Girl, Unstrung

by Claire Handscombe

  “We don’t take unnecessary risks,” the instructor said. It seems to me that the whole hurling yourself down a mountain on two planks of whatever is one big unnecessary risk to begin with, when I could be curled up with a mug of hot cocoa in front of the fire place with Tim massaging my feet. If you’re going to risk it, you might as well risk it.

  “Let’s do it,” I say to Tim. We’re not technically allowed to go off unaccompanied like this, and I don’t break rules, but Tim asked me. Me. Just me. Finally it’s going to be just the two of us.

  My ski pole is attached to my wrist and I lift it and use it to point to the chairlift I went on earlier with my instructor.

  “Careful,” Tim says. “You’ll have someone’s eye out with that.”

  I dig my poles in the snow and push myself off. It’s hard work on the flatter parts, you really have to put as much of your weight as possible on the poles and push ridiculously hard to move just a tiny bit. It takes your breath away, not in a romantic isn’t-that-beautiful-way, but actually, physically. But still, it isn’t so long before we’re on the gentle slope that leads down to the chairlift line.

  We wait our turn behind a group of schoolkids and a couple families, and when it comes time to position ourselves for the chairlift to come around and scoop us up I try to surreptitiously shuffle as close to Tim as I can so that our legs will be touching when we sit down. Or, you know, his blue ski pants which are on top of his thermal pants which are on top of his boxer shorts (or whatever, I obviously haven’t asked him what he wears) will be touching my red ski pants which are on top of my thermal pants which are on top of my very plain cotton underwear. We’re not exactly talking skin-to-skin contact.

  When we do sit – or, rather, when we’re whacked into place by the not-exactly-gentle contraption that’s probably going to give me a bruise – I’m not sure I can even feel his leg against mine. Such a waste of an opportunity and of carefully planned maneuvering. Still, it feels good up here. The air is so clean it hurts my nostrils to breathe it. Or maybe that’s just the cold. Regardless, I want to bottle this air and sprinkle it over Los Angeles. They should make scented candles with this air. I don’t know what it would smell of – clean laundry, maybe? And maybe it’s the clean air or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I forgot to bring energy bars or maybe it’s just being next to Tim – I wouldn’t call it touching, not with all these layers, but I am very, very close to him, breathing this same tingly clean air – but I feel a little light-headed. Is this what being drunk feels like? If it is, I totally get why people get addicted to it.

  “So you’re glad you came?” Tim asks me. Which is good, because there’s always a moment at the beginning of a conversation with him when I’m not quite sure how to start.

  “Yes,” I say. And then I worry all over again that it’s going to be the end of the conversation, and I scramble to think of something else. “The air is just really clean here.”

  He laughs. “What are you – eighty-five years old?”

  “Give or take seventy years.”

  He laughs again, but this time it feels good. This time he’s laughing with me – better still, he’s laughing because of me, because I’ve made him laugh. The chairlift takes us up, up, up, and maybe that’s what my stomach feels funny. Maybe it’s not butterflies. Except, who I am kidding with that?

  “What do you like best about skiing?” I ask him.

  “I like the sound of my skis across the snow,” he says.

  I know what he means. It’s kind of a whooshing sound and I like it, too. He’s a much better skier than me, though, so I bet it’s even more satisfying, whoosh, whoosh, turn which still whooshes, just as smoothly, whoosh, whoosh, all the way down to the bottom. I can imagine that feels good, almost like music. Like the first time you play from the beginning to the end of a Mozart concerto without your teacher interrupting to correct your technique. When I ski, it’s more like, lazy, half-hearted whoosh that grinds to a halt as I attempt a turn, panicked whoosh as my skis take control and I start going too fast in the part of the turn when I’m pointing down the hill, thump as I land on my hip the way Tim taught me.

  “I’m also really enjoying this chairlift ride,” he says.

  My stomach flips before my brain finishes processing the sentence. That’s how I know he doesn’t mean the effortless rise up the mountain, the break for our tired feet, the sun on our faces, or the weird but kind of cool sensation of our skis half-resting on the metal bar below us, half swinging in mid-air.

  “It’s a great view,” I say, which would work much better as a line if we were actually facing each other rather than up the mountain.

  “Yes,” he says, and I hear from the swoosh of his ski jacket that he’s turned to look at me, so I do the same thing. Are we actually going to kiss here on this chairlift? That would be so romantic. But we’re almost at the top of this mountain, or at least our little section of this mountain, and it’s time to move the metal bar that straps us in so we can slide off. Never mind. Next time.

  It always feels like I’m a legit skier when I get off a chairlift. I look no different to anyone else. I’ve got the equipment. I didn’t fall off and embarrass myself. I can look down the mountain and convince myself I’m about to ski down just as elegantly as all the other brightly-outfitted people, as if I’d been doing this since I was the age of that kid Harry’s height who whizzes past us as we stand adjusting gloves and goggles and helmets. Come to think of it, why did my parents never bring me skiing? Maybe it’s to do with Juliette’s precious ballet legs. I’ll have to remember to ask them.

  “Ready?” Tim says. I’m suddenly nervous he’s going to whoosh all the way down and leave me up here to slide down all the way down on my butt. Because, let’s face it, I’m actually nothing like those elegant brightly-outfitted people.

  “We’ll do it in stages, okay?”

  He looks at me like I’d be crazy to think otherwise.

  “Of course. I’m not going to leave you to fend for yourself up here when you’ve only been skiing three days.”

  My hero. Maybe someone else could get away with saying that, but it would sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth. So instead I smile and say thanks. We push off down the mountain with our poles, and I follow in his tracks. He’s using the whole width of the slope, like our instructor showed us, like he knows I need reassuring about the steepness. If you ski across and then make a tiny turn, the only scary part is the tiny turn, because you’re only facing straight down the slope for a fraction of a second. Or a little longer if you’re me, because I do the turn in a pizza wedge position rather than with my skis in parallel like Tim, and that slows me down a little.

  The snow feels different than it did when we skied down this slope with our instructor earlier today. Not so much whoosh whoosh as the sound of ice being scraped off a car’s windshield. My skis aren’t gripping the snow as well. My turns are happening too fast. There’s a lot of slope left, and it looks steeper than I remembered. I wonder if this was the best of ideas. But we’re here now. We might as well enjoy it, right?

  “You okay?” Tim calls. The wind carries his voice back to me. I don’t remember it being so windy this morning. My face feels like it’s being eaten alive.

  “I’m good,” I shout back to him. I’m good I’m good I’m good, I repeat to myself, relax relax relax. And the one of my skis catches on snow that’s piled up on itself. It happens fast. I don’t have time to remember to fall on my hip. I put my left hand out to break my fall. It catches my pole; I hear the crack before I fell it. I’m on the ground; my ski has snapped off and is careening down the mountain. My wrist my wrist my wrist. I think I’m going to black out from the pain. And then I do.

  Twenty-Six

  I cry sitting on the cold slope waiting for help. I cry and cry when the rescue guys in their orange pants and jackets ski me down the mountain in this big orange canvas coffin, Tim following behind. I can’t see, and with every jolt
and jerk, pain shoots through my wrist, all the way up to my shoulder. I stop crying when they get me out of there and I walk over to urgent care, because it’s hard to walk in these boots and you really have to concentrate. Then after they give me a pain injection I bite my lip and wait for it to kick in. Tim tells me half-hearted jokes to try to take my mind off the pain, but he doesn’t know me well enough to know what will actually make me laugh, and anyway, you can’t forget about pain this bad. You can’t forget about a bungled LACHSA audition. My wrist will be fine by 17th February – it has to be, right? – but I can’t bear to imagine what a month without practice will do to my playing, to my chances of getting into LACSHA. But mostly I’m not even thinking about that. Mostly I’m just thinking about the pain. It’s like a million tiny bombs going off in my wrist, over and over. I hate that Tim is seeing me cry like this. I hate looking weak. Then again, there’s an argument to be made that this is all his fault. So who cares what he thinks.

  I CRY SOME MORE ON the phone to mom that evening, so much that she has to keep asking me to repeat what I’ve said because it comes out in a garbled, snotty mess. In the end, though, she gives up asking me to repeat myself. She realizes, I think, that the actual words don’t matter, that what I really need is for her to just be there, like the phone equivalent of a hug.

  I do say one thing loud and clearly though: “I want to come home.”

  The chaperone says that there’s no reason I can’t stay. The lodge we’re staying in is cozy, with an open fire with real logs crackling downstairs, and thick hot chocolate practically on tap. And I guess if I was the reading type, I’d curl up there, my splinted arm resting on the arm of the plush red couch, a little high on painkillers, a book in my good hand. But I’m not, and everybody here hates me, and I can’t stand to be around Tim. I’m embarrassed that he saw me fall apart the way I did, and mad at myself for losing my logical head and going up there with him. And then yesterday the door to the game room was shut for a while, with a sign up saying the room was closed for a private meeting, and I saw him shuffle out with his head low. I’m mortified he got in trouble, but I’m also glad he did, and I’m also fearful of what my punishment will be. Right now people are saying things like, “I guess you’ve learned your lesson” and “I think you’ve suffered enough” but I’m sure they’ll change their minds.

  That’s a lot of emotion, and emotions make me squicky and uncomfortable, and I just want to be in a room by myself with the door shut, bingeing something on Netflix and not having to care what I look like when I come out for dinner, to care whether my eyes are red and puffy or my cheeks are blotchy from crying or the pattern from my pillowcase is imprinted on my forehead.

  Those are some of the things I try to tell mom, lying face down on my twin bed, the scratchy bedspread itching my feet, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand any of it but at the same time she understands all of it because she’s my mom.

  “Okay,” she says, “okay,” and phone calls are made and forms are signed and someone helps me pack up my luggage and drives me to the airport with its enormous Chrisstmas tree and its twinkling lights, mocking me with its manufactured joy, but I almost don’t care because soon I’ll be home, home, home.

  Twenty-Seven

  Ebba’s going to be waiting for me by baggage claim at LAX. Mom and Dad are both working today, and acting isn’t the kind of work where you can call in sick or with a family emergency. There’s a reason why the show must go on is a cliché, even if Dad does insist on using it far more than he should. Anyway, it’s not an emergency, as such. My wrist is already broken, already in a splint. (I was lucky, apparently: I don’t need surgery or metal plates. I don’t feel lucky.) I don’t really know what it is that my parents rushing to the airport would achieve at this point. What would have actually made a difference would have been for them to rush to the airport on Saturday to stop me getting on the plane to Utah in the first place. (What was I thinking? I can’t believe I allowed the prospect of a kiss – a kiss with Tim! Tim! – to derail my entire life’s purpose. This is so unlike me. Love clearly makes people crazy. I guess in this case I’m the one who’s Exhibit A.)

  Still, all the way home to California two days before everyone else and hopped up on painkillers, my elbow propped up on the plane’s armrest, watching old episodes of Parks and Rec on my iPad to try to take my mind off it, I wish Mom or Dad was coming to get me. Someone who’s known me my whole life, who understands that my wrist is not just my wrist. The other kids on the trip, they totally didn’t get it. At least you’re not left-handed! they said, like I care about writing. We mostly write things up on the computer, anyway, so it doesn’t even matter – you use both hands equally to type. And schoolwork is the very, very least of my worries. Mom and Dad would understand. Mom would make me the carrot and cilantro soup which is my absolute favorite. Dad would tell terrible jokes till I couldn’t help but laugh, no matter how hard I’d try not to. (It’s best not to encourage him.) You’re in treble now, he’d say. And then he’d look at my crestfallen face and say, Uh oh. That joke fell a little flat. I guess the pain must be pretty sharp.

  The puns are working, though – they’re making me smile. Apparently I don’t even need Dad here in person. I’ll always have his terrible jokes. I look around at the gate and Ebba’s waiting for me, looking sad. Looking as if she is the one with the career-ending injury.

  “That’s her,” I say to the flight attendant who was assigned to look after me. The airline was super helpful, actually. I was pretty impressed. They helped me with my viola so I didn’t have to put it in the hold and they had me get on the plane before everyone else so I could get settled. The flight attendant, Tracey, told me she has a daughter my age. I guess that’s why she was kind to me. “That’s my step mom.”

  “Honey,” Ebba says, standing and walking over to me. She sort of stands there awkwardly, I guess trying to decide whether to hug me. She squeezes my right arm instead.

  “How are you holding up?” she asks me, after she signs the paperwork on Tracey’s clipboard and I say thanks and bye to her.

  My two-hour record of not crying comes to an abrupt end. I feel my face crumple. She opens her arms and I let her hug me. It might be the first time ever. She’s less bony than Mom, and she smells faintly of vanilla and marzipan. The hoodie she’s wearing is soft, though it’s possibly also now covered in my snot and tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, when I pull away.

  “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  Actually, if I’m honest, I’ve got two years’ worth of things to be sorry for. But I push that thought away. Right now I’m really just sorry for the snot and the tears, and the fact Ebba’s had to make the hour-long drive to collect me when all the other kids will just get to go on a bus tomorrow.

  “I was so hoping you’d have a good time.”

  “I did, before all this.”

  She raises an eyebrow. What is it with people who can raise just one eyebrow? They make you want to tell them everything.

  “Not like that,” I say, clarifying.

  “No use for the thing you packed?”

  “Nope.”

  She stretches her arm out and around me. I let her, and we walk to baggage claim that way, through the hubbub of people and noise. I think about Juliette, walking with Ebba like this after The Nutcracker back in November. I get it now, the warmth of it. Ebba feels like home.

  Twenty-Eight

  The doorbell rings during the late morning of Christmas Eve while I’m upstairs, not practicing my viola, and I guess I could run down and get it, but really, what’s the point? If it was anyone interesting they’d have texted me first. I turn up my music – a Haydn string quartet—and try to focus on my equations. At least I know I’m still top of the class in math. But there’s banging on my bedroom door and I have to turn the music back down to ask what the deal is. “There’s someone here for you,” Dad says.

  “Who?�
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  “Just come down.”

  I’m hoping it’s Madison. I haven’t seen her in forever. But like I said, if it is her, it’s weird she hasn’t texted first. Or, you know, it could be Santa, with an early gift. Haha. I crack myself up sometimes. I want Christmas cancelled this year, anyway. My early gift was my cast: getting that put on yesterday was a barrel of laughs, let me tell you.

  I brush my hair with my one good hand and walk down the stairs. The fairy lights on the hand rail seem like they’re mocking me. When I get down the hallway I realize why Dad didn’t tell me who it was, at the door. I never would have come if I’d known. Tim stands there sheepishly, his hair all in his eyes. He’s holding, believe it or not, a bunch of flowers.

  “Hi,” he says. I’ve always liked the swoopy hair (you may have picked up on that) but now it feels like it’s just a clever tool, something to hide behind.

  “Hi,” I say. My stomach didn’t get the memo about Tim. It’s still attempting somersaults. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I can hear the sarcasm in my voice, which is exactly what I was going for. Good job.

  The flowers are giant daisies of all different colors. They’re actually really nice, but they’re too cheerful. I don’t want anything cheerful in my life. Not these flowers, and not that stupid tree with its stupid presents underneath it. It feels wrong.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking them from him, making sure our hands don’t touch. “You’ve brought them now. You can go.”

  His face falls and for a second I almost feel bad for him. Almost.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so, so sorry. I wanted you to know that.” He already said that a million times in Utah. I get the idea.

  “Thanks.” I look at the flowers. They really are pretty. Tim is pretty too, but I can’t bear to look at him. “You know my audition is in eight weeks and now I can’t practice for six of those?”