Элисон Скотч: The Theory of Opposites

“You cannot be serious,” I said to Vanessa. “This is my one thing.”

“You have a few things,” she said. “I had to pick.”

“I jumped off a goddamn bridge for you.”

“I thought you jumped off the bridge for yourself.”

I turned to Tandy. “I specifically told you that I hate mountain climbing. In my questionnaire — I stated that I hate mountains.”

“What do you think this is, a day spa?” she asked. “Thirty-six hours. Solo. That’s it. That’s your dare.”

“I can’t be alone for thirty-six hours on a mountain!” I swiveled to Vanessa, who placed her hands on her hips and shrugged.

“You can’t be alone for thirty-six hours because you told us that you hate being alone,” Tandy said. (She wasn’t dumb.) “The map has places where we’ve hidden food. If you hike well enough and accurately enough, you’ll be fine. And well-fed. And it’s not technically a solo since your cameraman will be with you. And after twenty-four hours, your path will intersect with Nicky’s, so you get the second day together.”

Nicky bobbed his head. “Sounds cool. Am I gonna get to meet Slack Jones?”

I didn’t bob my head. I said: “No way.”

Vanessa said: “I dare you.”

And I said: “That’s so lame.”

And she said: “No, that’s the point.”

And I shouted: “This is total fricking BS! This isn’t what I signed up for!”

But Nicky said: “Come on, Aunt Willa. This will be fun.”

And because I felt that odd new sensation that seemed akin to a maternal tug — and because I didn’t want to be the loser who disappointed him, I huffed out a melodramatic huff and said, “Fine.” The opposite of what I thought it would be. This would be anything but fine!

“I hate your theory of opposites,” I said to Vanessa, as she stepped into the van before it steered away.

“Don’t hate the playa, hate the game,” she said, slamming the door. As if that made any sense, as if that had anything to do with anything.

Nicky and I hugged, and he consulted his map and started off to the left, hiking up and up and up, the cameraman on his tail, getting smaller and smaller until he disappeared around a ridge, and then it was just me. (And Rick, my cameraman, the very same one who had emailed me the bungee photo. But he wasn’t allowed to talk to me unless I was faced with a medical emergency, so it was mostly just me.)

Thirty-six hours solo. On a mountain. It figured.

Since I didn’t have any choice in the matter, I put one foot in front of the other, and I started walking. My map indicated that my first food stop was about three miles away, which didn’t seem so bad. It was hotter than expected, but I wiped the beads off my brow and kept going. I had all sorts of positive self-talk and theories to steady me, to steel me, so I focused on the ground beneath my feet, and I thought about my guts and not too much else. Not Theo, not my dad, not Shawn.

And looking back, it was easy to see how the producers set their trap — how they lull their constants into a false sense of security — the vipers or bears or lethal berries never look too dangerous until you get closer, and that’s when the trouble starts. When everything is near enough to kill you. That first mile up the mountain was cake.

Then I came upon the rock wall descent. I turned to Rick and said:

“Are you kidding me?” But he wasn’t allowed to answer. I saw his lens focus in on a close-up of my huge and open pores that were emitting an angry army of sweat, so I turned around quickly and said, “Fuck it,” and read the instructions to the harness, and then secured said harness to a boulder and jumped over the side. I’d done it before, after all. I could see now how Vanessa had prepared me, training me like a soldier, raising me like a child who would finally be ready to go out there and face the world.

I may have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, but I’d never scaled the side of a mountain. I bounced and bounced and bounced against the scorching hot rock, limbs splayed every which way, profanities shouted every other way. My elbow started bleeding, and a gruesome cut opened up on my left cheek. About halfway there, I looked down and realized exactly what I was doing: dangling 100 feet in the air off a cliff with no literal net, with the sun crushing down on my shoulders and GORP as my only sustenance, and that is when I started to panic. The all-too-familiar rebellion of bile arose in my throat, but I inhaled through my nose and out again through the same pathway, and I found my reserves.

So what? What now? What’s next?

I steeled my shaking hands, and I eased down until my feet hit the dirt, and I rejoiced, “Hallelujah.”

Rick was already waiting for me at the bottom, which Ithought was a little fishy, but when I questioned him, he mimed a little zipper in front of his mouth, which I found super-irritating, but I continued on my way. Two miles or so later, I reached my first food drop, and I thought:

“I can do this. This is a joke! This isn’t a dare!”

And I sat and enjoyed my Gatorade and my two granola bars and banana, and I let the sunshine soak into my cheeks, and for a moment, I felt content. I thought about Nicky and knew that he’d be killing it, that he probably had already reached his campsite, and I deemed myself the most genius substitute mom in the world. How cool was I? Taking my nephew on to Dare You!. I was the coolest. I was going to be the coolest mom in the history of the world.

When the sun starts setting on the mountains, the temperature drops perilously quickly. You don’t think about things like this when you’re a city girl, and your only experience with mountain climbing is one other outing on Mt. Rainier, a mistaken abandonment in the Alps at the age of eight, and cyber-stalking Cilla Zuckerberg’s Chicks Who Dig Mountain Climbing page on Facebook.

I should start by saying that in hindsight, I had gotten overconfident. I lingered on my snack site too long. The sun felt good, and I felt good, and readers, as you well know by now, it’s not often that I, Willa Chandler, just feel good, so I may have savored my Gatorade ( Dare You! is sponsored by Gatorade) a bit too long, not minding the time (we weren’t allowed watches anyway), not caring too much.

I was here! I was on Dare You! . I had guts!

I drank that Gatorade like it was champagne, and I thought about how I would tell my father what I had done. I climbed a mountain; the Alps hadn’t scarred me for life! And then I tried not to think about him again, but that didn’t prove easy either. The truth is that we are all, always, works in progress, so yes, I sat on the rock and I thought: screw you, Dad! This is so much better than the fucking Alps! But then I also thought: I hope that he forgives me for doing this. And I considered that for a long time, wondering why I needed him to absolve me or why his absolution still mattered.

And then I contemplated fate and timing and how if Vanessa hadn’t dared me in the first place — way back in June — I’d be home with Shawn right now, not here on a mountain, with the taste of freedom on my tongue, with that freedom throbbing in my veins. And then I thought about the broken condom and how fate probably does mean something. Just likely not everything that my dad always said it did.

By the time I pushed myself up from my resting place, the sun had dipped below the crests of the surrounding mountains. I consulted my map and saw a fork in the road. When I turned to ask Rick for guidance, he was packing up his gear, ready to head back to where we started.

“You’re leaving me?”

“The mountain is rigged with cameras. You’re covered.”