“What is it?” cried Eleanor, throwing open her front door.
“OH, ELEANOR!” I blubbered. “EVERYTHING IS RUINED!!”
I collapsed facedown in her hallway—my red snow boots sticking out the door—and howled louder than a coyote.
“Ruby, what are you talking about? What’s happened?! The back of your jacket is torn!”
But beyond that, I couldn’t hear what Eleanor was saying as I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
She bent down in front of me and pulled at my arms.
“Roll over and talk to me!” she insisted. “I need to close the door, Ruby.”
I inched my body forward, but couldn’t stop my sobbing, which was turning into gasping, choking noises. My face was so hot and damp, it stung.
“Ahh! Were you skiing at Sugar Mountain?” Eleanor demanded as she tugged on the ski pass attached to one of my jacket pockets.
I wailed louder.
In another room, the phone rang.
“Oh, aiyo!” said Eleanor. “I’ll be right back—don’t go anywhere.”
Eventually, between crying spasms, my tears slowed and I suddenly felt extremely tired. If I hadn’t been lying in the middle of someone else’s hallway, I think I would have fallen into a deep sleep right then and there.
Instead, I forced myself to stand, take off my boots, and find Eleanor, whose quiet voice was coming from the kitchen.
Every part of my body ached.
I found her leaning against the sink, talking softly on the phone in Sinhala. She turned around slowly to look at me and gasped out loud, as if I’d frightened her, then said a few more quick foreign words into the phone and hung up.
“Who was that?” I managed to ask between sniffles.
“Amma,” Eleanor replied quietly. “Nenda Soma is much better now. So my mother is flying home tomorrow night.”
More bad news! I mean, even though it should be a good thing that Nenda Soma was better and that Eleanor’s mom was returning after being away for so long, I knew it really meant that all the fun we had been having would come to a screeching halt.
I just couldn’t take it on top of my already hideous day, and I burst into tears all over again.
Eleanor took my hand, led me into their family room, and pushed me down into their soft comfortable chair where I curled up into a tight ball. She set a box of tissues on the coffee table.
“Where’s your thaththa?” I managed to ask between sobs, grabbing a wad of tissues to wipe my whole face.
“He’s still at the gas station.”
She touched a spot on my cheek and it hurt.
“Ow!”
“Oh, Ruby,” Eleanor whispered, and took a deep breath. “Tell me what happened. Please?”
I forced myself to look up and absorb the Bandaranaikes’ sweet house with all their beautiful decorations from their island country, and I tried to think about how nice it would be to visit that island country with its delicious food and colorful birds and tropical jungles. And I did this until my heartbeat finally calmed down and I managed to stop crying.
“I knew I needed to”—hic—“take my lesson soon”—hic—“and since it was a sunny day and Mim got”—hic—“home early to watch the boys”—hic—“I rushed over to Sugar Mountain before I could change my mind”—hic—“even though I didn’t have enough”—hic—“money for the gown in the catalog”—hic—“yet.”
“Wait,” said Eleanor. “I’ll make some tea. Take off your jacket, Ruby, and I’ll be right back.”
When Eleanor stood up, something fell from the back pocket of her pants. Another piece of paper folded into a tiny square. I gazed blankly at it as if my brain had completely shut down.
Soon after, the whistle on the kettle blew and Eleanor returned with a tray of tea stuff, which she set on the coffee table. She saw me staring at the tiny paper on the floor and quickly picked it up.
I took another tissue and blew my nose hard.
“Why are you dropping so many notes lately, Eleanor?”
At first she wouldn’t look at me, like she felt ashamed of something.
“They’re nothing, really,” she replied. “Tell me your story first, and then I’ll explain.”
“You’re like a mother, you know,” I said, and even smiled a little, “making tea and taking care of me.”
Eleanor smiled back and patted my knee, then sat on the floor near my feet.
“So did you take a lesson?” she asked.
“Sort of. I rented the ski gear, which I’m telling you, there’s a lot of, and it’s hard to walk in those moon boots, lugging everything, and the helmet feels like a boulder on your head. Anyway, I followed Page, the super unfriendly instructor, to the beginner area, where they have this picture of a bunny on a sign, which stands for the bunny hill, which is the easiest hill where they teach people, but believe me, it’s not that easy. Skiing is a lot harder than it looks!”
Eleanor leaned back against the wall and sipped her tea. I could tell she was listening carefully because that’s the kind of friend Eleanor is.
“So, rude Page shoved my boots into my skis and showed me how to hold the poles and then talked about ‘french fries’ and ‘pizza,’ which is the way you learn to ski down the hill. She said she would call out ‘french fries’ when she wanted my skis straight ahead, like two french fries, and when she yelled ‘pizza,’ that meant I had to snowplow so the tips of my skis were touching together, to look like a wedge of pizza.
“Then we practiced on the flat ground until I got it, and finally we went up the rope tow, which also looks a lot easier than it really is. You can’t grab it like I did the first time, because it will yank you down to the ground until you fall on your face and the rope stops and everyone is stuck waiting for you to get up.”
“Oh no,” said Eleanor. “Is that how you cut your cheek?”
“What’s wrong with my cheek?”
Eleanor scrunched up her nose.
“Umm, nothing; just a little scrape. Go on with your story.”
“Anyway, once I got the hang of the rope tow and we made it to the top, I was shocked to see how long and steep the bunny slope really is, because standing at the bottom and looking up the hill, it hardly looked like a bump. Page told me to follow her over to the far side by marching on my skis and pounding the poles. Most of the younger kids were attached to adults skiing down behind them with these harnesses, like they were little ponies, but Page said I shouldn’t have to wear one at my age, as long as I listened to her instructions.”
I had to stop and take a deep breath, because this is where it got hard to talk about.
“That’s when I should have asked Page more questions, but something about her made me so nervous, Eleanor. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t even know how to smile or say something nice, but it was the way she was rushing, like she didn’t have time for me—like she had crammed unimportant me between other really important things, even though I had paid all that money we worked so hard for! So instead of getting everything straight and asking her to repeat stuff, I waited for her to give me orders, like I was in the army.”
“Sounds like my cello teacher.”
“Really?”
I had forgotten all about my tea and bent over to take a sip.
“She’s dreadful,” said Eleanor. “But tell me, what happened next?”
At that point I had a very difficult time keeping my voice steady. I didn’t want to start crying again, so I took a couple more sips of tea and swallowed hard.
“Well, I waited sideways at the top of the hill while Page explained that she would give me a little push on my back to get me going, and then follow right down next to me, saying either ‘french fries’ or ‘pizza,’ and that I was supposed to copy her and make the right shapes when she said it all, the same way we had done it at the bottom of the hill.”
I paused to take a big gulp of tea, followed by a deeper breath. But my voice kept getting higher and my words shakier.
“So I did that, only I pushed down on the poles the same time she gave me a HUGE shove, not a little push like she said, and before I knew it I was flying downhill on french-fry skis! I could hear Page’s voice yelling ‘PIZZA! PIZZA!,’ but I couldn’t push my toes together to make a pizza wedge, so that meant I couldn’t stop my skis, and the whole time my arms were making circles and my poles were flinging out to my sides and I thought I would fall backwards, but somehow I kept going and going straight, all the way to the bottom—and right before I got there I saw this big group of Outer girls strolling by in their fancy jackets, holding their fancy skis and snowboards, and I screamed so they could jump out of the way, but they just stared up at me and screamed back and I plowed right into them and we all landed in a giant HEAP!!”
Eleanor quietly repeated, “A heap?”
“BUT THAT’S NOT THE WORST PART!” I said, as I exploded into sobs again.
Now Eleanor’s whole face puckered up like she had swallowed a lemon.
“It isn’t?”
“OH, ELEANOR!! Those Outer girls were so mean. They started calling me swear words I can’t even say, and even after they stood up, they kept yelling down at me, because I couldn’t stand up with my skis tangled between my legs. One of them called me lardo, even though all my clothes are wicked loose now, and another Outer told me to get my townie butt off her boot. But worst of all, when I focused and stared up at them, I realized they weren’t all girls. One of them was JB Knox! And he was bent over, moaning in pain, practically crying!”
Eleanor gasped. “Oh, Ruby.”
“And stupid, rude Page didn’t even care that I was flat on the ground, in pain. She kept apologizing to the horrible Outers and said nothing to me and put her arm around JB, asking him if he was okay, and left me there without asking if I was okay, and then she took JB back to the lodge or somewhere and the Outer girls said more wicked mean stuff, like I ruined his basketball career FOREVER!! Plus . . .”
I couldn’t say it. Eleanor reached up and patted my back.
“Plus what, Ruby?”
“Plus . . . I never got to drink hot chocolate by the stone fireplace like my mom and pop used to do when they were in high school.”
And with that, I erupted into full blubbering. A volcano of humiliating lava-spewing tears sprayed all over the family room.
I knew this had to have been the most horrendous story Eleanor had ever heard, because it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone.
“Oh, Ruby,” she said, “I was afraid—really afraid—that something like this might happen. Maybe some dreams just aren’t meant to come true.”
And then she spread a blanket across my lap and whispered, “I’ll boil some more water.”