I mean for this to sound mature, like I’m evolved and far removed from petty jealousy and territorial tendencies. Instead, it sounds childish. Like why would dating someone for a few days give me any semblance of ownership? I start to formulate how to dial this ridiculous statement back when Amanda bursts out giggling. Then she downs her beer in big, open-throated gulps. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve.
“You are too funny!” she says, shaking her head. “Me and Richard. Richard and me.” She puts up air quotes with her fingers. “Close.”
I search her face. “Aren’t you?” I ask.
She giggles again as she peels the label off her bottle in skinny strips that curl and waft to the floor like snowflakes. “Strictly geographically speaking, yes, in that we’re neighbors, right? We’ve been hanging around together since we were both in diapers. But he does not live in a romantic part of my brain. Besides, I’ve seen how he does relationships and I’m not a fan.” She looks up at me, apologetic. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I say. “What do you mean exactly? About how he does relationships?”
“Oh, you know, like someone’s filming him. Like he’s starring in his own romantic comedy. Just over the top.”
She sounds like Mason. I think back to Richard blindfolding me so he could lead me to the ski trip poster down the hall. That was pretty silly.
“God, you must think I’m an idiot,” I say.
“What? Oh no! That’s not what I meant at all. I’m sure it’s exciting when it’s coming at you at a hundred miles an hour. I’ve just seen his whole playbook.”
So that’s what he has. A playbook. And I was just a girl in a line of girls, the next on the assembly line. How did I think it was something special?
So all this time, Amanda and I haven’t been vying for the same guy. We’re not in competition. She’s not my nemesis. What is she to me, then? I look at her without all my misinterpretations for the first time. I drink my beer. This is going to take some getting used to.
“Boys are gross,” I say.
“And love? The grossest,” she agrees.
“This beer is putting me to sleep. I’m going to crash.”
“Crash away. I’m going to go prowl around a little more,” she says. “Suck the marrow out of the night. Is that cool? I’ll be quiet when I come in.”
“Happy sucking,” I say. She snorts. She peeks in the mirror and tucks some blonde hairs that have escaped her braid backbehind her ears. Then she stuffs her feet back in her boots and heads out.
I click off the bedside lamp and curl into a ball. “I’m not going to fight the mountain,” I mumble out loud. I close my eyes and try to ignore the incessant floaters and flashing that is playing against the back of my eyelids. I can’t worry any more today. And I don’t. I sleep a sleep that’s heavy as a weighted blanket and as black as the bottom of the ocean.
“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 herdriving 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 afew 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,unencumberedwould 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 trainof 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 caféis 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 anRfrom aBfrom a5. 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 fromToy Story, except with a five o’clock shadow. I like him right away.
