My attention was yanked back to the climb as a small piece of rock holding the weight of my left foot snapped off. My foot dropped, throwing me off balance, and I fumbled the piece of gear I was holding as I jammed my hand into the crack to stabilize myself.

"Shit!" I yelped, as I scraped my knuckles and as James' favorite cam struck a ledge, bounced, and fell the rest of the hundreds of feet we'd climbed this afternoon to clonk onto the ground not ten feet from our camping gear. Well, shit. Those suckers cost a hundred bucks each, and I'd be duty-bound to replace it.

"You okay?" James called down.

I got myself into a better position, shook out my skinned hand, and looked up at him. "I killed Bessie!" I replied, before starting to climb again.

He made a mournful sound and started soliloquizing as I finished the last twenty feet of the climbing pitch. "Oh, Bessie! No better cam has ever graced the rack of a climber! How can we ever climb again without you, your lovely corpse lying upon the pine-needle soil of Yosemite? How shall I go on? Death! Woe! Ruin! Never again will I see the gleam of the sun upon your sapphire blue—"

I clipped in next to him and smacked him on the arm, making him burst into laughter. "I'll buy you another one, you dork," I said, grinning at him.

He grinned back, his cheerful one-dimpled smile. "They don't make 'em like they used to, Leah. We're never gonna find another Bessie," he said, trying to sound doleful and instead coming off irrepressibly cheerful. It was hard to be sad in the backcountry of Yosemite.

"Of course not," I said in my best lecturing schoolmarm voice. "You can't just replace your most darling, beloved cam! You'll have to fall in love all over again, mister." I flashed a perky smile at him. "How about trying out a Metolius? Sam swears by 'em," I said cheekily, naming one of the brands a climbing buddy of ours used.

"Insult! Horror!" he cried, clutching at his chest. "You would defile Bessie's name with a Metolius? Black Diamond or bust!"

I laughed at that, and started setting up the rope for the next pitch. "Yeah, yeah, you'll get your Camalot 3 Blue, babe."

James sniffed at that, but started transferring the gear to his setup while I got the rope set up. "You don't actually have to buy me a new one," he offered with a cheerful smile. "I'm capable of finding a new beloved cam."

"Psh, don't even try it," I replied with a laugh. "I make more money than you, and I'm the one that dropped her. I'm a big girl and can deal with it." I finished setting up the rope and got my belay device set up so James could unhook from the anchor.