I can’t do this.

“You’re right, you can’t,” her mother said. “There’s no point in you taking advanced algebra, Marissa. Girls have different brains. I think home economics is much more sensible.”

Great, what a time for a conversation with her mother. She eyed the next handhold, already feeling a suspicious trembling in her arms.

“It’s all fine and well to learn to type. You’ll always have work, though you won’t ever really need to be serious about a career as I’m sure you’ll get married. But learning this gibberish—”

“It’s called hypertext.”

“Whatever it’s called, it’s useless. If you have to learn a second language, try French. You’ll know how to order in a fine restaurant.”

“I’m twenty-four, wait. I’m thirty-four . . . and I can make my own choices in life, Mother!”

“You can’t possibly think that you and that Octavia girl can run a business together. You both should be looking for husbands. I can’t tell my friends my daughter runs a dating service. They’ll think you’re . . . you’re . . .”

“A madam? A pimp? But Mother, you told me once you’d rather I was a whore than any kind of sexual deviant, because Jesus forgave whores. That was after dad left, remember? I understand you’re bitter about that but it’s not an escort service. It’s a complicated, intensive program that scores individual likes and dislikes then ranks the comparative intensity against that of other—”

“You should use the service yourself, but look at you! You’re overweight, you work eighty hours a week, you have no friends, no social life. You can’t live that way!”

“Don’t tell me . . .” Marissa took a deep breath and heaved herself up the cliff face to the next handhold. With a frightening scrabble, she got her foot into the right spot. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

“Next time,” Linda called down, “set your foot first if you can. You can use both legs to push that way. That was great, though. You’ve got fantastic upper body strength.”

“It’s from knocking back Krispy Kremes.” She didn’t know until Linda laughed that she’d spoken aloud.

“Told you that you could do this.”

I can’t, Marissa wanted to say. I really can’t.

“You can’t do this to me!” Her mother stood between Marissa and the door, outside which a cab was waiting to take her to the airport.

“He’s still my father and I’m going to spend Christmas with him. Him and Phillip.”

“What will I tell people? How can you have anything to do with him? He walked out on us—”

“No, he walked out on you!” Marissa glared across the foyer with the echo of a hundred overheard fights in her ears.

“If you’d been anything like a real daughter he could have been proud of, he’d have never left—”

“He walked out on you. He couldn’t wait to get away from you. He’s gay because of you!”

Marissa dug her fingers into the rock as she thought, “Okay, you knew that was a lie and you can’t ever take that back and you never should have said it.”