by Carrie Quest
“Took you long enough.” His voice is flat. “I’ve been waiting.”
I want to say I’m sorry, but in this nightmare, I’ve lost my voice. All I can do is stumble toward the bed.
“I remember everything,” he says, still staring at the tiny rectangle of light. Then he looks up at me and I see his dark eyes are wet with tears. Fuck. Through all of this, I’ve never seen him cry. He lost his body and his passion and none of it broke him. Only I could do that.
“You’re an asshole, Ben.”
I nod, still unable to force any words past the lump in my throat. I shuffle a little closer, but it’s like I’m wading through molasses. I can barely move.
“Get over here.” Adam holds the phone out to me, and I clutch a fistful of my shorts, physically pulling the cloth toward him, making my muscles obey. Fuck. What am I doing? If he can watch it, I can watch it. Time to cowboy up.
My heart pounds so hard I actually feel it beating against the wall of my chest, and suddenly I’m back in my body. Able to walk again.
Able to speak.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Adam waves the phone at me. “Watch it.”
I deserve this, so I take the final steps and grab the phone. The shot starts out wobbly and I hear Autumn giggle and swear. I see her board, sponsor stickers in place, and then the camera swoops up to the sky. Clear, deep blue without a cloud in sight.
“It was a perfect day,” I croak out. And it all rushes back. The frigid air, the glare of the sun off the snow, the way my breath puffed out in little clouds as we stood and waited to drop in.
Adam’s hair spills out of his helmet and he’s squinting up at the camera, his goggles down around his neck. He’s constantly in motion, fooling around with his bindings, doing little hops on his board, waving at friends on the lift above. I’m there next to him, perfectly still, my eyes trained on the pipe.
“You were pissing me off,” he says. “I kept trying to talk to you, but you wanted to watch Bryce.”
“He was talking shit at breakfast,” I remember. “Saying he would be the first to crack the triple. I wanted it to be us.”
The thing is, that’s the truth. I’d never thought of myself as competing against Adam. A victory for one of us was a victory for both, and we both needed to get that triple cork before Bryce or anyone else landed it. So many people were close, but I knew the guys who got it first would have a huge advantage. Sponsors would be stoked, money would roll in, and, most importantly, we’d intimidate the fuck out of every other guy in the pipe for the rest of the season. It had to be us.
We’d both had the trick in our minds for years. I’d visualized it over and over until I saw it whenever I closed my eyes. I dreamed about it. I was ready, but I was shit scared and I wanted to see Adam land it first. He was always paving the way like that for me, nailing tricks down and showing me what was possible. I doubt he knew it, but I needed him to be out in front because I was too chicken shit to lead the way.
That’s why I did it.
The guy in the chute waves us down and Adam and I do rock, paper, scissors to see who’s going first. It takes a few rounds because it was so fucking cold that neither of us wanted to take off our mittens, so we both kept choosing paper. We’re laughing, and Adam punches my shoulder, knocking me over into the snow.
In the end, I won. I’ve thought about that moment so many thousands of times in the months since that it’s surreal to see it playing out on screen. What if I had just fucking manned up and gone first? Would his run have been okay?
Instead, I faked a problem with my binding and Adam got sick of me fumbling around with it, so he went first. Just like I wanted.
He gives me a fist bump and I pretend to be drawing back an arrow, then mime letting it fly as he takes off. Our ritual.
I touch the tattoo on my forearm and notice him doing the same thing.
I force my eyes back to the screen. I hop up, my binding obviously fine, and Autumn shakes her finger at me. “You’re so bad,” she purrs. I wink at the camera and yell down at Adam, then laugh when he flips me off.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I say.
“You told me not to puss out, Ben,” he answers. “We’ve said that to each other a thousand times.”
Maybe. But this time was different, because of what came after. And if I hadn’t pressured him, then maybe he would’ve given himself another warm-up run instead of going in hard so early in the session.
Now Adam’s at the starting point, gliding his board back and forth, swinging his arms and practicing what his upper body needs to do to land the trick. He’s there a few minutes, waiting for the guy in front of him to clear the pipe. I can’t remember who it was, and the lack of detail has niggled at me for months. I should remember; it seems disrespectful not to know. Everything about this day was important.
Something drips onto my hands and I reach up, surprised to find tears running down my face. I scrub them away with the back of my hand and hold the phone up higher, because any second now it’s going to happen.
The guy in the pipe wipes out and Autumn hisses in sympathy. It isn’t a bad fall, but he lies there for a minute, getting his breath, and a couple of his friends come down to help him up.
Now.
I see myself drop a mitten and dig out my phone, then furiously start texting. A second later I put it away again and wave down at Adam, but he doesn’t even see me. He’s still for once, waiting and watching the scene below him. Then he tips his head, hearing the buzz of his phone, and pulls it out of the front pocket of his jacket, checking the screen and staring at it for long minutes.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. I can still see what he’s looking at. I never stop seeing it.
Don’t you fucking dare wimp out. We’re getting this today. No excuses. No failure. And don’t fall.
The guys who fall are the ones who think about falling. I knew that. Of course I did. We were all incredibly superstitious about stuff like that, me most of all. I knew Adam always spent his final seconds visualizing himself making whatever trick he was about to do.
Not this time. This time he spent his last seconds thinking about crashing.
That shit was in his head, and I’m the one who put it there. All because I was too scared to go first, and too selfish to let him go at his own pace. I was so focused on success that I sacrificed my best friend.
I force myself to watch the rest, the phone shaking in my hands. He drops in clean and fast and hits the center of the pipe looking good, then spreads his arms and swings them around hard before launching into the air and reaching back to grab his board. His tuck is tight, and I honestly thought he was going to make it, but then his edge catches the lip of the pipe on the landing and he slams back and then flops forward like a rag doll, his face totally unprotected, and slides down to the bottom.
I hear Autumn’s gasp of horror, then my own screams as I take off as fast as I can, trying to get to him. Finally, the screen goes dark. It’s over.
I hand the phone back to Adam and he throws it on the bed.
We stare at each other for a minute or two, both of us breathing hard. I should be the one to break the silence, but I’m a coward. There’s nothing I can possibly say to make it better.
“Did ski patrol give you my phone?”
I nod. “It was in your jacket.”
“And you erased the message?”
“Yes.” My gut clenches and I look around for something I can hurl into. Just in case.
“You’re a fucking moron, Ben!” He wipes his own tears off his face, and I wordlessly hand him a handful of tissues from the box on the table near his bed. He knocks my hand away and I let them float down to the floor.
He closes his eyes, calming himself down enough to continue. “That story you told me about your knee,” he finally says. “You said you knew you’d never snowboard again, that’s why you tried to ride the sled off the roof.”
“Yeah.”
“And this” — he points at the phone — “is why you’re never riding again? Because you think you sent me a fucking text message with the power to make me crash?”
I shrug and Adam screams. He punches his pillow a few times, his breath heavy and uneven.
“Not just that,” I whisper. “I should have gone first. My binding was fine. I could have gone, but I wanted to watch you, so I could get a handle on it. I manipulated you and then pushed you because I’m a fucking coward.”
“You’ve wasted your whole fucking summer!” he yells. “Your knee is fine, isn’t it? You haven’t worn that fucking brace in weeks.”
When I nod, he screams again and punches me in the leg. Hard.
“You’re giving up riding—giving up your career and the Olympics—for this shit?”
“It’s my fault,” I say.
“That’s bullshit. We were always messing with each other. Yeah, it was a dick move, but it’s not like you forced me. I could have waited for you to fix the binding, but I was ready. I wanted to do it.”
“I took it too far with the text. I put falling in your mind. It was the last thing you thought about before you dropped in.”
Adam sighs. I hold out some more tissues, and this time he takes them and mops up his face.
“I wasn’t thinking about falling,” he says. “It wasn’t the last thing I looked at. I glanced at the message and then opened my browser to something else. None of this was your fault, you superstitious idiot.”
I drop down in the chair next to the bed with enough force to send it sliding back a foot. Adam winces at the high screech the metal legs make as they move across the floor.
“I was looking at the menu for Señor Snow’s. I wanted to check the specials.”
“The specials?” I ask, doubt apparent in my voice. We ate there almost every single day. We’d pretty much memorized the menu.
He grins. “The specials. And maybe also see if the hot waitress was in any of their Insta shots for the day. What was her name?”
“Chloe?”
He sighs. “Yeah, Chloe. Her tits in those tank tops she always wore were a work of art.”
“You weren’t visualizing yourself falling?”
“No, shit for brains, I was visualizing breasts. Chloe’s, in particular. Then I thought about the trick, same as I always did.”
I slump back in the chair, boneless.
“Please don’t ever tell your sister that story,” Adam adds.
My mouth is hanging open, and I stare at him so long that he brings his hands up to his face and claps.
“Are you in there?” he asks.
I want to answer him, I do, but I can’t say a word. There’s some kind of earthquake happening in my brain: ideas shattering, walls tumbling down, entire cities of thoughts being razed and rebuilt.
Adam sighs. “Look, even if I was thinking about falling, this still wouldn’t be your fault. Maybe I didn’t have the speed, maybe I was going too fast, maybe the pipe was fucked up. That superstitious shit made us feel like we had some control, but we both know it’s an illusion. People fall. Even when they’re good.”
“You weren’t just good,” I croak out. “You were the best.”
He closes his eyes and bows his head.
“Anybody can fall,” he finally says. “And sometimes it’s nobody’s fault. This was one of those times, Ben.”
I move my head up and down, but I’m barely in the room. My hands are shaking again. In fact, my whole body is vibrating hard enough for my teeth to chatter. Maybe I’m going into shock.
“You need to get back out there, man. None of this is on you. I threw everything I had at that trick and I failed, but you not riding isn’t going to fix my brain. I want you out there, man, especially if I can’t be.”
“I don’t know if I even want to ride anymore,” I scrape out.
Adam raises his eyebrows. “Why the fuck not?”
“You were always there, in front of me, leading the way. What if I can’t do it without you?”
“Dude, you don’t need me. You were always way more prepared than I was anyway. You’re a fucking machine.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a machine. I’ve figured out a lot of shit this summer that I didn’t have time to think about before. I found a kind of balance.”
Adam tosses me a blanket from the end of his bed. “You’re shaking like a leaf, and you’re talking shit. How can you have balance without boarding?”
I wrap the blanket around me and tip my head in thanks, but I stay silent. Giving up riding voluntarily, for any reason, isn’t something Adam will ever understand.
“It’s Natalie, isn’t it?”
“Part of it, but it’s mostly me. I don’t know how to have a life and train and compete at the same time. You were always better than me at that kind of shit.”
He smirks. “Because I was always better than you.”
I let him have that without arguing. It’s the truth.
“Look,” he says. “I get it. Nat’s a really cool girl and you’ve got your dog and your classes and this whole other life you’re making. But don’t give the rest of it up because you’re spooked and don’t know if you can make it work. Your girl will understand.”
“I don’t know if she’s my girl anymore,” I say.
“Then you shouldn’t be sitting here with me,” he says, flicking the lights on and grabbing my blanket away. “Go get her.”
I don’t leave though, not right away. We sit together, mostly in silence, and watch a crappy comedy that we’ve been laughing at since junior high. He tells me to leave a few times, but I can’t, not until I can start to get my mind around this fragile new peace I feel in his company. A couple hours later he kicks me out, saying he wants to sleep, so I go.
I walk out into the clear Colorado night feeling different. It’s not a magical resolution kind of thing, but I do feel a little lighter somehow, and that’s a start.
25
Natalie
I don’t have time for this girlfriend shit right now.
Long after Ben slams out the door, his words are still running through my head. They hurt. There’s no way Ben could have known it, but he basically found my most tender spot and zapped it with a Taser.
I don’t have time for this right now…
My mom, when I tried to show her my first story: I don’t have time for this right now, Natalie. I have to get to the hospital.
My dad, when I asked him to help me pick out a college: I don’t have time for this right now, Natalie. Use my credit card and order some books.
My sister, when I cried to her about not making the soccer team: I don’t have time for this right now, Natalie. I have to study.
My first friend-with-benefits, when I asked him if he wanted to see a movie: I don’t have time for that right now, I’ve got shit to do.
(He was still inside me when he said it.)
And now Ben. I know he was upset, but is this always how it’s going to be? The minute something goes wrong with Adam, he slams a door and leaves me waiting on the other side?
When I think back to the devastation on his face, I hurt for him. He’s obviously carrying some major guilt about something, and I want to be supportive, but maybe it’s not the best thing for me to support someone who hurts me. Even if he doesn’t mean to do it.
The speed at which this day has gone to shit is truly astounding. I should probably go take shelter in case life has anything else to throw at me, but I’ve got a meeting with my writing group this afternoon and I have to go. I might be needing Monique’s letter (or testimony, as my dad will probably call it) now more than ever. I need to prove my devotion to my craft, not hide in my closet, eating sugary cereal by the fistful.
Why the fuck did I spend all those years when I was a kid wishing I was grown up? This sucks.
I take the bus to campus because I can’t be bothered dragging myself up the hill. Sadness is fucking heavy. I�
��m almost afraid to check my email when the notification dings, in case it’s my parents.
When I see Felicity Burns’s name in my inbox, I groan loud enough the guy in front of me hears it through his enormous headphones and turns around to shoot me a dirty look. Seriously, why do people need headphones that big? He’s riding a fucking bus, not manning a mission to Mars.
I open the message, figuring at least I’m headed to meet the four people on earth most likely to commiserate with me. Plus, I’ll have a valid excuse for the epic day drinking session I’m about to indulge in.
Natalie,
Thanks for your message outlining your revisions. I’ve read the manuscript again, and I can see how the changes you proposed will make it even stronger, particularly the work you intend to do on the love story.
Do you have an idea of when it will be finished? I’m really looking forward to reading it!
Best, Felicity Burns
If it were possible to get whiplash from an emotional rollercoaster, I would be rocking the biggest neck brace known to woman.
After the initial excitement (headphones guy moved up a few rows—guess my screams of joy were harshing his groove) I slump down in my seat. I have no idea how to answer her. No agent is going to want to sign a writer who has early-onset writer’s block. That’s just bad business.
If I can shake off this block, I’ll be able to send it to her and prove to my parents I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. Even if she ends up passing, it will impress them she’s this enthusiastic about my writing.
I need to do this. So I’ll go to this meeting. I’ll put the fight with Ben out of my mind and concentrate on staying on Monique’s good side. Then I’ll go home, sit down at my desk, and tie myself to the chair until I’ve cracked this thing. I don’t have a choice.
I’ve been at the meeting for five minutes when I have a full-on Hit By A Lightning Bolt While Hearing Angels Singing epiphany. Sadly, the divine inspiration doesn’t help me figure out my plot problems or my relationship with Ben.
