Trixie took a deep breath of the fresh spring air as she hurried along the path to the clubhouse. In the nine years since they had formed their club, a lot had changed. But this part of the Wheeler grounds isn’t one of them, she noted to herself with inner satisfaction. It looks just the same as it ever did. She quickened her steps, eager to find out why she had been summoned to this mysterious meeting.

As the beloved building came into sight, she slowed to take note of its condition. Without the regular attention it got while their club was active, time and the elements had taken their toll. Trixie silently resolved to put in a little work during the warmer months. The door stood open, showing that Honey had already arrived. Trixie took one last, calming breath before stepping inside.

“I’m here! Why did you want to see me, Honey?” she asked, as her best friend looked up.

Trixie’s insides squirmed. She had not noticed until that moment that Honey’s eyes held fear, a deep, abiding fear that transmitted itself across the room and took up a place within Trixie herself.

“I… well, I guess I have something to tell you, which I need to say in person, and not over the phone.” A little crease formed between Honey’s eyes and her hands tangled together in a nervous gesture. “Which is why we’re here, and not talking on the phone, or just casually meeting on the street somewhere, because I wanted to talk to you in private and, well, no one really comes here any more, do they? So we can be alone and talk this through without any interruptions.”

The chill deepened inside Trixie. She nodded a single time, encouraging her friend to continue. But as the silence extended, she added, “You know you can tell me anything, don’t you?”

With a smile too bright and a giggle that seemed forced, Honey answered, “Well, of course. And I would tell you anything which needed telling, which is why we’re here, in our old clubhouse, which we worked so hard to put together, way back when we started our club, and where we shared so many happy times in the past, and now I’m ruining everything!”

In the midst of this speech, as Honey’s eyes filled with tears and her cheerful mask slipped away, Trixie grabbed both of her hands and asked, “What is it?”

Honey squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, taking in a deep breath. “I’m going to move to Kathmandu.”

“You’re going to what?” Trixie almost yelled at her.

“I’m moving to Kathmandu. To be with Mart.”

For several moments, Trixie did not answer. At length, just to make sure, she stated, “My brother, Mart.”

“Yes, that’s him.” Honey nodded, the bright, fake smile returning to her face. “Because he’s decided to go and I’ve decided to go with him and that’s all there is to it.”

“I see.” Trixie lapsed into a stunned silence, not knowing how to respond to such a revelation out of the blue. “Wait. Why is Mart moving to Kathmandu? And why have you chosen to go with him? And why hasn’t he told me about this himself? And why do you think this will ruin everything?”

“Oh. Yes. I guess you might like to know all of those things, and they really are very good questions; yes, very good questions, which you might like me to answer–”

“Just answer them, okay?” Trixie interrupted. “Start with why Mart’s going there.”

“Oh! To teach English. Didn’t I say that?” As Trixie shook her head, she carried on. “And I thought, well, since Mart is going, I wouldn’t be going by myself if I went and he would be with me and, well, it seemed like such a great opportunity to see the world and learn some new things, while at the same time teaching other people things that I know, because I did do well in English in the end, and I really enjoyed it in college, so I applied too and they accepted me as well.”

“And you and Mart…?” Trixie tried to ask, letting the question trail off when she didn’t know how to end it.

Honey gave her a coy smile. “We’re exploring our options.”

Trixie squeezed her eyes shut. “If these are the kinds of options that I don’t want to hear about, then I don’t want to hear about them!”

“That’s not what I was talking about,” Honey objected, laughing, and this time her laugh sounded genuine. “Right now, we’re not in a formal relationship, but we are both open to that, if that’s what happens, which it just might, seeing as neither of us is in a relationship and any relationships we might have thought of having, or might have had in the past, are not likely to happen again.”

“Is this what the thing about ruining everything is about?” Trixie wondered, reaching out to Honey once more. “Because I don’t think it will ruin things.”

“Nothing will ever be the same, ever again,” Honey pointed out. “If I do this, and I am doing this, we can’t ever go back to how things were before.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “We can’t go back to how things were before now. Not since Brian married Barbara and moved his home base to Iowa to be near her family.”

“Well, no, I guess not.” Honey sighed and got up to walk to the window. “I don’t know why, but it just seems so much more final if Mart and I start something. It’s not the same as how we thought things would be.”

“Maybe not. But things aren’t ruined. We grew up to be different people to the people we thought we’d be.” She joined her friend in looking out the window. “But different isn’t bad; sometimes, different is better. Just look at me!”

“What are you talking about, Trixie? You look just the same as you always have. Except older, of course. Which suits you.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean literally.”

“You mean, about when we were seventeen and we both first tried abseiling, and you loved it and I didn’t, and how everything after that seemed to change? Though, now that I come to think of it, Brian was already dating Barbara before that, which means that the first part of the differentness happened earlier than that, but I’ve always felt that that day was the beginning of the way things are now.”

“Something like that,” Trixie agreed, smirking.

To say that Honey did not love abseiling was rather like saying that Trixie did not love knitting. While Trixie’s enthusiasm for the sport knew no bounds – to the point where she abandoned all thoughts of becoming a detective in favour of finding a career, any career, which would allow her to pursue this new love – Honey experienced a terror that still haunted her. It had only gotten worse when Trixie had picked up a lucrative job cleaning windows on high rise buildings to pay her way through college. Honey could not bring herself to even watch others abseil; the experience still made her feel sick.

A tiny crease formed in Honey’s brow. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing that we didn’t get stuck spying on cheating spouses and investigating insurance fraud cases, because that would have been horrible.”

“And just think,” Trixie went on, “I have an adventure-based career and you’re going off on your own adventure now. But you still haven’t told me why this is the first I’m hearing about what Mart is doing. Because, being my own brother, not to mention my almost-twin, you’d think that he might have at least mentioned that this was a possibility.”

“He’ll be here a little later, so you can ask him yourself,” Honey replied, “but I think his intention was not to say anything until he knew whether it was really going to happen. And that was my intention, too. And because we heard on the same day, well, we’re telling people on the same day.”

Trixie’s eyes opened wider. “Am I first? Are you using me as a kind of practice run, before you tell the parents?”

Honey nodded. “And I can see that I’m going to have to rethink my approach. I didn’t expect you to yell at me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.” She turned from the window and took a seat at the table where they had once held their meetings. “So, when do you leave?”

Honey shrugged. “We’re not exactly sure, yet. Not for a few weeks, at least, but before the end of the summer. If we have time, we might do some travelling before we start work. After we’ve broken the news to my parents and yours, we’re going to start making all the arrangements.”

Trixie lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence, tracing her finger across some faint scratch marks on the table.

“What are you thinking?” Honey asked, at length.

Her best friend shrugged. “Just wondering about the best time of year to visit you and what else I might do while I’m there.”

“I am not climbing any mountains, Trixie. I’m just not.” She shivered. “And I don’t want to sit and wait and worry about you while you climb mountains.”

A rueful smile spread across Trixie’s face. “We’re never going to see eye to eye on this, are we? Anyway, I didn’t want to climb the whole mountain; only the interesting bits.”

“Those aren’t tame mountains, Trixie.” She began to pace in a square around the small room. “They don’t just present nice, safe, interesting bits for you to play around on. It’s wild and cold and dangerous and I’m actually terrified of that part of the whole thing. What if I don’t even like it there? And I’ll be there for the winter. Not in the mountains, of course, because I’m happy to just look at those in the distance and not climb them, but in a foreign country, with a completely different culture and where I have to learn the language and eat food I’ve never tried before and find ways to cope with all of the new things I’m experiencing.”

“But you’ll have Mart with you.”

At Trixie’s words, a soft smile replaced Honey’s fretful expression.

“Yes, I guess I will.”

“And presumably they have internet and phones. You can call me any time.”

Honey cast her a sceptical look as she settled across from her at the table. “Except when you’re somewhere in the air, dangling from a rope.”

“Yes, yes. Except then, of course.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “You do understand that I spend most of my time on the ground, don’t you? I instruct other people on how to abseil.”

“Well, you can’t answer the phone then, either,” Honey pointed out. “But at least it’s better than that horrible college job you had.”

Trixie shrugged and grinned. “I know you hated it, Hon, but it more than paid my way through college.”

Honey nodded, looking down. “And since I was so understanding about your completely incomprehensible career goals, now it’s your turn to be understanding about mine.”

Trixie scrambled out of her seat and plonked down next to her best friend. “I don’t need to be understanding. I do understand. And I’ll miss you, and even Mart, but it’s not the end of anything. This is only the beginning.”

As they embraced, the sound of approaching footsteps caught their attention.

“That will be Mart,” Honey noted, wiping away a stray tear.

They both turned and looked expectantly at the door. As Mart’s head appeared in the doorway, he jolted in surprise.

“I take it you’ve shared the news?”

“She has, and I’ll ask you to do your own dirty work in future,” his sister retorted.

“Ah.” Mart took a step back. “In that case–”

“Come here,” Trixie ordered, and pulled him into a hug. “Everything’s fine. You’re going to have a wonderful adventure and I’m looking forward to hearing all about it.”

The End