Rope and Ruin

Connie knew the door code to Ascent Gym, which meant Dale had to follow her in, which she counted as a small win before the night even started.

"You know the manager said final call is mine," Dale said, jangling his chalk bucket like it proved something. "I set routes here, Connie. That's my actual job."

"And I coach here, which is also an actual job," she said, kicking off her sneakers and pulling on her climbing shoes. "Besides, whoever sets the comp route gets their name on the card. You really think the owner is handing that to the guy who still says 'send it' unironically?"

Dale was thirty-one, and she'd been dating him for three years now, ever since the regional comp where he'd beaten her by two points and then bought her a beer like an apology. Most days that was funny. Tonight it was fuel.

"Fine. Show me," he said. "Flash the thing. No falls, no hangs. Then we talk about whose name goes on the card."

"See, this is why I love you. You keep setting yourself up."

The gym was empty at ten on a Thursday. Fifty feet of wall, lit by the dim safety lights that made everything look a little orange, ropes creaking on their own in the drafts from the vents. Connie chalked her hands, smacked the excess off, and stepped onto the start holds of Dale's new line. He'd bolted it that week, a long, lurching thing full of big moves between small edges, the kind of route built by someone who wanted people to fail.

She moved through the opening sequence clean. Crimps, a gaston, a heel hook that felt like it was designed by a man with a grudge. So far, exactly what she expected from Dale.

"Looking smooth," he called up. "Doesn't mean the top section isn't going to eat you."

"We'll see about that!"

She pulled onto the overhang and the holds got worse, which was the point. She reached high with her right hand for a sloper he'd stuck way out past anything reasonable, and that was when the door at the back of the bouldering cave opened and someone cleared his throat.

"Don't mind me," Jordan said. "Keep going. I want to watch this."

Connie almost dropped off right there. Jordan was twenty-seven, had been the famous kid of the local scene until his shoulder blew out at twenty-two, and he'd been drifting around the gym for the past year like a ghost with an attitude. He had his arms crossed and that smirk he did, the one that made her want to throw a chalk brush at him.

"How'd you get in?" Dale called.

"Door code's the year the gym opened. You guys should really change that." Jordan wandered over and looked up at the wall, then at her, hanging there on one hand. "No, seriously, keep climbing. I want to see if you make the crux."

She should have come down. She knew that later. But Connie had a competitive streak that had gotten her in trouble at every gym she'd ever belonged to, and Jordan knew exactly which button to press. So she reset her feet and went for the sloper.

It spun under her hand.

Not the rubber, not loose stone, the hold itself, like the bolt had turned in the wall, and it scraped across her palm as her feet cut loose. She fell, hit the mats, rolled onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling lights, which flickered twice, like a stutter.

"Whoa, hey, you okay?" Dale was over the mats in three steps, crouching next to her.

"I'm fine. Palm's a little raw." She held it up. A red scrape across the meat of her hand, annoying more than anything. "But that hold spun, Dale. Did you torque it down?"

"I torqued everything down. I check my hardware."

"It spun," Jordan said. He wasn't smirking anymore. He was looking up at the overhang with an expression she couldn't read. "Holds don't just spin. Not on new bolts."

"Everything okay over there?" Dale asked. "You're being weird, and that's a high bar."

Jordan crouched, picked a little river stone off the mat, turned it over in his fingers. "You know this building used to be a mine office, right?"

"Here we go," Connie said, sitting up.

"I'm serious. There's an old shaft under the back half of this floor. They capped it when they renovated. Guy died down there decades ago, before any of us were born, and they never brought him up." He let the stone drop. "Old-timers used to say the ground around here is hungry. It likes competition. It likes watching people push until something breaks."

"That is an incredible story and I'm going to need you to leave so I can finish this route," Connie said.

"Connie." Dale's voice had that careful note it got when he thought she was being reckless. "The hold spun. Let me at least look at it."

"Fine. Look at it. But then I'm finishing it."

Dale got the ladder from the wall rack, climbed up, and hung off the overhang, wrenching at the sloper. "Huh."

"Huh what? Huh is not a reassuring word."

"Tool's stripped. Somebody's been on this bolt besides me." He climbed down and looked at Jordan. "Was that you? Because if you've been messing with my routes again, we're going to have a conversation that gets you banned."

"Why would I touch your route? Your routes are boring." Jordan shrugged. "Maybe the wall's settling. Maybe the building's just old. Or maybe, like I said, the place is hungry and it wanted to see somebody fall."

"That's twice you've said hungry," Connie said. "That's a weird word choice and I want it noted."

"Noted by whom? You two are the only ones here, and I'm the one telling you." Jordan walked over to the main wall and put his palm flat against it, which was such a dramatic gesture that Connie almost laughed. "Tell you what. You two want to fight over who sets the comp route, do it properly. Contest. Both of you, hardest line you can climb right now, judged by me since I'm neutral. Winner stays in the gym's good graces, loser gets humbled. Everybody wins, mostly me."

"We're not taking climbing advice from a guy who lurks in caves," Dale said.

"The cave is where the good problems are."

"Contest sounds fun, though," Connie said, and Dale turned to stare at her.

"You fell off the wall thirty seconds ago!"

"And I'm fine! My palm stings, I have tape in my bag, and I am not letting this guy watch me walk away from a challenge." She looked at Jordan. "What are the rules?"

"No rules. Hardest line wins. You each pick your own problem." Jordan smiled, and this time the smile was worse than the smirk. "And one thing. Nobody leaves until both lines are done. Call it commitment."

"Deal," Connie said, before Dale could object.

"Deal? Connie, the door locks from the inside, nobody's trapped here."

"Then it's an easy deal, isn't it? Tape my hand, Dale. You've got it in your bag, I've seen you fuss with it a hundred times."

Dale dug out the tape and wrapped her palm while she flexed her fingers, and Jordan settled onto a mats bench like someone who had all night would, which, she was starting to suspect, he did.

Dale took longer picking his line than climbing it. He walked the base of the far wall twice, hands on hips, muttering numbers to himself.

"Stop stalling," Connie called. "You picked that route Tuesday. You've been brushing holds on it all week."

"I'm reading it," he said. "There's a difference."

"He's stalling," Connie told Jordan, who had his chin propped on his fist like a judge at a county fair.

"Stalling costs points," Jordan said.

"There are no points. You said no rules."

"Then stalling costs nothing. My mistake."

Dale clipped in, chalked up, and went at the overhang on the far side, the line he'd bolted himself that week. It started on two crimps, threw you into a roof, then spat you out onto an arête with a long reach to the top anchors. Connie had tried it once and taken a whipper she still thought about in the shower. It was a good route. She hated admitting that.

He moved well for the first thirty feet. Fast, actually, faster than she'd seen him move in months, and she felt that little pinch in her chest that was half pride and half something uglier. He pulled through the roof on one arm, toes hooked, and she heard him exhale the way he did when a sequence clicked.

Then he reached for the third quickdraw on the arête and the rope went weird.

It didn't run through the draw. It snagged, bowing out from the wall in a lazy loop, like the rope had decided mid-climb it was done helping. Dale hung there a second, feeling it.

"Rope's stuck," he said.

"Drop and lower, Dale."

"It's jammed in the draw, I can just..." He pulled. The rope came free all at once, and he was already committing to the reach on the arête, and Connie saw it happen the way you see a car slide on ice, everything half a second too slow. His hand slapped the hold and the hold wasn't there. Not spun, not loose. Just gone, like the wall had swallowed it. There was a bolt hole and a smear of chalk and nothing else.

"Dale."

He fell. Fifty feet of wall and he fell maybe twenty-five before the rope came tight, except the rope came tight wrong, swinging him out and back into the corner where the extra webbing from the anchor setup hung in a loose coil. He hit the mats in the middle of the tangle, hard enough that Connie heard the air leave him.

She was over the mats before she'd decided to move. "Dale. Dale, hey."

He was flat on his back in a nest of yellow webbing, blinking at the orange safety lights. "That," he wheezed, "was not the hold I bolted."

"Where's the hold, Dale?"

"That's my question."

Jordan got up off the bench. He wasn't laughing. That was the part that scared her, that he wasn't laughing. "Did you see the wall?" he asked. "Tell me one of you saw it."

"Saw what?" Connie was running her hands down Dale's legs, checking, and he let her, which told her how rattled he was. "Move your foot. Does that hurt? Does anything hurt?"

"My pride hurts. Ribs are fine. I landed in a pile of laundry." He sat up, pushing webbing off his chest, and then he went still, holding a length of it. "Connie. This webbing is frayed. All of it. Look."

She looked. Every strand in the coil was fuzzy, chewed looking, like mice had spent a year on it, except it had been on the rack in good shape that