The Final Race

Looking back, my brother probably didn't jump.

Or at least, that's what I told my anxious mother that night. She's the kind of woman who would speed 90mph down the highway if one of her kids had a scraped knee. If I had children, I'd probably do the same.

"How did this happen!?" she shrieked into the phone, no doubt searching frantically through the drawer for her car keys. She knew I wasn't the one to joke about traumatic experiences like this.

"Well..." I bit my lip, scrambling for a soft delivery. I told her it started with Christian, who thought he could make a few extra dollars off his brother while on the way to our favorite ski resort.

As emerging adolescents, our salaries consisted of the occasional lawn mowing stipends and birthday checks from relatives who didn't understand the gadgets "kids liked these days." Listening to my friends brag about their allowance made my blood boil.

"But Dad, even our cousins get money for doing the dishes!" I'd whine.

"Just because another family is doing it does not justify the action," he would patiently reply as he tossed me the dish rag.

So a dare for some real cash? We took that seriously.

"I'll give you five dollars if you ski down The Wall backwards," Christian smirked.

We were piled in the van under a mountain of ski equipment so that I just saw the outline of his cocky 12-year-old grin. It wasn't my favorite kind of road trip.

"An icy hill at a 45-degree angle?" I retorted, readjusting the pole that was poking at my side. "I'll save myself the trip to the hospital."

He turned to my youngest brother, David, who was silently staring out the window in the backseat.

"I'll give you ten dollars if you jump off the ski lift," he challenged. I snorted. "Ten dollars? He'll do it for one."

My brother David is not the emotional type. Whenever our family discussed feelings on car rides, or had an in-depth conversation about anything other than his YouTube channel, he'd yell for Dad to turn up the music. He always sat in the same corner of the backseat of the minivan.

If his words were few, he made up for it in daredevil stunts that would make Houdini turn in his grave.

There's a secret laundry list of his near-death experiences that we kept hidden from our mother. David stepped on a beehive, David is pulled under a creek, David jumps off the roof into a snow pile, David builds an America Ninja Warrior course off our playground in the backyard. How did these events happen without so much as a sprained ankle? The only possible explanation is that he was made from rubber.

The two of us were not close growing up. His stubborn attitude clashed with my emotional thought process, usually ending in a fight. One of my top priorities was to prove my superiority. As the oldest, I felt an unspoken responsibility to create the perfect path for my younger siblings. For an over-confident middle schooler, I had to be the smartest, the fastest, the first.

It was the last run of the night. We had just raced down the black diamond, the most difficult level in the park. I breathlessly reached the bottom behind my brothers, calves throbbing from the moguls. My ski poles were slightly bent due to the inhumane pressure I applied to propel myself forward. Yet I still lacked the aerodynamics required for the first-place bragging rights and Christian's last birthday check.

"One... more... run." I gasped, pumping adrenaline through my words. I turned my head and realized the boys were already on the lift. My sister gave me a look that read "you care way too much about this" as we loaded onto the next chair. I stared ahead.

The sun crept over the hill as we fell into a silent slump under the humming of the lift. I watched the white air hiss from my mouth as I wiped the fog from my goggles. The last few avid skiers were speeding downhill in streaks that made it look like they were flying. Purely free...

My sister was talking to me. I turned toward her voice, unaware that I was in my own fantasy. She rolled her eyes. "I said-"

"DA-VID!"

The scream was a knife cutting through the wind. It echoed in my ears, my brain. My eyes zoomed in on the chair ahead.

A blur, a blue flash. 20 feet, 10 feet, five feet. He was flying. He was falling.

Panic jumped from my stomach to my throat. The lift screeched to a halt.

No, no, no, no. I helplessly swung the chair back and forth and back and forth. I could barely make out the crumpled body directly below me. The "what ifs" were buzzing around my head and I frantically tried to swat them away. He was gone.

The lift finally sprung to the top and we flew down the hill. I was a torpedo. The wind lifted me forward; my skis never touched the ground. At that moment, I was propelled by a force other than my own. The world turned on my behalf.

I was the first one to reach the scene. He was lying next to the post with skis and poles scattered around him. The edge of my vision flashed red, but I was only focused on one thing.

"David?" I said gently, crouching down to eye level.

I held my breath as I looked into his face, that same daredevil, cliff-jumping, stunt-double face that encompassed who he was.

My brother.

Fresh blood dripped from his nose, but nothing could take away from the look on his face as he slowly lifted his head toward us. His eyes were blazing as he pointed a shaky, accusing finger directly at Christian.

"You owe me a dollar," he declared.