They went to school; they did school‑kid things, opened their lockers, put books away, took notes; Tamma sketched climbs in her lab notebook; Dan did homework; Tamma downloaded
videos of Alex Johnson; Dan stooped over his textbook; they sat in brightly colored, molded‑plastic chairs; they walked vinyl‑tiled hallways, full of the feeling that life was somewhere, elsewhere; and on Monday, the fourteenth of November, Tamma was crimping up the overhang of Fingerbang Princess, her breath falling in evanescent plumes, sinking down into the last good hold, skittering her feet about on matchbook edges until she found the high, left, dice‑sized nub, and then she leapt. Going up on pointe like a dancer and then leaving her stage behind, out into the dark.
She caught Tinkerbell’s Bandersnatch and her feet caromed left in an enormous swing, her shoulder packed, her hair fanning, and sneer‑ ing with effort, she held it. For the first time ever. She was so surprised that she just dangled there, waiting to fall, holding the roof with one hand, nothing else. When she didn’t fall, she kicked her heel up over the lip and, in one smooth, clean, desperate movement, boosted her‑ self up onto the slab above.
Standing in the dust, Dan was thinking, Fuck me, but she is good. On the ground, Tamma was the clumsiest person he had ever met, but on the wall, she was breathtaking. People who didn’t climb tended to imagine climbing as a series of Cliffhanger‑style pull‑ups, and indeed, that’s how Dan climbed. Dan could solve entire boulder problems with his feet nowhere except in the way. But Tamma—Tamma set each hold gently, and rather than cranking with her arms, she stepped through the move, turning her hip to the wall, driving with her legs, extending for the next edge, so that it appeared effortless, tiptoeing up climbs with body english and devious footwork. If there was a big, pull‑up‑style move, she’d sling a heel above her head and pull through with her hamstrings. Watching her, he felt himself to be in the com‑ pany of grace and courage such as most people went their entire lives without ever seeing. Everyone he knew seemed to think Tamma was trash, but he thought she was some kind of genius.
He waited, holding the flashlight, and in him moved the twinned, scissoring‑apart, scissoring‑together wantings, wanting to see her succeed, and a peeling‑back from her, a fear that she would do the boulder before him, and that with her having done it, the pressure would be on for him to do it too. Since his fall, he had been holding back, more concerned with not dying than topping out; he wasn’t committing from one move to the next with the send‑or‑splatter in‑ tensity that Fingerbang Princess required. But if Tamma climbed this thing, then he’d have to put on his big‑girl panties and climb it next. And yet, he wanted that; he watched her, brimming with hope, and not sure what he hoped, maybe for something bigger, scarier, riskier, more wide open, for whatever came next if Tamma proved that they could actually, for real, finish this thing.
The slab above the roof was crossed by three slanting crystal dikes: outsloped rails like the crimped edges of a piecrust. The wall was oth‑ erwise featureless save for the subtle dishing of the rock, about as deep and positive as paper plates. Tamma climbed with hand‑foot matches going to intricate, balancy sequences, until she came to a blank place more than twenty‑five feet above the deck, her stance as high as she could get it on the last piecrust dike. Dan could see no footholds ex‑ cept a crystal shaped like a domino pasted onto the rock. It was high up by her hip. She had to leave the security of the dike behind, step left to a terrifying friction‑smear in a paper‑plate dish, and then right to the domino, which would be level with her groin. Her only handhold was a molar‑sized crystal, high and left, angled the wrong direction, which she would pry against with the pad of her left thumb.
She was blowing with panic. In the flashlight’s beam, he could see gooseflesh on the backs of her arms. She dipped one hand into her chalk bag, clapped it clean on the butt of her jeans. The slab was so steep that her cheek was up against the rock.
He watched as she planted her pointer finger on the domino hold by her hip. Then she backed off.
“Dude!”
“Yeah?”
“That’s a bad hold, dude.”
“Tamma, there’s no other choice. It’s go, and maybe fall. Or stand there, and definitely fall.”
“I just want to go home!” “You have to try, Tamma!”
“I’m too scared, dude!”
She planted her finger again on the domino hold. A centimeter deep. Four centimeters wide. She started bringing her right foot up to it, and then, once again, retreated to the stance at the dike. Put her face to the wall, making scared and miserable noises.
“Commit or crater, slutcake.”
“How’s the fall?’
“Not good!”
“I can’t do it!”
“You can!”
“Dan?”
“Yes?”
“If I die?”
“Yeah?”
“At the funeral? Like, during the speech? I want you to say I was the best lay you ever had.”
“What?”
“I don’t want people to think I died a virgin, dude.”
“You are a virgin,” Dan said.
“But it’s so embarrassing, Dan! I want people to think I lived a rad life of adventure and blossoming sexuality. A kind of slutty, swash‑ buckling pirate princess!”
“Why?”
“Just say I was better than Madison.”
“What? At the funeral? Won’t it seem inappropriate and apropos of nothing?”
“Nah, dude, it’ll be fine.”
“But I barely know Madison, won’t she find that confusing? Won’t her mom be alarmed?”
“I’m sure she’s amazing. She’s, like, the third hottest girl in school. Just stand at the head of the casket, weeping, and say, ‘Ah, Tamma. The best lay I ever had. Even better than Madison Van Der Meer.’ Then point her out in the crowd. So everyone can see how hot she is.”
“Tamma, don’t make me do that!”
“Promise me!”
“I promise!”
She began drawing her right foot up to the hold, hooking her leg around the back of her arm, aiming to share space with her fingertip in a hand‑foot match. She was trembling all over, canting her hips, en‑ gaging every muscle. Then her left foot greased out from beneath her and she came cheesegrating down the slab, and at the last moment her foot snagged an edge and she flipped over backward. Dan reached up to catch her and she came on toward him headfirst, her hands extended in a backward somersault. She put her thumb into his eye and he twisted away with her thumb pad catching in the socket, bringing his chin down and reaching to catch her nonetheless, and she squirted out from his grasp and took a header into the dirt.
She lay in the sand for a time and then rolled over and tried to prop herself up and then she puked and put her face right back down into it and lay breathing. Dan crouched beside her, not wanting to say any‑ thing, covering his eye with his hand. Then he let himself down into the sand, staring up at the stars with one eye, holding a hand over the other, unwilling and afraid to open it. She crawled over to him. Her face crusted with gravel.
“I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. She started to cry, leaning over him, bracing her head with both hands, as if to hold it together at the temples.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said. He spoke to the stars. Andromeda lay there above him, the chained daughter of Cassiopeia swathed across the starscape.
“No it’s me.”
“I should’ve caught you.”
“I shouldn’t’ve fallen.”
“It’s my job to catch you, Tams.”
“It’s my job not to fall.”
He could feel sludge beneath his fingers. He did not yet have the guts to lift his hand. Tamma was crying and snotting into the downy peach fuzz of her upper lip. Jupiter was enormously bright.
“You okay?” he said. “I’m great,” she said.
With a single effort he sat up and tore away his hand. He could see out of his injured eye. He began palming away a thick clear mucus. The world was strange, webbed and distorted, but it was there. She was crying but when she saw him, she lit with smirking amusement. Her lips worked delicately from crying to smirking and back to cry‑ ing, her chin quivering, and she said, “Dude.”
“Sorry.”
“Your eye is gooing.”
“I know.”
“It’s glue‑gunning.”
“Yeah, I feel it.”
“Your eye is doing just what I do when I think about Paisley Cuthers.”
“She’s a person,” he said. “Not just a famous climber, she’s a real person, you can’t make those jokes.”
“A real sexy person.”
“Can I say something?”
“I love how boldly she climbs.”
“Tamma.”
“She climbs like she can’t fall, you know? She throws for holds like she can’t miss. Like she’s never slipped. Never fucked up. Never been hurt. Never, ever fallen. Total self‑belief.”
“Tamma—”
“But in interviews? She’s humble and kind of flustered. I like that too. On the wall: a bitch. On the mats: a damsel.”
“Tamma,” he said, again.
“Yeah?”
“Can we be serious for a moment?”
“Sorry, yes. Yes.”
“I think you do lead a rad life.”
“I think you lead a rad life,” she said. She fell on him and beat upon his breast with the heel of her hand.
“You lead an amazing life,” he said. “It’s just not a life of adventure and blossoming sexuality.”
“Not yet,” she said.
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From Crux by Gabriel Tallent. Used with permission of the publisher, Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2026 by Gabriel Tallent.
