The Long Distance Playlist

by Tara Eglington

  Taylor

  Wednesday 6 February

  I knew Claire was going to use our first session after the January break to talk about NYE. She knows from this time last year that the holiday isn’t my fave.

  ‘You mentioned in your journal that you’re still experiencing “edginess” or anxiety.’

  I wanted to roll my eyes. We’d been talking about my anxiety since the day I started therapy. Of course I was still ‘experiencing it’. Why else would I still be in therapy?

  ‘Perhaps there are some coping strategies that you employed in the past – before the accident – that might be helpful for dealing with present stress and/or strong emotions. Why don’t we start listing them?’

  ‘I don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Let’s see what comes up. No pressure.’

  ‘There’s no point to this exercise.’

  ‘That’s an interesting statement. Why would you say that there’s “no point” in making a coping-strategies list?’

  ‘Because the way I coped with stress before my accident was boarding, and I don’t DO that any more.’

  And then Claire tried to talk to me about why I’m not boarding any more, and that conversation wasn’t going to happen.

  So the session ended badly, which sucks because it had started out good. I’d told her my latest step in ‘getting out more’ was to join the Queenstown Photography Club. That finding the old picture of Issy in the lupins had made me remember how when I was little and staring over Uncle Bill’s shoulder as he took pictures, photography had been something I’d wanted to learn one day. So I mentioned this to Dad a couple of days after Christmas, and he called Uncle Bill. The next thing I knew, he was sending out an old Nikon with a bunch of lenses he didn’t use any more. Uncle Bill said he’d be happy to take me out and about when he arrived in a couple of weeks for his annual four-month stint in Q-Town.

  It’s past midnight now, and I want to go to sleep, but my brain is too busy investigating everything all the time. Opening sections of my mind, riffling through stuff, tossing certain thoughts up in the air, again and again, just for kicks.

  With all that mental energy going on constantly, if I don’t direct my mind to the right place, it starts pulling up old memories that leave a bad taste in the back of my throat. It turns the same worries or what-ifs over and over.

  Snowboarding was the only thing that used to shut my brain up. I learned to ski when I was five. That sounds young, but it’s not when you live in a ski town. Some of the parents around here get their kids into lessons as soon as they can walk, because the younger you are, the less fear you’ll have about strapping two planks to your feet and pointing them down a steep hill.

  I switched to snowboarding when I was in Year Three. I loved it from the start, but it wasn’t until the year Dad got sick, and the winter I was almost thirteen, that boarding became something I HAD to do all the time.

  Everybody said non-Hodgkin was ‘the best kind of cancer to get’. That NHL responded well to chemotherapy, and the long-term survival stats were good. So I thought chemo would be simple and Dad would go into remission.

  It didn’t take long for me to realise that it wasn’t going to work that way. Dad went into remission after the first cycle of chemo, but not for long. His NHL was aggressive – meaning the tumours grow back, fast. I learned words like ‘relapse’. And then, down the track, ‘refractory’.

  Refractory: Stubborn, or doesn’t respond to treatment.

  The words burned my brain the more I thought of them.

  I started taking the bus up to Cardrona any chance I could. Weekends. School holidays. I signed up for any camp that was running. Park skills. Halfpipe. Slopestyle.

  Big Air was the best of the lot. I needed to focus ferociously on something – anything but the cancer – and Big Air demands a hundred per cent focus. You can’t think about other things when your body is barrelling off a ramp. If your mind wanders and you lose control of your body and the trick, the consequences are brutal.

  Boarding was the closest I ever got to meditation. Anytime I wasn’t on the slopes, I could feel the anxiety about Dad coursing through my body, and it showed up in my limbs, which would jiggle like crazy.

  It was like every part of me needed to move because moving was doing something – and I HAD to do something, every moment of the day, every single day, to deal.

  A voice was screaming in my head that I had to do everything I wanted to, or needed to do, right now. I had to live NOW because look at what had happened to Dad.

  I hated myself for this, but sometimes when I looked at him, pale and thin, my mind would whisper: That could be you one day. After all, Dad had got cancer, and his dad had too, although that had been a different kind – pancreatic. It felt like there was a connection, even though non-Hodgkin lymphoma isn’t hereditary.

  So I’d send myself flying over the Big Air kicker without hesitation, because everyone dies, don’t they?

  When you board like that – it gets noticed. By the start of the next winter, I was getting a rep on the mountain for being an ‘all-out fearless’ rider. Every boarder knows that ‘fearless’ is a major compliment in the snowboarding circuit. It means you have guts and drive.

  So I let everyone think that was who Taylor Hellemann was. The type of guy who shrugged his shoulders before pulling a mad stunt. That ‘fearless’ was part of my DNA – instead of just being something that only came out of fearing the worst.

  By July the next year, I was entering comps. In October, I placed second in both my divisions – Slopestyle and Big Air – at the Cardrona NZ Junior Ski and Snowboard National Championships.

  I was now ‘someone to watch’. I started travelling for junior comps across the country, placing in the top three consistently. After coming fourth in Big Air at Junior Worlds, I was considered ‘international level’ and was given my own coach – Joe – because I ‘had serious potential’, and I started getting a few sponsorships for my gear.

  And then the September I turned fifteen, I walked away with the Audi Quattro Big Air Bronze. A month later came the offer to train in the US. It was everything I wanted, but the timing was the worst. In mid-December, when I was meant to be six weeks into the training program in Colorado, Dad was booked in for his stem-cell transplant. Uncle Bill had been a match, just like we’d been hoping.

  ‘Taylor, you have to go,’ Dad said. ‘This is an amazing opportunity.’

  ‘Maybe next year.’

  ‘You might not get the offer again next year.’

  ‘It’s six months. I don’t want to miss out on stuff.’

  Time with you, was what I meant, but I couldn’t say that to Dad. I didn’t want him to know that I was thinking, What if the transplant doesn’t work? or What if we don’t have that much time left as a family?

  ‘Six months is nothing. You’ll be back here with Mum and me before you know it.’

  ‘I want to be here with you guys.’

  ‘You know what I think about when I’m sitting in the ward with the IV in?’

  ‘F&*% cancer?’ I said, before I could stop myself.

  Dad laughed. ‘Yeah, a bit of that. But I think about good stuff too. You, landing that triple at the games. Mum’s face, watching you. How talented you are, mate, doing the thing you love. And this sponsorship – that gives me something else great to think about.’

  What could I say to that? Mum wanted me to go too.

  ‘Where are we going to get the money?’ I asked.

  The sponsorship covered a lot, but there was still stuff that Mum and Dad would have to pay for.

  ‘We’ll sort something out,’ Mum said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  The next night, she came into my room and put a piece of paper next to my keyboard.

  It was a bank account statement. I picked it up, checked the number and stared at Mum.

  ‘You see – there’s money in there for the US. And enough for the mortgage for another few years.’

  I didn
’t ask her where the money came from. I knew.

  Isolde’s parents – or really, Isolde’s mum.

  I knew she was the one to front the money for the stem-cell transfer too. So I signed the sponsorship papers and I landed in Colorado on the 2nd of November.

  When Mum called late one afternoon to tell me Dad and Uncle Bill had been rolled into theatre, I was standing up the top of the on-slope airbag-training area. I was meant to be taking my last run of the day.

  Instead, I handed Joe my helmet and walked down the hill. Even if there was an airbag down the bottom of the jump, I didn’t trust my limbs to go through the motions right then.

  Some patients die during a stem-cell transplant. Dad lived.

  And in February, like some kind of miracle, the new stem cells from Uncle Bill responded to the aggressive chemo. Dad went into remission. Proper remission. And for the first time since he got sick, I started to feel like things were turning around for our family.

  That our luck was changing.

  And then came my accident in June.

  But I always knew that was the way it worked. You think you have something – and life takes it away. You think you’re ahead of what’s coming for you, like a back-country boarder outriding the roar of an avalanche – but you’re not. You think things are going to last forever – but they can’t.

  Every moment you think that moment is yours, and it’s yours always, when really, it might just be the last time.

  The last time you do it.

  Have it.

  Love it.

  Instant Messenger Conversation

  Saturday 9 February, 11:51am

  Finn Williams: I saw you, you know.

  Taylor Hellemann: Creepy way to start an IM. Tell me that’s not your opening line when you text a girl?

  Finn Williams: HA-HA. Like I said, I SAW you. In the florist, two minutes ago.

  Taylor Hellemann: You sure about that?

  Finn Williams: I KNOW your ugly mug, dude. Mum and I drove past, and I saw you in there, surrounded by flowers.

  Taylor Hellemann: Dad asked me to organise some V-day flowers for Mum.

  Finn Williams: Firstly, your dad is way smoother than THAT, and secondly, there aren’t enough sheep in NZ for you to pull the wool over my eyes right now. And we both know there are 27 million sheep in NZ, almost six for every person.

  Taylor Hellemann: It’s scaring me that you know sheep statistics off by heart.

  Finn Williams: Everyone who LIVES in NZ knows that statistic. Back to WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT: are the flowers for her?

  Taylor Hellemann: Her?

  Finn Williams: Ellie, you moron. You’re sending her a bouquet on the 14th of Feb, right?

  Taylor Hellemann: They’re not for Ellie.

  Finn Williams: Oh man . . . they’re for Isolde, aren’t they?

  Finn Williams: Dude, you can’t hide this by not IMing back.

  Finn Williams: Wow. I didn’t think this would ever happen.

  Finn Williams: You, owning this.

  Taylor Hellemann: Owning what?

  Finn Williams: That you have feelings for her. About flippin’ time though.

  Taylor Hellemann: I don’t have feelings for her.

  Finn Williams: HE SAYS, while selecting red roses.

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m not sending her red roses. That’s ordinary. I’m sending her a selection of purple-coloured wildflowers.

  Finn Williams: Oh wow. You’ve got it bad. You’re sending them anonymously, right?

  Taylor Hellemann: No.

  Finn Williams: BAD idea.

  Taylor Hellemann: Why?!?

  Finn Williams: Dude, think about it. You don’t think that’s going to confuse her? Getting flowers from you? Given you’ve been messaging each other NON-STOP lately? I mean, it’s cute and all, but sometimes I want to throw your phone in the lake because you’re THAT addicted to the thing. You can’t even keep up a conversation with me. You’re useless.

  Taylor Hellemann: Nice. Call an amputee useless. Totally PC.

  Finn Williams: You KNOW I don’t mean it like that. And don’t change the subject. You and Isolde are super close these days. Then you send her a bouquet on Valentine’s Day? What does that say?

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m planning to write in the card BECAUSE YOU DESERVE FLOWERS.

  Finn Williams: For real, you have NO BRAIN CELLS. That gesture says to her I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU.

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m not trying to say that.

  Finn Williams: I repeat: it says I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU. Dude, COME ON.

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m ignoring you.

  Finn Williams: You shouldn’t. Are you sure you want to say I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU right now? If you’re finally saying it, don’t you want to wait until you can say it in person?

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m not finally saying anything. She KNOWS we’re just friends.

  Finn Williams: Yeah, because you don’t have the guts to try for more.

  Taylor Hellemann: Your argument’s flimsy as, you know. One minute you’re claiming I’m screaming in flower language that I LOVE HER and the next you’re all TAYLOR, YOU’RE A COWARD?

  Finn Williams: You’re a coward because you’re going halfway on this thing. Pulling a grand gesture but not owning it. Not owning what you FEEL. I don’t think you should send the flowers. You’re not ready to send flowers.

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m sending the flipping flowers.

  Finn Williams: Well, don’t come crying to me when they confuse the hell out of her.

  Taylor Hellemann: I’ve given my credit card deets to the florist. It’s done.

  Finn Williams: You’re killing me, you know.

  Instagram DM Conversation

  Thursday 14 February, 7:45pm

  Ana Zhang: Send me a picture of the flowers.

  Isolde Byrne: How do you know about the flowers?!?!

  Ana Zhang: Grace texted me. She said a huge purple bouquet arrived at the studio for you, right in the middle of class. She said Aidan’s jaw dropped when the delivery guy yelled out your name.

  Isolde Byrne: It did?!?

  Ana Zhang: You didn’t see Aidan’s expression? Or Steffanie’s? Grace said Steff was pissed at Aidan because he didn’t do ANYTHING for Valentine’s for her. Not even a card.

  Isolde Byrne: I was too busy looking at the flowers.

  Ana Zhang: Huh.

  Isolde Byrne: What does that mean?

  Ana Zhang: It’s a good huh. As in it’s a good sign that you didn’t even think to look for Aidan’s reaction.

  Isolde Byrne: Yeah, I guess it is.

  Isolde has sent you a picture

  Ana Zhang: The flowers are from Taylor, aren’t they?

  Isolde Byrne: How do you know that?!

  Ana Zhang: Who ELSE would be sending them?

  Isolde Byrne: Thanks, Ana.

  Ana Zhang: I don’t mean it that way. I mean . . . I kind of had this feeling he might do something for Valentine’s.

  Isolde Byrne: Don’t go thinking it’s romantic. He sent them because of a conversation we had, where I was whingeing that Aidan never gave me flowers when we were together. It’s a sympathy bouquet.

  Ana Zhang: That doesn’t look like a sympathy bouquet to me. It looks like a lot of thought went into those flowers. Plus, they’re the same colour as the photo he gave you for your birthday. It means something.

  Isolde Byrne: It didn’t mean that, Ana. But it meant a lot to me anyway. I’m going to call him now to say thank you.

  Skype Conversation

  Thursday 14 February, 8:30pm Sydney time, 10:30pm Queenstown time

  Isolde Byrne: Sorry about my phone. Ana’s messaging me every twenty seconds, I swear.

  Taylor Hellemann: Finn’s doing the same thing.

  Isolde Byrne: Really?

  Taylor Hellemann: Yeah. Is Ana asking you about the flowers?

  Isolde Byrne: Yeah . . . Is that what Finn’s messaging you about?

  Taylor Hellemann: I’m sure y
ou remember he doesn’t do chill when it comes to any interaction I have with the opposite sex. So, of course the bouquet set him off.

  Isolde Byrne: Oh really?

  Taylor Hellemann: Funny, right?

  Isolde Byrne: Yeah, super funny. I know you didn’t mean it that way.

  Taylor Hellemann: Right? Still, I’m glad you liked the flowers, Issy. The florist in town helped me. We spent about an hour choosing what to put in the bunch.

  Isolde Byrne: I love them, Tay.

  From: taylor_hellemann@gmail.com

  To: IsoldeByrne@hotmail.com

  Sent: Sunday 24 February, 8:50pm

  Subject: Just in case you’ve forgotten the type of traffic jams we get around here

  Attachment: IMG376, IMG377

  From: IsoldeByrne@hotmail.com

  To: taylor_hellemann@gmail.com

  Sent: Sunday 24 February, 10:51pm

  Subject: My favourite type of traffic jam

  Because how annoyed can you really get at a farmer who’s helping two hundred sheep cross the road? All those woolly butts plodding along would make anyone smile.

  Did you take that photo up in Glenorchy?

  From: taylor_hellemann@gmail.com

  To: IsoldeByrne@hotmail.com

  Sent: Sunday 24 February, 11:17pm

  Subject: Sure did

  Just in case you were worried (or Vi was worried, given Uncle Bill’s her wedding photographer and she wouldn’t want her photographer to break an arm a few months out from the big day), Uncle Bill wasn’t on a horse. He wasn’t driving either – I was. I’m not far out from getting my restricted licence. So, start crossing your fingers, and those battered ballerina toes of yours as well, that I pass the prac test straight up. Then we’ll have legit wheels for when you visit.

  From: IsoldeByrne@hotmail.com

  To: taylor_hellemann@gmail.com

  Sent: Monday 25 February, 8:19am

  Subject: Can I pre-book Uber Taylor?

  First trip is Glenorchy.

  From: taylor_hellemann@gmail.com

  To: IsoldeByrne@hotmail.com

  Sent: Monday 25 February, 4:45pm