The Tree of Knowledge

My tiny rebellion cost me dearly. I have eight fresh lashes across my ass left behind by Ryan’s belt. It’s difficult to sit down.

But I can’t even bring myself to care. In two days, I’m seeing Jace again. Nothing else matters. I walk around the house singing. I play with Little Bird, who has recently mastered par-a-boo. I even help out with the housework.

Rebecca thinks I’ve lost my damn mind. Quite possibly she’s right. I overhear her telling Ryan they should take me to a head shrink. That maybe Mara and Isaac’s deaths unhinged me a little. Funny how I start acting happy and they think I’ve gone insane.

It’s a beautiful autumn day and I’m seeing Jace again in two days. They can’t possibly come fast enough.

Two days later I’m like a kid on Christmas morning. I rush out the door and fly my TARDIS to Stone Works.

Today, the white wicker basket has two sandwiches.

When I walk through the door, Jace has beat me there. Duke bounds up to me in excitement and knocks me on my ass in the door way. He then proceeds to lick my face with abandon despite my protests. Jace rushes over to wrangle him.

“Just like old times, right?” he says with a smile. “Duke! Chill!”

Duke does not chill, preferring instead to bound about the room in happy circles. I produce a chunk of turkey from my basket and toss it to Duke, who snatches it out of the air and runs away, into the silos with it. Jace eyes the basket.

“So what’d you bring me?” he asks.

“Roasted turkey and smoked gouda on Rebecca’s honest-to-goodness fresh baked croissants and waldorf salad.”

“You know you’re amazing, right? I pretty much live on hot dogs on sliced bread from the 99¢ Store.”

He dives into a sandwich happily.

“What’d you bring me?” I ask, eyeing the open backpack on the floor.

He grins and upends the bag. Out spill his climbing shoes, harness, and ATC.

“No more suicidal shit from you. Today, we put up some top ropes.”

It’s called lead climbing.

Your belayer clips an ATC, a sort of breaking device, into his harness. He feeds a rope through the ATC. One end of the rope gets tied off in a nice figure-eight knot with a loop on the end. That loop gets clipped into your harness with a locking carabineer.

“It’s so unfair that you still have your gear.” I complain as I take my skirt off. “I couldn’t think of any excuse to bring mine with me when I moved out. My mom and dad probably sold it all on eBay. They sold everything else.”

“Kit,” Jace says awkwardly, “Why are you getting naked?”

“I’m not getting naked.” I roll my eyes at him, like this is no big deal, pulling my harness on over the pink lace panties I absolutely did not pick out with this is mind. “It’s not like I can wear a harness over my skirt. You might recall it’s a sin for girls to wear pants.”

“But getting naked in front in front of a man you’re not married to isn’t?”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

I reach into my bag and pull out my iPhone.

“Siri, is getting naked a sin?”

Ding ding.

“Here’s what the Bible has to say about getting naked.” Siri answers, and pulls up a block of text. I skim through it.

“Adam and Eve are ashamed of their nakedness…Ham covers his father’s nakedness…” I put the phone down. “I think we’re good here, but I should probably work on being ashamed of it.”

I start putting on my shoes. Jace still looks unconvinced.

“Jace, for fucks sake we’ve been skinny dipping. This is nothing new to you..”

Jace shakes his head.

“No. You’re right. Sorry. I’m cool…Just a little distracting.”

I choose not to comment on that.

“Seriously dude,” I say, steering the conversation away from my nakedness, “Look at these shoes. I miss my shoes.”

We’re doing 121 first. Before we start climbing, Jace checks himself over; Carabineer is locked, rope is fed through the ATC properly, figure-eight dressed and tried correctly. He checks me over next; carabineer locked. Next, I check all the same things myself.

“On belay?” I ask him.

“Belay on.”

“Climb?”

“Climb on.” he says with a grin.

I smile back at him. Just like old times. The old familiar words.

“Climbing.” I announce, and start up the wall.

It feels so good to do this again.

All the way up the wall, nestled in between the holds every few feet, are small metal D rings stuck in tight. As I climb to each one, I stop. I unclip one to the many quick draw’s dangling from my harness. It’s two non locking carabineers connected by a short piece of webbing, similar to the stuff a dog leash is made out of. As I reach each of these D rings, I clip one end into the D ring, and the other end to my rope. Now, I’m tethered to that point. When I fall, I can only fall as far as the last time I clipped in. Jace stands below me, continuing to feed me rope, ready to put on the brakes if I fall. Like, when I go to grab that should-be-attached hold and it spins around in my hand.

“Falling!” I yell as I plummet.

“Got you!” Jace calls back. As I dangle there, Jace yells, “Bet you’re glad to have me here now!”

I am glad. I’m so happy to see him I think I’ll burst with it. I missed him so much.

Also, there’s the whole stopping me from breaking my neck thing. That’s also a plus.

“Climb?”

“Climb on.”

“Climbing.”

I continue to make my way up, clipping in every few feet with another quick draw.

The beauty of this system is, say one of the D rings, or maybe one of the ’bineers is faulty. If it snaps I just fall a couple extra feet and the next one catches me. No worries. For all people fret about rock climbing being dangerous, it’s actually a really safe sport if you do it right. There’s a lot of built in fail safes and redundancies. Checking and double checking.

At the very top, there’s three chains hooked into the celling and one last D ring. I clip into that one.

Now for the tricky part.

I get a nice, stable footing and hang on to the wall with one hand. With my other hand, I grab a quick draw and clip one side on to the end of one of the chains, and the other directly into my harness. For good measure, I do this again with the other two chains.

“Slack!” I call.

Jace feeds me some extra rope. I wind up the slack into a loose knot, then clip that knot into the top D ring, because now would be a sincerely bad time to drop the rope.

Safely dangling from the celling chains, I let myself hang and unclip the rope from my harness. I untie my figure eight knot, feed the end through all three chains, then tie the knot again. I clip the knot back into my harness.

Now that the rope isn’t going anywhere, I unclip my slack and untie the knot in it.

Finished.

For all of that seemingly complicated process, the end result it quite simple. There’s now a piece of rope through a loop at the top of the climb, with me attached to one end, and Jace at the bottom with the other end.

I unclip the three quick draw’s tying me to the chains and clip them back into my harness for storage. Now, it’s just a matter of slowly working my way back down, retrieving all those quick draw’s as I go along.

Or,

“Lower?” I call.

Jace laughs.

“Lowering!” he says, before sending me into free fall.

This is the best part. Jace can slow or stop my fall at any time. He lets me drop maddeningly fast. I laugh and whoop as I plummet. Finally, he slows me to a stop, then lowers me, still laughing, to the ground.

“You’re a bum!” he says to me. “You’re going to make me pick all of those up, aren’t you?” He waves a hand towards the many, many quick draws I’ve left dangling from the wall.

“You could have left me up there ’till I did.” I say.

“Yeah.” Jace concedes. “But dropping you is so much fun.”

“I’d forgotten how much fun.”

I lay back on the mat. He lies down next to me. We stare up at the ceiling, admiring our handiwork. 121 is wired for sound.

“Alright.” he says. “I get the next one.”

“Cool.” I respond. “Maybe we should start you on something easy.”

“Hey!” he pretests. “I think I’m a little better then ‘easy’. I’m good at this.”

“You were good at this. You haven’t done it in a year.”

I pinch his forearm.

“You’re getting little soft.”

He stands up. Looming over me, he clenches his arm muscles.

“See,” he says. “Rock hard.”

My eyes wander past his arms and down to his pants.

“Yes,” I say, “I can see that…”

Jace looks down. I didn’t think it was possible for a black boy to blush.

“Shit. I…”

“It’s okay. I know just the cure for that.”

“What’s that?” Jace asks warily.

“An epically deflated ego.”

I roll over on to my stomach and hold out my toned arm.

“Arm wrestle.” I suggest. “Loser has to go pick up all those quick draws.”

Jace lays down and grasps my hand in his.

“Deal.”

Jace is climbing up 121, picking up the quick draws.

“Ah….” I sigh. “Sweet…sweet victory.”

Jace unclips the next one. Instead of clipping it into his harness, he drops it on my foot.

“Hey!” I yell up at him. “I will drop your ass!”

We’ve always been like this. Competitive. Teasing.

This is the way it always has been and always should be.

We agree to same time, same place, three days from now. I promise to bring more food.

We hug before we part. I feel his skin on mine, so warm.

This is the way it always should be.

I just hope that this is enough.