Hiking

The stone of the mountaintop pushes hard against her soles, keeping her upright and walking. It’s not worth stopping. The better views are further ahead, anyway, and Carrie’s breath is burning through her lungs straight down into her muscles. Every step is a stretch, every gasp is pushing the limits of her lung capacity. Her heartbeat grips her chest like an angry lover.

Her cell phone is turned off; there probably isn’t any reception here, but Carrie doesn’t take chances. Her mother’s anxieties about her credit card debt are waiting for her down at the treeline; her father’s disapproval of her job is in the car. Her plans to go back to college are lurking in the lichen around her, but she doesn’t have to stop for them and she doesn’t have to turn around when opportunity comes knocking if she doesn’t want to. She wants to go forward- her stomach is trembling as she heaves herself over a particularly vertical chunk of boulder – she wants to keep going up until she can see nothing around her but rock and sky.

Then maybe she will stop, and eat, and breathe for a while, and let the frustrations of the morning catch up a little. She likes shouting obscenities off the top of the rocks, likes knowing that no one will hear them and she doesn’t have to feel ashamed. Likes the feeling of the syllables ripping up her throat. But she can’t wait too long; she has to be ready to run back down again, jumping down the trail, ready to fall at any moment. Her mother would be furious to see Carrie risking her neck like this. But her mother isn’t here, and it feels so damn good to push herself that she does it anyway, every time.

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