by Lark O'Neal
In my defense, I was sixteen.
With Alice, it was different. More mature. I fell slowly, admiring her mad skills at first, liking her long, athletic body. She’s smart and made me laugh and we come from similar family backgrounds—hers from Connecticut, mine from Philly. Hers in shipping and imports, mine in banking. She was the black sheep, her family failing to appreciate her extraordinary talent, even when she swept the top awards in half-pipe in every category for five years running. It was a burning wound, one she hid behind hard shots of white tequila.
At least I have my father. He might be a douchebag, in a lot of ways, but he believed in this. In me and boarding.
I should give him a call later today. Reach out.
As sleep drops away completely, realize that nearly every square inch of my body hurts from the training yesterday, ranging from muscle soreness in abs and thighs, to mild headache from beer and a face plant to stiff, burning hip. I shift off the offended joint, roll on my back.
The curtains are open, letting in full cold morning. It’s snowing—big fat flakes I can see even from the bed. I can taste beer, but I kept it sane, just a few beers with Alice and some of the other riders. A couple were dudes I’ve known a long time. Several others were new, their faces too young for beards, probably for beer. I felt old in their company, the grandaddy trying to find an edge with the young whippets. Alice laughed at me when I said that, clapping me on my shoulder. “I’ll bring you a wheelchair for your quarter-century birthday,” she said.
“I’ll need it,” I replied darkly, taking a long swallow of the yeasty local brew.
But it felt good. Real. True. My tribe. I felt like myself at that bar, talking snow and boards and injuries and tricks and wax and gear.
Rolling out of bed, I wash up and brush my teeth and pull on a thick robe. It’s cold, but I never mind a snowy morning. It gets my blood rushing. I’d love to get out and shred the slopes, but Alice has ordered a rest day and I’m following coach’s orders. I’ve got books to read, a big chair to kick back in and watch the view. I’ll treat myself to a steak later, book a massage to ease the soreness, then a good soak. Rest day.
What I wish is that I had some of my art supplies. Never occurred to me to bring them, but I’ve been away from it all week and my fingers a little itchy. I’d like to sketch the slopes, the skiers and the kids and the boarders, the action and activity out there. Wonder if I can find anything at the resort, or ask for something to be delivered from Santiago? It’s Sunday. Not every place stays home 24/7 like the US.
I brew a pot of coffee and punch the start button. It’s not even quite seven. Jesus. I grin to myself. Back to training hours. Feels good.
What time is it in New Zealand? I pull up the world clock on my phone and see that it’s not quite 11 pm. Was she traveling today? I can’t remember. Worth a try.
I fire up the computer and send an email:
Jess, I’m up. Can you Skype?
There’s a ton of email, I notice with surprise. One is from my dad and I’m about to open it, the program dings and it’s from Jess:
Yes! Let’s try it! We’re at a lodge (fancy pants) and the internet is good. Two seconds.
My face half-splits with a grin and I carry the tablet over to the chair by the window and prop it up on my knees. In less than a minute, Skype rings. I open it and there is her face, full screen. It’s idiotic how my chest fills up with light. “Hi!” she cries.
“Hey.” I drink in her face, the wide-spaced eyes, the hair, kind of messy tonight, her elegant cheekbones. Behind her is a classic rock-and-timber room, and I can hear music pounding in the background. I touch her chin. “It’s so good to see your face.”
“Tyler, I love the goatee!” she cries and leans in, kissing the camera so it’s her lips I see. Her fingers move across the screen. “But what’d you do to your eye?”
I forgot about it, and reach up to touch it self-consciously. “Kinda bad this morning, right? Training mishap,” I say before I remember. Despite my reputation, lying is not my strong suit. Too much trouble. “Mountain biking.”
“It looks like it hurt.”
I shrug. “Did I ever tell you about the time I fell off a mountain bike and looked up to see a cougar staring down at me from a rock?”
“Really?” She leans in, and something about the tilt of her head gives away her tipsiness. “Were you scared?”
“He was beautiful, Jess. These amazing eyes and paws and—“
A face leans in above her, a girl with expansive cleavage showing. “Hi, Tyler,” she cries, and Jess leans sideways to let her have access. “I’m Darcy. We’ve heard all about you.” She leans in. “You’re HOT!”
I laugh at her drunkenness. “Thanks. Nice to meet you.”
Jess fills the frame again. “Don’t mind Darc. We went to that bar you recommended. It’s practically a blizzard here and we can’t do the shots we were supposed to, so we have a day off.” She widens her eyes and I see they’re a little bloodshot. “I’m gonna sleep all day tomorrow, I swear.”
“Poor baby,” I say, smiling. “I have a day like that here, too. Rest day. I’m going to just read. I was thinking about getting some art supplies, but not sure I can find any.”
“Where are you, Mr. Mysterious?” She inclines her head and her hair tumbles down her arm. “Are you still not going to tell me? I’m so curious!”
“Not yet,” I say. For a second, I’m tempted to turn the camera to the view, but then she might put it together. “It was court-ordered. That’s hint number 3.”
“Hmmm. The hints don’t add up, you know.”
I grin. “That’s the point.”
She shifts, plopping backward and I think she’s on a couch. There are people around, I can hear them. I wonder why she didn’t go somewhere private. “Does the Internet work in your room?”
“It’s not private there, either,” she says with a sigh. “We’re a pack. That’s what we do, move in a group like a school of fish.”
“Pod of dolphins,” someone says. A guy with a strong Kiwi accent.
“That’s Kaleb,” she says, and clicks the camera. He’s at her feet, more or less, and the picture is a little grainy and dark. He’s a pretty big guy, tall and lean, but broad through the shoulders. Still a boy, which stings in a way. He can’t be more than twenty-one, face still smooth. He looks at the camera and again I notice the eyes—tilted and golden, like a tiger. One eyebrow cocks, and with a clear understanding of exactly who we are to each other, he says drily, “Hey, mate.”
“Hey, Kaleb.”
The camera swings back to Jess. For a minute, we just look at each other. My mouth is full of a thousand things I can’t say with an audience. Her eyes shine. “Queenstown is my favorite so far,” she says. “It’s so beautiful in the snow. The lake is amazing, right?”
“It is. Did you run into a lot of Aussies?”
She frowns a little. “I might not pick up the differences yet?”
“Ah, of course.”
“Tell me something about you, Tyler. Anything.” She touches the screen, a silent ode to what we are, at the center of us. It brushes over my heart.
“Um. Ok. I ran into some old friends and had some beers last night. Riders.”
“That’s snowboarders, right?”
I grin. “Yeah. Bunch of guys were in town, on their way to Wanaka to train, actually.”
“Yeah, somebody said there are a bunch of people here training. So did you train for the 2010 Olympics, or just the 2006?”
A pen is lying on the table, and I pick it up and start to tap on my leg with it. “Both. Shattered my hip before 2006. It was a solid year and a half, but I was training for the 2010 when I got in trouble.”
“That’s when you went to jail?”
I duck my head, tap harder. “Not my best moment.”
“It would have made a lot of things make more sense if you’d told me about all that, you know.”
“Uh, could we not talk about this wit
h an audience?”
“Kaleb left.” She looks around. “They’re all partying.” She flips the camera around and swings it in a pan around the room. I see people in clumps, some around a fireplace, some dancing to the music that’s playing, no one at her feet. The camera comes back to her. “This is about as alone as I can get unless I go into a closet or something.”
“So...?”
Her wide mouth turns up on one side. “No. Just sit right here. What did you do today?”
“Just got up, actually. I’m having a quiet day. It’s Sunday. Kick back, read, let my body have a day off. Same for you tomorrow, right?”
She nods, and I notice she’s leaning way back on the pillows of the couch, her eyes sleepy. “I’m not getting out of bed until noon.”
For Jess, that’s like being asleep at five pm for most people, and I give it appropriate attention. “Whoa!”
Her eyes blink, and nearly stay closed. “I’m so glad to see you, Tyler.” I see her arm, covered in a sweater, along the side of the screen. She kisses her fingers and blows me a kiss. “I’m falling asleep, ‘kay?”
“Okay.” It feels too weird to say I love you, so I put my hands over my heart. “Bye.”
She does the same. “Bye.”
The screen goes dark and I’m left sitting in my cold apartment thousands and thousands of miles away, my chest feeling hollow. Damn.
If I’d known love would feel like this, I would have never let it in. Not that I really had a choice.
chapter EIGHT
The rest day is good for me, filling up on good food and letting my joints and muscles have some downtime. I meet Alice for lunch and we go over a training plan. “You in for this?” she says. “All the way?”
I nod. “I’m in.”
“It’s about to get crazy here, with a bunch of people coming in for the slopestyle competition, and you’re not ready for that. We can come back next month, or maybe head to South Africa for the slopestyle training later, but I’m thinking we head to New Zealand end of the week and what we can do in half pipe. Get you up to speed.”
I keep my face neutral. “Good.”
“Got enough backing?”
“Yeah.”
Her smile is tight. “Daddy’s got deep pockets.”
I shrug. “Better than not having it, right?”
“You’re right.” She scribbles some notes on a piece of paper. “I’ll get an itinerary mapped out and you can call him or do whatev.”
“Done.”
It’s time to call my dad anyway, check in and let him know how it’s going. He’s been pretty cool about not nagging me this time, so maybe I can show up for once. He golfs on Sunday mornings with a bunch of his buddies, and I catch him afterward, mellow with exercise and a couple of beers. He’s not a big drinker my dad, but he likes craft beers a lot these days. His tone is jovial as he picks up. “Hello, son!”
“Hey, Dad.” I stand at the windows and watch the slopes, little figures sailing down in red and black and blue and green.
“How’s the training going?”
“Good. Better than I expected, honestly. I found a coach and we’re going to head over to New Zealand next week, then maybe to South Africa for a short stint after that before the snow melts.”
“Can you do it?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, scanning my body, feeling the weak places and the strong ones. “Hip is holding up okay, but I’ve got some balance issues, and it’s going to take some time to start catching air in any kind of real way.”
“I believe in you, kid. Always have.”
Something aches in my general heart area, and I duck my head. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Need anything?”
“I’ll be booking the flights later today for my coach and me, but that’s really it.”
“Well, let me know when you head down under, email or something, if you would. And let me know when it’s okay to tell people. I’ve been biting my tongue.”
“Give me a little longer, all right?”
“Will do.”
There’s a slight pause, and I hear myself say, “Maybe you can meet me in the Alps or something, in October.”
“I’d like that.”
“All right. I gotta go.”
“Thanks for calling son. It’s good to hear your voice.”
I hang up with a weird heat at the base of my throat, and stare out at the little colored figures on the slopes until it goes away.
Monday morning, there’s an email from Jess. Very cryptic.
Something you want to tell me?
I’m running behind, but I stick the bagel in my mouth and type, No idea what yr talking about. On the way out the door, not trying to be rude. What’s up?
Has she found out about my training? I wish I had time to check out the internet, but even as I’m thinking I might be able to squeeze out five more minutes, my phone buzzes with a text from Alice.
Get ur ass down here, Wilder.
Whatever is going on will have to wait.
At the start, I’m feeling pretty good. Rested, stronger, all the parts coming together to remember how things work. Body memory is coming back, in balance and I’m shredding like my old self. Then Alice wants to take it up, and we head for the slopestyle course. Most people know the half-pipe, the u-shaped feature riders use to move from side to side, up and back. Slopestyle comes out of skateboarding, with rails and series of jumps meant to give more and more height. I’ve been skating a lot the past couple of years, all over downtown Manitou and with a bunch of crazy-ass dudes with nothing to lose. I’ve been flying down mountains on a bike. I’m feeling strong going into the rails, and all right on the first couple of jumps, then wipeout like a splattered bug on the third ride, twisting in a backside 560 that means I come down hard on my left side, the left battered hip, and it feels like ass. My body twists and spins downward and I finally come to a stop, sprawled on my back at the bottom of the jump, staring up at the sky.
Start again.
You can’t catch air if you aren’t willing to wipe out. But it’s grueling work, going down over and over, falling, skidding, slamming.
And again.
After a lunch break, we review the good and the bad, and I spend another couple of hours hitting the jumps, over and over. I can feel it coming, the feet and the hands, the slant and the air, the style of it, myself, my way of doing things, coming back.
“One more,” says Alice. “Nail it, dude.”
I stand at the top of the slope, sky and snow and mountain all round. I’ve sweated hard all day but I can feel ice crystals in my beard. I’m listening to my cells, to my blood, mentally seeing the run, tick, tick, tick, and suddenly feel it, the click. I take a breath and launch. Rail, check. Rail, turn, check. Slope one, 520, sweet. Second jump. I launch and forget the tension of training, finally breaking through to the reason this is so fucking great in the first place.
It’s fun as hell. I’m spinning high like a creature of the sky, and tuck and grab the board, holding my body to get maximum spin—one, two, three, land backside, sweet as honey, building speed for the final jump. I feel it solid and clean as I catch air, high high high, and stabilize, riding currents like a hawk, spinning in extreme silence, far above the earth, a double cork. It was one of the first tricks I made my own, and now it comes back, roaring through me, and my body is strong, and it’s there, and I land as soft as a kitten, raise my arms, whooping out the pure, clean, perfect exhilaration bursts through me, bright as the dazzle on the snow spraying up from my board.
Alice meets me. “Holy fuck,” she says, and high fives me. “Dude.” She shakes her head. “I’mna find that judge and kiss him right on the mouth. With tongue.” She slaps the back of my head, hard. “Why the fuck have you been doing anything else? You’ve wasted so much goddamn time.”
I pick her up and spin her around. “No time like the present.”
“Yeah, let’s go soak it out. That’s a good place to stop.” She pul
ls off her helmet and her hair spills out on her shoulders. Again she smacks me, but this time, she’s smiling. “That was goddamn beautiful, son.”
And all I can do is laugh, because it was. It really was. I have a long, long, long way to go yet, but...yeah.
This is what I was born to do. How could I ever forget it?
By the time I’ve soaked and showered and eaten, it’s nearly six, and I’m hoping I can catch Jess again. Maybe it’s time to tell her what’s going on. It’s real now, that was real today. I’ve been around long enough to know it was good timing, a good moment, and I’ve got a long, long way to go before I can do anything like that consistently, but it’s buzzing through me when I get online.
There’s a second one line email from Jess, sent a couple of hours ago. Check ur Facebook
I’m scowling without any real sense of worry as I type in the address. Can’t be anything much, because I haven’t done anything. Some dumb misunderstanding.
But the minute it opens, I get why she’s freaked. Somebody has tagged a photo of me and Alice from Saturday night in the bar. We’re toasting the camera, grinning drunkenly. It’s from some sports gossip site and the headline is typically raggy speculation. Back in the spotlight? One of snowboarding’s glamour pairs spotted in Chile. Could somebody be making an Olympic run?
Hustler has tagged me and commented. “You’re outed, bro.”
And there are a lot of other comments, too. A lot. Friendly, mostly, encouraging. Every rider from here to the North Pole must have been online the past two days.
Nothing from Jess, but I get it.
I send her an email. It’s ten am there and she said she had the day off. The earlier email came in at 8 am her time. Jess, she’s my coach, that’s all. Can we Skype? Are you there?