Chapter 16
“From what you’re telling me, it’s very likely macular edema,” Dr. Porter says through the phone.
It’s late the next morning, and I’m back in the lodge lobby, this time on a bench by a massive picture window, holding my phone with one hand while I tear at the fingernails on the other with my teeth.
I quit biting my nails in eighth grade after I heard my grandmother ask my mom what she was going to do about my “filthy habit.” I kept polish on them for years to remind myself.
But now they are naked, and it seems more acceptable to chew on them than to punch random passersby, which is the other option my nervous energy is considering.
Even though she’s usually full of bad news, I’m starting to like Dr. Porter.
She talks to me like an adult, and gives me the straight scoop instead of sugarcoating stuff or dumbing down her vocabulary.
And frankly, it’s nice to talk to someone about RP without worrying that they won’t understand, or that I’ll have to take care of them somehow while they have an emotional breakdown about it.
This is the reason I decided not to call my mom back.
If I had told her my vision is rapidly declining and that I almost killed myself night skiing, she would have freaked out.
And I didn’t want to be responsible for her careening down the highway at eighty miles an hour to come get me, her panic making her driving even worse than mine would be.
No thanks. Stuffing me into her minivan wouldn’t actually fix anything.
It would just make me have to deal with her out-of-control feelings on top of my own.
So instead, I looked up Dr. Porter’s number, and was comforted when the off-hours emergency number yielded a familiar voice.
“Edema means swelling, right?” I say. All that time my mom said I was “wasting” watching medical dramas on TV is paying off.
“Exactly,” she says. “It’s not unheard of for a change in altitude to have this effect on people with RP.
Or it could even be as simple as the retina reacting to dehydration.
” She pauses for a second, maybe debating how much information to give me, then continues.
“Even though, in a direct way, RP breaks down the rods in the retina, it also tends to pick up a lot of hitchhikers along the way. Not just edema. Cataracts and cysts are also things we want to keep an eye out for as we move forward.” Keep an eye out? Is she doing that on purpose? Aargh.
“Is this”—I wince in anticipation of the answer—“is the edema permanent?”
“Oh! I wouldn’t think so,” she says. “Usually, vision returns to normal within a few days back at a lower altitude. You should be fine once you come home. If not, there are some eye drops we can try.”
It feels like I’ve been underwater for the last day and I’ve finally kicked my way up to the surface. If you had told me a few weeks ago that getting back to my regular crappy vision would be something to celebrate, I would have laughed at you, but now it feels like winning the Powerball.
I thank Dr. Porter and hang up. Outside, the morning crowd is hitting its peak, and the line to the chairlift goes right past the window.
Groups of girls are taking selfies, their goggles perched perfectly on their soft ski hats.
How they can be dressed in such bulky clothes and still look skinny is like alchemy to me.
Guys are shouting to each other from different spots in line.
I can’t make out what they’re saying through the glass, but based on what I witnessed yesterday I’m sure they’re challenging their fellow adrenaline junkies to black diamond races, talking trash that might be more for the selfie girls than for the person they’re talking to.
Directly up the blurry hill in front of me, I can just make out a class of little kids flying straight down the bunny slope, unencumbered by any of that annoying fear of death that would slow them down.
In fact, unencumbered would be my description for everyone but me in the ski universe.
Like the only care in the world anyone here has is how many inches of new snow there are.
The idea that anyone else could have health problems or relationship problems or certainly dead friend problems seems completely impossible.
The bus isn’t leaving until this afternoon so the group can maximize their skiing time.
I want to go back to bed, get the rest that eluded me when I woke up at three last night and my brain kept me busy troubleshooting doom-and-gloom scenarios, but we’ve already checked out, all our bags sitting on a train of luggage carts by the front desk.
I land on a caloric solution. I’m going to après-ski, which the internet informed me means socializing, entertainment, and refreshment after a day of skiing, without the skiing. I’m going to “après-nothing.”
The café is dead. I slide into a booth and grab a plastic-coated menu from between the salt and pepper shakers.
I flip it open and the anticipation drains out of me.
I can’t read it. The blurs in my vision seem to fall in all the essential spots, the junctures that differentiate an R from a B from a 5.
I blink and try again, but no matter how my eyes strain to reach around the blurry spots, they move along with the center of my gaze, like a queen stalking a pawn across the chessboard.
I close the menu and close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a burgeoning headache, still not quite believing that I can’t do the simplest, most automatic thing in the world.
“Made a decision?” The waiter might be about my age, but his easy smile makes him seem like he’s been on this planet longer, enough to get real comfortable.
He’s got a hint of a Southern accent, which could be why he reminds me of a life-sized version of Woody from Toy Story, except with a five o’clock shadow. I like him right away.
“Um, no, actually, I couldn’t decide,” I lie. “What’s your favorite thing on the menu?”
“Without a doubt the loaded tots. They are life-changing. I eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
This guy is my kind of eater. “I better get them, then. I could use a few changes in my life.”
“You got it. Drink?”
“What life-changing beverages do you have?”
“Well, nothing truly transformative, but your meal will take care of that. Might as well get hot chocolate with whipped cream. It’s basically its own food group here.” He shrugs affably.
“Done and done,” I say. “Oh, and two big glasses of water, please.”
“Smart.” He gives me a little two-fingered salute and saunters off to the kitchen.
Moments later, the waiter returns with a giant pottery mug of steaming hot chocolate.
“Not hitting the slopes this morning?” he asks me as he slides the drink onto the table.
“Nah, I had a pretty unnerving time skiing last night,” I say. “I think I’m all set for now.”
He nods. “Yeah, I never really bought into that ‘get right back on the horse’ thing. What about what your gut is saying? I listen to my gut.”
“I don’t trust the horse,” I say. “The horse is very slippery and does not appear to like me.”
“Maybe another horse on another day,” he says.
“Exactly.” I’m glad he gets it.
He pulls a can of Reddi-wip out of the pocket of his apron and artfully sprays a mound of whipped cream into the cup so high it resembles the peak outside the window.
“Tableside service,” he announces.
“Wow, that defies the laws of physics,” I say.
“There’s no such thing as too much whipped cream,” he answers. “Now, what would really defy those laws is if you could drink it without getting a white mustache.”
“I’m not even going to try to rise to that challenge. Thanks for the hot chocolate.”
“No problem. I’m going to grab the waters and those tots. And some more napkins, since you are clearly going to need them.”
I take my time over my food, since I have absolutely nowhere else to be.
Normally, if I was stuck sitting somewhere by myself, I would read a book or look at my phone, like a semi-normal human.
But my retinas—retinae? Shit, I should know the name of my own body parts—have decided those activities are off-limits for now.
I have no choice but to watch my cowboy, a cute boy who is not Richard Walker, wipe down the tables and refill the salt shakers, his every movement making it seem like what he’s doing is more about fun and less about work.
He was probably just being so nice to me to improve his tip, but in the moment he did an excellent job of making it seem like he was enjoying himself.
I pretend like I’m considering writing my phone number on the check, as if I’ve never met myself and don’t already know I’m way too much of a scaredy-cat to do something like that.
And anyway, a long-distance relationship isn’t exactly an option for sad sacks like me with neither a car nor the ability to drive.
Finally, the amount of time I’ve been sitting in the same place without doing or saying anything gets cringeworthy. I can’t read the check, so I put down what I’m sure is entirely too much money just to be safe. I don’t write my number.
“Make sure you stop in and visit me next time you come to tame horses,” he calls after me.
“I will!” I promise, wishing it were true but also knowing there’s no way in hell I’m ever coming skiing again. Not this mountain or any mountain, I guess. I can almost hear the click as the scope of my future tightens even smaller.
I’m the first to board the bus. This is by design so I won’t have to choose who to sit with.
The tough-as-nails woman behind the wheel looks up from her sandwich to see me tapping on the glass and yanks on the lever to slide the door open.
She’s clearly a little annoyed that I interrupted her snack.
She eases the volume down a few notches on her murder podcast and stares at me. I pause, but then she waves me in.
“C’mon up, you’re letting all the heat out.” Her voice isn’t unfriendly after all, so I climb the stairs.
The warmth inside the bus encircles me like a hug.
I go way to the back and settle down in the corner.
Maybe I can just lie low all the way home until I get back to the safe tedium of my own room.
I close my eyes and drift back to the time a few weeks ago when everything in my life felt much more predictable and within my control.
When every day Mason would be smirking at me from across the lunch table.
I remember thinking my life was so boring then.
Now I would give anything to be that bored.
Soon I hear laughing outside, and I lift up my head to peer out the window at the group of kids gathering.
The tinted windows of the bus allow me to see them when they can’t see me.
Again, ironic. Not surprisingly, I zero in on Richard right away.
Even though he’s a little fuzzy through my altitude-addled vision, I can still read his body language enough to make my skin crawl.
He looks positively jaunty. He and Amanda are standing next to each other, their hands each stuffed inside their pockets, playing some sort of jostling game.
She elbows him in the side and then he elbows her, back and forth until one of them gets pushed hard enough to have to take a step to the side.
Looks like a dumb excuse to have physical contact.
I wonder about the truth of what Amanda said.
Maybe she’s just in denial about her love for Richard.
Or maybe he lusts after her so much he’s creating enough chemistry for the two of them.
One thing’s for sure. He is not looking for me.
A bone-chilling wind rushes through the bus as the door is reopened and everyone climbs aboard, bringing a wall of noise with them as their voices bounce around inside the enclosed space.
I’m trying and failing to look unconcerned about who will join me at the back of the bus when Jeff’s friendly face appears.
I’m so happy I could kiss every one of his floppy dark curls.
“There you are,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you, Hatts.”
“Here I am. Sit with me!”
Jeff unzips his jacket, pops it into the overhead space, and settles in next to me. It feels like protection, like a Saint Bernard sat down in my row.
“I probably could have convinced Lucia to come if she knew you were gonna be here. Why didn’t you tell us?”
I’m not really sure why. After our last conversation about Mason, I’ve been steering a little clear of the whole group.
I guess I’m afraid he’ll come up again, which makes it hard to hold the secret that, for some reason, I’m the only one who gets to keep talking to him.
Or maybe I was trying to keep the whole Richard situation out of their awareness because on some cellular level I knew how ill-advised it was.
“It was very last-minute,” I finally say.
This seems to satisfy him. Jeff is not the kind of guy to look for subtext. He takes people at face value.
“So, how’d the snow treat you? I didn’t even know you skied.”
“I don’t,” I say.
Just then we hear a high-pitched whistle from the front of the bus, and the shouting subsides. I get up on my knees to see over the seat backs in front of me. It’s our chaperone, Mr. Williams, standing next to the driver.
“Attention, minions.” That’s what he always calls students, like he’s an evil mastermind or something. Mr. Williams phrases everything in a weird way, and it’s impossible to know whether he’s doing it on purpose or not. The awkward contours of teachers’ senses of humor never stop fascinating me.
“So it has come to our attention that there was some unauthorized substance use of the green leafy variety among our illustrious group last night, which is not at all what I expected from ambassadors of our Crimson Tigers. And as you of course realize, this is a blatant violation of the Code of Conduct that you all signed in order to participate in any school extracurriculars.”
Jeff and I look at each other, and his eyebrows are raised in surprise. He clearly has no notion of what Mr. Williams is referring to, the lucky duck.
“Anyway, I am not going to execute any discipline myself. I am merely the messenger, and will be letting the administration know. But I wanted you all to have something to mull over with your consciences on the long ride home.” He leans in and says something to the driver, and she pulls the bus door closed.
“I hope you enjoyed your testing of a zero-tolerance policy. I think you will find that it is not, in fact, just a formality.” And with that, he disappears, lowering himself into the front seat.
I slide down off my knees, too. I’m just trying to get comfortable in my seat despite all the uncomfortable thoughts in my head when I hear Mr. Williams again.
“Hattie! Come to the front, please.”