Carry Your Heart

by Audrey Bell

  CARRY YOUR HEART

  BY AUDREY BELL

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Prologue

  After the initial crack, there was nothing but noise. If Ryan and Danny screamed, I never heard them.

  I didn’t turn my head. I don’t know who went down first, or how they went down. I don’t know if, like the reporters said later, one of them shifted the snow. That after heavy snowfall, any sudden movement is like a brick on a mountain of leaves. And there were three of us. Carving. Searching for deep powder. Bored on a Sunday.

  Everything shifts.

  Everything falls.

  The snow swallows you. It’s like being caught by a wave. It crashes over you, only colder and thicker, and instead of letting up, it ices over. It ices over you. It changes to hard water. You can’t swim through it.

  I had air. A broken leg. Broken badly enough that it didn’t hurt, it just went numb. But there was enough pain in my head and lungs to know I wasn’t dead yet.

  I punched my hands out, for air and in case I was close to the surface. My chest buckled under so much weight. I choked on snow and spat until I could shout for help.

  I shouted because it hurt, and then, later, because I was scared, and at some point I shouted for Ryan and Danny.

  I held onto what I thought was the truth. That when it was over, and I was out of the snow, nothing would ever be so hard. But that wasn’t the truth.

  When my voice went, and the light started to fade, I heard Danny.

  Nobody believes that I heard Danny. Nobody wants to hear about his voice. It drew me out of the snow. I heard it so clearly. Pippa. Pippa. Pippa.

  I thrust hard, I broke out of the snow, towards the sound of his voice. I crawled, and found my feet, and hopped. I searched for them. I started to dig.

  I found both of them eventually.

  It felt like such a long time before anyone found me.

  Chapter One

  One Year Later

  I wake up with a missed call and a voicemail from Mike. It’s how I wake up every morning. Nine times out of ten, I delete the voicemail. It’s easier to forget that way.

  But some mornings, I give it a listen. Just to see if he’s calling for a different reason.

  He sounds like he’s outside, maybe by the ski lift or parking lot. I can hear the wind, muffling his voice, but it’s still quite clear what he’s saying: “Hey Pippa, it’s Mike Ames calling again. Look, I know you’re ignoring me right now. But I think you should reconsider a comeback. I’ll keep trying you until I get you. Hope you’re doing well.”

  I make a noise of disgust and delete it. This has been going on for nearly a month now. It was sometime in October when he’d decided that I’d had enough time to grieve and recover and needed to get back to training. He’s an asshole.

  ***

  “How you feeling, kid?” Dad asks.

  He’s asked me that every morning since I moved back home. Since we buried Ryan and Danny. Since they set my leg in a plaster cast to heal a nasty compound fracture, that left a six inch scar on my shin.

  I used to tell him about my leg. It aches, but it’s getting better. Or a little stiff today, but it’ll warm up.

  Once my leg healed, I ran out of things to comment on. How was I feeling? “Fine.” Nothing, really, so that’s an improvement.

  “Good.” He smiles. “Coffee?”

  That’s always been his second question. Much easier. One of my favorites, actually.

  “Yes, please.”

  He smiles again. “Good luck today.”

  “Thanks.”

  I have back-to-back exams today. Anatomy and then biology. I’d studied enough to preempt any nerves.

  I used to get nervous about schoolwork. Getting used to college had taken time. I’d spent high school skiing competitively and taking correspondence courses instead of attending a normal school. When I started here in September, I felt totally lost. How is it that in a sea of clueless eighteen and nineteen year olds, I’m the one who feels like such a mess?

  There seemed to be no central purpose to college, whereas I’d always shared this near-impossible dream with my closest friends and fiercest competitors. The dream of a gold medal was our shared, beating heart. We were a family, united by a goal, and divided by the fact that only a small handful of us would be offered the opportunity to attain it.

  The way my world had shattered separated me still further from the other students. Everyone suffers tragedy. I know that. Few escape into adulthood unscathed by some serious loss or hurt or trauma. Life is too chaotic. Still, after Danny and Ryan died in an avalanche that for some unknowable reason didn’t kill me too, I felt like a stranger in a foreign country, where I understood the language, but no one understood me.

  ***

  I drive my dad’s old red Jeep Wrangler the half-hour to the campus at Boulder. I park in one of the back lots by the athletic center and stroll over to the lecture hall for my anatomy exam.

  The things that I am trying to remember and the things I’m trying to forget always get jumbled together in anatomy.

  There are twenty-seven bones in the hand.

  Eight are in the wrist.

  After the avalanche, Danny broke seventeen bones in his right hand, fifteen in his left trying to punch through the ice for air.

  I close my eyes against the memory of Danny, who comes back to me all the time, when I’m least expecting it. His smile is what does me in. Nobody with a smile like that should ever die.

  You’re being very inconvenient right now, Danny. I have a test.

  He just smiles wider. The lines around his eyes crinkle and his laugh…I can almost hear it. I can almost hear his voice saying my name.

  I swallow thickly, focusing on the noise around me. Students walking to class, their flip-flops rustling in the grass, a low chirrup of birds, the sound of gravel underneath car wheels, music from a dorm room window. The noises ground me in the present; they keep me from tumbling back into the past.

  I long ago gave up walking around campus with an iPod—every song I knew brought me back to him and then I couldn’t get away from him. I’d hear a familiar chord and get stuck in some time and place years ago with Danny—far away from where I lived in Colorado, a year aft
er Danny stopped breathing for good.

  The much-abused door to the lecture hall bangs loudly behind me and I glance around the mostly-empty room. I’ve given myself more than enough time to get to the exam room and get settled—too much time, actually. I’ll get nervous if I sit down and start cramming, which is what I was hoping to avoid. I turn back to the hallway and stroll, killing time, focusing on the details of the floor and the walls and the noise.

  I stop at the vending machine to buy a Coke and Skittles.

  “Breakfast of champions,” Court says, with a teasing grin when she sees me, crackling open the red wrapping,

  “Hey,” I smile. “Ready?”

  “For Anatomy? It goes heads, shoulders, knees, and toes, right?” she asks.

  “Exactly.”

  She smiles broadly and swishes her long blond hair from shoulder to shoulder. “I’m going to rock it.”

  ***

  Court walks with me over to the student center for lunch after the test. She’s one of my best friends at college, simply because she was one of my best friends in middle school, before I turned my focus completely to skiing in ninth grade.

  Courtney plays on the lacrosse team here. Like me, she was a competitive skier when we were younger. Unlike me, she’s now nearly six feet tall and built like a Victoria’s secret model. Sometimes, I think I should stop hanging out with her just for the amount of attention she attracts.

  We grab food at the Darley commons and find two chairs outside. It’s been a mild fall so far—and the November temperatures have hovered in the sixties and most of the students are still dressed for August weather. Flip-flops, t-shirts, the occasionally brave girl in jean shorts.

  I eat my pizza and glance up at the Flatirons—un-skiable rocky mountains high over campus. They dwarf the buildings and the people, casting long shadows over the land, making everything look smaller and less important.

  “Is Bio your last exam?”

  I nod. I handed in both of my history papers last week. Once I finish bio, I’m done with finals. It’s an early end to the semester for me—November 22, less than a week after Thanksgiving. Some people will be here for another two weeks but I lucked out with my classes.

  “Well, you should come out tonight. The men’s team is throwing a party,” she says.

  I throw her a dubious look at the word “party.”

  She shrugs, like she was expecting me to be dismissive. She used to laugh at me and plead for me to join. Now she really doesn’t bother to anything other than invite me.

  Mild disappointment flits across her blue eyes and she turns her head to wave at another one of her teammates.

  I need to snap the fuck out of it, I tell myself. I’m turning into a total recluse.

  “I’ll come,” I say suddenly.

  She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it. But, I’ll come to whatever.”

  She laughs. “It’s called a party. And oh my god, yes.”

  “Court.”

  “I’m not making a big deal out of anything. I’m just excited. Can you allow me to be excited? Jesus.” Her iPhone chirrups, and she reaches for it, frowning at the message.

  “What’s up?”

  “Trevor,” she explains. “He thinks he failed his econ exam.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, shit,” she shakes her head. “He worked so hard on that…he’s coming to meet me…” She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  “I can hang out for a little bit,” I say. “If he wants to see me.”

  “Of course he wants to see you.”

  Trevor’s had a rough semester. He broke his wrist playing lacrosse in September, told his parents he was gay in October, and came down with a debilitating case of mono in November, making it virtually impossible to pass any of his classes and actually impossible to kiss his charming boyfriend, Dean.

  I’d worked with Trevor during reading week. We stayed in the library one night well past midnight, and I saw how close to undone he was becoming. He seemed to flinch at every problem he missed on his endless economics worksheet, and I had to grip his shoulders and tell him to breathe when he started to hyperventilate about the work he hadn’t done and the things he hadn’t learned and the sleep he hadn’t gotten.

  Trevor lopes down the long plaza towards us. Lean, dark-haired, and tall, he had been a jerk his freshman year to a lot of different girls, especially to Courtney, who was his girlfriend at the time. She was the first person he told and she had hugged him and said it would be okay. Now, they lived together and he adored her. Even though he could still be a jerk to people he hadn’t come out to yet.

  “Hey,” he says. He smiles sheepishly, his voice hoarse and his eyes bloodshot. He looks like he hasn’t slept in day.

  He grabs a spare piece of pizza off of my plate. “What’s up, Pippa?”

  I shrug as he bites into it, a satisfied look on his face.

  “Was it that bad?”

  “Horrible. I failed. There’s no way I passed. I answered half of the questions, and I think I got two of them right.” He pushed back from the table. “Sorry I’m being such drama queen,” he rolls his eyes and smiles at Court. “I really don’t give a shit about econ. This is borrowed anxiety from dating someone with a 4.0.”

  Courtney throws a French fry at him. “Don’t freak out until you know if you failed. Where’s Dean?”

  “Exams,” Trevor rolls his eyes. “Real exams to be a real doctor. He’s so annoying.”

  Trevor loves bitching about Dean, his fourth-year medical student sort-of-a-secret, perfect-dreamboat boyfriend. And I love watching him do it, because he can’t stop his eyes from lighting up when he says his name.

  Trevor met Dean when he showed up, desperate and blackout at the one gay bar he knew of in Boulder. Dean drove him home, stole his phone number, bought him dinner later that week.

  Trevor says he hates the story, says it’s stupid and embarrassing—but I’ve seen him when Dean or Courtney tells it, seen the little smile he’s holding back. He’s in love. He’s trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive about it as possible, but he can’t hide it completely.

  I used to hate how brightly I flushed when Ryan would tell the story of how he tricked me and Danny into our first date. And I would say I hated the story to whoever was hearing it. And how I thought it was cheesy and stupid. But I love that story. I would kill to hear Ryan tell it again.

  Although, I’d kill to hear Ryan tell any story again. I’d kill just to hear his voice.

  “Pippa’s coming out tonight,” Courtney announces.

  Trevor turns his exhausted gaze to me. “No way. Really?”

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  “Bullshit. I am definitely making a big deal out of it. You’ve never been to a college party in your life,” Trevor said. “I’m having dinner with the fucking doctor first, but then we’re coming.”

  “I’ve been to parties.”

  “College parties,” Trevor explained.

  “Parties are parties.”

  “Spoken like someone who has never been to a college party.”

  I nod. “Well, I can’t wait to experience it first hand. I should get going. I’ll text you guys tonight.”

  “Don’t blow it, loser,” Trevor teases.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  He smiles and gives me a hug. “Break a leg, girlfriend,” Courtney says. The platitude freezes on her face. She’s remembering, I’m sure, that I did break my leg once. That I broke it in the avalanche.

  I just smile. It doesn’t bother me. People always think they need to tiptoe around what happened—the avalanche, the broken leg, any mention of death or skiing. But the thing is, nothing anybody can say will ever be as bad as what happened. Nobody needs to tiptoe at all. It’s not like I ever forget.

  It feels like there’s a constant avalanche in the back of my mind. It’s like a television I never turn off, and I’ve grown use
d to the look and sound of it. I work around it. I eat, sleep, live, and dream with a video feed of the avalanche that killed Danny and Ryan playing on a never-ending loop.

  “I’ll try my best,” I say playfully, looking at her with the biggest smile I can pull off. I try to put her at ease.

  It’s the least I can do. Nobody should ever make people worry as much about someone as I’ve made them worry about me the past year.

  Chapter Two

  I get home at four—just enough time to grab a snack and find clothes that actually make me look like a girl.

  This means heels, which I haven’t worn since I broke my leg. Okay—so they’re boots with a heel, but I’m trying. I’ll change at Court’s, I tell myself, which will hopefully ensure that I won’t wear something that’s gone completely out of style.

  I scurry down to the kitchen and snag a water bottle out of the refrigerator. I notice the red voicemail light blinking and hit play, wondering if my physical therapist called.

  “Hey, it’s Mike Ames. I’m trying to get a hold of Pippa. I’ve been calling her cell phone for a few weeks and I haven’t heard back. Anyways, if you’ll give me a call back. It’s 207-801-9530.”

  I delete the voicemail and hit play again, making sure it’s gone. The last thing I need is for my dad to call him back and invite him out for dinner. When I’m sure it’s gone, I glance at the clock and realize I’m running late.

  Dashing back through the front door of our old brick house, I nearly clothesline my own father, returning from work, who swears in surprise when the door swings open and then bursts into laughter.

  “Pippa!” he grins, realizing I’m not trying to jump him.

  “Hey,” I say breathlessly. Fuck, I’m out of shape.

  “Where ya going?”

  “Um, Courtney invited me to this lacrosse party,” I say.

  “Great! That’s great!” he smiles broadly with genuine enthusiasm like I just told him I got into Harvard.

  He’s probably the only man in the world who is this thrilled to hear his daughter is going to party thrown by a college lacrosse team. “Great!”

  I nod. “Three greats!” I grin. “Am I really that pathetic?” I meant it as a joke—but it falls flat, my voice sounding too hurt. A spasm of pain flashes across his face and he reaches out and cups my chin.