SUNSHINE HIT my face, warm against my skin. A distant honk grew louder. Go away, I thought as my eyes blinked open. Rippled light crept through the cabin window and splashed across the wood floor. My head throbbed, an ache that was piercing. Several seconds passed as I watched dust swirl in the beam of light above the wood, this warm yellow light a rare sight in winter. But then I remembered that winter was almost over, spring drawing nearer every day.

      I narrowed my gaze, the window was the same, but something was different about the view. The honking persisted. Go away! I thought again. I was so tired. It was from a car nearby, maybe even in our driveway, judging by how loud it was. And then—Oh shit!

      I leapt from the bed, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.” I was late for work.

      Only then did I notice my own bed across the room, empty. “What’s with all the honking?” Came a man’s disgruntled voice.

      I gave one final “Shit” when our eyes met. Garrett.

      “Good morning to you too.” He was shirtless, his white freckled shoulders peeking out from beneath the comforter.

      “What the fuck, Garrett.” I scrambled across the room to my own space, picking up clothes from the floor, panties, a tee-shirt. How dirty were they? I didn’t care. Turning the panties inside out, I rushed them on. “Where are my ski pants?”

      “It’s a little early for all the fuss don’t you think, Kate?”

      My ski pants were slung over the dresser, and I shoved them on too. I raced to the bathroom to brush my teeth and gagged at the taste of mint in my throat. I stood, lightheaded, but undeniably more present. What a stupid fucking idea it was to share a room with my ex-boyfriend. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

      Nevermind. I was late, and today was the last day of Bluebirds.

      “Who’s freaking honking?” Garrett was standing at the window that had poured the room full of the warm yellow light only moments ago, its warmth gone now, just a window, silhouetted by his head.

      “Where’s my phone?” I demanded to know.

      He looked exasperated. “I don’t know. You said something last night about it being dead.” He was shirtless. His red freckles like wings across his back.

      “What?” At the same time I remembered, Valerie had taken it days ago, and I still hadn’t plugged it in. What if Juanito called?

      “Who is that?” Garrett bent over the window, peering through the glass. “It’s Sam,” he said, as if this were a revelation. He turned around, looking at me over his shoulder. “She sounds annoyed.”

      “I’m late. Can you text her that I’m coming?”

      Instead of looking as sick as I felt, Garrett smiled sweetly, and started to put his arms around me. “You alright?”

      I twisted from him. “I’m fine. I need to go.” I knelt onto the hard wood, searching for my shoes. When I’d come in here last night to change into my bathing suit, where had I tossed them? I spotted my bathing suit top under the bed, and a fuzzy image of the post hot tub strip tease flickered in my mind. A tilt-a-whirl of bad decisions.

      I stood, clutching one shoe. Garrett stepped closer to me. “I had fun last night.”

      “Did we fuck?” I blurted, though I already knew the answer. Knees, straddling his body, pressing my hands on those pecks, circling my fingers around his sides, pushing him against the mattress while I pushed against him. Suddenly the room smelled like sex. It was suffocating.

      Alarm flashed in his eyes. “You don’t remember?”

      “I remember being very drunk.” I found the other shoe beneath his bed and rushed it on.

      “Are you coming home tonight?” Garrett asked, leaning against the dresser. He was holding a shirt, but he still hadn’t put it on.

      “I don’t know.” My phone was face down on the dresser behind him. I checked, and yep. Still dead.

      “Look I’m sorry—”

      “Garrett, I can’t deal with this right now.” I held up my hand, standing in the doorway. “I have to go.”

SAM LAUGHED uneasily. “You had to see that coming.”

      “Gross.” I held my head in my hands, waiting for the Soma Sam had given me to take effect. I didn’t know how to explain that no, I hadn’t seen sleeping with my ex-fuck buddy who I shared a room with coming. I hadn’t seen any of this coming, not really. Ever since my brother’s overdose, planning had become really hard. My body responded, I acted on impulse. Decisions were made with a jolt in my brain, and then I was thrust into a new life—a new world—seemingly overnight.

      “You never thought about it? Really?” Sam’s car smelled like eucalyptus and tea tree oil, a combo she wore on her wrists like perfume.

      “I mean, maybe when I first moved in, but not since…” I trailed off because I wasn’t supposed to say it—Juanito. I hadn’t considered sleeping with Garrett since I’d started seeing Juanito. We both grew quiet. I assumed Sam was thinking the same thing I was. Was I still seeing Juanito? Had I ever been?

      “I’m sorry,” Sam said as if to answer my question.

      I cringed at what I heard in her voice. Pity.

      “Have you talked?” She asked, both of us pausing to shake our heads at the Jerry pulled over, putting on chains. They were completely unnecessary on a day like today. Clear skies and clear roads ahead, but tourists always did things they didn’t need to in the snow, and I was used to feeling superior to them by now.

      “My phone is dead,” I said, which was an easy way of saying no, but still left the possibility that he might have texted me, I just didn’t know it yet.

      “Still? Here, plug it in.” Sam snapped her phone off the charger in her center console and tossed it into the back seat, waving at the vacant cord for me to take over.

      “Thanks.” After I plugged mine in, I leaned back and tried to relax, which was easier now that the Soma was starting to take effect, and the pain in my head was subsiding. The phone was so dead that it would take a while to actually boot up and turn on. I tapped my hands on my knees, trying to restrain myself from checking it.

      Sam went quiet. She never played music on these drives. Even when Jason rode with us, which was less often lately, she always drove in silence. Pine trees flew past the windows. The morning was already bright and sunny, right on the cusp of spring, but still cold. The road glinted as snow melted, but great mounds of it lined the sides, stacked ten feet high. The plows had been piling it higher and higher for weeks, each storm another layer, like a wall, locking us in.

      This would be the perfect day for Huckleberry, I thought. When the groomers were tracked out and slushy, the Gates would be light and fluffy, softened from the afternoon sun, but not ruined yet. Too bad I was stuck with Bluebirds all day.

      “Fuck, I forgot my gloves,” I said, as I realized they were still sitting on the dresser in my bedroom—Mine and Garrett’s. I curled lower into my seat, swallowing the wave of nausea that seized my stomach, settling just above my breastbone.

      “Lost and found probably has some,” Sam offered, and the car grew quiet again. Why didn’t she ever listen to any fucking music?

      “When’s the exam?” She asked.

      “Next week.” I managed a half smile that felt more like a grimace. The snowboarding instructor exams were all held at the end of the season at a mountain across town. Although we’d been practicing all season, I definitely hadn’t had enough time in the trees. And then there was the question of what I would do after it. Even if I passed, I didn’t have a job. Was Juanito really going to help me get hired in New Zealand? Probably not, after last night.

      Sam flipped her visor down when we reached the top of the pass. The rising sun blasted into the car. “So, you’ll take the level 1-2 combo?” Her voice rose with enthusiasm. It sounded like encouragement.

      “I don’t know, I guess. I mean, that’s what I signed up for.”

      “That’s what I did,” she said, satisfied. “It really fast tracks things, but it’s hard, I’m sure the trainers have been telling you.”

      I nodded. They’d been telling me alright. They’d been telling me I shouldn’t do it.

      My phone chimed then, finally powering on, and as I reached for it, my heart started racing. I counted the days since I’d last seen him—or, since we’d last really been together—four. Four days since we’d touched each other, held one another, since I’d laid my head on his chest, since he’d run his fingers through my hair. It was the longest we’d gone since all of this started.

      I pulled open my messages and drew the page down over and over again to refresh it. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Finally, I locked the phone and dropped it in my lap.

      I could feel Sam’s eyes on me as we parked. Her pity, like a laser piercing through me. I’ve been through worse, I wanted to tell her. Try waking up to your mother gone, moved out in the middle of the night; try finding your brother’s heroin-soaked body in the cave where you used to play.

      I didn’t need her to feel bad for me.

      As we got out of the car, the Soma had finally fully kicked in. My hands shook a little, but my head was blanketed in warm billowy cotton.

      “You know, with your level 2, you could get hired in either Australia or New Zealand without his help,” Sam said before I could walk away.

      “Mm hmm.” I nodded, but I barely heard her. Don’t ruin my high, I wanted to say, I’m tired of thinking about him anyway.

I FOUND GLOVES buried in the kids’ lost and found, one pink and the other teal. The Soma had me teetering. Clipped steps, sliding from careful to careless, a breathless desire to wrangle my executive functioning. My thoughts kept drifting back to him.

      Juanito was marrying Valerie. So what? It was in name only. It didn’t mean anything. Then why had Juanito lied to me? He hadn’t lied, exactly, but he hadn’t been honest either. It was a lie by omission. He’d probably lied about New Zealand too. He was probably lying about everything. I didn’t care, I told myself. I didn’t care. I. Did. Not. Care.

      During the safety meeting, Raquel gave a lengthy lecture about the importance of using the bar during lift rides. “You always must do this. Put the bar down. Put it down.” She gestured emphatically with her hands, and it had taken all of my self-control not to correct her. Pull, I kept thinking, pull the bar down.

      Afterward, I took languid steps to the locker room to change. Somehow, I managed not to run into either of them, though part of me had hoped I would. Were they avoiding me? I should be the one avoiding them! He should be scrambling to make things right. Even through the Soma that cushioned me from the outside world like a padded room, I could feel it, a monster of fury that I’d kept tied up for far too long, a Beowulf, its chains thinning.

      “Can we ride Huckleberry?” Johnny exclaimed when he saw me, the other boys following close behind. They were buzzing, energized about it being the last day, but also because we’d missed yesterday when the storm had closed the pass and their buses had turned around. Their excitement doubled in urgency.

      “Good morning to you too,” I said. I had sunglasses on instead of goggles, another item I’d swiped from the lost and found. “We’re starting with easy rides today. Easy sunshine rides.”

      “You said we’d try Huckleberry before it was over!” Johnny jabbed his poles into the snow.

      “I most certainly did not.” I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Did I? “Where’s Starla?” I asked, scanning the crowd was starting to disperse, instructors taking their groups for their last hoorah of the season.

      “Probably taking a piss in her pants,” one of the boys said.

      “Hey!” I shot stern eyes his direction unsure if he could see them beneath my sunglasses. “Knock that off.” They’d been so good all season. “If you’re gonna be a bully, you can’t ride with us.” That shut him right up.

      “Kate, please,” Johnny wouldn’t give up. He was stabbing the snow with his ski poles, staring up at me, his bottom lip jutted out, an expression I judged was meant to make me feel sorry for him, but I laughed instead.

      “I’m sorry, did you wake up this morning a black skier?”

      “But you’ve been telling us how good we’ve gotten!”

      “There she is.” I spotted Starla clambering from the cafeteria eating the last of what looked like a muffin, and I motioned for the boys to follow me so that we could head her off. If bucko in the back had anything to say, he’d have to yell it past me first.

      “Have you not had fun?” I asked Johnny. To Starla, I said, “C’mon get your skis on girl, we’ve got some riding to do.”

      Johnny said, “No, but Huckleberry would be way more funner than anything we’ve done.” At the lift, he got even more persistent, soliciting the other boys’ support. “Didn’t she say we’d ride Huckleberry?”

      “Stop,” I said more forcefully as I pulled the bar down over us. “Stop,” I told him when he started tapping his pole against the lift. “Stop,” I said again when he leaned forward and stared at me with those bright blue eyes. I pressed him backward, harder than I’d meant to.

      “Owe!” He cried. His eyes narrowed.

      “I’m sorry.” I softened then. Had I really hurt him? “Sorry, it was an accident.”

      “Every class you’ve said—”

      “I didn’t.”

      Starla was sitting on my other side, her hand tucked around my arm, her head on my shoulder. Was she especially needy today?

      “Stop,” I said again, though I was relieved he wasn’t actually hurt. I perched my elbows on the lift bar. Johnny’s tapping was killing me. Tap, tap, tap. Still, beneath it, I saw how I was the buzz kill.

      “Just once!” Finally, he tucked his ski poles beneath his ass and stared over at me. His demeanor changed from stern and insistent to pleading, his body folding over in a full-blown pout. My brother had always been good at this sort of thing as a child. He had a knack for changing his tact so many times, the adult finally relented. He used to beg our dad to get him video games by asking every few hours for months, wearing him down until Dad finally cracked just to get him to stop asking. Dad never was very good at holding the line, but it was hard to say no to John’s big blue eyes.

      I looked out at the trees that stretched across the valley, their green tips looked tiny in the distance, like the stitches of a well knitted blanket, woven together by the universe with care and intention. Every tree had a place in the larger fabric, I didn’t pretend to have any idea what that place was, but it seemed that way, staring at it from above.

      Beau did it all the time, I thought. He took his classes into the trees no matter how many times Raquel said no during safety meetings. Just last week, I’d seen him dart into roped off territory. I didn’t need to see his face to know it was him. He had a reputation for it. The flash of red, and his loud obnoxious woop woop echoing down the valley were enough. It was obvious. And yet, he never got reprimanded. And look how much I’d taught these Bluebirds so far! They’d shown up newby skiers and now they were what? I’d say at least solid blues. At least! As good as I was, if not better.

      “Huckleberry, huh?” I said, nudging Johnny’s shoulder.

      He took that as a yes, and his face broke into a wide smile. “Really? Oh my gosh, really?”

      I laughed. I didn’t have the energy to fight him, but it wasn’t just that. When his face broke into that smile, my heart skipped a beat. It made me happy to see such glee, to be the reason for it. It made me ache for a time I’d been able to make my brother smile that way.

      I felt Starla go rigid, and when I looked over, her eyes were wide, brimming with fear.

      “Starla, you can definitely do it,” I said, encouraged by my own enthusiasm. Johnny’s excitement filled me. For the first time all morning, I didn’t feel like shit. The taste of bile receded in my throat, and instead, exhilaration replaced it. They can ski because of me, I thought. I should continue to challenge them. It was like Oskar said, I was brave. And so were they.

      At the top of the lift, Starla was still rattled with fear. I even considered leaving her with someone, but then I’d have to admit what I was doing, and even though I felt good about it, I wasn’t sure others would.

      “Look how much you’ve learned!” I said to her, trying to boost her up. “Remember the first day when you couldn’t ski at all? Now you’re skiing the whole mountain! This is just another part of it. Same as the rest.” We stopped to take our skis off, preparing to hike over the ridge at the sign that said, “Pass at your own risk.”

      Starla did as the boys did, clipping her skis together, hauling them over her shoulder, crouching to counter the weight. I bent to face her. “You got this, ok?” She nodded, biting her lower lip, wrangling her fear. I didn’t feel worried about her then. It was something more like pride.

      The boys had already trudged ahead, up the ridge, their bodies bouncing happily as they went. “Wait for me at the tree line!” I called after them. I glanced around to check who might be watching. My Bluebirds didn’t wear bibs anymore, not this late in the season. We’d shed those colorful vests that told ski patrol and lift operators the terrain we were good enough to ride because they didn’t fit our skill levels anymore, but it meant we weren’t immediately recognizable as Bluebirds either. To onlookers, we could have been any group, disappearing over that ridge.

      “Come on,” I urged Starla, taking her skis and adding them to my own. I took her hand too. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”

      When we finally reached the top, Johnny and the boys lay on their bellies, peering over the edge at the steepest part, where the bowl dropped easily 100 vertical feet.

      “Kate, this is amazing!” Johnny screamed, his voice cracking excitedly. I smiled and my cheeks began to hurt. His enthusiasm did it again, it filled me. It was better than the drinks I’d had the night before that had blurred my world, better than the Molly that made me feel stronger and more capable than anything else ever had, and it was better even than a night alone with Juanito. Johnny’s joy—its echo of what my brother’s used to be—was the drug I’d come here chasing.

      “We’re just doing it this one time,” I said, “After this, we stick to the runs we’re supposed to be on.” I made eye contact with each of them, standing at the ready. “This is between us. You promise?”

      The boys nodded eagerly, muttering, ya, ya, ya. Even Starla nodded, all geared up and ready. The last thing I needed was a kid blabbing that their coach had taken them into Huckleberry and it getting back to Raquel or Josh, especially before I’d taken the exam. This would be great practice, I thought, as long as I didn’t get caught.

      “It’s not a cliff,” I told them as I pointed at the line we would take down. “Think of it as more of a bowl.” I traced my finger down the bowl and into the valley where we’d pick up the cat track, funneling us back into resort bounds like it was a map on a projected screen in front of us. I showed them where the incline was a little less steep, where they could ride sideways until they were ready to go straight. I didn’t tell them that if they fell here, it would be hard to get back up. They’d likely tumble all the way to the bottom, the yard sale would be outrageous, hiking back up a feat we might not accomplish. I just said, “Try not to fall,” as I positioned them sideways, helping them snap into their skis.

I WENT FIRST, plowing sideways down the bowl’s rim like the three-ton CATs that plowed the mountain every night, packing the snow down tight, until I mustered the courage to turn. I dug my skis in hard, using my full body weight to control my speed. I edged onto my right ski, then my left, panting heavily. My ears burned in the wind. I forgot the throbbing in my head, and the throbbing deeper, and I let the mountain fill me. The clear blue skies were my roof, the trees my wallpaper, and this here bowl was my house. Adrenalin pumped through my chest into my arms and legs, out my fingers and head. “Ahhh!” I screamed, excited, rejuvenated. “That was fucking amazing!”

      I wiped snow from my sunglasses, catching my breath. Turning, I regained awareness of the four tiny figures at the top of the hill where I’d just come from, waiting for my instruction. The ridge was a tight rim around them, the ledge tiny, making it look like they were floating, very far away. They looked so small. Each one was a little twig, dwarfed by the size of the ridge. So fragile. So little. Shit, I thought all of the sudden. The world that had been spinning into some kind of fantasy all morning—the one where I thought I was teaching black skiers!—faded away, and I was squarely in the present.

      These kids were barely blues. Barely. Not only that, but their strength was a fraction of my own, and what I’d just done had taken every ounce I had. But it was too late to turn back. I couldn’t help them hike back down and sending them by themselves seemed harder than just letting them ride down. How would I even explain it? Screaming across the span of snow—Go back! I realized it’s actually too dangerous! Even if they understood, they’d be so disappointed. Would they even listen?

      No, there was no other way out except down.

      I took a breath and yelled, “Ok! Go!”

      The snow fell in crumbles beneath them, trailing lines of powder where they loosened it. They moved slow and then fast, and then very fast, picking up speed like boulders careening down a very steep hill, none of them strong enough to dig in the edge it required to slow the hell down.

      I nearly cried out. Johnny tumbled first, cartwheeling and landing just between two trees that opened into a valley near the river. “Not that way!” I yelled, and I clambered that direction. He rolled just once and then landed with a plop beside a tree, and I whispered “Thank God,” though I’d never believed in any god, and at the same time I realized how insane it was that we were here—what was I thinking?—his body tumbled to a stop and just lay there, and I thought now might be a good time to start. He didn’t move.

      “Johnny, are you ok?” I yelled. Panic crackled inside me like a crab pinching off every organ I had. My heart stopped, my lungs froze, my stomach sank. A moment later, Starla was beside me breathing hard. “Johnny?” I said again, staring at the mound that I was sure was his crumbled body. Terror pulsed through my arms, burning hot as fire.

      A tiny hand shot up from the snow and he squealed, “That was amazing!”

      I laughed, nearly collapsing with relief and exhaustion, blood pumping through me again. My head returned to its throbbing. “Can you get up?”

      I watched through clouds of Starla’s and my breath while Johnny climbed to his feet. Miraculously, both skis were still attached, and he kept babbling excitedly as he untangled his limbs and stomped into the snow. “Did you see how fast I was going? Did you see that’s where I came from? Did you see?” He wobbled a little, righting his goggles, shaking the snow from his beanie. It was unmistakable—his big goofy smile was brilliant, a salve to my nerves.

      “I saw,” I assured him. “I saw it all.”

      When all five of the kids had made it down the bowl in one piece, I finally let myself breathe easily.

      We still needed to get down the narrow cat track, passing flat sections where speed would be crucial, but the hard part was behind us. I gave them hurried instructions about getting in a line, one behind the other, just like we’d done during those first weeks of lessons. “Keep up your speed,” I said, leaping out in front of them. “Watch the person in front of you. Like ducks! Remember, when we were all ducks?”

      I glanced back a few times, but the valley was too narrow to take my view off what was ahead for long. The wind throbbed in my ears now, burning my cheeks and nose. I couldn’t wait to sit down, to take these shitty mittens off, to get warm. When we reached the cat track, finally, I slowed letting my skis glide into the track of marbled ice and looked back, counting one, two, three, four little bodies, bobbing behind me. Where’s the fifth? I kept thinking, glancing back and then forward to keep track of where I was going, but never stopping. The cat track narrowed further, turning a corner of marbled snow that pushed me sideways. I pulled my skis in line and checked again. I did this again and again, until finally, we stopped at the bottom of the cat track where Huckleberry dropped into resort bounds.

      “Where’s Johnny?” I nearly spat.

      “He was right behind me,” one of the boys said.

      We stood for a long moment, staring up at the hill. The trees blew in the wind, their branches suddenly sinister. Two skiers passed, a man and a woman. “Did you see a kid?” I called, and they shook their heads. The man stopped and said, “Do you need help?”

      I narrowed my gaze, considering how much faster he could hike up than I, but then I declined. His help would undoubtedly bring unwanted attention, and Johnny had to be back there, I’d just seen him. “No, we’re alright,” I said as calmly as I could. We’d already done the hard part. The cat track was literally the only way out. Slowly, I popped my skis off aware of their eyes on me, willing Johnny to come bobbing out from the trees. I climbed up a few paces.

      “Johnny!” I called into the forest. My voice echoed through the canyon.

      “Stay here,” I told Starla and the boys, and I began hiking up farther, back the way we’d come. My clunky ski boots sank into the snow as I found my way to the marbled parts where it was hard and packed down. “Johnny! Johnny!”

      No answer.

      Breathing heavily, I walked a few more feet. “Johnny?” My heart was thumping hard. So was my head. I jumped out of the way as skiers raced by, and then—damnit, the kids!—I stumbled back to where I’d left Starla and the boys standing alone in the cold. The couple was gone. “We have to go down,” I said, panting. The lift wasn’t far. There, I could dump the kids and take the lift back up. The mountain was easier to maneuver going down than up. Hastily, I clipped back into my skis and waved the kids forward.

      “What about Johnny?” Starla asked as we started to slide. Her voice was a high whine.

      “I’ll go back up, don’t worry.” My voice sounded more reassuring than I felt, but I was their capable instructor. I knew what I was doing. Didn’t I?

      At the lift, I searched for help, another instructor, preferably not our boss, Raquel. “Oskar!” I yelped when I saw him. Oskar was the perfect person for this mission: Find Johnny, subtly. “Can you watch my kids? I need to go—” I hesitated, unsure of how I should approach this, still convinced I could get away without anybody knowing what I’d done. “I’ll be right back.”

      “Where are you off to little lady?” Oskar had pre-teens with him, the higher level Bluebirds he’d had all season. The real black skiers.

      Feeling desperate, I decided not to lie. “To find Johnny.”

      “He’s not with you?” Oskar’s voice rose sharply, showing rare but immediate concern.

      “Is there more than one way out of Huckleberry?” I asked. We didn’t have time for this. My mind was doing mental gymnastics. Fifteen minutes up the lift, fifteen minutes hiking along the ridge, fifteen minutes down.

      Oskar’s face fell, and my stomach dropped. “Johnny’s in Huckleberry?”

      “Not the steepest part—”

      “You left him there?”

      “I thought he was following me!”

      “I’ll go.” Oskar’s voice was severe, his words clipped. “You stay here.” Before he was gone, he turned and asked, “Where did you last see him?”

      I closed my eyes, looking for a way to describe my nowhere to Oskar, and I felt the blood leave my face as I realized it. “By the river.”

      Oskar started to run, conveying everything I felt. “Tell ski patrol now!” He screamed. “Code red!