she could not forget him? He didn’t say Remember me.
Kyle is talking about Sam’s climb and Amber says, “I wish I had it on my phone.”
“That’s okay,” Sam says. “You are my witnesses.”
Amber says, “I don’t even have a picture.”
“But now I wish I could start from the beginning,” says Sam.
Amber looks at her like I love you, but you’re weird. “What are you talking about?”
“So I could figure it out all over again.”
“Well,” Kyle says. “You are a climber.”
Amber is still talking about her missed photo. “You were too fast for me.”
But they are walking slowly now. Slower and slower, until they can hear the highway through the trees. “I don’t want to leave,” Sam says, except she knows she will. You’ll do great, everybody says. You’ll be back, they say, as she tries to memorize these leaves, these words, this light, this air.