Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [50]
Isabella lay next to him while he slept. Once she got up to go to the bathroom and ate a granola bar she had in her bag. She sat in the bottom bunk for a little while and read her book, but she couldn’t concentrate so she climbed back up the ladder and lay down next to Harrison again. Maybe she didn’t really know him, but compared to the people downstairs, he was her closest friend, her ally. She wasn’t leaving his side.
Sometime after the sun went down and it was night again, Harrison woke up. Isabella was staring at the ceiling. “What are you doing?” he asked her.
“Thinking,” she said.
“You look like a crazy person,” he said and laughed a little bit. “Have you been here all day?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to go downstairs,” she said. Her eyes started to fill with tears. “I didn’t know anyone, so I just stayed here.”
Harrison turned toward her and smoothed back her hair. All she wanted was not to cry. She couldn’t cry; they hadn’t been dating long enough. He would think she was crazy, a nut.
“Sorry,” he whispered right next to her ear.
“That’s okay,” she said. “You know, they probably think we’re making out up here. No one’s come up all day.”
Harrison smiled. “Then maybe we should prove them right,” he said and slid himself on top of her carefully.
“I’ve never had sex in a bunk bed,” she said.
“There’s a first time for everything,” he said. “Just don’t fall off.”
Harrison stayed by her side that night, and she was grateful. They went to a local bar, for which she was also grateful. She stayed even closer to Harrison than she had the night before. Part of her was touching him at all times.
“So, you want to go skiing tomorrow?” he asked. “It’s our last chance. Plus, I think we can go on some diamonds.”
Isabella said, “Absolutely.”
The second day of skiing started off better. It had snowed the night before, so when Isabella fell, she fell on soft snow instead of the ice. It was also a little warmer, and Isabella even started to have some fun.
Harrison was conscious of her at all times. He was faster than she was, but he always waited at certain points to let her catch up. This was a big mountain, and there were different forks and turns you could take. Harrison always pointed out the path they were going to take on the map before they went.
For the last run of the day, Harrison wanted to try something different. Isabella felt bad that she had been holding him back on the easier mountains and so she agreed. They had to take two chair lifts up and would ski down a blue, then a black, then finish on a blue. “It’s easy, see?” Harrison said, running his finger along the map. “Just keep staying to the right and you’ll get to the next run. I’ll wait for you at the top of each.”
Isabella nodded. She was cold again and ready for this day to be over. Just one more run and the whole day would end on a good note.
The second chairlift was higher than any of the other ones they had been on. It stopped halfway up the mountain and Isabella started seeing black.
“Scared?” Harrison asked.
Isabella nodded and Harrison just laughed. He thought it was really funny. She felt like she was dying. The metal creaked and kicked and the lift started moving again. Isabella waited for the whole chair to plummet to the ground, and was surprised when they skied off at the top.
“Okay, so you remember the way?” Harrison asked. He put his sunglasses down and smiled at her. She nodded. Almost over. It was almost over.
They started down the mountain and it was going okay. Isabella had gotten used to the blues and her snowplow wasn’t such an embarrassing giant wedge anymore. She even let herself go a little fast sometimes. She finished the run and skied up to Harrison.
“Awesome,” he said. “Ready for the next one?”
He was already moving before he finished talking. There were moguls at the top of the run and Isabella hesitated. She saw