Sometimes there are no handholds at all. Just when I start to panic, my voice turning shrill at the realization that there’s nothing there, that I can’t go any further, Mack speaks. His voice is calm and full of assurance that I can do this. He reminds me to breathe, to take my time looking, that he’s not in a hurry to get back to our brawling fathers so if I want to hang out for a while, that’s cool too.
He gets me laughing, and breathing again, and relaxing enough that the panic subsides and the terror that blinded me eases. That’s when I see I was wrong about having nowhere left to go. It’s not the best place, but with my small fingers, it’s enough, and so I climb.
I take my time because I don’t want to make a stupid mistake, and also because climbing is so new to me that I’m strainin
