Anywhere but Here (22 page)

That's how I first heard about
Uganda Rising
and Alison Lawton—because I was reading about past winners at Sundance. The film is all about a part of Uganda where kids got stolen from their families and turned into child soldiers for the rebel army.

The movie made Lauren nauseous. I remember exactly what she said:

“They're in Africa!”

“And?”

“I can't fix Africa. I can't fix it. I can't do anything at all about it, and now I'm going to feel sick all day thinking about those children. What good does that do?” She was blinking fast.

She had a point. But when I suggested that we go to Uganda and make follow-up documentaries to raise awareness or funding, Lauren thought the idea was ridiculous. And that,
apparently, made me angry enough to break up with her.

Indirectly, Alison Lawton is responsible for the demise of my relationship with Lauren, our post-relationship one-night stand, and my current predicament. I wonder if she feels bad about that?

With a belch of exhaust, the bus finally rounds the last bend to the summit of the Logan-Webster, highest year-round highway in the world. There's a frozen lake to our right and avalanche-control stations down the slope to the left. Straight ahead, this road leads all the way to Vancouver.

Probably, I should hijack the bus, kick everyone off, and just keep driving.

This thought grows more appealing as behind me, Lex and her friend start giggling, something about sausage wieners.

I huddle in my seat and close my eyes. It's unfortunate that humans have eyelids but no earlids. If early man had ever had to sit in front of Lex on a school bus, he would have evolved earlids.

My mind wanders. I ate wieners for dinner last night. Wieners and boxed mac and cheese, in silence, with my dad. Since the bar fight, we've been tiptoeing around each other, talking only about the blandest of subjects: food choices, the location of the truck keys, whether a brown shirt goes with gray pants. (We didn't reach a conclusion on that last one.) As far as I can tell, Dad hasn't been back to the bar. He's been spending his
evenings alternately watching the History Channel and Clint Eastwood movies. Sober.

It's kind of scary, actually.

With a grinding of brakes, the bus arrives in the Whitedome parking lot. We stumble down the steps in our ski pants and jackets, like a string of multicolored marshmallows. The air is cold enough to sear my lungs.

Near the rental hut, I stop and make a show of adjusting the Velcro on my cuffs. Really, I'm waiting for Greg. I find it hard to believe—no matter what else is throwing the universe out of whack—that we're not going to ski together.

He almost walks past me, chatting away to some girl in a hot pink ski suit. Then he stops and sends her ahead.

“Tons of powder,” he says.

“Tons.”

“They're setting records for the snowpack already.”

“I heard that too.”

I scuff a boot against the icy trail of footprints. Part of me wants to apologize for screwing things up, but I haven't actually fixed anything with Lauren since the last time I said I was sorry. It feels wrong to apologize again before sorting things out.

Greg opens his mouth to say something. Then someone calls to him from the other side of the hut. There's a whole group there, beckoning.

“I'm sorta surprised you're here,” Greg says. He's already turning toward the others.

“I thought we'd . . .” But what am I going to say?
I thought you'd hang out with me instead of those other people?
That sounds lame. Besides, if I weren't me, I wouldn't want to hang out with me either.

“I guess I'll see you up there,” I say.

Greg raises his hand in acknowledgment as he crunches his way across the snow.

I join the lineup at the rental shop and pretend to be interested in conversation with a bunch of guys from the junior volleyball team. By the time we're matched with skis and sent out into the snow, I've expended my entire stock of small talk and socialization tactics.

“You coming, Cole?” one of them calls as they head to the chairlift.

“I have to adjust a binding. Go ahead, I'll catch up.”

I wait until the entire group has gone up the lift. Then, when it's all strangers, I fall into line. I get on the chair with an older man, and we ride silently to the summit.

Once there, even the strangers swooping back and forth across the slope seem like too much company. I follow the tree line until I find a single set of ski tracks through the trees. Plowing into the powder, I focus on twisting between evergreens.
Knees bent, arcing back and forth around mounds of snow and sweeping boughs. Other than the soft swish of my skis, it's blissfully quiet. Peaceful. Blank. Back and forth, back and forth, I pick up speed and twist faster and . . .

The problem with blindly following someone else's tracks is that someone else may be a better skier. Without warning, the twin lines disappear over a precipice. They swoosh right on through the snow and out into nothingness. For a split second, I consider going over. I can see it, Warren Miller sports-action style: my body flying through the air, skis perfectly parallel, poles steady, tips up in preparation for landing. It'll be shot from multiple angles: a helmet cam, a stationary cam behind me, and an aerial shot from the helicopter. . . .

Fuck.

I don't ski
that
well.

At the last possible moment, I throw my weight to the side, one ski lifting off the snow and the other carving a deep rut in the ice at the edge of the drop. I get a glimpse of sky and snow below, and then I'm careering uncontrollably sideways toward the evergreens along the edge and . . .

Falling.

Not into complete nothingness. One ski flips off and another twists down—with me attached—to stick like a toothpick into the snow. The back of my head smacks hard against a patch of ice.

The world is suddenly, eerily silent.

When I look around, I'm under one of the evergreens, in a well where the bushy green boughs have prevented the snow from falling. The hole is about twice as wide as my body and deeper than my height. Even with one ski stuck straight down below me, the lip of the snow is still above my head. My elbows and knees are wedged into the sides, holding me upright. Basically, I'm stuck in a vertical cave of ice.

Some help would be good right about now.

If this were a film, the edges could bleed to white and my mom's ghost would appear, pushing aside some branches and perching on the lip of my icy well, swinging her snowsuit-clad legs.

I blink. A film version of my mom is not going to get me out of here. I must have really whacked my head. Scrabbling my hands higher, searching for a way to pull myself out, I cause another mini-avalanche of snow. Cold trickles down the back of my neck.

“Looks like you're stuck,” my film mom would say.

“Just resting.”

“This is exactly why they don't recommend skiing by yourself,” she'd continue, still swinging her feet. Music would swell in the background because this would be an epiphany of sorts. A teaching moment in the world of Disney family flicks.

A sprinkle of ice chips falls on my face, an effect I consider
shockingly realistic. I guess even melodramas are coming in 4-D these days.

“If you ask me—” she'd say.

“Which I didn't. Because you're sort of . . . dead.”

“Completely a figment of your imagination,” she'd agree.

I reach to finger the bump on the back of my head. It hurts like hell. “Unless I'm dead too.”

“I always pictured the afterlife to be less icy,” she'd say.

She would know, I suppose.

“Shouldn't your friends be here? Don't you watch out for each other?”

Ignoring those questions, I swing one leg to the side, trying to snap off my ski. It works, eventually. Once my boot is free, I start searching for a toehold.

My head pounds. Every few minutes, I have to stop and rest it against the ice. I almost wish my dead mother really were here because then the film could cut to when I woke up in bed, knowing the fall was all a bad dream.

Another toehold attempt. Another rest.

A word of encouragement would be good right now. A supportive smile. There was always something inexplicably comforting about my mom's presence. She's sort of reassuring even when she's an advice-spouting illusion.

“I miss you,” I say out loud.

There you go: One crack on the head and I'm talking to dead people.

If I want to get out of this hole, I'm going to have to climb. I jab my foot backward and finally, I manage to chip a hold in the ice. Balancing on that heel, I haul upward and swing an arm over the lip of the tree well. Then I stop to pant.

“Totally going to be okay here,” I say to my mom. “No need for you anymore. We can go right to the cut scene.”

“I could leave, son, but it looks as if you could use a little help.”

Interesting. That's not my mother's voice. It's an older man's. And he's wearing a bright red jacket and staring down at me. Ski patrol. He probably thinks I'm a lunatic. There's a younger guy behind him, also staring.

“I'm fine,” I mutter. “I was just about to climb out.”

As the young one pulls out a radio, I take a furtive look around. She's not there, of course. And even though I know she was never there, her absence leaves me a little hollow inside.

I try to tug myself farther onto the snow, but my foot slips. Only the old guy's hand, now clamped around my shoulder, keeps me from falling back into the hole.

“Thanks,” I mumble. “I would have gotten out, probably. I was just sort of missing my mom.”

What the . . . ? Why am I talking about her with strangers? I must seriously have a brain injury.

“We'll give her a call, soon as we get you down the mountain,” he says.

“Good luck with that,” I tell him.

The ski patrol team straps me onto a stretcher for the ride down. I gaze skyward as branches and chairlift cables whip by me. By the time we finally slide to a stop, I think my eyelids have frozen open.

“Let's get you inside,” the older one says.

From my upside-down position, I see the Swiss-Alps-style gingerbread of the hut, then the wood-paneled ceiling.

“Got yourself into a bit of a mess there,” says the young guy. He seems to be one of those people with a talent for stating the obvious. “Ah, well. Happens to most of us at some time or another.”

“That's what we're here for,” says the older one.

Then, while one of them takes my blood pressure and the other radios to find the adult responsible for me, I realize something: We all
do
get ourselves into messes. A lot of messes.

I blink on command and obediently follow a penlight with my eyes. The whole time, I'm cataloging people who have messed up. There's Lauren, obviously. Trying to seem in control when, really, she's never been more confused. And Hannah, with her oh-so-casual act when she desperately wants to fit in. There are more. Lex. Greg's mom. Greg's dad.

My dad.

Maybe he fell in a metaphorical tree well when Mom died and he's still trying to pull himself out. I assumed he had some sort of master plan, even if it was to become a committed drunk. But no, he's been flailing around like the rest of us, searching for footholds.

“I think you're all right,” the younger ski patrol guy says. “Probably a mild concussion. You might feel some dizziness in the next few days, and you'll definitely have a headache. Check in with your doctor when you get home.”

Lauren. Hannah. Greg. My dad. A concussion is the least of my problems.

“Buddy,” I tell him, “I have a lot of headaches. What's one more?”

It turns out that being rescued by ski patrol does not actually cause you to die of embarrassment. Which is unfortunate because in a choice between death and that bus ride home, during which half the bus (girls) gushed over me and the other half (guys) mercilessly mocked me, I would have chosen death. Hands down.

I am so relieved to get home. So relieved, I can't even describe the level of relief that I feel. I want to dump my ski stuff, crawl into bed, and stay there until January.

“I'm here,” I yell in the direction of the living room. “I'm going to bed.”

“Don't go yet; we haven't said hello!”

Seriously? I would pay a million dollars just to go to bed without anyone talking to me, and I have to hear
that
particular voice in my house?

Well, it could be worse. I could still be chatting with my dead mother.

Or maybe that would be better.

“Cole!” Sheri smothers me in a hug that squishes her breasts against my ribs in a highly uncomfortable way. She reeks of gardenias and she's wearing a black dress that's splattered with massive red flowers that look like vaginas.

I should have known she was here. I should have smelled her as soon as I walked in the door.

“I have a headache. I have to go to bed.” It's worth a try.

“A headache! I'll make you some tea. First, we have something to tell you. Come. Come!”

I have no choice. She drags me by the arm as if I'm a stuffed bear she won at the fair. The vagina fair. I really can't look at her dress.

My dad—my big, square-shouldered, lumberyard dad—is sitting at the kitchen table with shimmering stickers all over his cheeks. He appears to be doing crafts with a small, pigtailed child.

Maybe I should have asked the ski patrol guys for some meds.

“Cole! We've been waiting for you,” Dad says. “This is Brittany Anne.”

The little girl looks up at me and smiles, pigtails swinging and glitter dotting her nose. She's a miniature version of Sheri, except less smelly and with better fashion sense.