Chapter Text
Iverson is sixteen, and he is alone.
His mother is downstairs, nursing a gin and tonic as she talks in hushed tones to a man he will never meet. His sister is across town repeating her father’s mistakes, sitting on a warm bar seat and grinning with chipped teeth.
He would like to say that this was his choice. That he shooed away his family in favor of some teenage solitude, but like most things these days, it was not.
Rather, it was a choice made in the absence of choice. It was a casualty created from his lack of speech, a new development since his father’s death.
His therapist had told his mother that the trauma of Kendall’s abrupt passing had been too much, and his “special brain” had regressed to the point of losing his speech.
“It’s all just too much for him and he can’t cope.” She told Rava, “He’ll get better, he just needs to process.”
He had sat beside her in his holy silence, pondering the truth of the situation. His father was dead. He was dead and he took his words with him.
The therapist had said that he would be talking again in a few months, yet nearly a year later he is still quiet.
Rava had given up on it once the deadline passed. Aware that he was in more control than she knew. She now casts him pitiful looks as he types out requests on the ACC device he carries.
“I want pasta for dinner.” The mechanical voice tells her as she watches him, something like an apology in her eyes.
So, when his birthday came around and he failed to produce any vocal desires, his mother made her own plans. A nice bottle of wine to celebrate her only birth. The first time it was her failure, not Kendall’s, that she was left with.
It's barely four o’clock and his mother is already drunk when he texts her. He can still manage that.
“I’m taking the car to the gym.” It reads. In response, Rava likes the message and requests his location.
—
The driver drops him off a block away from the gym, signaling to him with a tip of his hat. When he reaches the doorway of the building, he stares at the neon sign of a man hanging from a cliff side for a moment too long. That could be him one day, he thinks. He has the money to fund such outlandish adventures. He could hire the best in the business to train him and put up with the mechanics of his disease. Or he could train himself, drilling the same moves on the wall until he can’t get them wrong. He could take himself out, risking his life to remain in his silence.
It’s not like nature would demand much else from him.
Inside he shows his pass to the girl behind the desk. She waves him in with a tight smile. She’s only two years older than him, having applied for a job right out of school. If things were different he could see them together. Belay buddies turned partners. She wouldn’t change her name or question the burden he carries. She would simply tape his hands back together, unaware his skin was more than she was repairing.
But in this universe, she looks down at her phone as he shuffles into the main room of the gym. He finds a locker and begins to root through his bag. Producing a pair of climbing shoes, his chalk bag, and some wired earbuds. He straps the shoes to his feet, clips his chalk to his waist, and starts up his playlist.
He spends his first thirty minutes on V3 to warm up. With an overhang that could classify it as a V4, he uses a route he’s practiced a million times, making a point to use his feet as much as possible to stay steady. He sends it twice before deciding that he’s got all he can out of it.
In the back room of the gym looms his current project. A V6 boulder with a nasty section of crack climbing. It’s modeled after two boulders in Yosemite that he’s been dreaming of climbing one day. Pictures of both hang on his wall at home. They act as a talisman of sorts. A reminder that there is more out there. There is always more in this life.
He starts easy, his hands and feet working in sync as he makes his way up the wall. He has memorized the holds before him, having spent countless hours in the dark of his room drilling how to best approach them.
Soon after he lost his voice he realized that just because he goes quiet does not mean the world will follow. His mother still weeps on his Sunday, his sister still blares her music, and strangers still chatter away.
Below him, two men are praising his climbing ability. The older of the pair points to his footwork as something the younger one should work on. They stare for a moment longer as Iverson pauses, hanging off the wall with straight arms as he approaches the crack. They are gone by the time he starts the section.
The crack is a thin one, with the walls overhang growing with it. He struggles in the middle, feeling spent from just how hard his body is working to stay attached to the wall. His mind feels foggy as he approaches the pinnacle. He pulls his body up over the edge, something like contentment washing over his body.
“I did it.” he thinks. “I fucking did it.”