Authors: Rachel Vail
SAMANTHA SAT BETWEEN me and Kevin in the back seat for the long ride up to Vermont. She asked if I wanted to play hangman. I told her I got carsick. She said she was sorry to hear that, and took
The Hobbit
out of her backpack, which she read from beginning to end, while twirling a strand of her own hair. I guess hair-twirling runs in their family. Kevin drummed on his leg and listened to music through his earphones. There was no singing in the car this time around, no personal space. I looked out my window the whole time, mourning my untoasted buns.
The house was fine but upside down, with the bedrooms downstairs and the living room and kitchen upstairs. There was a pool table behind the couch and a fireplace in front of it. It looked like an L.L. Bean ad. Kevin and his father got the twin beds in the red room, Samantha and I each got a twin bed in the yellow room and my mother was marooned on her own in the big blue room with its one king-sized bed.
The first night, after we hauled all our stuff in and unpacked it and ate the dinner Mr. Lazarus cooked for us—pasta à la vodka, which tasted a lot better than it looked, which isn’t saying much—I went downstairs and took my shower. I brought my pajamas and a sweatshirt into the bathroom with me. I didn’t need to go parading around as if we were all actually related. Everybody was being perfectly pleasant and I didn’t want to be the pouty brat of the group, but no way was I going to pretend we were suddenly the Brady Bunch either.
After I was all dried off and dressed, I dashed across the hall to the yellow room and slipped under my covers. I got out my book and read for a while, but I guess I was pretty wiped out because I was asleep before anybody else came down.
When I woke up the next morning, Samantha was fast asleep in the bed across the room. Her hands were in prayer position, tucked under her cheek. She looked so sweet and innocent. I lay there imagining how it would be if she actually became my sister, my half sister, the first in line to be my maid of honor at my wedding, bumping out Tess. Would she come to me asking my advice about school (probably not) or boys (yikes) as she got older? Would she look up to me? Would I protect her and, like, brush her hair for her?
It was too weird. I got up quickly and dashed to the bathroom to brush my teeth, thinking, this is a good plan, doing all my personal stuff before anybody else. I could just be in a different time zone and not have nearly as much stress, even if we all have to live together.
I thought about peeking into one of the other bedrooms to check that the sleeping arrangements were as advertised, but decided the embarrassment potential outweighed the nosiness factor by a heck of a lot. So instead I headed up the stairs to make myself some breakfast, humming
personal space, personal space,
and almost jumped out of my skin when Mr. Lazarus said, “Hi, Charlie!”
He was standing at the counter holding a mug in one hand and a newspaper in the other, wearing his long underwear.
“Hi.”
I went past him to the fridge and took out the milk. As I was pouring myself a big glass, he asked, “Psyched to ski?”
I nodded. “So is your wife really a fighter pilot or a masseuse?”
“She was in the Air Force,” he said. “Briefly. Now she’s a masseuse. Ex-wife.”
“And you’re a photojournalist?”
“Photographer.” He nodded some more.
“What kind of photographs do you take?” I hated myself. I would not, I knew, have been doing this if anybody else had been in the room. He obviously didn’t know me well enough to have planned for security. “Abstracts? Nudes? Have you had, like, shows of your work in galleries?”
“I do weddings,” he said, leaning back against the counter and crossing his legs. “Bar mitzvahs, holiday cards. That kind of thing.”
“Oh,” I said. Of course, I already knew that.
“But your intuition is right, your jab.”
“I wasn’t . . .”
“Come on,” he said. “Of course you were. Don’t back off. I like you better when you let your talons show.”
“My what?” I was starting to regret picking on him. He had seemed as meek and pitiable as a substitute teacher. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
“Yes,” he said, almost drawling. “I did want to be the kind of photographer who showed in galleries. That was my ambition.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“But I love what I do now.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Yes it is,” he answered. “You know why?”
“Why it’s nice?”
“Why I like it. Because my job is to see the beauty in people, and then show it.”
“What if they’re ugly?”
“Then I’m not looking well enough,” he answered. “Because we are all amazingly, shockingly beautiful. Aren’t we?”
“You must know different people than I do,” I said.
He smiled. “What’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your ambition.” He sipped from his mug.
“To get out of this conversation?”
He laughed. He has a really generous laugh. I could not entirely blame my mother for liking this guy, despite my ambition to. I shrugged, trying not to smile myself in response, and said, “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“I’m only fourteen.”
“I know how old you are.” When he smiles his canine teeth are noticeable. It gives him a sort of vampire look, or maybe it was just that he looked a lot like Kevin, who had been a vampire for Halloween. Or maybe I was just panicking.
“I honestly have very little ambition.”
“Your mother was right,” he said.
“My mother told you I have very little ambition?”
“She said that you’re like her, but more so.”
I stood at the top of the bunny slope praying
don’t fall, don’t fall
and waiting for my turn with all the other kids whose parents had abandoned them to ski-school jail. Samantha went first of the three of us. She did fine, slow and cautious, nice wide turns. She got sent to a group of kids who looked about her size.
A higher group,
I prayed. If I’m with his little sister and he’s doing black diamonds, I will fake a broken leg and sit in the lodge. My ambition, Mr. Lazarus wanted to know? To not make a fool of myself in front of your son. That’s all. Forget Pulitzers, Nobels, canonizations, even falling indescribably madly passionately out of control in love. I just want to
not fall
. At all. In anything. That is the entirety of my ambition.
Kevin went next. He did tight little turns, his boots locked together. Highest group. Great. Just great.
I was next. I clamped my knees against each other and leaned forward. I was going so slow I thought I might start moving uphill. But I eventually made my way down and was relieved and surprised when the head ski guy pointed his pole directly at Kevin.
Success.
I duck-walked up to him and the beautiful redhead ski instructor beside him. There was nobody else in the group yet. I was so relieved I gave the instructor an uncharacteristically cheerful hello.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Helena, and this guy is Kevin.”
“I know,” I said. I just achieved my life’s ambition. I’m done now. I can totally relax and coast for the rest of my life.
“Oh.” Helena looked back and forth between us. “Are you guys . . .”
“Cousins,” Kevin said.
“Oh, great, so you’ve probably skied together a lot. No inside jokes, now, promise?” Helena stretched over her skis. “So what’s your name?” she asked me.
“We call her Chuck,” Kevin said.
“Chuck?”
“Short for Charlotte,” I said.
“I love that,” Helena said.
“Me, too,” I mumbled.
Helena skied over to her boss to see if any other kids were getting assigned to her.
“Ready, Chuck?” Kevin shot me a sly smirk.
Some of my other ambitions came charging back.
WHEN I HEARD footsteps coming toward the bedroom that night, I faked sleep.
“Good night,” Kevin whispered.
“Hey,” Samantha said, near my head. “I won.”
“You cheated.”
“You can’t cheat in chess. You promised.”
“Ugh. Fine.” I heard Kevin tiptoe loudly into the room.
I opened the eye that was against the pillow. Kevin had his back to me, and Samantha’s eyes were closed. This is exactly what Kevin did:
He poked her on the forehead and said, “North.”
He poked her chin and said, “South.”
He poked her left cheek and said, “East.”
He poked her right cheek and said, “West.”
Then he turned to go.
“Kevin!” she said.
“Come on, Samantha. Enough.”
“That was not a whole Global Kiss,” she said.
He groaned.
“I would’ve given you the whole five dollars if you had won,” she said.
Kevin came back into the room. He kissed the top of her head and grumbled, “I love you all over the map.”
Her eyes were closed. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Do you miss her, too?”
“No,” Kevin said.
“I do.” Samantha opened her eyes.
“Good night,” Kevin said, and left the room, closing the door gently on his way.
I closed my eyes quickly. I listened as Samantha got into her pajamas and then into her bed. When I opened my eyes, she was reading with a flashlight. At that moment she glanced over at me. We both gasped a little, both caught.
“Were you awake the whole time?”
I paused a second too long, trying to formulate a lie.
“I thought so,” she said. “Did you see the Global Kiss?”
“The what?”
“Global Kiss—north, south . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “Global Kiss, huh?”
Samantha nodded. “My mother made it up for Kevin when he was little, and since she’s, you know, away, he gives it to me sometimes. Isn’t it nice?”
“Yes,” I said.
“My dad loves your mom,” she whispered. “I think.”
“I think so, too,” I whispered back.
“Do you love Kevin?”
“Why . . . why . . . why do you ask?” I very casually responded.
“You and he get that same blotchy look around each other that our parents get.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling somewhat blotchy suddenly. “He does? Kevin does? Or is it just me, getting blotchy?”
“No,” she said, bless her. “Him, too.”
“He’s going out with my best friend.”
“I know,” she whispered.
We raised our eyebrows at each other, across the yellow carpet. She got it, she knew, she was on my side. So I asked her: “What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m only eight. Do you mind if I read some more now?”
“Sure,” I said, and rolled over. I don’t think I fell asleep for hours.
I TRIED TO convince myself not to like him. I really did. I was getting to know him a lot better. Sometimes his nose was a little runny, a particularly unattractive quality despite suffering from it—on occasion—myself. His lips were slightly chapped, which made him look marginally less kissable. And when I said, “What if Helena’s boyfriend wanted to marry her, but his last name was Handbasket?” Kevin didn’t get it, or at least didn’t die laughing.
How could I be crazy about somebody like that? Also, he ate French fries with mustard and hummed while he skied (okay, that was pretty cute). Oh, and as we were waiting in the lift line on the second day, he told me, “Your socks don’t match.” I was about to explain to him that mismatched socks was my thing, the special thing about me, my style, when I realized, okay, obviously it was my mother who had told Mr. Lazarus about the socks for the gift. It wasn’t Kevin. He had never noticed. I shrugged and turned away from him, pretending to concentrate on the chair approaching us from behind.
But then, once the safety bar was down and we were floating silently up the mountain, he leaned against me, slightly. His jacket pressed against mine, and I stopped caring about anything else.
We skied hard and fast, following Helena in a line down the mountain, all in the same rhythm. It was great. The third day we decided to avoid the lunch crush by waiting until two to eat. My stomach wasn’t just growling, it was roaring. We each got a tray and met back at the table where we’d left our hats and mittens, and wolfed down our food without talking. I only looked up when I heard Kevin slurping the dregs of his soda. He’d gotten a small. I smirked at him as I casually sipped from my jumbo.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, and plopped his straw into my cup, too.
I started to open my mouth to protest the gall of that and the germs (oh, whoa, his germs, again) but he was chugging all my soda so I started sipping as fast as I could. We were so close our noses were practically touching. We sucked my cup dry in about five seconds flat.
“Thanks,” he whispered, his lips still around his straw.
“Uh-huh,” I breathed. Then, pretending I had to tighten my boot buckle, I ducked under the table. As I sat up I slammed my head on the underside and fell off my chair onto the floor.
“One wipeout for Chuck,” Helena cheered. “Come on, let’s ski.”
My legs were slightly shaky on the next few runs, probably from skiing so hard. Right. Just before four o’clock, racing down so we could get one last run in, I was between Helena and Kevin. We were coming down Revenge, our favorite trail. It was the time of day when the shadows can really mess you up, camouflage the moguls just as your legs are starting to feel like overcooked spaghetti, but I was keeping up with Helena, in a good crouch, feeling good and free. She skidded to a stop and I edged in, just above her. I was breathing a little hard, but I’d gotten over being embarrassed about that and trying to hide it from her. She smiled at me. “You and your cousin are really improving this . . .”
She stopped and looked up the hill. I turned to see what she was looking at and saw Kevin’s jacket, smashing me in the face.
When we stopped tumbling and lay still, I first felt only cold on my neck. Then I felt a weight on top of me and something soft on my cheek. It took me a second to realize it was Kevin’s cheek.
He wasn’t moving.
“Hey,” I said softly.
I felt him shift. Phew.
“You okay, Chuck?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so. I’m looking at the clouds. Maybe I’m dead.”
He lifted his head off mine. Snow crusted the bits of hair that stuck out of his hat, and his eyebrows, and his mouth.
“Nice stop, Santa,” I told him.
He sniffed. “You like that? Been working on that all week. To impress you.”
“Oh,” I said. “You sure did. Swept me off my feet.”
Luckily Helena pulled him off me then, and we got caught up in the tumult of finding our scattered skis and poles and assuring her that neither one of us had to be taken down in the stretcher. We skied down in tandem, racing but not full-out. The sun was heading down and everything looked glazed, including us. And the smell of hamburgers from the lodge was making me weak with hunger.
“Let’s call it a day, huh?” Helena suggested when we got to the bottom.
I thought of six wiseguy suggestions of what we should call it instead of a day, but managed to hold them in. Instead I bumped my shoulder into Kevin, who toppled over.
“Oh, Chuck, now you’re asking for it,” he yelled from the ground.
I jumped out of my skis and almost got away before he attacked me with a handful of snow in my face.
It was freezing.
It was great.
It was the beginning.