by Audrey Bell
“Oh, no, no—I just…” he breathes deeply, searching for words. “I know how hard you’re trying, okay?”
I nod. “Thanks.” My eyes fill, unexpectedly and I pull my chin back.
He grins at me. “Have fun. Don’t—dude, Pip, just relax. Alright? Go with what feels right. You’re young. It’s okay to have fun. Nobody’s going to hold that against you.”
I laugh and wipe my half-full eyes. “Okay.”
He lets me go, worried. I’ve got to stop making him worry. “Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“I am excited to be going,” I insist, getting control of my emotions. “I really am.”
“That’s good. Have fun.” He walks me towards the driveway, like I’m a first grader going to the bus stop for the first time. He squeezes my shoulder and kisses the top of my head. “I love you, Pippa.”
***
I drive back towards campus, to Boulder, with Icona Pop blasting from my car’s speakers. Icona Pop is something I can thank Courtney for. I bob my head up and down to the irresistible beat of the song.
Court’s been sending me her pregame warm-up mixes for lacrosse since she was in sixth grade, and I don’t think I’ve ever fallen in love with a song that hasn’t come from her.
I pull up to the apartment that Courtney and Trevor share off-campus, scramble up the outdoor flight of stairs, and bang loudly on the door.
Courtney answers the door with a big grin and Trevor’s sprawled on the couch, a video game controlled clutched tightly in his hands. They’re already playing loud music and drinking lemon-lime Gatorade and vodka, Courtney’s favorite drink, which I can assure you is unpalatable.
“Want one?”
“Ew,” I say. “No.”
“Ew, no,” Trevor mimics. “Pippa, when did you become such a snob?”
“Trevor, are you seriously pregaming for dinner with Dean?”
“Uhh…I’m hydrating with side of vodka,” he says. He grins. “And wannabe Dr. Whitney already came to dinner. He likes the early bird special. He’s in my room doing his makeup.”
“I heard that,” Dean shouts.
“You were supposed to. Who goes to dinner at 5:45?”
“Our reservation was at seven—you said you were going to die of starv…”
“He’s hallucinating,” Trevor informs me seriously.
“Please tell me you have other mixers,” I say.
Trevor grins. “Obviously. We have red bull and I have a stash of 4Loko, just to piss off Dean, plus Dean brought some fancy fucking grape juice that tastes like poison if you’re into that kind of thing.”
Dean walks into the comfortable, spacious living room. Like Trevor, he’s tall and handsome. Unlike Trevor, he’s black and immaculately dressed. “Trevor, how the hell do you still have 4Loko? That was taken off the market two years ago.”
“Have you seen Extreme Hoarders?” Trevor asks.
Dean rolls his eyes.
“Obviously, you’ve seen it. I happen to be a perfect candidate for that show. I also have a stockpile of Twinkies and some of the original FruitSnacks in my parents’ basement,” he gives Dean a knowing look.
“I brought a bottle of wine,” Dean reassures me with a chuckle. “Come on.”
“She’s not into grape juice,” Trevor calls. “Pippa, don’t do it! It’s terrible.”
I follow him back to Trevor’s room, which is frenetically neat—more Dean’s doing than Trevor’s, since Dean practically lives here too.
I haven’t been in here since move-in day—despite dozens of invitations, I always just ended up at home with my dad on every weekend, scanning takeout menus for something new.
There’s a picture of the three of us on his bedside table—a fairly recent picture, black and white, sitting on the porch of my dad’s house this summer.
I swallow something—a happy kind of emotion, possible gratitude—that Trevor, who spends so much time denying any kind of sentimental emotion, would bother with a framed picture of me.
Dean smiles. “I love that photo.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen it,” I say.
“I gave it to him on our one-month anniversary,” he says. “He’d always look at it on his phone.” He shakes his head. “He’ll deny that to the grave, so…”
“I won’t say anything…” I smile big and nod. “It’s really great.”
“I’ll get you a copy,” Dean says. He hands me a plastic glass of Pinot Noir. “It’s good to see you, Pippa. It’s been a while.”
“I know.”
“Been busy?”
I shake my head. “With exams, some.” I exhale.
Truthfully, I haven’t been all that busy and whenever I admit that to myself, I feel strangely guilty. I used to ski eight hours a day and have just enough time to watch really bad reality TV with my best friend Lottie and fall in love with a boy. Now, I go to class for a few hours, and physical therapy three days a week, and nothing else seems to happen. I ignored Lottie for so long, she doesn’t bother with me, and the boy died.
Half the time, I can’t even tell myself what I did with my day, other than got through it.
He nods and I take a sip of the wine, which I can tell is fancy and was probably super-expensive. “This is really good.” Dean’s like that. Classier than anyone I know. Trevor makes fun of him, but he deserves this kind of man. Someone who appreciates the finer things, and insists on taking Trevor out to nice dinners and movies.
“Glad you appreciate it,” he said. “Trying to get Trevor to drink wine is like pulling teeth.”
We walk back into the living room. Courtney turns up the AWOL Nation song blaring from her iPod speakers, and bobs her head up and down so violently, I think it might snap off.
“You can’t drink wine on a Friday night,” Trevor shouts at me over the music. I finish the cup quickly and Dean refills it.
They say everyone gets drunker in Boulder because of the altitude, but throw in exams, and it’s a recipe for a blackout.
Dean, normally the responsible one, ends up shouting at the top of his lungs along with David Guetta. By ten o’clock, we’re all drunk.
Trevor grabs Dean by the shirt collar, mumbling something about a secret, then plants a sloppy kiss on his mouth and pulls him purposefully by the collar into his bedroom.
“Hey, girls, I don’t think we’re going to make it out,” Dean calls through the door, just before Trevor slams it behind him.
“Those two are animals,” Courtney says, making a face.
I grin. “It’s adorable.”
“Well, just us girls!” Courtney’s grabs my hand and we start walking over to the lacrosse house.
The night wind blows soft and delicate against my bare arms. It’s quiet on the dirt sidewalk by the empty road, underneath the shining stars and the long evening shadow of the flatirons. With the loud music shut off, it’s easier for me to think. Not always a good thing. So much of what I think about is so sad. Danny. Ryan.
I’ve learned this year that there are things too sad to understand. They don’t make sense. They can’t. And they get jumbled up inside your head, like riddles without answers. They were alive and then they were dead: a concept I understood until it hit me like a wrecking ball.
I glance up at the flatirons. In the dark, they remind me of ski mountains. They remind me of Danny. Nights on ski mountains with Danny. I stare at them, not listening to Courtney, or paying very much attention to the road we’re taking, simply mesmerized by the way the rocks cut up the horizon, equal parts defiant and massive.
We hear the noise from the lacrosse house when we’re a hundred yards or so away. It’s what you’d expect from a college party. Although this will be my first one, I can tell that’s it’s typical. Quintessential, even.
Boys in flannel shirts lean against the plywood railings, holding red solo cups. Girls in halter tops and boots call out shrilly to each other, jogging up their stairs. A handful of smokers on the worn steps in a mild
, white haze of their own making. Laughter shrieks out from the windows, and the bass pumps against the ground, so deep you can feel it in your shoes.
“Oh my god!”
“I love you!”
The closer we get, the more it seems like everyone has just those two things to say to one another. With the air the way it is, and the alcohol buzzing through my body, I kind of start to agree with them. Oh my god, I love you.
I don’t know who I’m directing that at. Maybe Courtney, maybe the flatirons, maybe eternally dead and eternally silenced Danny. But something irrefutably optimistic courses through me. It’s late, it’s noisy, there are so many people here, and things are starting to happen.
“Hey, Court!” She’s folded into a big hug by Donovan Barry, the guy she’s been hooking up with all semester. I’ve met him at least fourteen times, all during the day when he (hopefully) was sober, but he never remembers having met me.
“Hey, Donovan,” I say. Fifteenth time’s the charm?
“What’s your name again, sweetheart?” Or not.
“Pippa.”
“Pippa, Pippa, Pippa, got it, right on.” He nods, throws a loose arm around me, and pushes Court and me into the house. “Court talks about you all the time.”
“Really? I think we might have met a few times, actually,” I say coolly. Court gives me a look, and I roll my eyes back at her. Donovan’s cute, but nobody’s so cute that they should be allowed to forget me fourteen times. If this had been a two, or three, or even five-time thing, I’d have been cool with it, but it was starting to get ridiculous.
“Yo, Luke,” Donovan shouts at the team’s freshman goalie. “Get my girls some Jungle Juice.”
With his eyes glazed, Luke sways side to side, take a sip from a red Solo cup, and hands it to me with a loopy smile.
I take a cup from Luke, suspiciously. “Um?”
“That one’s mine,” he says breathlessly, more than a little drunk. “We can share.”
“Thanks?”
“Luke, you know Pippa?” Donovan asks, obviously trying to hand me off.
I smile at him. “I don’t…”
“Yeah, definitely. Pippa Baker, right?” he says eagerly holding out his hand. I shake tentatively. I can’t remember him from anywhere, although he seems totally harmless. He’s kind of adorable actually, wearing a huge, goofy grin on his face. Smashed, obviously, but in an adorable kind of way. “Hey, Courtney,” he adds with a half-wave.
“Oh, right on, man,” Donovan says. “You two have class together?”
I study Luke hard and shake my head. “No, I don’t—I don’t think so.” I offer him a grin. “Where do I know you from again? Sorry—I have the worst memory for people.”
“Oh, no, you probably don’t remember me. I mean, we haven’t actually met officially or anything,” he says. “We skied together back in the day. Or I mean, I was like in the program—you were a senior. I didn’t end up moving onto the junior national team, but—I definitely remember you did. Out in Utah? Luke Mumford.”
I nod. “Wow. Small word. Luke Mumford. Like the band?”
“Yup, same spelling and everything.”
I nod.
“Here, do you want to come with me to get your own drink?” he pauses, looking at the cup he gave me. “That one was mine.”
“Ah.” I hand him his cup back. “Sure.”
Courtney looks at me, tentatively. I can tell from her eyes that she’s ready to leave with me if I want, but I shake my head. I want to be here—I want to try harder to get back to normal. If this is the part of college that I’ve been missing, I should experience it. Because it sure as hell seems like something is missing from my life.
“Sure,” I say following him into the overcrowded kitchen.
He turns his broad shoulders and helps me slide through the dense, loud crowd into the packed kitchen.
He snags two cups and ladles out a generous serving of something that is as sweet as it is strong.
“Here—for Court,” he says, handing me an extra cup.
“Thanks.”
When we get out of the kitchen, he keeps talking at a half-shout, which is necessary over the noise and the crowd. I keep smacking shoulders with drunken boys and getting jostled by girls in shaky heels. I look around for Court, to give her the drink, but I don’t see her anywhere.
“So, do you still ski?” he asks, reaching a relatively empty stretch of wall to lean against.
“No,” I say. I swallow. “I don’t.” I swivel my head once more, sweeping the room for Court and Donovan. Everyone here seems to look exactly like Donovan.
“No? Wow. When did you stop? You were sponsored and everything, weren’t you?”
I nod. “Uh, a little, yeah. I didn’t have any big sponsors.” I look harder for Courtney. “I injured my leg, actually.”
“Badly?”
“I broke it?” It comes out sounding like a question. Like, I’m not sure what happened. Although, saying I broke my leg sounds dishonest. I’ve broken fingers and ribs and a wrist. And my leg. That’s not the problem. What I really broke in the avalanche was my whole heart, and not in a temporary kind of a way. The leg was collateral damage, but the real problem is the heart.
“Oh, wow. That sucks, man. That’s really terrible.”
I nod.
“How’d you break it?”
I know this drill. Maybe it’s true in all sports—maybe it’s endemic to sports that are more extreme—that lend themselves to freakish falls and bad breaks and concussions and fractures—but everyone has that one horror story. The time their binding broke or they caught an edge or they veered suddenly off a narrow catwalk.
And then they fell.
If it was bad enough, they’ll go into what it’s like to be picked up by the snow patrol. They’ll tell you how strange it felt going down the hill on the sled, with their legs and arms secured, with everyone staring and wondering whether they were seriously injured or just another kid with a sprained ankle.
They might tell you about how they were brought to the hospital, where doctors shook their heads in disbelief told everybody how lucky it was that they lived.
Every skier has a variation on this story. No one gets through without a minor or major incident. Most of them are more minor than mine. Most of them end with crutches and plaster. Mine ends with two funerals. The leg is the least of it. It might not even be a part of it at all.
I swallow and give him the simplest answer: “Skiing.”
“Skiing?”
I nod. “Yeah, backcountry.”
My Dad says I shouldn’t feel badly telling people that I don’t want to talk about the avalanche. But, I do feel badly about it.
This is how I know that I’m a retired skier—when people want to know my story, the time that I got hurt and had to come back—I don’t want to talk. Because I didn’t come back. I stayed put. On the ground. Off the mountains. On my feet, instead of on skis.
Luke waits for me to elaborate. He wants the story. I can see the question in his eyes, even if he won’t say it aloud. That’s it?
“I fell off a chairlift once,” he offers, in exchange for my story. “Head first. Helmet cracked. My coach thought I was dead for sure. They had to airlift me off the mountain. It was gnarly.”
“Yikes.” I can focus on that—on him falling off a chairlift. I used to be like him—used to think injuries were part of it. They were scars—proof of your commitment. Proof of your heart.
He smiles. “Yeah. I woke up in the helicopter and thought I was going heli-skiing. I was like wait, I’m so not ready for this and then they were like, dude, you hit your head. You’re not going anywhere but the hospital.”
I nod slightly, laughing, trying to laugh. You’re lucky, I want to tell him. That’s not a horror story. That’s a luck story.
“I’m really surprised you quit though,” Luke says.
I nod. “Yeah. Me too, sometimes.” I smile at him. This conversation is making me tired and nauseo
us. I have got to get out of here.
“Look, it’s been really great to meet you, Luke. I’m pretty tired. I think I’m going to head out.”
“Ah, okay—um, could I get your phone number?”
I’m surprised he asks for it, so surprised I don’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah, of course,” I say, reciting the digits. I smile at him while he types them into his phone. “I’m really glad I met you.”
“Yeah?”
“For sure,” I say, turning to leave.
I’ll text Courtney once I’m gone—she won’t let me leave alone and it’s not worth ruining her night. Once I’m back out in the air, past the loud and growing pack of smokers congregated on the porch steps, I feel an enormous sense of relief. I went to a college party. Saw what I’d been missing. Not much of anything. But I saw it.
A voice in the back of my head chides me for rushing to conclusions: you gave it twenty minutes. You quit.
I walk back towards Courtney’s place, calling one of the overpriced cab services to meet me in front of her apartment building—certainly too drunk to drive.
By the time I get home, I feel like I’ve been out for hours, but it’s only 11:30 and my dad’s awake in front of the television, a half-done crossword puzzle resting on his knee.
“Hey, Pip.”
“Hey,” I say.
“How was it?”
“Good,” I smile.
“You’re back pretty early,” he says. “I’d have come to get you.”
I smile. “I know. It wasn’t a problem…it was fun.”
He nods. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I ran into a kid who trained out in Utah too.”
He looks worried by that.
“He was really nice. Younger than me,” I reassure him. “He didn’t know about the accident.”
“Great,” he says. He smiles. Bespectacled, with his flannel shirt rumpled, when I see him smile, it almost breaks my heart. I’ve made him worry so much all year. It’s impossible not to feel guilty about it.
It’s impossible not to feel guilty about so many things.
Chapter Three
I roll out of bed with a mild headache and a dry mouth. It’s late for me—10:30—I usually don’t sleep in like this.