Waiting for Everest ✓

Part III

The four of us spent the night at a motel outside Williams, Arizona, about twenty miles from the Grand Canyon. It was a couple minutes past one o'clock in the morning when we pulled into the parking lot outside La Piedra Inn—a quality establishment, if I'd ever seen one—and hauled at least a thousand pounds of water bottles and tents and sleeping bags and canned food and spare clothes up to our rooms, because we couldn't leave them in Matt's van in case any of the local criminals were interested in going for a hike sometime soon.

Lindsey and I shared a room.

Our window overlooked two oversized dumpsters and the brown stucco wall of the neighboring building, and the sink in our bathroom only spouted out ice cold water. I just barely managed to brush my teeth before I collapsed onto one of the two twin beds in the room, so exhausted I couldn't stay upright any longer.

When I woke up the next morning, the button of my jean shorts was digging into my stomach and the underwire of my bra felt like it was trying to burrow its way into my ribcage.

I sat up, blinking furiously as I tried to orient myself. Brilliant Arizona sunshine filtered in through the stained curtains over the window, illuminating the empty bed on the other side of the room. The bathroom door was shut, but I could just barely make out the sound of Lindsey's muted humming. I rubbed the palms of my hands into my eye sockets, wondering how on earth she could sound so chipper.

I wasn't a morning person.

By the time I'd managed to get my act together long enough to tug on some clean shorts and a tank top, Lindsey was out of the bathroom, whistling a tune I didn't know.

"G'morning," I grumbled, still half-asleep.

Lindsey laughed musically.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she teased, "You look like you need coffee."

I grunted.

"You excited for today?" she continued as she folded her pajamas into a neat stack and tucked them away at the bottom of her hiking pack.

"Yeah," I said, my voice still thick with lethargy, "I am."

It was true, at least.

There was a certain kind of buzz in my veins that morning, the kind I only ever felt before a climb. It felt a lot like the eager jitters I'd gotten as a kid when the sun set on Christmas Eve, or when I looked out the car window after a six-hour road trip with my parents and saw the road signs telling us to take the next exit for Disneyland.

"Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon before?" Lindsey asked.

I shook my head.

"No way!" she said, her jaw dropping open. Lindsey propped her tanned, slender hands on her hips. "You've never climbed the Grand Canyon? Oh my God, Camille! It's, like, the mecca of the western rock climbing world. How've you never been?"

My face grew warm.

I rubbed my palms against my shorts, shrugging.

"I just never got around to it," I admitted quietly, deciding to leave out that part about my mother bookmarking every news article she could find online about climber deaths in the Grand Canyon over the past fifty years in order to tell me that no, I could not go. "Have you?"

"Of course!" Lindsey cried, plopping down on the edge of her bed. She pulled her legs up onto the duvet and folded them, Indian style. "I've been three times, actually. I went on a climbing tour this March with some of the other counselors from camp. We went to, um, let's see—" she held up a hand and started counting off on her fingers, "—Peru, Venezuela, Colorado, Arizona—obviously, then Wyoming. It was so incredible. Phineas is a great guide."