grit works,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. She flipped and went under. Came up with two handfuls. Scrubbed her armpits. She said, “It feels like sandpaper.”
We both scrubbed like cleaning the dishes before. That first night, we cleaned together.
Lucy said, “Did you grow up near here?”
“Yes, in the Valley.”
“In the Yosemite Valley?”
“Yes.” I bent my knees and washed the mud out of my armpits. I didn’t know why I was being so honest with her.
“Your family is park workers then?”
“No,” I said. I leaned back and started to rinse out my hair.
When I came back up and wiped my eyes, Lucy said, “But I thought…”
I knew what she was asking but I didn’t explain.
She did a backward roll, flipped, and came up next to my face. She spit water and swam away.
I cut my feet and swam in place, watching her swim out farther, toward the only deep part of the lake, where the water turned from gray to black.
• • •
My sleeping bag was already set out in one of the boys’ designated pole tents, across from the stove. Lucy came in and laid her sleeping bag down, perpendicular like a T at the bottom of mine.
She said, “I didn’t want to sleep alone in the girls’ tent again. Since no one else is up here, is it all right if I sleep in here with you?”
I said, “Sure.”
It got warmer in the tent. I tried to relax. Lucy was lying on top of her bag, breathing deeply, inhaling and exhaling. I’d started to read but couldn’t follow the sentences with her breathing. She was just beyond my feet, six inches from the end of my sleeping bag. I kept thinking of her bra straps, the thin line of lace across the top, the way she looked before she ran into the lake, her near-naked body standing by the water in less than a swimsuit.
I flipped the page of my book and realized that I’d forgotten to read it. I went back a page. Then I sat up. I said, “I was just lying down for a minute, but I’m not really that tired. I’ll be back, okay?”
“Okay,” Lucy said, and turned over.
I stepped out of the tent and jogged up the road. Turned toward the dome, then into the stunted trees. I jogged down the short switchback and hopped across the creek. In the dark, up in front of me, the white granite glowed.
I found the south face. It’s easy climbing. Knobs on 50-degree rock, then 60 degrees as the steepness increased. Up higher on the dome, hand jams in a long, arcing, more vertical crack, then laybacks on the left side of the crack system, stepping over a corner. The stone was bright even in the dark, and I climbed barefoot. My feet were calloused from climbing each night, bouldering near the lake on weekend mornings.
Half an hour later, on top of the granite dome, I was alone. No other climbers there at that time of night. I looked up at a waning crescent moon and millions of stars. I was facing south but Orion hadn’t yet returned to the sky. I looked back at the Ursas. Cassiopeia. Polaris. I felt the stars drop down and prick my skin like droplets of water. The water thickened and covered me as I extended my arms and rose up, floating.
Lucy was in my tent, her sleeping bag touching the bottom edge of mine.
• • •
My father says, “Warriors.”
I say, “What?” I’m twelve years old. We’re fishing the logjam pool across from Housekeeping, fifteen feet deep where the river gouges on the north side.
“Yes,” he says. “They don’t care about now because they’re always fighting the past.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. “So is that good or bad?”
My father looks at me like he looks at scrub jays when they tear apart a food bag in our cache. He says, “Good, of course. That’s all we can do.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Never, never,” he says. “We can’t forget the old things, the old wrongs.”
He pulls a three-pound whitefish out of the water, oily and fat. Unhooks it from his treble.
I cast into the pool again. Reel across the current line, and my