Alex Morel - Survive

Bye,

Will p.s. Got you last.

Bang, bang. My heart races.

“Are you decent?”

I tuck the letter in and close the book and place it back exactly as I found it. I lay my head down, as if his knocking and voice woke me.

“Yes, sorry. Enter.”

Paul pushes the door in and then pushes it shut, stepping gently beside my head.

“Sleep is good, but we only have the light for so long. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Up the mountain to the plateau-where we can be seen. It isn’t snowing anymore-the weather broke. It’s our best chance.”

“No. I can’t.”

I probably can’t climb up a mountain, but what’s really soul-crushing at the moment is I can’t just do things without a plan. One day we were making a nest and now he wants to climb a mountain. I feel that old sense of paralysis that’s plagued me for years seep into my heart. Just don’t move, Jane. If you don’t move, nothing will happen, and that’s better than something unexpected happening.

“You can. You will, unless you want to die alone in a bathroom.”

He shuts the door and the tiny echo reverberates a kind of loneliness that’s just as terrifying as climbing a mountain.

The ungrateful hardass has returned.

“Wait!” I shout. “Give me a minute and I’ll be outside.”

I get myself together, glancing briefly at the mirror. It ain’t pretty, but hey, there isn’t much competition up here.

Paul stands with rope and climbing stuff around his shoulders. With his sunglasses and gear, he looks a little like a warrior set for battle.

“Let’s talk about this for a second,” I suggest.

“I’m not wasting time talking about this. Let’s go. We’ll die down here if we don’t. They won’t find us until the spring.”

“I thought you said two or three weeks?”

“Look.” He points up. “The plane landed on a ledge deep in a steep valley in a thick forest of trees. They’ll never spot us down here, and if they can’t spot us, they won’t send a climber blindly into a vast, roadless tundra. We have to be seen.”

“But now?”

“Good weather up this high is the anomaly, Jane. This might be our only chance for a week or more.”

“Are there no other choices?”

He shakes his head and turns toward a slope that rises a couple hundred yards behind the plane. It doesn’t look quite as steep as the rest of the valley for about one hundred feet or so, but then it gets really steep near the top and inverts for about ten feet. It’s those last ten feet that make my stomach twist into knots.

“I can’t climb that,” I say.

“Stop it. You will,” he says bluntly.

“I’m not you.”

“No, but you’ll die here if you don’t climb.”

“That’s nice.” I snort.

“It’s a fact.”

“There are no facts,” I shout. I feel trapped and unsure. “You don’t know any more than I do. We could be saved in an hour or end up dying on that cliff because of your stupid facts.”

Paul’s eyes heat up. And then they cool.

“Die, then. It’s of no consequence to me. I’m not going to sit here and wait to die; it’s not my style.”

My heart dries and crumbles in my chest and the tears start to well up. A big, sad lump sags inside my throat. Coldhearted bastard. I hate him. I hate him more than any being I’ve ever met in my life, including my father, who I’ve hated since the day he abandoned me. I point to the top of the cliff.

“Don’t leave me, Paul,” I sob. And then fall to the snow on my knees. He stands over me for a minute as I cry.

“You want me to take you back to the cabin?” he asks.

I nod yes.

“I’m not doing that. That’s what the fucking shrinks do, isn’t it? Enable you? That’s what you call it, right? Well, that’s fine in a hospital, where they feed you and take care of you. But not here. Stasis is death.”

I hear Old Doctor’s voice echoing in Paul’s. I stop crying and look up at him and then back at the mountain.

“That invert, I can’t do that.”

“You’re only afraid of what you’ve never done. You’ll do it.”

“I’m not afraid; I just can’t imagine it’s possible.”

Paul looks up to the point in the wall where it pops out. “That thing? Oh, that’s easier than walking. You can walk, right?”

Sarcasm. That’s the answer-a stupid joke. How is it that a boy can go from amazing to jerkhead in a single second?

“I’m going first, so if I fall and die, you can feast on me until help arrives.”

He says this with a smile.

“I don’t like jerky.” So lame, but I had to say something.

“Insulting me won’t change anything.”

I stand there defiantly. He doesn’t say anything and then he looks up to the mountain, like he’s thinking about the climb. But just when I’m thinking I took him down a notch or two, he fires back.

“Don’t think I don’t know your little secret too, Solis. You’d rather give up and be a victim than fight and lose. Easier to cry on daddy’s shoulder, isn’t it?”

“Screw you,” I shout. “My father’s dead. And he was a piece of shit, like you.”

I push past him. I can’t look at his face. I stare up at the inverted top, trying to will my courage up. I feel like I’m marching right toward the end of my life. How will I ever make it to the top of the mountain?

Why try, I think. Old Doctor’s voice echoes in my head: “Because that’s what we do. We impose meaning on life.”

Inside, something else is bothering me. That word, victim. Like a little dagger, Paul stuck me with it. I hate it, but I feel some truth in it. Fuck him-what does he know about it!

“Let’s go,” I say as I brush by him and walk toward the slope.

We don’t speak as we stand at the base of the climb. The weather is just above zero but overcast and the cloud line hovers just above the valley. I feel the sun bearing down from behind the clouds; it casts a slightly ominous light over the valley. The wind pushes us a bit, but there’s no snow, except what’s kicked up. We couldn’t ask for more pleasant conditions, at least by mountain standards.

At the base of the wall, I look up to the top and realize that even the distance we crossed to get here hasn’t diminished the steepness and length of the climb. I want to look over at Paul and cry or beg him to turn around, but I push down the impulse. No more crying in front of the Bastard, which is how I will think of him from now on, I decide. I can’t give him that satisfaction.

“Listen,” he finally blurts out after playing with the ropes for what seems an eternity. “I’m going to lead us up. This is your rope. Run it through your belt loop.”

I grab it and pull the rope through my back loop and tie a knot.

“If you fall, that won’t hold you,” he says.

I look at him with a so-tell-me-what-to-do-dipshit stare.

“Pull it through the front and loop the rope around all the loops, like a belt. Then re-loop the last one and tie off a couple of knots. That stitching will hold you. You’re like a feather anyway; it won’t take much.”

Well, at least he noticed! I loop, tie, then nod.

“Let’s do it,” he says, putting up a fist bump.

“A fist bump,” I say. “I’m going to die and you want me to fist bump.”

He looks sheepish for a second and then says, “Sorry. Just trying to inspire you. Remember yesterday. You were amazing. Be amazing today.”

I look up the mountain one more time to assess my situation. Because the wall in this section is steep, there’s less accumulation of snow. That could change in a couple of months, but I’m starting to see the wisdom of Paul’s choice. After about one hundred feet of steep hiking, there’s a fifteen-to-twenty-foot climb to a small ledge.