She had been going into one of the bars on the main drag in Whitefish. She’d finally met some other local instructors—two girls her age—on her own, not through Logan. She’d met them at a preseason instructor meeting, and they’d invited her out. Both, on the offseason, worked at a lodge on the lake right below the ski hill.
Vivian couldn’t wait to pick the instructor’s brain. She had driven to the small town twenty minutes north of Kalispell, parked by the train station, and was walking toward the bar where she was to meet them when her phone buzzed.
It was Ryan. She’d picked it up, thinking it would be quick. She knew he was at the retreat. “Hey, little bro, what’s up?”
“Um, not much.” He sounded nervous.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, irritation creeping up in her.
“Uh, nothing. Just wanted to talk.”
“How’s the retreat?”
“Fine. I mean, it’s . . .”
Vivian usually would have pushed, asked,It’s what? What’s the problem?But she was already running a little late and she didn’t want the others to leave the bar to go to another before she got there.
Instead, she said, “Good. Okay, glad things are fine.”
He went silent.
“Ryan?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ryan, look, I gotta go. But is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound like himself. That was the first time she wondered if maybe it wasn’t such a great idea for her dad to push him so hard. She knew it would only take a bit of prodding to pry him open, to give him permission to vent.
She knew he needed that—except, at that moment, she did not want to stand out in the cold and listen to him complain. She did not want to have to give him a pep talk when the new girls were waiting for her. This was one of their father’s unspoken reasons for making him play, she was sure—to make him more confident, more self-sufficient. More manly. Maybe it was high time. He was fifteen, for God’s sake. Time to start bucking up.
She hopped over a puddle of water in the road. “Look, Ryan,” she said. “Have fun. And try not to overanalyze everything. I’ve gotta go. Friends are waiting for me.”
“Right,” he said. “Have fun.”
Weeks later, after the retreat, Ryan still wasn’t himself. Eventually he broke down and admitted to Vivian what had happened that evening. He told her that the reason he’d called was that he was nervous becausehe sensed the JV team hazing shit he’d heard about was bound to happen that night.
So, it had been a cry for help, Vivian had thought. A sinking, sick feeling had overcome her when she thought of how she brushed him off.
A part of him, he revealed, had wanted to tell her, to have her call their mom and insist she go fetch him. Another part of him wanted to not be a baby. To tough it out. To be picked up would have only made things worse.
Toughing it out was exactly what he did. He made Vivian swear not to tell a soul about how they’d broomed him, all in good hazing fun. His insides still hurt from it, he told her.
Her guilt ballooned. She insisted he should go to a doctor, but he refused. When she said that she needed to tell their mom what had happened to him, he broke down and swore he’d never forgive her, never speak to her again if she breathed a word to anyone. Vivian couldn’t bear to make things worse than they already were.
Vivian said to Shona now, “He was never the same. By December, he took his own life.”
“Oh my God,” Shona said when Vivian quieted. “That’s so, so terrible. So incredibly awful. Your poor brother. I feel so bad for him.” Her forehead was creased with anguish. She set her hand over her heart for a moment, then placed her cool, delicate palm on Vivian’s wrist. “And you never told anyone?”
Vivian’s eyes filled with tears. “He asked me not to. He begged me not to. He was so afraid that if it got out, he’d be bullied endlessly at school. And he would have been. I didn’t want that to happen to him, either.”
Shona shook her head in disgust, and Vivian waited for her to say something about the hazing, about the team, about the coaches, about what a horrible sister she was to not report it to someone, but she didn’t. She said, “And your dad?”
“What about him?”
“Jesus. What a jerk,” Shona said with disgust. “What an ass to push him to do that. Why couldn’t he have honored who he was—your brilliant brother, who had other interests?”
Shona wasn’t trying to be mean. In fact, she could have been so much more vicious by spotlighting Vivian’s own negligence in the situation, but suddenly Vivian wanted to jerk her hand away. She looked down at Shona’s white fingers, imagined them gingerly inserting the tip of a thin, cold needle. She brought her eyes back to Shona’s, wide open and full of a combination of distaste and pity. Her pulse began to race. She wondered if Shona could feel it beneath her palm.
