Free Peak by Roland Smith

cagey as old Zopa.
    There was a lot of competition sitting on the mountain under those large tents. Getting a dozen clients to the summit could bring in as much as a million dollars, and if you were simultaneously mounting other expeditions on other 8,000-meter peaks, several million dollars.
    If an Everest wannabe was going to plop down a hundred grand (or several thousand to get to one of the lower camps) who were they going to give their money to? The company with the best success rate? The company with the best safety record? Or maybe, the company who put the youngest person in the world on the world's tallest mountain, who also just happened to have the same first name as the company that put him on the top. And did you hear about him climbing those skyscrapers in New York?
    Don't worry about the money. I'll get my portion back.
    The film crew should be here later this afternoon.
    She's here to cover Peak, not herself.
    I suddenly remembered where I had seen the name Holly Angelo. It was a byline under an article about me climbing the skyscraper. She was the reporter who broke the news about who my real father was. Did she dig up this information on her own? Or did Josh give her a call and spill his guts?
    The youngest person so far to reach the top of Everest was a fifteen-year-old Nepalese girl named Ming Kipa Sherpa.
    If I were one year older I might still be in ... I stopped in midstep.
    "What's the matter?" Sun-jo asked. "Nothing," I said.
    Would Josh have bailed me out if I had already turned fifteen? I didn't think so. Was he using me? Probably. Did I mind? I wasn't sure at that point. He was paying more attention to me than he had my whole life.
    "I'm going to head back," I said.
    "I should go, too," Sun-jo said. "Zopa wants me to talk to the cook about helping in the mess tent."
    "A job?" I asked.
    "For room and board." Sun-jo smiled. "Or tent and food, I should say. Perhaps it will lead to something else."
    Tent and food was not going to get the tuition paid. "I could talk to my father," I offered. "If I asked him, I think he'd hire you for more than tent and food."
    Sun-jo shook his head. "We had better leave that up to Zopa. He brought me to the mountain. It is for him to decide."

ROCK WEASELS
     
    RATHER THAN CONFRONT JOSH, I crawled into my tent, wrapped myself in my sleeping bag, and fell asleep.
    I know what you're thinking: CHICKEN! Maybe you're right. But what was I going to say? "I will not be used, Father!" Or how about this: "Send me back to New York so I can do my time. Take that, Dad!"
    Besides, I needed some sleep before I talked to him. Walking around at 18,000 feet wears you down. And it turned out that I didn't have to find him because he found me.
    "You awake?" he asked.
    "Yeah," I said, although I hadn't been until he stuck his head into my tent.
    He crawled in and zipped the flap closed. "Did you get a chance to look around the camp?"
    "A little. There's a lot of competition for your company up here."
    "You noticed, huh? Next year there won't be so many commercial operations. There's only a finite number of people who have the money, time, and desire to get up this mountain. This will be the last year for a lot of the operations."
    "Including Peak Experience?" I asked.
    He grinned. "Your mom told me that you're smart," he said. "I guess you got that from her."
    Flattery has never worked on me. "So, how much trouble are you in?"
    "Like the judge said, I look good on paper. But the truth is, I'm in debt up to my crevasse."
    Humor, on the other hand, always worked on me. I laughed.
    "If we have a good season this year," he continued, "we might be able to recoup some of our losses next year. It's all riding on how many people we get to the summit in the next few weeks and how much publicity we get."
    "Which is why I'm here," I said.
    He gave me a sheepish look. "Not entirely," he said. "But yeah, that's one of the reasons."
    That's the main reason, I thought. Might as well get it over with. "If