Phillip had just stumbled out of his tent. His hair was sticking up all over the place. He looked like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. He walked over to us, rubbing his eyes.
“Have you seen Cindy?”
Mom pointed to the river. Cindy laughed and punched Ethan in the shoulder.
Phillip scowled, then looked at the mugs we were holding.
“Is that coffee?”
“Tea.”
“I need coffee. I want to head out in an hour. Wake Zopa and tell him to have everyone ready to go. We’ll be spending the night at the cliff they scouted yesterday, so you need to bring your gear. With his bum foot, Ethan will have to stay here. I want you to take his place as the film crew’s climbing advisor.”
He stamped back to his tent.
“Trouble,” Mom said.
“Bonjour!”
Alessia stepped out of her tent, waving, with a happy smile on her beautiful face. Unlike Phillip, she looked like she had slept quite well. When she was halfway to us, Rafe caught up with her. It was obvious that he’d scrambled out of his sleeping bag as soon as he heard her. His hair looked worse than Phillip’s. He was wearing shorts, and his T-shirt was on backwards and inside out. He said something to her in French. Am I the only one that doesn’t speak French? She laughed. I hoped it was polite laughter and not that she really thought he was funny.
“G’day, mates! Glad to see you made it back in one piece. I was done in last night. Didn’t even hear you come back to camp.”
Cindy let out another peal of giddy laughter.
Rafe looked down at the river. “Who’s that with Cindy?”
“Ethan Todd,” I answered.
“You mean Sarge Todd, the bloke who claims to have taken a snowboard down McKinley?”
I nodded. “Chased by wolves at the bottom.”
“Not bloody likely. I have a friend who was there and said that none of it was remotely true.”
I was surprised Rafe didn’t claim to have been there himself.
“What was your friend’s name?” Mom asked.
“Nobody you’d probably know. Bill Weathers. He said that Todd made the whole thing up. Why’s he here?”
“Part of the film crew,” I said. “Sprained his ankle when the crew fell off the cliff they were scouting. He’s out of commission for a couple of days.”
“Too bad,” Rafe said, clearly not meaning it. “I should have gone with them. You have to be careful around here. I probably could have prevented the fall. This is no place for amateurs.”
The film crew were not professional climbers, but they weren’t amateurs, either. They’d climbed all over the world carrying extra gear no pro would ever carry.
“Guess we’ll never know if this Ethan can climb or not.” Rafe grinned and looked at me. “You missed the preliminary interviews last night.”
“I heard.”
“They went great. I think Phillip’s picked his stars.” He looked around camp. “Where is Phillip?”
“He’s getting ready to leave,” Mom said. “We’re spending the night at the shoot. He wants to be on the move in an hour.”
“I can be ready in ten minutes. Can’t wait to get some climbing in.” He looked at Alessia. “I’d be happy to help you with your tent and gear.”
“No thank you.”
Atta girl, Alessia.
Rafe looked at the fire. “Is that tea in the billy?”
“The what?” I asked.
“The kettle, mate.”
“Yeah.”
Rafe grabbed a mug and helped himself.
Aki and Choma stepped outside their tents and started stretching the night kinks out. Ethan and Cindy started making their way to the fire. Ethan had his arm around Cindy’s shoulder, using her as a crutch. Both of them were grinning when they reached the fire. Cindy looked totally different with a genuine smile on her face.
“I’m Ethan Todd, or what’s left of him.” Ethan stuck his free hand out to Rafe. “I got a little banged up last night.”
“Bad luck, mate.” Rafe gave Ethan’s hand an unenthusiastic shake. “Guess you’ll be missing the climb.”
“I heal quickly,” Ethan said. “I wouldn’t count me out. The wheel’s better than it was last night.”
“Right,” Rafe said. “But you won’t be going with us today, mate. Not on that.”
“That’s right.” Phillip had returned. He was frowning at Ethan’s human crutch. “If all goes well tonight, we’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. You’ll have to hold the fort down here for a couple of days on your own.”
“No problem. I’m happy to stay and—”
“You can’t possibly expect him to stay here alone,” Cindy said. “He’s injured.”
Phillip’s frown deepened. “Everyone is going to the cliff.”
“What about Elham and Ebadullah?”
“They go where we go. Security.”
“I’m not a climber or security,” Cindy said. “Someone needs to stay with Ethan.”
“There’s no need,” Ethan said. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
“You’re my PA,” Phillip said, with his eyes still on Cindy.
Everyone rolled their eyes, including Cindy.
“I’m staying,” she said.
It was obvious that Phillip knew he’d lost this battle, and probably his girlfriend as well. He gave her a malicious grin.
“Suit yourself. Have any of you seen Zopa? I roused everyone else, but he wasn’t in his tent.”
Everyone shook their heads, looking a little surprised. I’d often seen Zopa disappear at inopportune times on Everest. He was always climbing the mountain, but not always with us.
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” I said. “He tends to wander off. He’ll be there when we need him.”
Phillip looked at his watch. “Well, I need him now.” He looked at Mom. “I want to leave in twenty minutes. Think you can get everyone moving in the right direction? I need to direct breaking camp.”
“But we’re not really breaking camp for several days,” she said.
Phillip took a deep breath. “Dear God, give me patience. Of course we’re not breaking camp permanently today, but on the day we break camp, the weather might be lousy, or something else might go wrong. We need to get our shots when we can, not necessarily in chronological order. When the video airs, it will look like first-person present tense. I’ll make that happen in the editing room. Not here. We’re shooting raw video. The shots are like words. We’ll use the shots to tell a story. It takes hours and hours of film to make five minutes of actual air time . . .”
I smiled. For the first time, I kind of liked Phillip. Vincent would totally understand what Phillip was saying. It was exactly how Vincent explained the writing process.
Phillip continued talking to my mom. “Let’s get moving. If Zopa shows up, he can lead the group to the cliff. If he doesn’t, you’ll be leading them, providing you know where it is.”
“I know where it is, but I’m a little concerned about Zopa. We might want to—”
Phillip raised his voice. “This is not summer camp! You’re not a bunch of little kids. We have a limited amount of time to pull this thing off. We’re not waiting on Zopa or anyone else. Let’s get moving!”
Everyone got moving.
“What are you smiling about?” Mom asked when we got to our tents.
“Phillip. I think he just took charge.”
“You can’t tell people you’re in charge. You have to show people, and I guess that’s exactly what he just did, but I’m still worried about Zopa.”
“He disappears,” I said. “He’ll show up when we need him.”
“Where do you think he is?”
I shrugged. But I noticed that the camel and the donkey were no longer tied up outside his tent.
ZOPA HAD NOT RETURNED by the time we left camp. Cindy and Ethan stayed behind. Phillip didn’t say a word to either one of them that I saw. I told Ethan to tell Zopa where we were headed if he happened
to return, which was probably unnecessary. Zopa would know where we were going. He always did.
JR, Jack, and Will recorded our every move and word under Phillip’s direction, which meant they had to run across the scree to get in front of us, film us passing, then run ahead again, covering twice as much ground as we were, with heavier equipment. Not easy after falling off a cliff the night before.
(Note to self: Do not become a videographer.)
But they didn’t complain. It was as if the project was fueling them with superhuman endurance. Phillip seemed to have come into his own too, making suggestions for shots, asking us interview questions as we walked. I think having Cindy dump him, if that was what she’d done, had reminded him what he was there for. He was actually smiling from time to time, telling everyone they were doing a great job. Rafe tried to hog Alessia, but every time Phillip caught him doing this, he broke them apart, making Alessia walk alone or with one of us. I’d caught a couple of Alessia’s answers to Phillip’s questions, and it was clear to me who was going to be the star of the show.
When the cliff came into view, Phillip slowed us down because he needed to pick out what he called the “long shot.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by this, so I asked JR.
“Phillip hasn’t told you what he’s doing yet?”
“No.”
“I don’t think it’s a big secret, and it’s kind of cool. You’re all going to be spending the night on your portaledges. Each of your ledges is a different color. He’s going to string you out on the cliff face in the shape of a”—he hesitated—“an inverted V. Once you’re all set, you’ll light up your ledges one by one in order. He had custom letters made that will attach to the ledges. They spell out P-E-A-C-E, with the A at the top. Jack’s going to take the long shot somewhere back here. Will and I will be on the face, along with your mom and Zopa if we need them. That is, if Zopa shows up. We’ll be doing the close shots on the cliff face.”
It did sound kind of cool, but I wondered why he used the term “inverted V,” when it was clear that Phillip intended to set up a little mountain. And who was going to be the A? Who was the peak? But I didn’t ask, because I didn’t really care. I was just happy to finally be able to use a portaledge.
Ethan’s description of the cliff was perfect. It did look like a dragon rookery, or like a giant had blasted the face with a humungous shotgun. We headed toward a patch of green at the base of the cliff. The green meant moisture, maybe even a small stream. Jack dangled the mike boom in front of my face. JR and Phillip joined him. JR with a camera. Phillip with a tablet. I stopped walking.
“No, Peak,” Phillip said. “Keep walking.”
I couldn’t believe he got my name right.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions. Remember, this is your climb. The adults aren’t in it. It’s just you and the other young climbers. Just act natural. You’re talking to a friend, or if it feels better, you’re all by yourself in the Afghan wilderness talking to yourself.”
I’d rather not talk at all.
“This is a Peace Climb,” Phillip continued. “Obviously every sane person wants peace. We want the senseless killing to stop. We’re in Afghanistan, a country that has been at war for centuries. Most of the people here have fought their entire lives, as have their parents and grandparents, and their parents and grandparents. My question to you is why do you think wars happen?”
I kept walking, saying nothing, expecting Phillip to give me another prompt or to tell me to hurry it up. He did neither. He just walked along with me, JR, and Jack at his side, silently, camera running.
“Money, religion, land, and power, or a combination of these things, causes wars. It’s interesting that some of our former enemies, Britain, Japan, and Germany, are now our friends. So what was the point of all the people who died in the Revolutionary War, World War I, and World War II? Wouldn’t it have been better to just skip the war part and get to the friend part? We have to protect ourselves. We have to help those who can’t protect themselves. But beyond those two reasons, I don’t get the whole war thing.”
I walked on for a few more feet with the camera and mike boom in my face, wondering if I should say something else, but I had nothing more to say.
“That’s a wrap!” Phillip finally said, grinning. “Beautiful. I loved it.”
JR and Jack were grinning at me too. I didn’t want the compliment to feel good, but it did. They wandered off to interview someone else. I continued across the scree, thinking about Zopa, the climb, and the twins. I wondered how the two Peas were doing without Mom, which stopped me in my tracks. If I was missing the twins, Mom had to be going crazy. This was the first time she’d been away from them for more than a night. I turned around. We were spread out across the scree for at least a half a mile. Rafe was the closest to me. Mom was a hundred yards behind him. She was walking with Alessia. Behind them were Phillip and the film crew, heading toward Aki, Choma, Ebadullah, and Elham. If I waited for Mom, Rafe would catch up with me, and I might have to walk with him, which I didn’t want to do. I turned back to the cliff. I knew it wasn’t a race, but I really wanted to get there before Rafe.
I set a brutal pace, and by the time I got there, I was panting like a dog. A tree was being fed by a spring about ten yards across. The water was deep. If Ethan had been there, he’d have been swimming. If I could swim, I’d have been swimming. I got down on my knees.
“Don’t drink the water.”
I nearly fell in. Zopa was sitting on the far side in plain sight, but he had been so still when I walked up, I hadn’t seen him.
He laughed. “Where was your mind?”
“And where were you this morning?” I snapped back, a little ticked off at being startled.
“Here waiting for you,” Zopa answered calmly. “How is Ethan?”
“He won’t be climbing for a few days. Cindy is staying in camp with him. Don’t you sleep?”
“Not in the way you do.”
Big surprise. I didn’t recall seeing him sleep on Everest, either. But a lot of people don’t sleep on Everest. Not enough oxygen.
“We’re spending the night here. Did you bring your gear?”
Zopa shrugged.
“Did you bring the camel and donkey?”
Zopa nodded.
“How did you know that this was where we would be?”
This elicited another shrug. In other words, he wasn’t going to tell me, or else he didn’t know why he had come here.
“We’re using our portaledges to make a mountain on the cliff face,” I told him. “It will look like a Christmas tree lit up at night.”
I was pretty sure Buddhists didn’t celebrate Christmas and wondered if Zopa even knew what a Christmas tree was.
“Come around here,” he said. “You are shouting.”
I wasn’t shouting, but it probably sounded like it to Zopa, who rarely raised his voice above a whisper that you could somehow hear twenty feet away. I walked around the spring and sat down next to him.
“Is the water really bad?”
“I drank a little a few hours ago, and I’m waiting to find out. I think it is probably good, but I would give it more time.”
“So if you start puking, we shouldn’t drink the water.”
“Correct. But you can take your boots off and soak your feet. You will need your feet the next few days.”
My feet were in pretty good shape from walking around New York with the twins, and I had brought my best hiking boots and climbing shoes. I took my boots off, stripped off my socks, and put my feet in the pool. It was shockingly cold.
“Snowmelt from higher up,” Zopa said. He pointed to the pockmarked cliff face. “The caves are all shallow. They go nowhere. No escape.”
“Escape from what?”
Zopa shrugged.
“How do you know they’re shallow?” The caves started two hundred feet up from the base. It was impossible to see into them from the ground.
Zopa pointed. “Look.”
It took me a while, but I finally spotted the silver anchors glinting in the sun. There must have been thirty or forty—the cliff face was peppered with them.
“You set all those anchors?” Which was kind of a stupid question, because who else would have set them? I was amazed that one person could explore the caves and set that many anchors by himself in a single day, or a half a day.
“I assumed that Ethan is a good climber,” Zopa said, ignoring the question. “I was worried after his report about the condition of the rock. I found some good rock. Solid. Good anchors.”
“You should have waited. It wasn’t safe.”
“It’s not safe to climb skyscrapers in New York on your own either.”
My former pastime. I didn’t know that Zopa even knew about this. Sun-jo must have told him.
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“I am happy to hear this. Who wants to die falling onto a busy street? I set the anchors because it was faster to do it myself. And doing it myself assures that it was done correctly. You and Alessia are the only good climbers. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“How do you know this is where Phillip wants to film the portaledges?”
“He will film here now because the anchors are set.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, the others began arriving in twos and threes. Alessia and Rafe were first, which meant that Rafe waited for her or that Alessia caught up with him.
“Zopa!” Alessia ran over and plopped down next to him. “We were worried about you.”
Rafe acknowledged Zopa with a frown. Apparently he was jealous of anyone sitting next to Alessia, even old missing Buddhist monks. He looked up at the cliff. “Easy climb. As soon as I get a drink of water, I’ll show you how to put up your portaledge, Alessia. I’ve done it dozens of times.”
“No need,” Zopa said. “We won’t be using them.”
“Not according to Phillip, mate.”
“He will change his mind.”
“In your dreams. Phillip’s calling the shots. It’s his show. He’s the director.”
The director arrived at the spring next with Aki and Choma, with the film crew and Mom right behind them.
“Nice of you to join us, Zopa,” Phillip said.