The rock climbing gym

You awake in the afternoon with an idea. Ascend. Ascend is the local rock climbing gym. You've gone there with Mom, Cori, and other friends in the past, and it's full of tomboys. Even this late (actually checking the time, you guess 1PM isn't actually late) there should be someone there who can tell you how real this all is.

You change into climbing-friendly clothes, throw the Tome of Tomboy into a messenger bag, and head out on your e-bike.

It's a hot day with bright blue skies, perfect for a ride. Traffic is light and in no time you're downtown and locking your bike up in front of Ascend. It's a modern building, with walls of steel and glass that showcase the walls and climbers within.

You check in with the front desk (you and Mom come here often enough to have full-time passes), gear up, and head onto the floor.

The smell of rubber, sweaty bodies, and metallic air-conditioned air hits you like a wall. The smell of a gym. Immediately you know you've come to the right place.

Several climbers are in the gym, and a few of them are women. Tackling the beginner wall as a warmup, you surreptitiously scout them out before you decide who to approach.

A slim girl with Mediterranean features refills a bottle at the water fountain, with a galaxy of curly black hair pulled into a ponytail. The way she she looks at the walls with trepidation makes you guess this is her first time here.

Halfway up the tallest wall in the gym, meanwhile, an athletic black woman in rugged clothing crawls upward like a spider, her hands chalked and her movement confident. She's certainly a gym regular.

Finally, bouldering upside down beneath the artificial arch in the center of the gym without rope or harness, a muscular woman with a spunky undercut tackles the most difficult holds in the gym.

If you hung out longer you'd have more, but some of the women here now would leave.