Chalk

2

There was an open space just outside of town known for its ‘bouldering.’ Apparently, this is what I’m doing. Bouldering. Which right now is really only hiking my ass up a steep trail with the sun burning my neck, my backpack far heavier than it should be, and already starting to sweat. Alice snickered at me as we shared a cup of coffee over the sweet peas this morning. She still couldn’t believe I was going to go through with it.

I kind of couldn’t believe it either.

I struggled up the last of the hill, breaking onto the edge of an open meadow, brown wavy grass as tall as my waist that crept toward a section of trees a little ways off. There was a sheer cliff far above the tree tops, a towering fortress of stone that was slowly crumbling away, shedding pieces to the forest floor once every other millennia. A few of those monster chunks of rock had made their way clear to the meadow, lodging themselves deep into the soft dirt like upended houses, growing lichen and moss and heat. There were probably more buried in those trees, the ones that hadn’t rolled clear through the wooden barrier and I really hoped I wouldn’t be around to witness the next chunk fall, however slight the probability.

With my luck, I would totally be crushed.

I didn’t really know what I was looking for and crept through the meadow of rocks almost on my tiptoes, feeling nervous and and foreign and tiny among them. I followed the trail, keeping my eyes peeled as it meandered into the trees. It was pretty here, if anything, cool and green under shelter, early spring giving everything a lush emerald glow. The trail I was following began to branch as I neared the base of the cliff and I took a deep breath before I picked one of my three options, heading farther along the trail, parallel to the cliff. I began to spot the signs of other people’s climbing, patches of white on the smoothed edges of rock.

A scattered, connect-the-dots constellation up the sides of the giant boulders, the ground below them worn smooth from millions of feet.

I continued down the path for some ways, getting a little lost in how pretty it was out here and had even picked an interesting looking flower that I’d never seen before, something deep blue and sprouting jagged petals. I tucked it behind my ear and rounded a tree just in time to see a shirtless guy, all muscles and muscles and more muscles, hauling himself up the final stretch of a freaking gigantic rock, dangling at least ten feet off the ground. He strained up over the lip of the rock and hopped to his feet, sort of howling like a wild animal in joy or pain, or maybe some combination of both. A guy standing at the base of the rock joined in his yelling and I peered around the tree to watch them celebrate, fingers to the bark.

The tree smelled like butterscotch, I shit you not, and I started to panic about the fact that I was hiding behind a tree not ten feet away from them and that it was only a matter of time before one of them was bound to notice me.

The guy on the rock disappeared over the opposite side and was suddenly standing at the base faster than I thought possible, his friend holding a hand in the air for a high five that clapped together in a powdery puff of white. They stood with their backs to me, examining the rock and pointing spots of white out to each other, making all sorts of weird hand gestures between them. While shirtless-guy was lithe and lean with flaming burnished hair, the other guy was gigantic, dark haired and had a shirt on. It didn’t take long before the giant-guy was setting up at the base of the rock, readying his fingers and lifting his feet off the ground.

Now.

I ducked my head and stepped slowly out from behind the tree, moving at a deliberate pace and hoping not to catch too much attention. The giant-guy was hanging off the rock, focused intently on his fingers and didn’t notice me. The other guy, however, totally did and I scampered past with a timid wave and darted into the trees.

I’m pretty sure he watched me the entire time.

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