Chalk

10

I finally relented and took Alice with me two weeks after we met Edward in the tomatoes. She bugged me about it every morning over the sweet peas until I got sick enough of her and broke, agreeing to let her tag along. I still hadn’t told her about Jasper and his glitter fetish, not entirely sure how the two of them would be able to find common ground. He was usually scratched and scraped and dirty, while she was never anything less than impeccable. Which was why it took me so long to give in, and I knew within an instant that I had been so so wrong in thinking that she might be able rein herself in for this.

She showed up at my door wearing a fucking ballet costume. Literally. All puffy moss-green tulle and a bodice sewn with sequins and silky flowers and lacey embroidery. She had her big-ass camera around her neck because, along with getting drunk and pretending she was in Paris, she liked to pretend she was a photographer too.

“You’re not seriously wearing that,” I sighed, eyeing her and wondering just what all those chalk-covered climbers were going to think of me if I showed up with her in tow. “You got that from a costume store, didn’t you?”

“I did not,” Alice huffed and fingered the flowers at her waist. The top looked like one of those corseted contraptions from the sixteenth century and curved around her like a vise, her boobs practically spilling out of the top. “It’s from Neiman Marcus and it was very expensive.”

“Are you sure you want to wear it out in the woods? You’re probably going to ruin it.” I tried a last ditch effort, but knew that it wouldn’t work.

“You speak as if you don’t know me.”

---

Alice disappeared the moment we entered the trees. She’d been darting around the entire way up here, her camera firmly attached to her face. I’d convinced her to at least wear her knee-high boots since she was going to be tromping through bushes and brambles. Between those and the leather jacket I shoved her into to hide half of her getup, she looked like a forest-fairy from the wrong side of the trees.

I let her go, hoping that if she screamed loud enough I’d be able to hear her, and went off in search of the boys. Jasper had been joining us more and more ever since I did that Lock and Key problem ‘on sight,’ as though it changed something about me. I still kind of had the feeling that Edward let me slide in order to claim the distinction, what with his pointing out the crux and all, but he told me that I’d found that finger hold all on my own and that only my tiny little hands could have used it like that anyway.

According to him, he couldn’t even get the tip of his pinky into that hole.

I found them at the Passion Pit, the ground littered in crash pads and both of them shirtless this time.

Win.

“You’re going to have to campus around that lip. Go up from the right side rather than left.” Jasper was pointing to a jutting triangle of rock at least twelve feet above the ground, right in the very center of the stone.

“What’s a campus?” I spoke up, both of the boys looking over at me. Edward’s face broke out into a brilliant smile and I tried not to glance down at his abs. Dear god, were 24-packs even possible?

“Just hands,” he winked at me. “No feet.”

I looked back up at the spot Jasper had pointed out and got scared simply imagining Edward dangling from his fingers for several feet of rock with nothing but a deadly drop below him. Before I could voice my concerns he was already at it again, Jasper stepping in behind him and holding his hands just inches from Edward’s back as he climbed, in case he fell.

It looked impossible. The holds were spaced far apart and barely qualified as holds in the first place. Even Edward seemed like he was struggling and it didn’t surprise me that no one had ever topped this particular problem, its name was beginning to make more and more sense. Jasper stepped back when Edward got too far out of his reach, but didn’t leave the edge of the crash pad, eyes trained on his friend the entire time. I wondered if that was what Edward did as I climbed, my ass in his face, ready to catch me if I fell, and my face flamed a little around the edges.

Edward got stuck in the crux, just like I had earlier, and cursed under his breath. Grumbling at the rock as though they were long-distance friends with some serious quarrels to settle.

“What’s up with this rock?” I asked Jasper, both of us watching Edward slap the granite in frustration above our heads.

“He wants the first ascent,” Jasper whispered.

“Which is?”

“No one’s ever climbed it before. He wants to be the first.”

Edward finally calmed down enough to move onward and we watched him find a good grip on the edge of that jutting lip of stone, his face serious as he fingered gingerly along the edge. The panic was back, a fluttering in my throat that made my mouth go dry, as I watched him prepare to rely on nothing but his fingertips. A flash of glittered green caught my eye and I turned away from the rock to see Alice step out from the trees, her hair a complete mess, trailing bouquet of flowers in her hand. The sunlight pouring through the trees caught her ridiculous outfit and made her blindingly bright for a split second as she passed through the trees, and I heard Jasper’s breathing go shallow beside me.

“Who is that?” he gasped.

We both whipped our heads back to the rock at the sound of Edward’s exuberant yowl, wrenching our eyes from Alice to see him on top of the rock with his hands in the air, chest heaving, dripping sweat.

First ascent.

And we’d missed it.

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Chalk

9

“Peel off!” Edward’s voice rose up from around my ankles.

“Will you just speak in normal, human words. Please,” I hissed, trying to readjust my grip. “I can’t understand a fucking thing you say when you talk in tongues.” Stress made me bitchy. And getting stuck spread-eagle six feet above the ground with no up in sight was stressing me the fuck out.

“Just let go, Bella.”

“I’m not gonna just let go,” I argued with him, stubborn even though I knew he was probably right. He was always right. He’d been right about my hands and my muscles, both of them evolving to suit my needs as time progressed. Within three weeks I’d grown myself some calluses that I have to admit I was a little proud of, and my muscles were starting to stand out in my arms when I climbed. My first problem on that nemesis rock really did seem like child’s play now, and I think even Edward was surprised at how fast I picked it up.

He said I had a knack for spotting my lines and when I told him it was only because I had a good teacher, he shrugged silently as though it wasn’t really that at all.

This was my fourth problem, one I’d picked out, but Edward seemed skeptical of from the beginning. He’d tried to steer me toward something a little smaller, this particular problem was at least four holds longer than anything I’d attempted yet, but I held my ground and he finally relented. I wouldn’t let him climb this one first for my benefit, even though he was wearing cut off shorts today which would have made it quite enjoyable.

I wanted this one for myself.

“That right there,” he pointed out a hold far above his head, “is the crux. The spot where it either happens, or it doesn’t. You’re gonna have to hit the hold sideways, do you see it? Instead of hanging off the ledge, you’re going to brace against it.”

Which was where I was right now. Stuck in the crux and unwilling to let go.

I’d done what he said, had my fingers wedged firmly against a vertical lip in the rock and was trying to figure out where to put my other hand. There wasn’t anything in sight. I stretched my arm blindly, feeling with my fingertips for something to hold onto.

“It’s too far!” Edward called up at me. I was sure he could see the next hold and I was also sure that it was only barely out of reach of my fingers. Just as I was contemplating giving in and ‘peeling off,’ my index finger slipped into a tiny hole in the rock just big enough for me to hook inside up to my second knuckle. I tried not to think about what could be at the bottom of the hole and readjusted the newly sprouted callus on the underside of my finger against it. Took a deep breath, poured all my strength into my hand and used it to haul myself just high enough to put my foot on the next ledge. Let the adrenaline and pain pumping through my finger carry me onward without bothering to stop, blindly ascending the rock in a blurry daze of tunnel-vision.

I got more of that shaky-leg thing at the top that Edward called Disco Knees, and had to double over with my hands on my thighs to catch my breath. I looked down to find Edward staring up at me in disbelief. I was getting this look from him and Alice so often that I was starting to get used to it.

Neither of them seemed to believe what I was doing, but on entirely different ends of the spectrum.

---

We found Jasper was on his own rock a little ways off, stripped down to a pair of shorts and panting against the stone. I watched with Edward, silent, as he finished his climb and did a little victory dance on top. He noticed us only after he finished and looked embarrassed as he made his way off the backside of the rock.

“You need a spotter. That’s too high ball to do on your own.” It sounded like Edward was admonishing him and from Jasper’s reaction, I guessed that he kind of was.

“Emmett’s climbing with Rose on Coffin Nails, and you’ve been off with Sparkles here doing god knows what.” Jasper shrugged in defiance.

“She topped the Lock and Key,” Edward said as if it justified something. All these problems had the strangest names. And they still talked so funny I was having trouble keeping up.

“The Lock and Key?” Jasper gasped and I tried not to be offended that he sounded so surprised.

“On site,” Edward flashed a cocky smirk at Jasper and I scrunched my forehead up, trying to figure out what that one might mean. Jasper turned on me with an appreciative face, as though it was the first time he was really seeing me.

“Dang, honey. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Means you did it on the first try, Sparkles,” Edward laughed, taking pity on me. “Without any beta.” At least he explained so that I could stop with the face-scrunch thing. I’m sure it wasn’t all that attractive. I was already covered in dirt and chalk and scratches and bruises, adding an ugly face would just be the cherry on the sundae.

“Which is a good thing?” I asked, just to clarify. He ran his tongue across his bottom lip before pulling it into his mouth for a split second too short, his eyes sort of glazing over, and nodded his head.

“Very.

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Chalk

8

Alice forced me to the salon and bought me a manicure, even though I insisted that it was a waste of my time and her money. The ladies at the salon all cooed and clucked over my broken, scraped up hands, half of them wondering what the fuck would possess me to do such a thing to myself. None of them saw the allure that I did but, then again, they hadn’t seen Edward live and in the flesh.

And shirtless.

I forced Alice to the garden nursery once the salon women finally let us go and even though she played like she didn’t want to go, she went bonkers once we arrived. Grabbed a cart and was off like a rocket, which left me to wander around alone and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I had a green thumb, one that I didn’t quite understand most of the time, but I seemed to have a knack for keeping things alive and flourishing. I was trying to decide between something called chocolate mint and something else called orange mint, wondering when they had started fucking with mint like this, when he startled me.

“Hey there, Sparkles. It’s about time we met in the real world.”

I dropped both plants.

Oh god.

I turned to find Edward with a bag of fertilizer under one arm like it weighed nothing, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to lift it off the ground.

“Hi,” I stuttered, blushing I’m sure.

“What did you do to your hands?” He asked, his voice tinged in awe and he picked up my palm to examine my fingers, now scrubbed and trimmed and painted within an inch of their lives. They didn’t even look like mine, except for the scratches across the back of them and that ugly scab on my knuckle. I had been getting distracted by them all afternoon and it was probably why it was so hard to pick between chocolate and orange.

“I was threatened with death and dismemberment,” I justified, watching him bend his head low over my hand to examine it. I’d never seen his own hands clean of chalk and I was amazed at how normal they looked, how unassuming they seemed, even if they were a little worse for wear. Why the fuck was I feeling so breathless? It was like the third time he’d held my hand or some reason or another. I should be used to it by now.

“That would have made climbing hard, yes, but these might make it harder.” He pressed the pad of his thumb over my newly painted nail, the coating making it feel unnaturally hard and unforgiving, definitely not something I’d want to scrape against bare rock. I told Alice this stupid manicure wouldn’t last long.

The devil herself bounded around the corner in time to catch us with our hands clasped.

“Hey Bell- . . . Well, hi there.” She morphed from excited school kid to kittenish sex-pot in less than a millisecond, I swear, which was some kind of record for her. Edward really must be hot, it wasn’t just a figment of my sun-addled brain. I had better keep my eye on her.

“Alice,” I sighed and snatched my hand from Edward.

“This is Alice? I’ve heard so much about you.” Edward stared down at Alice as though she was a unicorn and not some girl dressed in what could have easily passed as a child’s fairy costume from the Halloween section.

“You have not. You’ve just heard me complain about her,” I grumbled and remembered Jasper asking him nearly the same thing about me. Calling me his Gabby.

“What’s a Gabby, anyway?” I asked him, jutting out my chin, trying to make myself look demanding.

“I thought you were a Gumby? Green and floppy?” Alice sounded even more confused than me and I watched Edward’s face redden as he realized we’d been talking about him. Fair exchange, I thought.

“It was,” I told her, staring him down. “Now it’s Gabby. Whatever that means.”

“It only means that you have potential.” Edward did more of that shrugging thing that told  me it probably meant far more than just that.

“And?” I pressed.

“And?” he stalled. Tried to stare me down, but I won. “And you’re a girl. So what? I didn’t think that part was important, but you made me say it out loud.” He leveled me a look that made me knock-kneed, even though I wasn’t even near a rock. Weird.

“And I’m yours, huh?”

Edward gulped before he nodded his head deliberately.

I did more of my fancy escaping act to get us out of there, wishing Edward well with his fertilizer and dragging Alice away. We left him standing in a long row of ripening tomatoes and made our way to the checkout counter.

“That’s the guy you met climbing rocks?” Alice hissed in disbelief.

“Yeah,” I nodded, still sort of dumbstruck and loopy off him. I was trying hard to tell myself that he only meant that he was mentoring me. Teaching and I was his pupil, even though the look in his eye when he nodded was far more territorial than that.

“Take me with you next time. This whole rock thing is getting more interesting by the day,” she laughed.

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Chalk

7

“What’s the Passion Pit?” I asked Edward the next day, gulping down my feminist side to take his hand and let him help me up the last steep part of the trail. He basically pulled my arm out of its socket, hauling me into the air like a rag doll and plopping me onto my feet next to him in the meadow, shaking his head at me.

“Not for you. Not yet.”

“But, what is it?” I pressed, knowing full well that it could be a person, place, thing or imaginary fucking creature, depending on the slang. Half of the time I still had no idea what he was saying.

“A problem I’ve been working on for a while.” His face compacted in the center and for a moment he looked just as frustrated as I probably did most of the time. I hadn’t seen this problem of his, but I was fairly certain it would put my own problem to shame.

Edward watched me struggle with my shoes again when we made it to my rock, but didn’t offer to help this time. He handed me a roll of white medical tape before I stood. He’d already bandaged his own hands, covering up several of the spots I’d noticed yesterday. The salve he gave me worked wonders last night, but my knuckles still felt sore and stiff.

“Tape up those fingers, Sparkles, or you’re gonna live to regret it.”

He ended up taking pity on me and helped to wind the tape around my fingers, his calluses against my wrists and long fingers prodding the cradle of my palms. I tried to ignore how good he smelled.

I was failing at everything these days.

But I got to the top this time.

Conquered that stupid, stupid rock like a fucking champion. A gumby champion, green and floppy, but successful nonetheless. I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding in my throat and screamed at the tops of my lungs, so full of adrenaline that my knees were shaking. I could see why Edward had done just such a thing on the top of that other rock because it just felt so fucking good to let it out. He tiptoed nimbly up the rock I’d struggled so fucking long on and gave me an awkward high five.

“Pretty good for a flat-lander, Sparkles.” More of that killer smile.

“I have the feeling that’s not a compliment,” I accused him and he grinned so hard at me it almost seemed like he was proud of me for making the connection.

“Flatlander. You know . . . those of you who never venture off the horizontal.” He gestured to the ground which, now that I stopped to look at it, was really freaking far below us. I couldn’t believe I climbed up that. I stuttered and I’m sure that my face turned a little green because the next thing I knew I was slumped against Edward and he was gripping me tightly by the arm, my vision spinning.

“Sorry. Me and heights aren’t all that awesome together,” I panted.

“Rule number one, don’t look down. Always up.” Edward propped me back on my own feet and was standing way too close for me to blame this dizziness completely on vertigo.

“Always up,” I parroted, trying to remember what we were talking about.

---

We heard a loud whoop through the trees as we were heading back to the cars and Edward scowled in the direction the noise had come from, huffing under his breath. He loped into the forest without telling me and I followed him without asking.

Glitter Friend was watching Giant Friend attempt what looked like an absolutely impossible line on of the biggest rocks I’d seen here so far, the chalk fading out higher and higher until it was just gone. I assumed this to mean that no one had ever reached the top.

“You know that’s supposed to be mine, right?” Edward said as he sidled up to Jasper and I wondered if this was the elusive Passion Pit problem that apparently wasn’t for me.

“You’ve been back there on that VB problem for some reason.” Jasper eyed me again with a smirk. “Kind of left it up for grabs, you know?”

“VB?” I asked. Again, these boys confused the fuck out of me.

“Beginner level,” Edward smiled at me. “One a scale of one to sixteen, it doesn’t warrant a number.”

“And what’s this, then?” I waved at Giant Friend on the enormous rock. “A V7?”

Edward choked in his throat and threw a cursory glance at the rock. “Try15, Sparkles. That’s about as high as it gets out here.”

“This is Sparkles?” Jasper arched both eyebrows at Edward. “Your Gabby?”

“Gumby,” I corrected him. I wondered if they’d had a conversation about me last night and barely suppressed the urge to scream ‘Glitter!’ in Jasper’s face.

“Gabby,” he responded wrong again, and I saw him exchange a look with Edward that made Jasper’s go wide eyed and Edward’s jaw turn to stone.

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Chalk

6

Alice was harvesting sweet peas from the fence when I got home, a ring of flowers in her hair. I wandered to the backyard to watch her, dropping into the grass on my side of the viney melee.

“You look terrible. What happened to your hands?” she asked, brutally honest, as usual.

“I went back to the rock.”

“Did you make it?” She was fully aware of my torment over an inanimate object after letting me bitch about it over the fence and coffee this morning.

“No. But I got closer.”

“You need to find someone to show you how,” she mused, still plucking peas. From my spot in the grass, the smell of the flowers was a little overwhelming. Cloudy and heavy with sticky sweetness and my head was spinning, Shirtless Guy’s long fingers against the rock suddenly the only thing I could see.

“I already do. This guy has been helping me.”

“One of the cute ones?” Alice twittered, excited again for no reason.

“Very. But I’m trying to learn from him, so I’m not paying attention.” Case in point, I didn’t even know his name.

He was just Shirtless Guy, even when he was wearing a shirt.

---

I found him the next day on one of the very first rocks lodged out in the meadow. He was wearing a shirt again today, which was disappointing, but he was also in a pair of loose jeans that looked as though they’d been washed to the point of disintegration, rolled up at the cuffs to keep them free of his feet. I watched him scramble up the side of the rock like he was a damned spider and he grinned at me from the top.

“Hiya, Sparkles.”

“I hate that you call me that.” I cringed as he leapt from the rock but he landed nimbly with a puff of dust beside me, crouched like an animal before he straightened up.

“I’m probably gonna keep calling you that for a while. Until you earn a new one,” he told me through a smile, plucking the crash pad from my back and leading the way to my rock. He didn’t even ask, just brought us there, and I wondered if he sensed my frustration. We climbed again for a while, Shirtless Guy doing it once for my refreshment (or benefit) before letting me take my place up against the rock. It took six attempts but I’d just managed to press myself hard enough against that damn sloper to finally get beyond it when a yell through the trees startled me right off the rock.

I landed with a thump against Shirtless Guy, who caught me before I hit the pad.

“Edward!” The cry came again, echoing through the trees and Shirtless Guy cupped a hand to his mouth before crowing into the air just like he had when I saw him reach the top of that rock the first day. He set me down on the pad, hands steady until I was upright, and I tried not to get mad that not only did I almost finally make it, but that I’d also accidentally learned his name.

I was kind of fond of ‘Shirtless Guy.’

A moment later a blonde boy came loping out of the trees, another crash pad on his back. As he neared I could hear a subtle jangle emanating from him, his pockets looking heavy, and I knew for certain that this was the Glitter Friend who collected sparkly rocks.

Giant Friend and Glitter Friend and Shirtless Guy. For all I hated Sparkles, I wondered how much they’d all hate the names I’d given them in my head if I said the out loud.

“Hey man, what the fuck are you doing way out here? The Passion Pit is back that-a-way.” The blonde dropped the pad off his back and looked at Shirtless Guy (Edward?) curiously before eyeing me. His eyes dropped to my waist and I looked down at the chalk handprint on my thigh that most certainly did not come from me.

“Oh,” blonde guy chuckled, as if that handprint explained it all.

“Jasper, this is-” Shirtless Guy/Edward stopped short and looked down at me with his eyes wide, obviously just now realizing that we didn’t exactly know each other’s names.

“Bella,” I offered. “And you’re Edward.” He nodded at me and I turned to Jasper, otherwise known as Glitter Friend with a grin on my face. “How many rocks you got in your pockets, Jasper? You should meet my friend Alice.”

Next

Chalk

5

I went back.

Mostly because I laid awake in bed all night hating on that rock. I felt like it had beaten me somehow, that I’d been offered a challenge by something that didn’t even breathe or sleep or cry and I’d failed. It was a rock. A fucking piece of earth that shouldn’t have been nearly that formidable, but it was.

I hated on the rock in lieu of fantasizing about that guy. The half naked one.

Which I also failed at.

I made it back to my nemesis the next afternoon without spotting any other human life along the way, breathing a sigh of relief as I dropped my newly purchased crash pad to the ground. A puff of dust splayed out around it when it landed. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but it wasn’t exactly lightweight and I was glad I didn’t have to carry it anymore.

The thought of hauling it back to the car was heartbreaking.

“Hey there, Sparkles. Fancy seeing you here.”

Gah.

Shirtless Guy. Leaning against a tree and looking expectant. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I sure wasn’t fucking prepared either.

“There are no sparkles today. I checked,” I told him, sitting on the edge of the crash pad and pulling my shoes from my backpack. I hadn’t let Alice come within three feet of me this morning and even did a cursory once-over in my rear-view mirror before leaving the relative safety of my car.

“Who is this Alice person and when can I meet her?” He sat down next to me and I tried to ignore him while I tugged on my shoes. He was wearing a shirt this time, which was a little sad, but the bands of muscles in his arms were flexing and I was kind of upset he was asking about Alice. Had I said her name out loud, or did he remember it from yesterday?

“Why?” I muttered, trying not to sound too jealous.

“I have a friend who sounds right up her alley.” He stood, his shoes already on and I wondered how the fuck he did that so fast. I only had half of one foot successfully into mine and he was already staring up at the rock.

“You have a friend who wears lots of glitter?” His answer surprised me, and I wondered if he knew his friend might be kind of gay.

“No,” Shirtless Guy chuckled. “But he picks up sparkly rocks wherever he goes. You could push him into a lake at the end of any given day and he’d probably sink right to the bottom. He’s got a thing for shiny stuff.”

“So does Alice,” I muttered, remembering the disco ball she’d tried to get my to hang in my living room. It ended up in hers. Far more fitting.

“So, I’ll uh . . . I’ll give you some beta if you want? It’s not that hard of a problem, once you know where to put your hands.” He looked back over his shoulder at me, his hair a little wild, and I shook my head at him in confusion.

“You speak an entirely different language.”

“What did I say?” he grinned, all teeth and lips and just a tad too much facial hair to be decent.

“Beta? What’s a beta? A fish?”

“No,” he laughed at me, again, which seemed to be becoming a thing with us. “Beta is like . . .  information. Instructions. I’ll give you beta on the climb?” he offered and nodded his head when he saw that I understood.

We spent an hour at the rock. I watched Shirtless Guy climb the route a couple of times, trying my damnedest to pay attention instead of ogling his ass before I tried it myself and boy, was it an experience. I learned that the spot where I’d torn all my skin off last time was called a ‘sloper,’ a flat expanse of rock with no obvious place to grip. That you just had to slap your hand hard against and use nothing but brute force to keep yourself there. Learned that the little ledges I was tucking my fingertips onto were ‘crimpers’ and that I’d probably never have another manicure again for as long as I lived. I didn’t make it to the top, falling to my ass on the crash pad more times that I cared to admit, but Shirtless Guy only said that I needed to be a little stronger and then it would be like child’s play.

Climbing rocks for fun is totally child’s play.

No matter how pornographic Shirtless Guy made it look.

He noticed me examining my hands as we were packing up, the sun starting to sink behind the trees. The skin on my fingertips was raw, my palms felt like sandpaper, and I was bleeding just a little on the knuckle of my index finger. The white powdery chalk I’d been using all afternoon was cemented to my skin with sweat, sunken into the ridges and haloing my broken spots. Shirtless Guy took me by the wrist and pulled my hand toward him to examine it, his fingers pressed to my pulse.

“You gotta take care of your hands tonight, or you won’t be climbing at all for a while.” He let go of me to rummage through his bag and I clutched my hand to my chest, blood throbbing just below where his thumb had been. “Use this tonight.”

He gave me a jar of green goopy salve and that’s when I noticed his own hands. If my hands looked bad, his looked even worse. There were spots like mine where the skin was sort of rubbed off, but still others that looked a week, or even months, old. His fingers were callused and there were deep ridges of skin protecting the side of his hands. I wondered how often he was out here.

Judging from the thickness of those calluses, I thought it was probably a lot.

“It looks like you need this more than I do.” I tried to give him the jar back and he followed my gaze to his own hands before he laughed low in his chest.

“I have more at home.”

We got back to the parking lot by the road, our cars the last two there, just as the sun disappeared entirely and everything went that odd lilac color it did just at twilight.

“What did you call me yesterday? When I was leaving?” I asked him as I threw the giant pad into the back of my truck. Shirtless Guy reddened a little at the neck and shrugged, watching me intently as he leaned against his own car, something too small and shiny for a grungy rock climber.

“It was nothing,” he muttered.

“Gumby.” I narrowed my eye at him, trying to look scary. “What does that mean?”

“You’re just new, is all. Everyone gets called that at first, but you’ll grow out of it. Besides, I kind of like Sparkles.”

“There are no sparkles today,” I reminded him, waving my hand in front of my face.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to forget them.”

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