I go direct.
Aim straight at the compression, skis flat, letting gravity pull me down into the roll. The world compresses, G-forces slamming into my legs, my chest, my jaw. For half a second, I'm blind, just speed and pressure and the sick thrill of being on the edge.
Then I reach the top of the roll.
Too fast.
My inner ski hooks. Just a fraction. The edge catches on something, a rut, a patch of ice, I don't know. But it's enough.
My weight shifts backward. My hands flail, reaching for balance that isn't there. The gate rushes at me, too close, too fast, and I twist, trying to save it, trying to pull my ski back under me.
That's when my knee gives.
Not breaks. Not yet. Justgives, like a rope snapping under too much weight.
I feel the twist. The sickening, wrong-direction torque that shouldn't happen, the kind your body recognizes before your brain does.
Then I'm falling.
Skis over head, the world spinning, snow and sky and blue safety fence all blurring together. I hit the ground hard, shoulder first, and then I'm sliding, tumbling, my body rag dolling down the course.
Sound cuts out. Or maybe I just can't hear over the roar in my ears.
I see the B-net coming. Orange mesh, too close, too fast.
I try to stop. Can't.
My body slams into the fence, and the impact punches the air out of my lungs. The net catches me, holds me, drags me down into the snow like a hand closing around a fist.
Everything stops.
For a second, there's nothing. Just white. Just cold.
Then the pain hits.
My knee. Oh God, my knee.
It's not sharp. It's worse than sharp. It's deep, grinding, wrong. The kind of pain that tells you something tore that shouldn't have.
I try to move. My leg responds, but barely, and the movement sends a fresh wave of nausea through me. My ski is gone, ripped off somewhere in the crash, binding released like it's supposed to. My knee feels loose. Unstable. Like something that was holding it together just let go.
Voices. Distant. Getting closer.
Hands on my shoulders. Someone saying my name.
I open my mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a sound I don't recognize.
Above me, the sky is too blue. Too clear. Too big.
And all I can think, lying there in the snow with my knee screaming and my season bleeding out into the Norwegian cold, is:
Élise is going to watch this on TV. I just hope she’s not on lunch with her mother.
***
Reiteralm, Austria, February 25
ÉLISE
