Never in her life had Mary Kate Sasser faced such a harrowing challenge, a quest so daunting that not even her months of meticulous preparation could quell her doubts. And this was just the plane ride!

Once they stabilized, she forced herself to loosen the death grip on her armrest. As if holding on would matter should this tin can disintegrate in turbulence at twenty-eight thousand feet.

Not exactly a seasoned traveler, Mary Kate had no idea what a normal flight was supposed to feel like. All she knew was they were bouncing over a third-world country with a third-world airline, probably in a plane that had been junked by somebody else after flying a couple of hundred million miles. This flight was much rougher than her first leg, a sixteen-hour adventure over the ocean, where she had been crammed in the middle section between the Michelin Man and a woman with a baby. Her attempts to sleep were thwarted either by the big guy drooping into her space, the baby pulling her hair, or her own gloomy thoughts about her crumbling relationship with Bobby Britton. The last bit annoyed her to no end. After thinking about it all the way across the ocean, she had finally solidified the decision that should have made her happy. But instead of feeling as though she were finally in control of her life, she had already begun to second-guess herself about what she was giving up. The closer she got to Tanzania, the more she hoped for resolve.  

At least this time she had a seatmate who stayed on his side of the armrest. He didn’t seem nervous about all this bouncing, and she found that comforting. Her window seat offered little in the way of a view, as they had been stuck in the clouds since Johannesburg. The plains of Africa were down there somewhere, but her first look would have to wait until touchdown, and only then if her prayers for a safe landing were answered.

In sharp contrast to her gloomy thoughts about Bobby and her fears of hurtling through the stratosphere, Mary Kate had never been so excited. Somewhere underneath all those clouds below was Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the continent, and her ultimate destination. If they didn’t fall from the sky in a ball of fire, getting there would be worth it.

She had sucked in every small detail of the trip so far, from the robotic way they had marched through immigration in Johannesburg to the jumbled cadence of Swahili she had overheard as they boarded this flight. This was the experience of a lifetime, and while part of her thought it was a shame to be having that at twenty-four years old, at least she knew she would have it. Hardly anyone back in her tiny town of Mooresville, Georgia, would have an adventure like this to look back on.

The plane bounced again forcefully and she looked around the cabin for any signs of panic. No one else appeared nervous, and the flight attendants were up and about performing what looked like mundane duties. That had to be good news, she told herself, unless they were trained to act nonchalant at moments of impending doom.

With a deep, calming breath, she settled her shoulders against the seat back. Africa was all she had thought about for the past six months, ever since seeing a documentary on public television. She couldn’t say why the mountain had called to her the way it had…maybe because Bobby made fun of it, saying it wasn’t all that big a deal if a person could just walk to the top. It wasn’t as if he aspired to scale the ice walls of Everest. His idea of a summer vacation was Myrtle Beach one year and Disney World the next. Repeat thirty times or until you died of boredom, whichever came first. That was all the adventure he needed, and it reinforced the growing realization that they weren’t exactly made for each other. In fact, the whole year they had spent together seemed to her an exercise in trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

As if belittling her about hiking to the summit of Kilimanjaro wasn’t enough, Bobby also had convinced himself and practically everyone else that she couldn’t manage the trip on her own. He seemed to think a Y-chromosome was required for reading a schedule or navigating an airport or bus terminal. She could still hear him warning her that she would be stranded in the middle of nowhere if she missed a ride, and then be sorry for not letting him come along. What Mary Kate couldn’t fathom was why he thought he knew all there was to know about getting around in a foreign country, since he had never been farther from home than Branson, Missouri.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one who had thought her solo trip was a bad idea. Her mother worried that she would plunge to her death from a cliff, even though Mary Kate had tried to explain that this expedition wasn’t like that, that it was more of a steep hike than an actual climb. Then her father read in one of the brochures that Tanzania was primarily a Muslim country, and he immediately started worrying that terrorists would blow up the plane or the bus or the hotel or the café or the tent. And finally, there was her sister Carol Lee, whose biggest concern was that Bobby would break up with her over the whole thing.

No matter how many times she tried to push him out of her head, Bobby kept popping back up. She had told herself a hundred times since leaving Atlanta that she wouldn’t spend the next sixteen days thinking about him. She was finally growing clear on what she had to do, and she was ready this time…as soon as she got back to Mooresville, or as he put it, once she got this out of her system. 

She was getting worked up again, clenching her fists instead of squeezing the armrests. She didn’t need Bobby’s permission for this or anything else. Still, it was hard to go against him and her whole family over something nobody seemed to understand. No matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t seem to explain why this trip was so important to her. It just was.

At least her mom had come around a little just before she left. Her Aunt Jean was on her side too, saying she had always wanted to go to Africa and see the wild animals. When Mary Kate told her she couldn’t afford that part of the trip, that she had scraped up only enough to pay for the climb and the plane ticket, Aunt Jean produced a check for two thousand dollars and told her to keep her mouth shut. So thanks to Aunt Jean, she would have a five-night wildlife picture safari before heading back for home.

Her stomach pitched again as the plane did, emptying her head of all thoughts except where she was sitting in relation to the emergency exits. By her watch, they were due to land soon. She hoped that had something to do with why they were suddenly losing altitude. The pilot was saying something on the loudspeaker…the only word she could make out was Kilimanjaro.

Suddenly, half the passengers from the other side of the plane were standing up, leaning over her row to look out the window. Fearing the wing was on fire, she made herself look, thinking that a request to have her ashes scattered over Africa would be timely.

“Holy shit.”

The man beside her seemed a bit surprised at her choice of words, which she hadn’t meant to utter aloud. Jutting well above the clouds below them was a massive tower, a hollowed crater with a glacial icecap on its highest ridge. Up until that moment, she had managed to suppress her doubts about whether or not she would make it all the way to Uhuru Peak, the top of that ridge. Bleak and foreboding, it looked about as hospitable as the moon, not at all something a normal person with only foothills hiking experience could conquer. “Did he just say that was Kilimanjaro?”

The man nodded and pointed toward her hiking boots. “You climb?”

“I…” Going with Bobby to Myrtle Beach suddenly had its merits. “I’m going to try.”

“Dangerous.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.” People had died on that mountain, most from acute altitude sickness. No wonder. It was just right there under the plane.

She pressed her face against the window to keep the mountain in sight until the plane banked. Then they were engulfed in white again, bouncing hard against the thick clouds on what she hoped was their final approach.

Flight attendants were rushing around, picking up the cups and trash, bringing the seat backs forward and tray tables up.

Mary Kate tugged her seatbelt another notch and gripped the armrests again, not caring at all if she left imprints in the plastic.

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