Addison smiled to herself to feel Mary Kate alongside her. Neither of them had moved an inch all night. Her mind drifted to pleasant thoughts of how relaxed they might be in this same position, but without the restricting bags. Thanks to the casual affection Mary Kate had shown since the Karanga Valley, she had given herself permission to speculate about where they might go from here. Sharing a room on the safari might lead them to share even more.
“Hi,” Mary Kate whispered as she raised her head for a moment. “You have a dirty face.”
Addison smiled. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but so do you.”
Mary Kate chuckled and dropped her head back on Addison’s shoulder. “I have a dirty everything.”
“There’s ice inside our tent,” Addison remarked drearily, peering through the hole in her sleeping bag at the frozen condensation.
“Do you realize that when we crawl out this morning, we won’t ever have to go back in?”
In an odd way, that realization made Addison sad. She surely wouldn’t miss the hard ground, or the cold, or the dirt that pervaded everything she owned. But she had enjoyed sharing the small space with Mary Kate, especially all the hours they had talked into the night.
“And you won’t have a tent mate sleeping on top of you every night,” Mary Kate added.
“I haven’t minded that at all. In case you forgot, I like sleeping close to women.”
Mary Kate burrowed against her. “Lucky for you.”
A sudden giggling from an adjacent tent broke their intense gaze.
“Hey, everybody! Last one to the bus is a rotten egg!” It was Nikki’s voice.
“That’s appropriate, since we all smell like rotten eggs,” Drew yelled from inside his own tent.
“I’m running off this mountain so fast you guys will be eating my dust!” Brad said.
Ann corrected him. “It’s all mud, Brad. There is no dust.”
The banter continued between tents for another ten minutes before Mei finally ventured out. “Shit!”
“What?” several voices asked.
“Everything out here’s covered in ice, even the stuff under the rain guard.”
Addison unzipped their tent to find a thin layer of ice covering their boots and Summit bags. A peek outside the rain guard revealed more. Ice coated the ground and hung from the trees. “I’m ready to get the hell off this mountain,” she said with a groan.
“I’m right behind you. One more day of this, and we’ll all be weaving baskets.”
Breakfast was hard-boiled eggs, delivered to the camp by the same transport that ferried Coca-Cola to the ranger station they had passed on the way down. Mary Kate shared her hand sanitizer, and everyone made the best of it. They packed only one liter of water each, as they no longer needed to worry about acclimatization. Luke guessed they would be off the mountain in three hours.
The exit through the rainforest was somewhat treacherous, since the damp moss growing across the rocks made for slippery passage. Nonetheless, they were making good time. Nikki had positioned herself directly behind Luke today, determined to be the first on the waiting bus.
After their first break, the trail became somewhat muddier. Addison helped Mary Kate navigate the mucky parts, lending a hand to ensure that she didn’t lose her footing. Both were glad they had brought two walking sticks. Those with only one were struggling for balance.
“So we’re almost there, Luke?” Ann asked. They had been slogging for more than two hours now.
“I think we are…half.” He looked at them grimly. “The rain has made the trail difficult. It is certain to get much worse.”
The runoff from last night’s chilling drizzle had spread through the jungle like a delta, and soon they had no choice but to trudge right through the middle of it. It was miserable and seemed as though it might never end.
The jovial camaraderie of the day before was gone, and all were quiet in their misery. Each had fallen in the mud, most more than once.
Luke stopped them again when they came upon a log that had fallen across the path. It seemed as good a place to break as any.
“Hey, Luke,” Brad said. “It isn’t like this in the movies. The African guide is supposed to walk ahead and chop down the branches with a machete so the tourists can walk through without any trouble. They don’t have mud like this.”
Luke shrugged. “I have never seen a movie.”
Addison spotted Mary Kate slumped at the end of the sloping log, her back to the others in the group. She gingerly crept over and touched her on the back. “How are you doing?”
Mary Kate shook her head. “Not so good.”
It was clear the grueling slog had taken its toll on her spirit. “We’ll be out of this soon.”
“I sure hope so, because if I thought the next two hours were going to be like the last, I’d just sit here and cry.” As the words left her lips, her eyes filled with tears.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Addison kneeled against the log and drew Mary Kate to her chest. “It’s just for a little while longer. I promise you, that feeling you had yesterday morning will be back as soon as we get down.”
Mary Kate tried to smile through her tears. She gave Addison a tight squeeze around the waist and whispered her thanks.
Addison looked over her shoulder to see Neal comforting Mei, who was covered with mud past her hips. Ann sat dejected on a muddy rock. Their misery today seemed magnified by the contrast from their elation at the summit.
When Luke stood this time, he offered encouragement. “No more breaks. Now we go to the gate.”
“Why don’t we walk the rest of the way with Ann?” Addison suggested. “She looks like she could use a little moral support too.”
In under an hour, they exited the muddy trail onto a wide dirt road. It too was wet, but here they could easily get their footing. To their surprise, they were met from the other direction by several young boys who escorted them the final half mile to the ranger station. Everyone thought it odd at first, but the youths’ friendly presence was a welcome addition. As they rounded the final bend, they got their first view of civilization—such as it was—in the form of several rugged four-wheel drive vehicles and a simple white structure that housed the ranger’s station.
The boy who walked with Addison took her arm and led her to a constantly running faucet that splashed onto a concrete slab. Carefully, she held onto a pole as he took out a ragged scrub brush and began to wash the caked mud from her boots and pants.
“Addison! Look at me.”
She turned and smiled as Mary Kate took her picture. It was a relief to see her come out of her funk. No one had imagined the descent would have been so emotionally draining.
The boy was thrilled with the two-dollar tip, though probably not as thrilled as Addison was to have her boots and gaiters clean.
Luke directed them to the ranger’s logbook, where each one officially signed out of the park, noting the highest point reached. “Tom Muncie will be pleased that all of you reached Stella Point.”
“Too bad about Courtney,” Mei said.
He shrugged. “There is little we can do for those who do not come to the mountain prepared.”
Addison watched the others sign the book, noting the pride of those who had reached the summit. She too was proud of getting there, but this trip had come to mean more than that. She had set out merely to make the most of the experience, one she had hoped to share with her best friends. She had never expected to meet someone like Mary Kate, someone who made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a while.
After a one-hour drive through the countryside, the bus pulled into the View Hotel, depositing them, tired and dirty, onto the same front porch where they had gathered expectantly eight days ago. In their last official act as Summit trekkers, they retrieved their belongings and pooled their dollars to generously tip their guide and the team of porters gathered by the bus.
Addison separated her gear, pulling out only the lightweight items. The rest she stuffed in the Summit duffel with her sleeping bag and presented to Luke for distribution to the porters. “I won’t have much use for this again.”
Mary Kate kept her sleeping bag, but emptied her backpack and added it the growing pile, which now included Jim’s boots, and all of Drew’s donated hand-me-downs.
Luke then presented each hiker who had reached Uhuru Peak with an official certificate from the Tanzania National Parks department, noting the date and time of their summit, and the age of the climber. The others got a Summit Trail and Safari Company certificate that said they had reached Stella Point.
Addison followed Mary Kate back inside and made arrangements to meet in one hour to walk into town to the Internet café. Then she retreated to her room on the second floor and turned on the water in her shower. Even with her diminished expectations about the plumbing, she was disappointed. The shower barely managed a trickle, and it was cold. It would have to do.
After thirty minutes of intense scrubbing and a cursory swipe of her legs with a razor, she called it quits, dressing in clean olive green convertibles with a pale yellow T-shirt. Sandals were a welcome change to the boots she had worn since leaving London.
Mary Kate was waiting on the front porch when she came down. She had on khaki Capri pants with a sleeveless white top and sandals. Small gold hoops adorned her ears, and she wore a necklace with a dainty opal pendant. Addison would have proudly taken her anywhere.
She liked very much where things had come since clearing the air in the Karanga Valley. The more they talked, the more she was convinced her interest wasn’t one-sided, and there was no reason to rein in what she was feeling. Mary Kate was twenty- four, old enough to know what she wanted, certainly old enough to stop things from going beyond what she could handle.
“There’s a little market up here at the corner that sells sodas and candy. I get the feeling they’re open just for us.”
Indeed, as they approached, a man rushed from his shack to push up the window of the snack stand, and two children suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Addison bought drinks and candy for the children and promised to stop by on the way back to the hotel.
They reached the café and paid the host for two terminals. The connection was sluggish, but eventually, Addison signed into her e-mail account. A quick check showed nothing pressing, and not a single reply to her e-mail inquiries about job opportunities. She typed a short note to each of her parents, letting them know she had reached the summit and was now safe at the hotel in Moshi. Next, she wrote to Cyn and Javier:
Get ready to be jealous. Kili was everything they said it would be and more. Six of us made it to the summit—including yours truly— and some of us are headed out on safari tomorrow. Can’t wait to tell you about the “and more” part. Suffice it to say that she’s a Georgia peach and we’re rooming together over the next few days(and nights).I hope to have more to say when I see you, but if not, I expect to add her to my short list of very good friends. I’ll e you again from London, and I can’t wait to show you the photos. Love, Addison
“How do you spell Falk?” Mary Kate asked without looking up.
“F-A-L-K. Who are you writing to?”
“Deb. I’m telling her how you laughed at me when I fell in the water, and how you taunted me when I couldn’t get up the Barranco Wall.”
“Uh-oh. She’s going to come beat the shit out of me.”
“Why, I do believe you understand Southern culture after all,” Mary Kate said, her drawl more pronounced than ever. “I wrote Deb when I got here and told her I was breaking up with Bobby as soon as I got home. You want to hear what she said?”
“Sure.” She closed out her connection and slid her chair next to Mary Kate’s.
“To my dear, dear, dear, dear friend Mary Kate. You cannot imagine the joy it brings me to hear you say that you are finished with Bobby Britton. In fact, I bought a six-pack of Coors Light to celebrate the blessed event with you, but I drank the whole damn thing in your honor. Can’t wait to hear about your trip, and for God’s sake, don’t bring home any parasites!”
“She sounds like a riot.”
“She is. So here’s what I told her.” She leaned back and read from the screen. “After the eight coldest, dirtiest days of my life, I am back at the hotel in Moshi. With the help of my untrustworthy sidekick, Addison Falk from Miami, I have conquered the highest mountain in Africa. Addison will be visiting Mooresville someday, and I told her you would kick her ass because she laughed at me when I fell in the water. Don’t let me down. See you soon.”
“I’m in such trouble,” Addison said before breaking into a grin.
She closed her connection. “We should go back before it gets dark.”
“You aren’t going to write Bobby?”
“No, I changed my mind. I promised I’d call him. He’s supposed to tell everybody when I’m back down. Besides, he doesn’t check his e-mail that often.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see what comes out of my mouth.”
When they walked past the snack stand on their way back, eight small children came to greet them, obviously on the recommendation of their two friends. They bought another round of drinks and candy for the children, and barely made it back to the hotel before dark. Mary Kate stopped at the counter and asked to use the phone.
“Good luck,” Addison said, wishing for an excuse to hang around. She wanted to hear Mary Kate tell him to get lost.