He comes close to me and puts his hands on my cheeks, a move I’ve quickly grown to recognize as the“don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything” maneuver. It’s a little hacky but supremely effective. “They light those trails up with a quadrillion watts,” he says, then smirks and nods. “That’s the official number.”
The cuteness makes me give in. “I’ve got to get my gear. Wait for me by the chairlift?”
He winks, and I hurry off to suit up, feeling like I’m on a sugar high. What was I being so melodramatic for? We can work this out. So he wants to be physical. That’s okay, I want to be physical, too. The only thing we disagree about is the timeline.A little scheduling snafu, that’s all this is, I think as I pull on an extra pair of socks. And he seems to want to be a feminist, even if he was using it to get what he wanted. At least he’s thinking about my rights.
Moments later, I glide up to him and the corners of his eyes crinkle in welcome. He points to my breath streaming out in front of me and says, “That’s hot.” I giggle and we scoot over to let the seat of the chairlift make contact. Richard nods in approval at how seamlessly it happens, and then begins discussing the pros and cons of the various trails that await us at the top. I can’t take it in: I’m distracted by the pride that’s filling my lungs. My mom always comments on how fast I pick things up, how I’m a quick learner, but she often pairs the comment with the criticism that I don’t give things enough of a chance when I’m not immediately good at them, so that’s the part I usually walk away with. But she’s right, I am a quick learner. I’m rocking all this skiing stuff.
As we slow toward the top of the mountain, though, all my newfound pride drains away. I gaze at the skiers passing below us and realize something weird is happening with my eyes. Richard was right, there are a lot of lights, but it’s like I didn’t put my contacts in this morning. No, it’s worse than that. Like I’m looking through a windshield in the pouring rain and there are no wipers. What the actual fuck?
Fear prickles on the back of my neck. Dr. Porter said that my declines would not be steady, that there would be long stable periods followed by steep dips, but I didn’t expect to go blind all in one night. Is that what’s happening?
“You ready?” Richard puts the bar up, and before I have time to gather my thoughts the ground rises up underneath our skis and we slide down off the chairlift. We stand at the top and Iblink, my eyes trying ineffectually to focus, to cut through whatever thick acrylic sheeting has sprouted up between me and the rest of the world. I blink again and rub my eyes a little, but I don’t dare do it too hard or my contacts will get all bunched up in one corner of my eye, or worse, pop out. Rubbing helps precisely zero percent.
I heard once that if you smell burning toast that could mean that you’re having a stroke. Am I having a stroke in my eyes? Is that a thing? I can’t spend too much time considering it, because I’m on top of an icy death trap in the middle of the night and I have to get to the bottom. How that is going to happen is, at the moment, more urgent and more bewildering.
“Um, Richard?” I say. I have to tell him. There’s no way I can fake my way out of this. He’s re-Velcroing his ski gloves and pulling his insulated buff up over his face to guard against the wind that has whipped up. “Something’s wrong. I can’t see.”
“I know, you told me in the lodge,” he says, stamping snow off each ski. “I get it. I’m blind as a bat without my contacts, too.”
Blind as a bat.People seem to love making this claim, like somehow it makes them special or more likable. But not only does it not do either of those things, it is also always a lie. Needing glasses doesn’t mean you’re blind, for fuck’s sake. Real blindness doesn’t have a fix, a simple little accessory that erases the problem. I bristle but try to keep my voice even.
“No, this is different. I’m not talking about reading letters on a chart, I’m talking about light and dark. My eyes don’tadjust. And there’s something else happening, something extra. Like something’s blocking my vision.”
“Hattie, look out there! Look how bright it is. I told you the trails are like the surface of the sun.” Other skiers glide past us on both sides, like they’re the river and we’re a couple of moss-covered rocks.
“It’s not helping, Richard. I don’t think I can do this.”
This is the problem with living in the space between the fully sighted and the blind: a lot of times I can cope. I can hide the problem. So when I can’t, it doesn’t make sense. Richard clearly doesn’t get it. He doesn’t believe me.
He sidesteps toward me now. He puts both his poles in one hand and places the other gloved hand over mine. “That’s your fear talking! Remember how great you did this afternoon? Channel that, okay? That’s my girl.” A patronizing forced patience drips off every syllable, and I don’t know who I hate more in that moment, him or myself. I swallow hard on the bile at the back of my throat.
“Maybe we can flag down one of those dudes in a snowcat?” I’m begging, but there’s no helping that. I know I saw some of those fancy snowmobiles patrolling the trails earlier today. There seemed to be so many of them. Now, though, there are none.
Richard glances around and notices this, too. The temperature is plummeting. It reminds me of a cartoon thermometer where the mercury drops through the bottom so hard it breaks the glass.
“Hattie, Hattie,” he says, like he’s talking to his senilegrandmother. “Hattie, this is not an emergency. It’s not like you have to pick out every snowflake. We’ve got nothing but open trail in front of us. Just follow me. C’mon, let’s go before we freeze.”
“No, wait, just help me think a minute. What are the options? Can I maybe ride the chairlift back to the bottom?”
“No, you can’t. Don’t be dense.” He faces away from me, as if he’s mad that I made him insult me. He’s actually huffing now. “God, just— This is getting ridiculous!”
Everything else is blurry, but Richard’s whole scene is suddenly clear to me, as if he was wearing the costume of a good guy and has now ripped off his mask. He doesn’t care about me, not really. I am only remotely interesting to him when I am convenient and offer the things he wants. The image of him earlier today telling me he loves me comes flooding back. What a joke. It’s a good thing I have skis and poles weighing me down, ’cause otherwise I might actually punch him.
“Just go,” I say. Knowing what I know now, being alone feels dangerous but being with Richard feels even riskier.
I hear that shift again in his voice, the shift I heard earlier today in his room when he was assessing me from his reclined position in the bed, where ice fills his words and he and I become strangers.
“You know, this is so stereotypical actress. I would think you would be more original,” he says. With that, he pushes off with one foot and he’s gone. The curve of the hill is so steep I can’t see over the edge. He just disappears.
I can’t think about whether I’m devastated or not. The cold keeps me in the urgency of the moment. I look around, my eyes trying so hard to compensate for all the junk that’s in the way of a clear view that I’m getting a headache. My eye sockets ache, and every time I blink it’s like a million flashbulbs pop. But I can still see the difference between the white snow and the dark trees. And that’s going to have to be enough.
I’ll just take my time. No rush. But even though I set off almost sideways, the incline of the mountain has other ideas for my speed. I sit down twice in about ninety seconds. I finally manage the first switchback, but heading out again across the trail makes panic fill the sides of my throat. I keep accelerating against my will, and my adrenaline is shaking my legs so badly it’s hard to stay on my feet. If there’s anything sticking up out of the snow, like a branch or a rock, I’m not going to be able to see it. And if another skier comes close, I won’t see them in time, either. A crash is practically inevitable. It occurs to me that if my school ends up with two accidental student deaths in one month, it’ll probably be national news. But there’s only one way down. I keep going.
I’ve only crisscrossed twice and my thighs are burning from the tension. I make the turn and squint, trying to get a sense of whether there’s anything in front of me. It’s like there’s a TV remote for the whole world and someone has turned the contrast way down. How can I go slower? I think about turning the points of my skis uphill, but can’t figure out the physics of the consequences. I definitely don’t want to end up skiing backward.
“Let me be the first to say that you were so right, Hattie. I was wrong. That Dick—uh—Richard Walker is a real gem.”
When Mason didn’t come to my call earlier, I sort of decided I could only see him in my town, in a place we both shared. So now, having him materialize on the mountain freaks me out all over again. His ability to be everywhere makes him less real, more like a dream. Yet there he is, at my right elbow, taunting me. Whether he’s also skiing or simply floating is somehow impossible to tell, since like everything else in my world right now, he is infuriatingly blurry.
