“So what was your climbing time?” I almost smile. She remembered that I said I beat my last record. “Two minutes, fifty-three seconds, eighty feet of ascension.” “I’m proud of you,” she says. “Did you scream, ‘I am a Golden God’ when you reached the top?” “Only you do that, sweetheart.” There’s a long pause again, and I can’t keep my smile from filling my whole face. When she collects herself, she laughs and says, “I did it once, and it wasn’t even a real mountain.” It was a gym rock wall. And it took her a week to complete the hardest course. By the end, she pumped her fists in the air in
...more