Growing Pains

Chapter 46 - I'm a secret to myself

I S A A C

The further we went north, the whiter everything became. At first, the snow covered only the peaks of the mountains on the horizon, then the slopes coming all the way down, and on both sides of the road, the top of every pine tree.

In the last stretch of the ride, there was snow everywhere, the whitest snow I had ever seen. I had been skiing with my family before when I was younger, but there had only been snow on the higher slopes, and not even all of them. This was different. This was very different. I had thought of missing all of this.

Ethan had called last night, saying his mom hadn't been home in the last few days. She hadn't shown up for work either and she wasn't picking up her phone. My mom looked over Ron while Ethan, my dad and I drove around looking for her. Ethan hadn't let us call the police. He never did. Probably because he knew what they would find on his mom.

In any case, we did find her around three a.m. at a bar no one went to for fun. Ethan took her home, as he always did, and insisted I went on the ski trip all the same. This was nothing new, after all, and he knew what to do now that his mom was home, because he had been doing it since he was a kid. My dad insisted on staying with him to help, and mom said she would look after Ron for the whole weekend if needed. Ethan had agreed so long as I went home to sleep a few hours before the bus this morning.

I called him once we made it to the resort and he said everything was fine. His mom was sleeping in his room and my dad was making barbecue chicken in his backyard while my mom made mashed potatoes with Ronny in the kitchen.

"Now get off the phone and go have fun," he hurried me.

I looked up from my shoes, buried in the snow. Coach Sargent was helping us all rent snowsuits, and snowboards, and skis. The guys were all fighting over who got what, except for Eddie, who was laughing at something one of the cheerleaders was saying.

I looked back down at my shoes, "I would rather have fun with you."

"Yeah, I love you too, bye." He hung up. I called him a bitch under my breath and joined the others. Eddie was saying something about some war movie I hadn't watched with that actor everyone was obsessed with these days and the girls were all smiling and agreeing.

I watched him make them smile some more while Coach Sargent went around giving everyone what they needed to hit the slopes, and then disappeared inside a lift to go throw himself off a mountain, apparently. Eddie said Coach went skiing every winter with his family, and that he probably wasn't going to kill himself doing it, and I believed him. He had brought his own skis after all.

Some of the guys probably were going to kill themselves, because they all followed him, even after being told to stick to the easier slopes at first. I had wanted to do the same, obviously, but Eddie had never skied before, and didn't have a death wish like me – his words, not mine – and so I decided I would stay behind with him.

This was a good decision because Eddie was good at absolutely everything he ever did and the next thing I knew he was already racing me down the hills and helping out everyone around him. Mostly Gary, who had followed the others up the mountain, and came back down on a snowmobile, crying, because they had all left him behind with no idea how to come down without breaking something.

Eddie didn't say anything about the crying, but I told Gary I had cried my eyes out too the first time I went down one of the bigger slopes, mostly because a bear had shown up between the trees, and I was barely ten, and had just seen a movie about Big Foot. Gary laughed and followed us around for the rest of the day.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the mountains, courtesy of Coach Sargent, and the guys spent the entire time talking about whether or not they would suck a dick for a million dollars. Next to me, the only thing Eddie did was shake his head, and pretend not to hear them, while eating his vegan burger. Coach, on the other hand, was very invested, sipping from his beer, a large grin on his face.