When I open my eyes again, I can see the mountains.
Silent. Waiting.
I’ve never been able to watch them like Chase does. I guess he and Brooke probably sit in his yard and just stare at them. But I do love them for what they give me.
They hang over the town like a promise, so I promise them back:
I’m coming.
Not this week, not this month. Maybe not for a couple months.
But riding is all that I have. It won’t leave like Raquel. It won’t tear my heart away. At least not unless it actually kills me.
And that? That I can deal with. For all these reasons I can’t articulate.
Because it gives my life meaning, and it makes me feel…
I take a deep breath.
“I’m coming back.”
“That’s creepy.”
I turn to see that Chase has come out of the door at that moment and must think I’m speaking to him. Or be pretending to think that. He gives me a grin in the darkness, coming up to sling an arm over my shoulder.
“Come on. Let’s go somewhere else. I paid up.”
“We don’t have to.”
“Are you kidding? You look like shit. Let’s get a taxi home. You’ve got beer at your place, right?”
In the taxi he pulls out his phone, saying he’s just going to let Brooke know where he is.
I see the message before he tilts the screen away.
Love you so much.
It aches in my stomach. I turn my head to look out the window, rubbing my palms just once over my knees, fingers spread as wide as they’ll go. Inside I’m screaming.
This can’t be my life. This can’t be my life. This can’t be my life.
The mountains look back at me, negative spaces against the night sky.
Raquel
The text comes through from Mike about three-thirty.
Did they try to speak to you for the story in Wild?
I frown at my phone, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear as if it’s something that I need to peer at closely.
What story in Wild?
The dot-dot-dot of Mike tying appears, disappears, and then appears again—before disappearing a final time.
Sorry. I thought you’d seen it, is what he finally says.
The sense of dread spreads through me as I switch away from the tab with my work in it to the browser. A few clicks take me to Wild magazine’s homepage. It’s still in my browser history. When I worked on the High Performance Program, keeping up with this sort of news was a part of my job.
I’ve tried hard not to look at it much since. Stuff like this is part of why.
It’s their cover story: a beautiful shot of a snowboarder at the top of a ridge, a dark silhouette against the bluebird sky.
It’s a good photo. I don’t expect Brooke’s name to be on the credit. Not because it’s a good photo: she’s plenty capable. Because of what the story is called.
THE EDGE: When you push hard enough, you’ll find it.
There’s a strange sound in my ears. A tinny ringing, something like tinnitus, but pounding with my heartbeat. It’s suddenly fast, my palms sweaty where they rest on the mouse. The cursor shivers on the faint shake of my hand as I click on the title.
I recognize the byline vaguely. It isn’t a journalist I’ve given quotes to in the past, but I know the name. Not that it matters.
They definitely didn’t try to speak to me for the story.
But it is my story.
I’m reading the words, but I’m not seeing them. I’m seeing all my memories.
When Gus Mayer died two years ago this month, his death was only one of a long line of freeriding’s best and boldest lost on the slopes.
I see Gus, with his arm around his wife, his hand cupped in pride over the swell of her pregnant belly.
I see the shape her mouth made when she let out the sound I can’t remember, because it was simply too much. A horror that my mind has saved me from in my waking hours and reminds me of only of in my dreams, waking me with a shout and a cold sweat.
Just why do we keep losing the people we love on the mountains?
And why do we keep going back?
I see the clock as I’m waiting and waiting for their call from Alaska, when I shouldn’t know as a girlfriend that the helicopter hasn’t been able to pick them up—but I know because it’s my job, and my colleagues can’t hide this from me.
I see JJ’s leg raised in a cast and can’t even remember which break that was.
I see the footage—all of it—over and over again, the crashes I shouldn’t have watched and did. On airs and halfpipes. Clipping trees and avoiding avalanches.
The look on his face when the camera pans to him after showing rushing snow, and he’s glowing and shaking, looking like he should cry when instead he’s laughing, bright with adrenaline, mouthing holy shit! to whoever’s wearing the headcam.
There are the list of names. I know them all already. I’ve worked with these people, or JJ has worked with them. I’ve met the partners, children, friends, and parents they left behind. Some of them I remember going to their memorial services, standing in too-big spaces looking at photos of people laughing, so radiantly happy, in the snow that would kill them.
Surrounded by all the other athletes being reminded of the stakes they were playing with.
I should stop reading. I know that. But it’s become a compulsion, clicking down along the page once my fingers are trembling too much for the scroll wheel on my mouse.
They can make all the arguments for and against riding that they want. They haven’t experienced it like I have. Haven’t waited, sure that the person they love most in the world is dead—
When JJ’s ex-fiancée ended their engagement, rumor has it that JJ’s risk-heavy lifestyle was the cause. Given that Sfeir then left her prestigious role at the Vertex High Performance Program, those rumors are widely believed to have some truth in them.
All the air has gone out of my lungs, and I can’t seem to draw any more in.
The monitor seems to be flickering, or maybe it’s only the flutter of my eyelashes.
JJ gave quotes for this article. Not about our relationship—and even in this moment I’m not surprised by that. He’s always been private about us.
But the rest of it…
I look back and forth over the quotes, trying to make sense of them. Like my brain can’t handle reading the words.
“There are risks to what we do. I don’t think anyone tries to deny that. But ultimately, that’s the price inherent in the sport we love. So I guess we’ll keep rolling those dice over and over.”
And then below:
Schneider means it, too. Word is that he’s trying to apply for late-season events this winter, despite still being out of commission with a nasty spine injury.
“I could say—it’s too dangerous, I have to stop,” JJ says. “But riding’s what I live for. I guess yeah, I’m at peace with what I do. And if it kills me… that is what it is.”
There it is, in black and white.
That is what it is.
My phone buzzes, the screen’s sudden illumination drawing my eye. Several new messages from Mike cover the screen.
I can’t bring myself to pick them up.
It’s nothing I didn’t know before. That’s what I should tell myself. But I feel like I’m about to vomit, about to break apart, about to fly out of my skin…
There it is, laid out so clearly.
Everything feels like it’s happening to someone else. It’s like I’m watching myself shove my chair back from my desk and get to my feet. I shove the door open so hard that it slams against its stop. I’m moving so fast that it’s all a blur: foyer, hall, stairs.
“JJ?”
I’m already heading to the gym before I hear his shout back, concern raising a question in his voice.
“Yeah?”
I don’t have a plan for what I’m going to say, or what I’m going to do. I don’t t
hink I’ve taken a breath since I left the office. When I burst into the gym, JJ is standing motionless on the mats, weights at his sides, his hairline sweaty, something offensively inane on the radio.
He drops the weights when he sees me, hardly stooping to make sure that they land somewhere safe.
“Kel? What’s up?”
His worry makes me angrier, somehow, because of course he’s worried, because he loves me, and he cares about me, and he’d protect me from anything…
Except from the consequences of this thing he can’t stop doing. This risk he’s addicted to.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were speaking to Wild?”
JJ’s brow crumples. He’s taken a few steps toward me but now he stops, because he must be able to see how angry I am, how I’m quivering with rage and something else, something that burns in my throat.
“What do you mean?”
“They have an article about how I left you because of your career and how you’re broken now but you’re still going back to it. Always. Because if it kills you, that’s what it is.”
I’m shouting. It doesn’t happen very often. We’ve never been good at it. But now I square off against JJ, my hands clenched at my sides, and I quiver with how angry I am at him, all this rage I feel that he can love me and he can still choose this, while he’s broken, while it’s more dangerous than ever before.
Something dawns over JJ’s face when I reach killing. His mouth downturns to pure unhappiness, concern crinkling at his forehead. He tries to reach for me, wanting to smooth his hand over my shoulder and pull me into his arms. I jerk away.
“Did they publish that shit today? I spoke with that guy months ago. I’d totally forgotten about it.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
Something flickers over JJ’s face, and there’s a note of roughness to his voice. “What—that I love my job? You know who I am.”
“Are you for real? You’re signing up to competitions?”
His jaw tightens. That harsher note is still in his voice, fighting with his concern. “I was going to talk to you about it, just not like this…”
“God damn it, JJ.”
I need to get out of here. I need to go. It’s only when I try to tug the door shut after me that I realize I can’t move it at all. JJ’s grabbed it.
When I whirl around to face him, his teeth are grit with the effort to hold it open.
“No,” he says. “Don’t go. Let’s fucking talk about this.”
“You don’t want to hear what I think about this,” I bite back. I feel like I might fall apart, and all I can see is him buried under all that snow—my beautiful JJ, broken and bloody, his body going cold—
“I do want to hear,” he snaps.
“If you wanted to know you’d have asked my opinion before you tried to sign up.”
“Well I’m asking now!”
In the silence after his shout, we stand and look at each other. His chest is heaving as hard as mine. Our breath is thick and hot between us, as together we pant with emotion.
“Hit me with it,” he says, quieter but not softer. “I can take it.” He presses his hands to his chest, as if he can force the truth there like a wound, as if he might show by the bright of his blood how solid he is. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t run from you.”
I’m being torn apart. There is nothing I want more in the world than to collapse into his arms. The place where I feel safe, the place where I feel whole.
The one that will be ripped away from me forever if he dies on a mountain. If he decides that it’s more important to risk dying than to be here with me, forever.
“I’m right here with you.” His voice is heavier now, his breathing ragged. His chest rises and falls quickly. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you, Raquel. Not ever.”
But he is. How could I not see it? How could I not realize that of course he would? He hasn’t changed. He’s still the man I love with all my heart.
And he’s still the man who’s willing to break the heart I’ve entrusted him with.
The anger breaks and I’m left with a pain in my chest. My sadness and fear are so deep that they swamp me, overwhelm me. The tears that I don’t want to show him are wet on my lips and salty on my tongue.
Why can’t he just be happy with us?
Why can’t I be enough?
“I’m not the one who left.” It sounds like JJ is making an accusation. It isn’t fair.
“You chose,” I snap back. “You chose, JJ.”
“Raquel!”
I hear him shouting behind me, but I’m already gone.
JJ
I can’t get out of that house fast enough.
I should never have fucking spoken to that journalist. They called at a hard time. Raquel was away with her girls in Tahoe, and she’d hardly talk to me, and I was so sure I was losing her. I felt like I had lost everything. Like if I didn’t get back to snowboarding, my life would be over. I just had to protect that one thing in case she left me.
And if I’ve been talking to people about going back for comps…
That’s my own business. It’s what I need to remind myself that I’m still alive. That I’m here, that I’ll heal, that one day I’ll be back out on the snow again and actually feel like myself for the first time in forever.
“Fuck.”
It’s not like me to hit anything, but I can’t resist slamming the heel of my hand as hard as I can against the side of the truck as I pass. “Jesus Christ, Raquel.”
I need to get out of here, I need to go—I need to be away from this house that feels like a trap made of all these goddamn memories, all these hours we’ve spent here laughing and loving and—
The bikes.
The thought hits me as I pass the open door to my gear room.
Even if I could board, I can’t do it in August. But I can get out on the same trails one way or another.
It hurts when I reach up to tug my mountain bike down from the rack. I’m mostly good now, but there are still these moments when pain catches at me—where particular motions remind me that my spine is now partly caged in metal.
But the hurt feels good. It feels like a promise of doing something, of getting out of here.
Chase picks up on the third ring.
“What’s up, man?”
“Hey. Let’s go biking. I’ll see you up the place we met last year.”
I can hear him thinking.
“Oh… kay? Are you sure you’re feeling up for that?”
“I’ll see you there in an hour.”
I hang up on the sound of his voice and start loading the bike into the back of my truck and strapping it down.
* * *
By the time Chase hops out of his truck in the parking lot, he’s looking seriously dubious. Which I guess is fair enough. It’s not like I do a ton of hanging up on him.
“What’s up with you?”
I shrug. A nervy, jangly energy is pumping through me. The kind of thing you can only get rid of by losing yourself in something physical—by giving yourself a shot of adrenaline.
If I can just forget everything else for a couple hours, reduce the whole world to my body and what it can do, then I’ll be okay.
Chase eyes me for a long time before he opens his own tailgate so that he can take out his bike. He watches me still as he unclips it, leaning it against the side of his truck as he strips off and gathers the rest of his gear.
If he has opinions about this whole thing, he isn’t voicing them just yet. He doesn’t need to. I can tell exactly what he’s thinking as he stares at me.
I don’t like how his eyes feel. I try to keep my face steady as I pull on my helmet.
“Ready?”
Chase looks at me for a long moment before he decides something. He rakes his fingers through his hair, tugging it back from his face before he pulls his own helmet on. He clips it in before he reaches out to give mine a rap. “You got your gear on?”
; I just want to get out there. Why can’t he see that? I nod impatiently. “Yeah. Of course.”
Chase reaches out to feel the armor over my spine before I can ask him what the fuck he’s doing.
I had an accident. It doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly useless forever.
He nods as his hand presses once to the heavy plastic molded over my back, protecting the vertebrae. It seems to satisfy him. “Let’s go then.”
The mountain bike isn’t my board. This isn’t riding. But I want the wind in my face. I want to feel adrenaline pumping in my veins. I want to feel free again, to feel like myself—whole and untamed and confident, doing whatever I want to do. Totally in control of myself. Even the tiny twinge of pain I feel as I swing my leg over the frame is something I savor, because it’s not more. Because that little ache is nothing compared to what I used to feel.
Now I can do this, and no one can stop me.
It’s not like Chase to be holding back, but I’m not waiting for him. I need this. I need it to get rid of the nervy energy that’s been flowing through me when I’m pent up in that house. I need it to forget about everything that’s going on. I need the thrill of moving to wash away all the sickening badness pooling in my gut. I need it to feel like myself again. I jump up and pedal down, tucking the bike in a tight skid as I turn onto the trail, and I begin to pump my legs as fast as I can as the trees whiz past.
This is where I’ve needed to be for so long.
My body feels good again. Not how it used to. But I can use it. I can push myself. I can pound my legs against the pedals and feel my quads and calves thrumming with energy, tense with potential. I take a deep breath and suck in the smell of the forest and the mountains. Home. Free.
I can’t resist it. As I duck through the trees, the wheels scrabbling over pebbles and dirt, I raise up to a full stand and let out a holler. A whoop of relief and escape. A statement: I’m here. I’m alive.
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 25