by Amy Giles
“Don’t think I don’t know why.”
The roaring engine fills the dead air. He may think this is all about Charlie, but it’s not. I hate flying. A boulder sits in my belly all day when I have a lesson. In the cockpit, my heart throbs in my throat, in my ears, behind my eyes, drowning out Phil’s instructions. My hands tremble for hours after we’re done.
“You’re close to getting your license. I want you to go back, right after break,” he throws over his shoulder.
I open my mouth to say something that will placate him, but Lila speaks up first.
“It’s not like she needs to have a pilot’s license,” she sasses. I want to kick her.
“Hey!” he shouts back. “Was I talking to you? No. So mind your own business!”
I catch Lila’s eye and warn her with a subtle shake of my head. Quit it. There’s only so much I can do to save her if she isn’t willing to try and save herself.
then
“I’m just going to have a drink.”
Mom walks toward the lodge, looking like a snow bunny, with her blond hair, pink lipstick, and tight ski clothes. We don’t go skiing often, but when we do, she never hits the runs with us.
“Okay. Let’s go,” Dad says, leading the way to the ski lift.
Dad gets on a chair with Lila, and I wait for the next one. When I get to the top of the mountain, there’s no sign of them. I look down the run and spot Lila’s hot-pink jacket, speeding down the hill behind Dad. I shoot down the slope, pushing through the pain in my hip to keep an eye on Lila.
The rest of the day is more of the same. Dad makes a point of leaving me behind. He thinks he’s punishing me. He’s not. But I know Lila is getting the brunt of it, so I try to keep up. I finally meet them much later by the ski lift.
“But I’m tired,” Lila whines, and slouches.
“I’m not paying all this money for you to sit around drinking hot cocoa. There’s still plenty of day left. I don’t want to waste it.”
As I approach, Lila’s eyes plead for help.
“What if we did an easier trail?” I ask.
Dad adjusts his straps and scoffs. “Easier? No way. By the end of this trip we’re going down the Black Hole.”
My mouth drops open. “Dad, that’s way too advanced for Lila. For any of us.”
“She can do it,” Dad says dismissively. “Come on.” He leads the way back to the ski lift, and I nudge Lila.
“Just follow him. I’m right here.”
“Hadley . . .”
“We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”
Today, we let him win. But there’s no way in hell he is taking her down the Black Hole.
The house Dad rented has five bedrooms, but Lila and I take a bedroom with two twin beds so we can share. Dad wakes us up early the next day.
“Let’s hit the slopes before the crowds get there,” he says in our doorway. Lila and I stare at each other, telegraphing messages with our eyes on how to survive the minute, the day, the week.
We get up and get dressed. Lila winces with each step.
“Sore?” She nods. I pour her a dose of Children’s Advil. “Don’t let him see that you hurt. It just makes him want to toughen you up more.”
She downs her shot of Advil as Dad hollers from downstairs, “HURRY UP!”
Christmas is over. The battle resumes.
I struggle to keep up with Dad and Lila all day. And then a miracle happens: a storm blows in with winds so fierce they shut down the ski lifts.
Dad argues with the ski lift operator.
“This is a ski resort. You ski in the snow!”
“Winds are too strong, man. Gotta shut it down,” he tells Dad.
Even Dad can’t win a fight with the elements, so we collect Mom from the lodge and the four of us head back to the house. The storm is a double-edged sword. It prevents Dad from forcing Lila to ski the Black Hole, but it also coops us up in the house together.
Lila tries to turn the TV on, but he shuts it off.
“You kids are addicted to electronics,” he says, checking his phone for the umpteenth time.
Lila can’t help herself. “But you’re on the phone!”
He shoots her a laser-beam stare that should vaporize her on the spot, but it doesn’t. “I have to check in for work. Not play Angry Birds all day or whatever you kids do.”
Lila is as easy to read as a picture book. She opens her mouth to make a crack about Angry Birds, but I give her one of my imperceptible shakes of the head to tell her no. She bites her tongue.
On a shelf by the fireplace is a stack of well-worn board games, the kind that families who get along play together. Mom, sipping her wine, decides we are one of those families.
“I have an idea. Let’s play Monopoly!”
Mistake.
Dad sets up the board on the coffee table, appointing himself as banker. It doesn’t take long for Dad to annihilate Lila, rubbing it in her face till her eyes well up.
“Oh, c’mon. Don’t be such a baby,” he teases. She gets up and walks away. “Where are you going?” he asks her, annoyed.
“To go do something else.” She pouts.
He points his finger back to the couch. “Nuh-uh. Sit your ass back down. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Mom chimes in, “Your father doesn’t mess around when it comes to winning or money.” Her lips quirk, barely suppressing a satisfied smile.
Dad looks up from counting his towering piles of pastel-colored cash. “I don’t hear you complaining about the money part while you’re busy spending all of it.”
Lila flops down on the cushion next to me with a mopey face on, a face he has little tolerance for. Dad stares up at her from time to time, getting increasingly pissed off. To distract him, I purchase every property I land on so I’ll be the next one to go bankrupt. Unfortunately, so does Mom.
Outside, the wind howls and the snow blows in every direction so you can’t tell if it’s falling from the sky or shooting up from the ground. It’s like being trapped inside a snow globe. Mom loses next, despite my best efforts to be the next one out.
She stands up with her glass for a refill. “Where should we go for dinner?” she asks, walking away.
Dad’s head snaps up. I guess I should thank her for being a drunk ditz; it siphons his attention away from us so fast you can practically hear the loud sucking sound following her out of the room.
“Go?” He looks out the window and back at her incredulously. “We’re not going anywhere. We picked up groceries. Scramble some eggs or something.”
She grabs the wine from the dining table. “I thought I got to be on vacation too.” Taking the bottle with her, she storms off to the kitchen, opening and slamming cabinets.
Dad stands up and goes after her. “Which part of the vacation wasn’t to your liking so far, Princess?” he snarls. “The sitting around in the bar all day? Or the sitting around in the bar all day?”
She walks back out into the main room, holding her now-full goblet. She lowers her voice. “Don’t talk to me that way in front of the girls.”
“They know! The whole fucking town knows, thanks to your little hit-and-run! Goddamn, Courtney, do you know how much money it cost to get us out of that mess?”
Lila and I sit wide-eyed and frozen on the couch, afraid to move in case we draw attention to ourselves.
Dad storms around, waving his arms like a baboon. “Now I’ve got CPS breathing down my neck because of you!” He walks over to the dining table, which is being used to hold all their vacation booze, and pours a glass of scotch.
Mom follows him, one hand on her hip. “What makes you think it’s because of me, asshole?”
That’s our cue. “Go!” I grab Lila’s arm and run upstairs to our bedroom, shutting the door behind us. We sit on our beds, listening to them scream at each other. They brought the storm inside after all.
Lila stares off into space, her eyes huge, her lips slightly parted.
“Did you brin
g your iPod?” I ask. She nods. Of course. Dad was only concerned about my use of electronics. “Why don’t you listen to that instead.”
She turns to me. “Hadley? What’s CPS?”
Do I tell her? Or do I keep her in the dark a little longer? She’s so young, like a peach that needs a little more time on the limb to ripen.
“I think they got into some trouble with that accident Mom got into,” I offer.
She accepts my version of the truth and puts her earbuds in. Leaning back into her pillow, she closes her eyes, escaping into her music.
I try to tune in to their fight, in case CPS comes up again. It doesn’t. Their argument has moved on to his girlfriend at work, how the whole town knows about that. . . .
But it’s always the same. In the morning, it’ll be like nothing ever happened. He’ll shower her with kisses and gifts. They’ll get really lovey-dovey for a day, sometimes only a few hours. But it will reenergize my mom. Make her feel like this whole shit show is worth it.
Outside, the storm still rages. I hope it ends soon. I need my parents to leave the house for five minutes so I can search through their room for my phone. The battery would have died by now, but Dad has an iPhone too. If he went to the trouble of bringing my phone and he really wanted to snoop, he could always use his charger on my phone.
If Charlie texts me about CPS, I’m as good as dead.
now
There’s individual therapy each day with Dr. Bruce. Group therapy with Linda. And then there’s art therapy with Miss Lucy in the cafeteria.
Today Miss Lucy hands us lumps of Play-Doh and tells us to “sculpt our feelings.” For a place that’s supposed to be working at lifting us up, this clay project is the most demoralizing forced group activity yet.
Sculpting with one arm is impossible. Rowan glances across the table from me as I jam my thumb into my clay as if I’m gouging out someone’s eye. She reaches across and grabs my mound of clay, then Melissa’s, and molds them together, quickly shaping an enormous rainbow-hued, mushroom-tipped penis.
She holds it up over her head proudly.
“Hey, Miss Lucy!” she calls across the room. “I sculpted my feelings! I’m horny!”
The group erupts in laughter, including me. Everyone stares, not at Rowan’s sculpture, but at me. It’s weird. I’m not the one who made a Play-Doh dildo!
After class, Miss Lucy calls over to me. “Hadley? Can you stay a minute?”
Rowan elbows me in the ribs. With her best attempt at a Freudian accent, she whispers in my ear, all hot air and spittle, “Zo, tell me, Hadley, how does zis peniz make you feel?” I laugh again and cover my mouth.
Everyone leaves as Miss Lucy collects the clay off the table. She smiles up at me.
“Looks like you and Rowan are getting along nicely.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s nice to hear you laughing,” Miss Lucy says.
“Thanks.”
“It’s big, don’t you think?” she asks me, her eyes glued to mine, while her hands absently knead Rowan’s Play-Doh penis. I hold my breath so I don’t burst out laughing.
According to Rowan, the kids that get out of here are the ones who play the game. Donnie still refuses to admit she’s trying to kill herself by not eating, so she’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Franklin will go home any day now because he’s finally working through his problems.
It’s up to me whether I get discharged sooner rather than later. I’m like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas. I just need to do what I’ve done all my life: fake it.
I help her scoop up clay off the table. “Huge!” I say, with too much enthusiasm, I can tell, by the way the happy glint in her eyes dims just a bit.
I hand her a mound of clay, and she shoves it in a large plastic bag. “Well, one day at a time,” she says, trying to stay positive.
I walk down the hallway, kicking myself. I can’t raise my hand three times to get out of this. I can’t hide all the broken pieces inside me behind a smile. I can’t make myself invisible so they’ll leave me alone.
Back in our room, Rowan is standing by my bed holding a stack of envelopes to her nose.
I look quickly at my pillow, the one area of real estate in this room that was private, which Rowan has now invaded. My feet fly across the room, grabbing her wrist with my unbroken arm.
“Those are mine!” I scream.
“Here!” She breaks her hand free and throws the envelopes up in the air. They flutter over us like ticker tape.
I crouch down, picking them up off the floor with one hand.
“Jesus!” Rowan’s fists curl up by her sides. “What the hell is your problem?”
I drop the envelopes on my bed and shove her. “You’re my problem!”
Rowan shoves me back, hard. My legs bump against my wooden box spring. She lifts a warning finger. “Don’t ever touch me again.” Her eyes are wild. I didn’t just push her; I pushed her into her dark place.
“Girls?” Janet is by the door, watching us carefully. There’s an orderly behind her, just waiting for his order to drag one of us out of here. “What’s going on?”
My knees go weak with panic. How much did she see? By the way they’re both eyeing Rowan, my guess is they only caught the tail end. I instigated this fight, but now they’re about to haul Rowan out of here. Just the other day, Quentin was dragged out of the rec room for going apeshit over the remote control. We haven’t seen him since.
Rowan’s cheeks go slack and chalky. I caused this. I need to fix it.
“It was me.” I turn to Janet. “We were just goofing around. I shoved her, she shoved me. But like a joke. Not, like, you know . . . Grrrrr.”
I crook my good elbow out and make a Hulk angry face, which makes Rowan laugh hard. The timing of her laugh is perfect. It defuses the moment. I laugh too, making it look like they caught both of us in a laid-back, “having a grand ol’ time in the psych wing” moment.
Janet exhales heavily, a glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes. “Well . . . you both know there’s no physical contact here, ladies. Joking or otherwise,” Janet says, trying to read us.
I nod. “It won’t happen again.”
Janet and the orderly leave. I bend over to pick up the last of the envelopes. When I stand up, Rowan holds my pillowcase open so I can put them back and then throws my pillow back at the top of my bed.
Rowan sits down on her bed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have snooped. But shoving me was a dick move.”
I fall back onto my mattress, folding my arm behind my head, closing my eyes. “I’m sorry too.”
I’ve sat through enough group therapy to know that Rowan’s been on the receiving end of shoves and worse for a while. Cutting is the only thing that makes her feel she is in control of her own life.
“Hey. Hadley?” When I open my eyes, Rowan is leaning forward. “When you first got here . . .” She gnaws a hangnail. “I didn’t mean to give you an instructional on how to do it, you know? Like, I would be kind of bummed if you got out of here and you know . . .”
I close my eyes again. “I know.”
“So, like, don’t. Okay?”
She’s quiet for a while. When I open my eyes again, she’s staring at me with a worried expression.
“I won’t,” I say, to take the guilt off her.
Her eyes narrow, searching. I don’t think she believes me either.
I used to be much better at this.
then
The storm blows out overnight.
“Come on, get up!” Dad throws our bedroom door open, bringing a blast of cold air in with him. Shadows slice against the ceiling as the sun snakes through the cracks of our vertical blinds. “I’m not going to lose another second of this vacation.”
We eat boiled eggs and orange slices out of our hands on the car ride to the slopes. Mom sulks in the front seat. After we park, we take our skis off the roof rack and snap them onto our boots, even Mom. Dad turns to me.
“Take your mother down some of the bunny trails today.”
“Huh?” I glance over at Mom, who is doing a bang-up job of avoiding eye contact with me.
“Lila and I are going to do a black diamond.” He pulls his ski goggles down and adjusts his wrist straps.
With my goggles still on top of my head, the all-consuming whiteness of the snow smothers me, deafens me, shutting down all my senses.
Lila inches closer to my side. “Dad, can’t I go with Hadley?”
“Don’t be a baby,” he says. “Let’s go.”
“Miles,” Mom calls after him. He turns around impatiently. “Please don’t take any risks.”
He lifts his hand in the air, whether in agreement or dismissively, it’s hard to tell. He takes off, and Lila follows, with one last mournful look over her shoulder.
Maybe that’s when it really hits me. All these stupid plans to stay closer to home won’t help Lila. I can’t save her from her own father.
Mom adjusts her wrist straps. “Come on,” she says, surly and childish.
My mind is on Lila all morning, as if thinking of her will somehow protect her on the trail. Mom and I amble down the bunny trails, behind wobbly preschoolers just learning how to balance and bend their knees. Mom doesn’t do much better. After a few hours, I catch up to her sitting on her butt in the snow, not even trying to get up. I reach my hand out to help her up. When she wraps her fingers around my hand, I get a flash of that movie Freaky Friday, where the mom and daughter switch places. I hoist her up.
I’m itching for a fight, but the words I want to say are too dark and too horrible, so I sucker punch her.
“You really suck at this,” I say with so much bitterness I’m surprised bile doesn’t spew out of my mouth.
She dusts herself off. “I don’t like the snow,” she mutters.
“So why are we here?” I bait her.
She sighs, her shoulders slipping with the weight of everything that sucks in our world. “To try and keep the peace.”
Her answer surprises me, but it doesn’t change anything. “You’re doing a shitty job of it then,” I say, sailing off on my skis to the bottom of the hill. She follows.