Carry Your Heart (3 page)

“Yo, Luke,” Donovan shouts at the team’s freshman goalie. “Get my girls some Jungle Juice.”

With his eyes glazed, Luke sways side to side, take a sip from a red Solo cup, and hands it to me with a loopy smile.

I take a cup from Luke, suspiciously. “Um?”

“That one’s mine,” he says breathlessly, more than a little drunk. “We can share.”

“Thanks?”

“Luke, you know Pippa?” Donovan asks, obviously trying to hand me off.

I smile at him. “I don’t…”

“Yeah, definitely. Pippa Baker, right?” he says eagerly holding out his hand. I shake tentatively. I can’t remember him from anywhere, although he seems totally harmless. He’s kind of adorable actually, wearing a huge, goofy grin on his face. Smashed, obviously, but in an adorable kind of way. “Hey, Courtney,” he adds with a half-wave.

“Oh, right on, man,” Donovan says. “You two have class together?”

I study Luke hard and shake my head. “No, I don’t—I don’t think so.” I offer him a grin. “Where do I know you from again? Sorry—I have the worst memory for people.”

“Oh, no, you probably don’t remember me. I mean, we haven’t actually met officially or anything,” he says. “We skied together back in the day. Or I mean, I was like in the program—you were a senior. I didn’t end up moving onto the junior national team, but—I definitely remember you did. Out in Utah? Luke Mumford.”

I nod. “Wow. Small word. Luke Mumford. Like the band?”

“Yup, same spelling and everything.”

I nod.

“Here, do you want to come with me to get your own drink?” he pauses, looking at the cup he gave me. “That one was mine.”

“Ah.” I hand him his cup back. “Sure.”

Courtney looks at me, tentatively. I can tell from her eyes that she’s ready to leave with me if I want, but I shake my head. I want to be here—I want to try harder to get back to normal. If this is the part of college that I’ve been missing, I should experience it. Because it sure as hell seems like something is missing from my life.

“Sure,” I say following him into the overcrowded kitchen.

He turns his broad shoulders and helps me slide through the dense, loud crowd into the packed kitchen.

He snags two cups and ladles out a generous serving of something that is as sweet as it is strong.

“Here—for Court,” he says, handing me an extra cup.

“Thanks.”

When we get out of the kitchen, he keeps talking at a half-shout, which is necessary over the noise and the crowd. I keep smacking shoulders with drunken boys and getting jostled by girls in shaky heels. I look around for Court, to give her the drink, but I don’t see her anywhere.

“So, do you still ski?” he asks, reaching a relatively empty stretch of wall to lean against.

“No,” I say. I swallow. “I don’t.” I swivel my head once more, sweeping the room for Court and Donovan.
Everyone
here seems to look exactly like Donovan.

“No? Wow. When did you stop? You were sponsored and everything, weren’t you?”

I nod. “Uh, a little, yeah. I didn’t have any big sponsors.” I look harder for Courtney. “I injured my leg, actually.”

“Badly?”

“I broke it?” It comes out sounding like a question. Like, I’m not sure what happened. Although, saying I broke my leg sounds dishonest. I’ve broken fingers and ribs and a wrist. And my leg. That’s not the problem. What I really broke in the avalanche was my whole heart, and not in a temporary kind of a way. The leg was collateral damage, but the real problem is the heart.

“Oh, wow. That sucks, man. That’s really terrible.”

I nod.

“How’d you break it?”

I know this drill. Maybe it’s true in all sports—maybe it’s endemic to sports that are more extreme—that lend themselves to freakish falls and bad breaks and concussions and fractures—but everyone has that one horror story. The time their binding broke or they caught an edge or they veered suddenly off a narrow catwalk.

And then they fell.

If it was bad enough, they’ll go into what it’s like to be picked up by the snow patrol. They’ll tell you how strange it felt going down the hill on the sled, with their legs and arms secured, with everyone staring and wondering whether they were seriously injured or just another kid with a sprained ankle.

They might tell you about how they were brought to the hospital, where doctors shook their heads in disbelief told everybody how lucky it was that they lived.

Every skier has a variation on this story. No one gets through without a minor or major incident. Most of them are more minor than mine. Most of them end with crutches and plaster. Mine ends with two funerals. The leg is the least of it. It might not even be a part of it at all.

I swallow and give him the simplest answer: “Skiing.”

“Skiing?”

I nod. “Yeah, backcountry.”

My Dad says I shouldn’t feel badly telling people that I don’t want to talk about the avalanche. But, I do feel badly about it.

This is how I know that I’m a retired skier—when people want to know my story, the time that I got hurt and had to come back—I don’t want to talk. Because I didn’t come back. I stayed put. On the ground. Off the mountains. On my feet, instead of on skis.

Luke waits for me to elaborate. He wants the story. I can see the question in his eyes, even if he won’t say it aloud.
That’s it?

“I fell off a chairlift once,” he offers, in exchange for my story. “Head first. Helmet cracked. My coach thought I was dead for sure. They had to airlift me off the mountain. It was gnarly.”

“Yikes.” I can focus on that—on him falling off a chairlift. I used to be like him—used to think injuries were part of it. They were scars—proof of your commitment. Proof of your heart.

He smiles. “Yeah. I woke up in the helicopter and thought I was going heli-skiing. I was like
wait, I’m so not ready for this
and then they were like,
dude, you hit your head.
You’re not going anywhere but the hospital.”

I nod slightly, laughing, trying to laugh.
You’re lucky
, I want to tell him.
That’s not a horror story. That’s a luck story.

“I’m really surprised you quit though,” Luke says.

I nod. “Yeah. Me too, sometimes.” I smile at him. This conversation is making me tired and nauseous. I have got to get out of here.

“Look, it’s been really great to meet you, Luke. I’m pretty tired. I think I’m going to head out.”

“Ah, okay—um, could I get your phone number?”

I’m surprised he asks for it, so surprised I don’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah, of course,” I say, reciting the digits. I smile at him while he types them into his phone. “I’m really glad I met you.”

“Yeah?”

“For sure,” I say, turning to leave.

I’ll text Courtney once I’m gone—she won’t let me leave alone and it’s not worth ruining her night. Once I’m back out in the air, past the loud and growing pack of smokers congregated on the porch steps, I feel an enormous sense of relief.
I went to a college party. Saw what I’d been missing. Not much of anything. But I saw it.

A voice in the back of my head chides me for rushing to conclusions:
you gave it twenty minutes. You quit.

I walk back towards Courtney’s place, calling one of the overpriced cab services to meet me in front of her apartment building—certainly too drunk to drive.

By the time I get home, I feel like I’ve been out for hours, but it’s only 11:30 and my dad’s awake in front of the television, a half-done crossword puzzle resting on his knee.

“Hey, Pip.”

“Hey,” I say.

“How was it?”

“Good,” I smile.

“You’re back pretty early,” he says. “I’d have come to get you.”

I smile. “I know. It wasn’t a problem…it was fun.”

He nods. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I ran into a kid who trained out in Utah too.”

He looks worried by that.

“He was really nice. Younger than me,” I reassure him. “He didn’t know about the accident.”

“Great,” he says. He smiles. Bespectacled, with his flannel shirt rumpled, when I see him smile, it almost breaks my heart. I’ve made him worry so much all year. It’s impossible not to feel guilty about it.

It’s impossible not to feel guilty about so many things.

Chapter Three

I roll out of bed with a mild headache and a dry mouth. It’s late for me—10:30—I usually don’t sleep in like this.

I amble downstairs in my sweatpants. “Hey, Dad, any chance there’s coffee left?”

I nearly tumble down the last few stairs and into the kitchen when I see him standing there.

Holy fucking shit.

“Oh my god, is everything okay?” I say.

My dad sits grimly at the table, looking distinctly displeased. And my former ski coach, Mike Ames, stands, arms akimbo, refusing to be intimidated. He’s really a gentle man—5’10”, in his early thirties, his own promising skiing career cut short by a knee injury in his twenties.

“Pippa!” He sounds relieved to see me in one piece. I haven’t seen him since Ryan’s funeral, two days after Danny’s. And I barely saw him at Ryan’s funeral, just saw his shoulder shaking as he sat in the pew.

He spoke at Danny’s funeral. He’d coached him for ten years, since he was a little kid. He couldn’t get through his eulogy—the only phrase I remember of it was
so much like a son
, and it broke the phrase permanently for me—the overused, trite cliché became a symbol of staggering loss—I can only think of it in Mike’s broken voice, trying to explain how he would miss Danny, trying to put into words what was gone.

“Hi?” I say, breathing, banishing the memory.

He smiles, hugs me against my will. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too? Um, what are you doing here?”

“I’d called you.”

No shit, Sherlock. Even I couldn’t ignore that many phone calls.

“Yeah, I meant to call you back. I had exams,” I offer.

He looks at me quizzically. “Pippa, you never were going to call me back.”

I lift my shoulders. I didn’t even listen to his voicemails anymore. And I didn’t read most of the emails or the texts. There’s only so much you can take, before you have to pretend it’s not happening.

I knew he wanted to know when I was coming back. I had told him.
Never
.

He didn’t need to keep checking in. I was fine and I was retired. I didn’t want to listen to his reasons. I didn’t want to be forced to defend my decision. I never could come up with any way to defend quitting like that.

“I’m not coming back to train.”

He bites his lip, unwilling to accept that. “Maybe not.”

“No, definitely not. Dad?”

My dad lifts his shoulders. “I told him you weren’t ready.”

“It’s not about ready,” I say. “I can’t. I’m done. I told you that.”

“Pippa…”

“No,” I say firmly. “I said no. I’m getting sick of it.”

Mike hesitates. “One weekend.”

I shake my head. “This is ridiculous.”

“One weekend. One tournament. Just for fun.”

“Why?” I demand. “I don’t owe you anything. Why?”

“Because this is what you wanted for your whole life,” he says. He sounds almost harsh.

“Before I almost got killed. Before Danny and Ryan died,” I tell him urgently.

“That’s right. Before Danny and Ryan died. And do you think this is what Danny and Ryan would be doing with their lives if it had been the other way around?” he demands. “You’d want them to give up everything? That’s what you’d want for them?”

“You need—you need to fucking go,” I manage to say before I burst into tears. I turn quickly back to the staircase and head upstairs.

My dad’s low rumbling voice tries to explain to Mike.

“You can’t just expect her to forget…”

“She’s throwing away her career…”

“Mike, this isn’t about skiing…”

“She can’t live without skiing. You know she can’t. It’s like oxygen to her. She’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t do this. You know that as well as I do. You can’t let this happen…”

I hurry out of earshot—slamming my bathroom door. I turn on the shower and sit on the toilet—at least I know Mike won’t barge in on me in the shower.

Although, maybe I shouldn’t put it past him—I never expected to find him in my kitchen, uninvited and unwanted and demanding I go back to competition. And I thought the voicemails were invasive…

I catch my breath, while steam rises from the empty shower, and then I strip off my pajamas and jump in. The water’s scorching—it burns, but I stay underneath it, until I can’t think about being sad—can’t think about anything except for the heat of the water and the burn of it on my skin.

Mike’s gone when I get out. My breathing doesn’t calm down for the rest of the day.

***

“Mike left a letter,” my dad tells me the next morning. “You don’t have to read it.” I nod and leave it on the counter. It stays there, like an overdue library book or an unpaid bill, all morning.

After a while, I feel like I can’t even be in the house with the envelope, so I take a fast and hard run uphill, toward Riverview Road. It faces the flatirons, climbing steeply, my lungs claw for more air, and I have to walk home, on shaky, spent legs.

By Sunday night, I know I have to open the letter. I take it up to my bedroom and sit on the windowsill, staring westward, towards Vail, the mountain I first learned to ski on.

The letters in Mike’s sloping, efficient hand don’t make sense when I glance over it. I’m willing myself not to understand what he has to say. But eventually, I take a breath and read:

Dear Pippa:

I know you didn’t want to talk to me, let alone see me, and I’m sorry for stopping by so unexpectedly. I feel like you need to hear what I have to say, before it’s too late for you to change your mind.

You had a dream to compete in the Olympics, and I never once doubted you would. I can’t fathom what you’ve endured and what you’ve lost and how you’ve felt since you lost Ryan and Danny.

But I do know that your dream is still possible, if you want to go after it. You don’t have much time. You have to think about whether you’ll regret giving this up. I worry that you quit because it was easier now—and that you have no idea how hard it will be in fifteen years.