Panic reared as I picked up speed. My weight shifted backward and the tips of my skis came off the ground. A yelp escaped my lips as I went down. Snow mashed up the sleeves of my coat, a shock of cold against my warm skin.
“Hey there.” Grayson chuckled as he reached his gloved hand toward me. I put my mittened one in it, embarrassment flowing through me like a tidal wave. “It’s like riding a bike,” he said. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
“I don’t know about that.” I let him help me up, my heated face melting every snowflake that touched it. The world felt ethereal with the softly falling snow, the muted light.
We continued on through the condo village, the ground mostly flat or gently sloping. I managed to stay on my feet, thankfully. Once past the buildings, Grayson led us to a run and pointed at the sign bearing a green circle.
“Forbidden Fruit,” he said. “Longest, but easiest run here. Goes all the way to the bottom of the mountain. You game?”
I adjusted my goggles and gathered my courage. “Sure. Sounds like a good way to get back on the bike.” I flashed a smile, gripped my poles tighter. My muscles shook like gelatin and I almost fell again.
“We’ll go slow,” Grayson promised. “Darren, you take us down.”
It took me a few minutes to really feel the ground beneath my skis, to see the soft spots in the snow, to catch my edges against the turns. But Grayson was right—skiing was like riding a bike. My confidence grew with every minute that passed.
I fell behind, but I could still see Grayson up ahead, so I didn’t panic. Darren stopped; so did Grayson; when I caught up, I managed to skid to a stop as well. My chest heaved, but I smiled. There was something therapeutic about skiing. Being alone with my thoughts, studying the snow, listening to the wind blowing in the atmosphere.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.
“We got here before the mountain opened,” Grayson said.
“This lift’s not going either,” Darren said, pointing down the slope a ways, where the lift sat silent and still.
I made to pull out my phone, but my pockets were empty. “No,” I moaned, glancing back the way we’d come. “My phone.”
“You don’t have it?”
I shook my head, my anxiety amping up. “Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I fell.”
“That was right by the cabin. I’ll text Luke and tell him to go look for it.” He pulled off his gloves and thumbed out the message. “Done.” He put on one of his blinding smiles. “It’s only eight-fifty. The resort doesn’t open ‘till nine. The Dollar lift always starts last. They’ll get it going.” He clapped Darren on the shoulder. “Come on, bud. Let’s go.”
We skied and skied and skied. At least it felt like it to my legs. I’d been off the soccer field longer than I thought. Skiing used different muscles anyway.
“Lift’s going.”
I broke my extreme concentration on the snow in front of me and found Grayson pointing with one of his poles to the ski lift above us, which seemed to move in slow motion. I waved to let him know that I’d heard him, and he turned back downhill.
Time passed while we went down, down, down the mountain. But when I finally caught up to Darren and Grayson, the lift had stopped.
No one sat in the tiny booth.
No one else joined us.
We’d arrived at the very bottom of a very large mountain with no way to get back to the top.
Found on the paper cup in the bathroom:
Josh is sick today.
So I shouldn’t want to go
Skiing with Grayson.
4
Grayson
“It’ll start up again soon,” I said, mostly for Darren though I caught the unease in Eden’s hazel eyes as well. I unlatched my skis and stepped out of them, wishing I hadn’t seen that blasted paper cup in the bathroom. What did it mean? She did want to go skiing with me? Or she didn’t?
It was the shouldn’t that was throwing me off. And I didn’t get thrown off, at least not where someone else could witness it. I dismissed the thoughts. I’d been obsessing about that poem for an hour now, and I wasn’t going to ask Eden about it, so I might as well leave it alone. I might go bonkers if I didn’t, trying to figure out if she liked me or not.
She pulled her goggles off and glanced around, her slim shoulders lifting as she took a deep breath. “So, we just wait until it starts up again.” She looked at me for confirmation, and my in-charge-of-everything mask slid into place, though I had no idea what to do either.
I walked to the hut and peered through the window so Eden and Darren couldn’t see my indecision. A switchboard filled most of the space inside, with a barstool behind that. A couple of jackets hung on hooks on the far wall, and it looked like only a single person would fit inside.
I tried the doorknob, but it didn’t turn. “Locked.” A howl of wind punctuated the statement, causing a shiver to rumble down my back. I added a twist to it so no one would see.
Darren had taken off his skis too and sat on a mound of snow several feet away, seemingly unconcerned. Eden still stood on her skis like she was expecting the lift to start up at any moment and she wanted to be the first one on.
I watched her, trying to decide which Eden I liked better: the one who played soccer in her jersey with her ponytail whipping around her face, or the one who wore a snowsuit and conquered mountains. No matter what she did, her movements were precise and controlled, a true athlete who understood her body.
She caught me staring. I glanced away quickly, heat filling my face again. The wind picked up as the minutes passed. The snow started flying sideways, and Darren moved closer to me. “It’s cold,” he said.
I put my arm around his shoulders. “Yeah.”
Eden stepped out of her skis and clomped over to us, her gaze scanning everything, including that lift that still hadn’t budged. “We should try to get inside this building.”
“Eden,” I whispered. “It’s barely big enough for one person.”
She finally turned her beautiful eyes on me, and I sucked in a breath like she’d punched me. “We can share body heat.”
I wished I didn’t like the sound of that so much. I wished Josh would let me ask his sister out. I wished a lot of things in my life, between me and Eden, with my parents, with baseball, were different.
“Yeah,” was all I said before turning away and focusing my attention on the locked door. “Do you have any bobby pins or anything?”
She joined me. “I have a ponytail holder.” She tried the knob but it didn’t magically turn for her. “And the clothes I’m wearing.”
“I’ll call Luke,” I said. “Maybe he can find out what’s going on with the lift.”
“I’ll see if I can get through this door.”
I took a few steps away from her and pulled out my phone. I couldn’t make a call—“No service.” My nerves jumped and my heart kicked out an extra beat.
“What?”
I moved back to Eden and turned my phone so she could see it. “No bars.”
“Not even emergency calls?”
I studied my screen. “Nothing.” I sighed. “It worked at the top of the mountain.”
“We were closer to the condo village,” Eden said. “There are towers up there. Nothing down here.” Her voice pitched up on the last couple of words. The desperation she put into the atmosphere wasn’t hard to detect, and the urge to comfort her grew to epic proportions.
I returned to the hut. “All right.” The words sighed out of me. “I guess I can try kicking it down.”
“Grayson.” Eden’s voice drew my attention. She pointed to her left and I followed her finger to find two figures skiing toward us.
Relief filled me, though I didn’t know why. If I turned sideways, Darren and Eden probably could’ve squeezed into the hut with me. But two more people plus us? No way.
I stepped in front of Darren and Eden as the two people skied up. It was obviously a parent and a child, but I didn’t know it was
another woman until she took off her goggles.
“Hey.” I made my tone as friendly as possible. “When did you start down the mountain?”
“Right at nine,” she said. “The lift was running.”
I exhaled, trying to keep my frustration tightly contained in the little box where I kept it. “Well, it’s not running now, and there’s no one down here. Do you have a phone?”
She unzipped her pocket and pulled out a cell. A frown told me the answer before she said, “No service.”
A strong gust of wind kicked snow off the ground and sent it swirling into the sky. My attention returned to the hut. Though there wasn’t enough room inside, we couldn't stay out here.
“Back up,” I told Eden and Darren. Once they were clear, I gathered my tough-guy persona as close as I could, my blood running through my veins with the strength of a fast-moving river. I was about to make a complete fool of myself in front of four witnesses, one of them the girl I’d had an on-again off-again crush on for close to a decade.
I inhaled, lifted my leg, and aimed.
I missed the sweet spot next to the doorknob and a jolt of pain traveled to my hip. I forced a laugh through my too-tight throat. “Maybe you should do it,” I said to Eden. “You being the expert at kicking and all that.” I grinned at her, feeling a little less foolish when she returned the gesture.
“How would you know?” She stepped to my side.
“I’ve seen you play soccer.”
She’d been sizing up the door, including the dent I’d left a good eight inches away from the doorknob, but now she faced me. “When?”
My heart bobbed in the back of my throat, and my stupid pulse rippled like a flag in a stiff wind. “Last fall,” I said, my voice forced and too high. “I came to four or five games.”
She cocked her head, and with her wearing that cute little hat, my off-again crush roared back to life. Of course, I’d been feeling things for her for a couple of months now, since she gave me my favorite cologne for my birthday in November. How she’d known I liked Alpine Breeze was beyond me, and I’d been too emotional to ask.
And if there was one thing I never let anyone see, it was my emotions. Only happy things. Only accomplishments. Only the best events, even if they weren’t that great.
“I never saw you at any of my games.”
I swallowed my feelings, masked the emotions. I was really good at it—dealing with my absent dad and drunk mother had taught me well. “You’re really focused on the field,” I said.
She blinked, her gaze accessing, which I didn’t like.
“Can you kick it down or not?” I asked. “It’s freezing out here, and I’m looking forward to some of that body heat you talked about.”
The last paragraph in Eden’s letter from her father:
I know I’ve said a lot. I wish I’d be around to say more, every day, every week, every year. You’re already a strong girl, Eden. You can do anything you set your mind to.
I have every confidence you’ll leave behind the mark I wish I could. That because of your drive and determination, you’ll be able to make me proud.
5
Eden
The door splintered open with my first kick. Pride mixed with relief, even though Grayson pushed past me and entered the hut first. He’d barely disappeared from view before he returned and said, “Come on. Let’s squeeze in.”
I waited for Darren to step inside, and then I followed. I couldn’t get the door closed behind me, so I leaned into the Young brothers and swung it closed, heat pooling in my cheeks and chest. With the door closed, I stepped behind it and pulled it open again so the mom and her son could crowd in.
With all of us inside, the door stayed shut even though I’d broken the doorknob something good. I wouldn’t be able to stay in here long, but the reprieve from the chilled wind and driving snow was welcome. My fingertips tingled as they warmed and I wiggled my toes to remind them they still needed to function.
I met Grayson’s eye across the space, and though this was about the most unromantic situation I could’ve imagined, something passed between us. “Is there electricity?” I asked. “Could you start the lift from here?”
He flipped some switches but nothing happened. “Even if I could,” he said, his voice low and drawn out. “What if it stalled while we were on it?” He looked at me again, his dark gaze striking me hard in the chest.
I swallowed hard. Now I wasn’t sure I could get on the lift at all, even if it started up. With weather like this, the ski lift could definitely stop halfway up the mountain, the five of us dangling over the snow-covered cliffs like puppets.
I nodded and switched my gaze to what the hut had to offer. Grayson, Darren and I hadn’t brought any food. It wasn’t like we were skiing to a picnic spot, where we’d stop and pull out sandwiches.
Frustration rose through me. My stomach tightened and then growled. I wished I’d eaten some of the bacon and eggs Melissa had prepared that morning. But my guts had been in knots over whether I was really going to leave Josh. I’d spent breakfast time in the bathroom, writing on paper cups and trying to rationalize my decision to go skiing with Grayson. Sure, Darren had come, but everyone in the cabin knew that if I went, it was because I wanted to go with Grayson.
At least it seemed that way to me. After all, since Dad died, I only went skiing once a year when the local youth group brought everyone up in the middle of the week for night skiing on the bunny hill. Even then, I only went to hang out with Sierra and eat doughnuts.
I hadn’t gone this year because Sierra had moved, and without her, I didn’t do much of what I used to.
My fingers itched to doodle something, but I couldn’t find anything to write with. I vowed that next time I went skiing, I’d bring along the essentials: a bit of food, a pen, some scratch paper, maybe a fire lighting kit.
The snow storms in Idaho could last for days. We’d already had four days of school cancelled because of snow, which had caused us to lose almost all of our upcoming spring break.
I told myself to calm down. That a human could go days without eating. Not without drinking, but we had plenty of snow to melt and drink.
“What’s your name?” I asked the little boy who’d arrived with his mother.
“Ryan,” he said.
“And I’m Loretta,” his mom said.
“Eden,” I said. “And that’s Darren and his older brother Grayson.”
“Are you guys staying in the condo village?” Loretta asked.
“No,” I said. “Grayson’s family owns a cabin just across the highway. We skied over from there.”
The extent of my small-talk abilities spent, I shifted my weight to give Ryan a bit more room to breathe and to relieve the beginning pain in my hip.
“Do you think they closed the resort?” Ryan asked, his face tipped back to look at his mother.
She smoothed her hand over his hair. “I don’t know, Ry.”
“Let’s think,” Grayson said. “If they started the lift and then shut it down, why would they do that?”
“Wind?” I asked.
“Bad weather,” Darren said.
“And there were both,” Grayson said. “But I’ve been up here lots of times with wind and snow and Sun Valley doesn’t close. Fresh snow always brings the skiers out and it snowed a lot last night.”
“It snowed a lot last night,” I said, my mind lighting up. “Maybe there was an accident coming up the canyon.” I leaned forward to peer out the window, but I could barely see the lift pole through the swirling snow. “Would Sun Valley close because of that?”
“Maybe,” Grayson said, thoughtful. “Only if they thought their employees couldn’t get up to work.” He looked at Loretta. “Did you have the TV on or listen to the radio before you left?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. Ryan was showing me this new soundtrack he likes.”
Grayson shook his head and gazed out the window in front of him. “The only thing I can think of that would ca
use Sun Valley to close on a holiday weekend when there’s lots of new snow is…” He trailed off and glanced at his brother, the other little boy, and then me.
My mind landed on the same thing Grayson had obviously already thought of. “The possibility of an avalanche,” I said, my voice hollow.
Grayson nodded once, fear flickering across his features for only a moment. Long enough for me and everyone else who was looking to see it. I realized in that moment that Grayson never—never—showed any negative emotions. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Never worried. I hadn’t seen him upset, or angry, or anxious about anything, ever.
He always wore confidence in his smile, and power in his shoulders, and his laughter brought the life to any class, any party, any function.
I wanted to hear his laughter right now, listen to his reassurances that everything would be okay, that of course there was no threat of an avalanche and that the ski lift would start any moment.
He didn’t say anything.
* * *
After only about thirty minutes, I couldn’t take another breath filled with everyone else’s exhalations, and I squeezed myself past Ryan and his mom and spilled outside.
The snow fell fast and furious; the wind cut through the sky; the ski lift stayed dormant. I looked at it as I took in lungful after lungful of clean air, my fingers squeezing into fists at its stubbornness.
Several moments later, Grayson joined me. “Eden.” His arm snaked around my waist, stopped me from stomping around, and brought me close. He squeezed me and I wanted to relax into his embrace, but I simply took another breath.
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “That lift isn’t going to start, and the resort has obviously closed.” I tilted my head back and looked up at him, searching for his real emotion. He wore his fear and resignation plainly for me to see, something I appreciated. It also scared me, made me wonder why he wasn’t hiding himself from me anymore.