Outcomes

On his first day back at Winslow College's climbing wall after the long winter break, Nolan checks the belay sign-up sheet and sees that someone named Heidi Lane has written her name in the seven-o'clock slot every weeknight for the entire month of January.

- Nathan Blum

Sure enough, at seven exactly, a short, narrow-nosed girl with a shiny brown bob hustles in through the gym’s double doors. She’s wearing bluejeans and duck boots and fuzzy white earmuffs around her neck like headphones.

“I made a New Year's resolution,” she says. “This is going to be my new thing.”

“Some people find it hard to climb in jeans,” Nolan says.

“I do everything in jeans.”

“What else do you do?”

“Like, besides school? Nothing. That's why I made this resolution.”

In the gear room, there’s a harness and a pair of climbing shoes meant for older children. They fit Heidi perfectly. While he tightens her waist strap, she lifts her elbows and stares right at him, unlike most new climbers, who tend to look up or off to the side.

“All right,” she says, waddling toward the wall. “How does this work?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're saying I just go. I just get on up there.”

“Some people try to stay on certain routes. That’s what those colored strips of tape are for, next to the holds. But, for now, maybe just use any holds you want. That's called the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

She starts fast, faster than he would have advised, and with a kind of right-left rhythm. There’s something Spider-Mannish about it, and he wonders if maybe that’s what she’s thinking of.

She’s about twenty feet above him when her left hand slips from a crimp and she falls back. Distracted by his thoughts, he’s less ready for it than he should be. There’s some slack in the rope.

Her scream is surprisingly low-pitched, almost gruff. He clenches his bottom hand and braces himself. She drops about two feet before the rope goes taut and her shoulder smacks against the wall.

A hot shame flushes through him as he watches her kick around for a foothold. It was a small error on his part, but he knows that first climbs are important and there’s a good chance she'll be looking for a new New Year's resolution.