Carry Your Heart

by Audrey Bell

  I amble downstairs in my sweatpants. “Hey, Dad, any chance there’s coffee left?”

  I nearly tumble down the last few stairs and into the kitchen when I see him standing there.

  Holy fucking shit.

  “Oh my god, is everything okay?” I say.

  My dad sits grimly at the table, looking distinctly displeased. And my former ski coach, Mike Ames, stands, arms akimbo, refusing to be intimidated. He’s really a gentle man—5’10”, in his early thirties, his own promising skiing career cut short by a knee injury in his twenties.

  “Pippa!” He sounds relieved to see me in one piece. I haven’t seen him since Ryan’s funeral, two days after Danny’s. And I barely saw him at Ryan’s funeral, just saw his shoulder shaking as he sat in the pew.

  He spoke at Danny’s funeral. He’d coached him for ten years, since he was a little kid. He couldn’t get through his eulogy—the only phrase I remember of it was so much like a son, and it broke the phrase permanently for me—the overused, trite cliché became a symbol of staggering loss—I can only think of it in Mike’s broken voice, trying to explain how he would miss Danny, trying to put into words what was gone.

  “Hi?” I say, breathing, banishing the memory.

  He smiles, hugs me against my will. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too? Um, what are you doing here?”

  “I’d called you.”

  No shit, Sherlock. Even I couldn’t ignore that many phone calls.

  “Yeah, I meant to call you back. I had exams,” I offer.

  He looks at me quizzically. “Pippa, you never were going to call me back.”

  I lift my shoulders. I didn’t even listen to his voicemails anymore. And I didn’t read most of the emails or the texts. There’s only so much you can take, before you have to pretend it’s not happening.

  I knew he wanted to know when I was coming back. I had told him. Never.

  He didn’t need to keep checking in. I was fine and I was retired. I didn’t want to listen to his reasons. I didn’t want to be forced to defend my decision. I never could come up with any way to defend quitting like that.

  “I’m not coming back to train.”

  He bites his lip, unwilling to accept that. “Maybe not.”

  “No, definitely not. Dad?”

  My dad lifts his shoulders. “I told him you weren’t ready.”

  “It’s not about ready,” I say. “I can’t. I’m done. I told you that.”

  “Pippa…”

  “No,” I say firmly. “I said no. I’m getting sick of it.”

  Mike hesitates. “One weekend.”

  I shake my head. “This is ridiculous.”

  “One weekend. One tournament. Just for fun.”

  “Why?” I demand. “I don’t owe you anything. Why?”

  “Because this is what you wanted for your whole life,” he says. He sounds almost harsh.

  “Before I almost got killed. Before Danny and Ryan died,” I tell him urgently.

  “That’s right. Before Danny and Ryan died. And do you think this is what Danny and Ryan would be doing with their lives if it had been the other way around?” he demands. “You’d want them to give up everything? That’s what you’d want for them?”

  “You need—you need to fucking go,” I manage to say before I burst into tears. I turn quickly back to the staircase and head upstairs.

  My dad’s low rumbling voice tries to explain to Mike.

  “You can’t just expect her to forget…”

  “She’s throwing away her career…”

  “Mike, this isn’t about skiing…”

  “She can’t live without skiing. You know she can’t. It’s like oxygen to her. She’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t do this. You know that as well as I do. You can’t let this happen…”

  I hurry out of earshot—slamming my bathroom door. I turn on the shower and sit on the toilet—at least I know Mike won’t barge in on me in the shower.

  Although, maybe I shouldn’t put it past him—I never expected to find him in my kitchen, uninvited and unwanted and demanding I go back to competition. And I thought the voicemails were invasive…

  I catch my breath, while steam rises from the empty shower, and then I strip off my pajamas and jump in. The water’s scorching—it burns, but I stay underneath it, until I can’t think about being sad—can’t think about anything except for the heat of the water and the burn of it on my skin.

  Mike’s gone when I get out. My breathing doesn’t calm down for the rest of the day.

  ***

  “Mike left a letter,” my dad tells me the next morning. “You don’t have to read it.” I nod and leave it on the counter. It stays there, like an overdue library book or an unpaid bill, all morning.

  After a while, I feel like I can’t even be in the house with the envelope, so I take a fast and hard run uphill, toward Riverview Road. It faces the flatirons, climbing steeply, my lungs claw for more air, and I have to walk home, on shaky, spent legs.

  By Sunday night, I know I have to open the letter. I take it up to my bedroom and sit on the windowsill, staring westward, towards Vail, the mountain I first learned to ski on.

  The letters in Mike’s sloping, efficient hand don’t make sense when I glance over it. I’m willing myself not to understand what he has to say. But eventually, I take a breath and read:

  Dear Pippa:

  I know you didn’t want to talk to me, let alone see me, and I’m sorry for stopping by so unexpectedly. I feel like you need to hear what I have to say, before it’s too late for you to change your mind.

  You had a dream to compete in the Olympics, and I never once doubted you would. I can’t fathom what you’ve endured and what you’ve lost and how you’ve felt since you lost Ryan and Danny.

  But I do know that your dream is still possible, if you want to go after it. You don’t have much time. You have to think about whether you’ll regret giving this up. I worry that you quit because it was easier now—and that you have no idea how hard it will be in fifteen years.

  I bought you a plane ticket. Come to Utah.

  Thinking of you always,

  Mike

  I find the plane ticket in the envelope and I stare at it. The flight’s tomorrow night, the event the following weekend is an Alpine qualifier. I’ve skied that race before. Won it. Swept the events my last time there—almost a year and a half ago.

  I haven’t been on skis for a year. I swallow thickly. I finger the edges of the tickets.

  No, no no, my brain whispers.

  We always had fun in Snowbird, I hear Danny’s voice.

  Go away, Danny,

  I walk to my closet, where I’ve stashed all of my medals. My dad moved my equipment in the basement when I came home. He didn’t want to leave the medals down there, but he took the bibs and the racing suits and the skis that leaned against the wall by my bed. He made it so I didn’t have to be reminded—half-convinced that he could make me forget if he tried hard enough.

  I swallow thickly.

  I already know, somehow, that I’m going to Utah. Just like I know that being a college student isn’t exciting enough for me, like I know I’ve felt half-empty since the avalanche because at least half of the person I used to be was about skiing.

  I also know I don’t want to go. But with a ticket in my hand—when I’m forced to choose between staying and going—I know I have to go and see if I still have what I once had.

  A competitive edge.

  A real shot.

  A real dream.

  I take a deep breath and pull out the box of medals. There’s only one medal that I’ve ever dreamed about—Olympic gold. These are just the first steps. First steps that hundreds of girls start taking when they’re seven or eight, and the only the tiniest handful ever finish.

  I need to see if I could still do that. I need to see if I lost that too—or if I just decided to throw it away.

  Chapter Four

  “Are yo
u sure you don’t want me to come?” my dad asks for the fourteenth, and possibly final, time. At least, I’d be impressed if he squeezed in the question again, as I’m halfway out the door at the curbside drop-off.

  “Yes.”

  He smiles. “If you change your mind…”

  “I will call you and you will come,” I finish.

  “Exactly,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “Love you, kiddo.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “And if you change your mind, I really don’t care,” he looks me in the eye. “And nobody who matters cares. Whether or not you ski.”

  I smile. “Dad. I get it. I do. I have to do this, though.”

  He nods. “Be safe. Good luck.” As I jump out, standing on the pavement and look at him, he slips the question in one more time: “Pippa, are you sure you don’t want me to co…”

  I smile and close the door. “Dude, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. I’m gonna be fine.”

  He sighs. “Right, right.”

  I know that I’m lucky to have parents who always seemed more confused by my Olympic dreams than anything else. I’d met so many kids with psychotic parents, who never had a choice. Most of them turn out used up and washed out—the worst cases ended up really screwed up and sad by the time they’re fifteen.

  I always knew I could walk away. Maybe knowing that is what made me work so hard. It was always a choice. When my friends were in high school, going to homecoming and getting ready for prom, I was running sprints, practicing turns, falling hard and bouncing back up.

  It never seemed like work—I loved the training as much as I loved the competitions. I loved skiing alone as much as I loved racing.

  And what got Danny and Ryan killed wasn’t a race—it was a backcountry avalanche.

  My first date with Danny had been when we were skiing backcountry—sneaking up the mountain after the lifts had closed the spring we both turned 18. He’d been the shy, cute Alpine skier for as long as I could remember—the one I never really got to talk to because we were never alone.

  And our mutual best friend, Ryan, had dragged us both out of bed that morning, loaded onto the Snow Cat, and then quickly bailed, claiming he’d fallen suddenly and dramatically ill.

  Later, he told us it was a set-up. He always said we would owe him our firstborn child, because Danny was too shy too talk to me, and I was too focused and clueless to notice that he wanted to. “If it weren’t for me,” Ryan would declare to anyone who’d listen, “these two idiots would have ended up alone forever.”

  It had been a dangerous, steep run—the kind that made adrenaline pump through your body so hard, you didn’t realize you’d been a little scared until it was over and your body was shaking.

  On a flat stretch of mountain, we’d both stopped and looked back up the steep, vertical slope we’d just whipped down.

  “Jesus, that was stupid,” Danny said breathlessly, and I’d laughed because I was relieved too, barely having time to catch my before, before he’d grabbed my chin and kissed me.

  He tried to flash me a cocky smile. “Told myself if I didn’t break my neck on the way down, I’d try that.” He flushed furiously, failing to act cool at all, and dipped down the next run, leaving me shaking a little more—torn between amusement, shock, and something else.

  You were swooning, Lottie told me when I recounted the story. There’s really nothing unusual about swooning. He’s cute. You two are going to get married.

  ***

  I have to shake Danny from my memory to get through the airport. The TSA at Denver thinks they’re the last line of defense against al-Qaeda, for some insane and irrational reason. And, even though the Denver Airport is the country’s central hub for traveling skiers and snowboarders, they think every ski bag is full of machine guns.

  In other words, it’s no place to seem nervous or emotional. I bite my lip and head to the JetBlue counter, check my bags and get my boarding pass.

  One hurdle down and one to go. I cast a wary eye at the security line. It’s short—on a Monday afternoon, there aren’t many travelers—but the woman who appears to be in charge reminds me of a bulldog: defensive, fierce and ready for a fight.

  She seems to run a tight ship, sending a hunched-over woman in her seventies after a young-looking snowboarder to the partitioned-off area for further screening.

  I hand her my boarding pass, and start fumbling around for my ID. I never get through security unscathed, but, like a clueless idiot, I always believe if I just smile wide enough, they’ll wave me through.

  Today is the day it works. Just smile. Smiling is the secret to life. Just ask Miss America.

  I hate Miss America. There’s no way you don’t make something beep.

  Smile anyways.

  No.

  Shut the fuck up and smile.

  “Hayyy,” I say like the drunkest idiot at a frat party, and then I flash her a toothy smile. Probably look like a shark on acid, but it’s still a smile.

  She glowers. “Philippa Baker?”

  “Yup,” I hand her my driver’s license.

  “Going to Salt Lake City?”

  “That’s right.”

  She arches an eyebrow, like I’m not going to Salt Lake City at all and my name isn’t Phillipa Baker either, and I’m a threat.

  She motions roughly with one arm to a security line.

  Shoes off. Laptop out. Coat in the bin. Really, you forgot to wear socks? Okay. Go with it. It’s fine. I’m sure the floor’s clean. Okay, now breathe and walk.

  For half a second, I think I’m home free, but the metal detector senses something it doesn’t like and goes off.

  I sigh, feeling my wrists for bracelets and my ears for earrings and my jeans for change.

  No dice.

  There’s no metal on me.

  I fail round 2 with the metal detector. Must be something in my bones, or my bloodstream, or my brain.

  “Is there anything else you can take off?”

  My clothes? Not fucking happening, dude.

  “No, I—I really don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have any metal on me.”

  “Ma’am, will you come with us?”

  I sigh heavily and turn to follow her into a small section of the airport that’s mostly partitioned off.

  A tall twenty-something guy is resting his hands on the counter with his back facing me. He’s a real piece of work, obnoxiously lecturing a bored-looking TSA agent. “There is no fucking way I’m letting you toss my board into the bottom of an airplane. You know how many times I’ve lost my snowboard? Zero. You know how many times JetBlue has? Four. Four fucking times. How is that level of incompetence even possible?”

  “Sir, I understand you’re frustration, but you need to check the bag. Or else you can have it shipped to the destination…”

  “Why can’t I carry it on? Look, it’s perfectly safe—I’m perfectly safe. I’m a normal person just trying to get his snowboard…”

  “Mr. Dawson, it’s against security regulations. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we can’t accommodate your request.”

  “Fine. That’s fine. I’ll drive then.”

  “Sir, you’ve checked a bag already. We’d have to unload the plane in order to do that.”

  He sighs.

  “I promise you—I will personally see to it that this board gets on the airplane.”

  He snorts. “Fine. Whatever. Check it.”

  Snowboarders can be real assholes. So can everyone, but there’s something about the way snowboarders pull it off that exacerbates the effect.

  “We’ll be very careful with it, Mr. Dawson.”

  He turns around and I get a good look at the douchebag.

  Okay. He’s unexpectedly cute. Unexpectedly gorgeous, if I’m really being honest. Long-lashes, green eyes, soft, dark hair you just want to reach out and touch, six foot whatever—the works.

  You know what I’m talking about. Annoyingly attractive.

&
nbsp; Downgraded for having an awful personality. The worst of them always look the best-looking. Court would die to see this kid. I’m not impressed because he’s an asshole.

  Okay. I’m kind of impressed, but that’s just because I’m never going to have to talk to him.

  He smirks at me as he walks towards where I’m sitting.

  Obviously, this one has an ego so inflated that he assumes I’m checking him out for his looks, not because he just threw a temper tantrum over getting his snowboard on an airplane, because TSA wouldn’t amend federal legislation on his behalf. What an animal.

  After I’m patted down and the authorities have determined that I’m not actually a threat to national security, I have to sprint to my gate, where handsome douchebag, is sitting on the ground by the gate his arms wrapped around his knees with a look of apprehension on his face. He actually looks sort of adorable now, like the kind of person you’d like to hug. Don’t fucking hug the stranger, Pippa.

  “Last call for flight 82 with service to Salt Lake City. Now paging customers Philippa Baker and Hunter Dawson.”

  That’s a damn good name for a snowboarder, I think. Hunter Dawson.

  I glance at the snowboarder who gets up reluctantly and walks to the gate.

  “I guess you made it,” he says, in a low rumble.

  I nod. “Just barely.”

  “Mm.” He looks pissed off and nervous, as they scan our tickets. We’re sitting together—first row, extra legroom. I have the window seat and he has the aisle.

  “You’re with USSA?” he asks.

  I raise my eyebrow. “Um, yeah. You?” Mike had told me that there was another athlete flying with me. I didn’t register that this might be the person he meant. This gorgeous, strange person. Douchebag, Pippa. Not person. Douchebag.

  “Yep.” He nods. “One of Mike’s, huh?”

  I swallow thickly. “Mike’s what?”

  “Lost causes.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Chill out. I’m the other one.”

  “The other lost cause?”

  “Yah,” he nods, closing his eyes, which flutter. He grips the arms of the seat tightly as the plane lurches from the gate and starts taxiing to the runway. Taking a deep breath, he releases the arms, pulls a prescription bottle from his sweatshirt pocket, and chokes down a small pill.