On belay?
Belay on.
Climbing.
Climb on.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Imagine it perfect.

Jump is my introduction to the sport of rock-climbing. Apparently, there are rock-climbing gyms and climbing shops where you buy gear with esoteric names and rocks and cliffs and routes to climb that have ratings and their own weird names (Swing Shift? Midnight Lightning?). Who knew such a world existed?

Anyway, our two protagonists, Critter, escapee from a mental hospital, and P.K., a runaway who just wants to avoid being sent to boarding school, find themselves hitchhiking across country to Nevada and then to California to find a place where they can share their mutual passion–rock-climbing. In the process, they, of course, discover another passion for each other, but there are issues that must be resolved. And the cops are chasing both Critter and P.K., seeking to return Critter to his drugged life in the hospital and P.K. into the arms of her parents-who-don’t-understand-me.

I’m making the book sound a bit trite and predictable, but it’s really anything but. Critter isn’t really crazy, or is he? He does read people’s emotions by the colored auras he sees surrounding them, and he makes things happen by visualizing them. And P.K. is a strong, independent, rock-climbing, kick you-know-what female, or maybe she’s just a girl who wants her daddy to listen to her and her mom to let her stay home. The parents of both young people were rather flat characters, not very comprehensible. But this story isn’t really about kids and parents; it’s about P.K. and Critter and their relationship and about trust and most of all about living in the present. Critter tells P.K. over and over that the present moment is all that’s real. The past can’t be changed; it’s subject to what Critter calls “the Law of Inevitability.” The future isn’t here, and most of the things we worry about happening in the future, won’t. So Now is all there is.

That’s the philosophy part of the book. The story part is your basic boy meets girl, problems, resolution. But it’s a good climb with some quirky, lovable characters.