Possibility of White by T.L. Tomljanovic
Between Linda’s dangling legs yawned a white abyss. She sucked in a breath eating her stale moist neck warmer. Twenty-year-old skis and boots pulled at her hips like anchors. She scooched her butt as far back in the chairlift as she could, gripping the safety bar.
The singles line was faster than expected. Before she could mentally prepare, she was rising hundreds of feet in the air up the mountain with three bulky snowboarders taking up more than their fair share of the bench. She couldn’t tell through impenetrable layers of snow pants, jackets, helmets, and goggles how old they were, but decided they had to be younger than her. A lot younger.
What was she thinking? It had been decades since she’d hit the slopes. So what if Patrick Stewart learned to ski in his 80s? She wasn’t a fucking starship captain. Christ, why didn’t she indulge her midlife crisis like her ex and just buy a Tesla? A barrage of ski accidents on TikTok the day after she bought her lift ticket hadn’t exactly boosted the ol’ self-confidence. Steve didn’t ski. He hated the cold. She didn’t decide to stop skiing when they got married and moved to a more temperate climate, it just sort of happened.
Green goggles turned toward her. “Is this your first time at Fernie?”
Linda smiled wanly, “No, I used to come here a lot.” She could see herself at 16, flying down double black diamond runs, hair whipping in the wind held back by a neon pink woolen headband. No helmets back then, no safety nets, no rules. Wrap around sunglass covered eyes tearing up from blasts of icy air. Her body obeying her every command. She’d pick her line, shift her hips and go. Racing her friends and skidding to a stop mere steps away from the lodge, clicking off the bindings in one fluid ‘there’s no place like home’ motion and ka-chunk ka-chunking up the metal stairs in rigid plastic boots. Stealing fries from her friends’ plates, scalding her tongue on hot chocolate. She only counted the money it cost, not the calories.
“Bar up!” Green goggles lifted the safety rail and nodded at her. “Have a good one.”
Linda scrambled to slide her poles from under her thigh, pointing her ski tips sky-high. She couldn’t manage a response; her entire focus was on not falling or worse getting stuck and riding the chair of shame back down the hill. Pushing herself up and off the chair without incident and with only the tiniest of groans, she glided towards the trail map past an encampment of boarders snapping their bindings tight. Heart thudding in her chest, she stared up at the options. Fat snowflakes settled onto her goggles obscuring her view. She ripped them off and blinked at the legend. Black diamonds for expert, blue squares for intermediate, green circles for beginner, red lines for lifts, but all Linda saw was an infinite possibility of white.
T.L. Tomljanovic is a flash fiction writer living in greater Vancouver, Canada. Her writing has been featured in Westerly Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Raw Lit, and many other fine journals.
Photo by Urban Sanden on Unsplash
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Oh yeah, know those feelings. Have a nice trip, see ya next fall. Good one!
Thanks for reading, Georgia.