Chapter 4: Jo Beth

Jo Beth was fine on her own, but if someone caught her eye it went against her nature not to pursue him. She would never again make the same mistakes she had made with Dallas, but what could be the harm of getting to know Blake? He worked as a bartender at The Outpost, a busy hangout at the base of Black Diamond’s most popular ski run. They met when she handed him her fake ID. He took one look and handed it back to her.

“Sorry, Amelia,” he said, calling her by the name on the driver’s license she’d given him. “You don’t look a thing like your picture.”

“I do when I’m naked,” she replied.

He ran his fingers over his super-short hair, rubbing his buzz cut. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said carefully.

“We’re at a bar, and we’re talking about nudity. It’s not supposed to make sense.” Slowly, she licked her lips. “Now can I please have a beer?”

He filled a glass with whatever was on tap and she drank it down in a few gulps. He kept filling and refilling it, and she sat at the bar, downing whatever he gave her. When his shift ended Jo Beth could barely stand, so he led her to his car and drove her to his apartment.

“I’m not a virgin,” she slurred as they walked in through his door. She plopped down on his couch and started to remove her boots. She was sober enough to realize that her pants would come off way easier if she took her boots off first.

He sat down next to her. “Of course, you’re not. You’re way too self-destructive to be a virgin.”

Jo Beth laughed at Blake’s earnestness, at the way he stared at her with those baby blue eyes. “What do you care? You’re about to get laid.” She tugged at his long-sleeved t-shirt but he swatted her hand away.

“Not tonight,” he said. “I don’t take advantage of minors.”

“You won’t be taking advantage of me. I’ll be taking advantage of you.”

Still, he got up, went to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and placed it on the coffee table.

“Goodnight,” he said.

She couldn’t figure it out. Why get her drunk in the first place? Her head was way too heavy to put together his motives, so she let it fall to the worn couch pillow, where she slept for several hours before she awoke with a stabbing pain behind her eyebrows and a mouth full of cotton. Jo Beth guzzled the water he’d left, put on her boots, and left.

Outside was cold and dark, not yet dawn. But she made a decision on her trek home. This guy, this bartender whose name she couldn’t remember, was for her. He was honorable and kind, and she liked his military-ish good looks.

The next night Jo Beth returned to the bar. “What time are you off?” she asked him.

“Forget it,” Blake replied. Blake. Of course. How could she have forgotten his female-soap-opera-character name? “I’m working all night,” he said, “but even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t go out with you.”

“You’re wrong,” she told him. “You’re totally into me.”

The bar was crowded and a loud, large man shoved into her before he ordered his drinks. Jo Beth stood back and let Blake do his job. But once a stool opened up she sat there, waiting for closing time. When Blake finally acknowledged her two hours later, he said, “Why are you still here?”

“Because we’re going to start dating.”

Blake squinted at her. “How old are you, really?”

“Seventeen. But I’m going places, so you need to catch me now, before I leave you in the dust.”

There was a hint of smile across his stubbled cheeks. “Oh yeah? Where are you going? To juvie?”

“The Olympics.”

Then his eyes widened in recognition. “You’re Jo Beth Blue, aren’t you?”

“You’ve heard of me?”

He nodded. “You’re like this prodigy, a ski legend at seventeen. Of course, I’ve heard of you. The whole town is talking about how you’re going to win the Gold before you’re a legal adult.”

“There are lots of things I’m going to do before I’m a legal adult.”

He laughed and that was it. Blake was hers.

They did everything together for almost a year. Even Jo Beth’s parents knew about Blake, because eventually it became too much of an effort for Jo Beth to hide their relationship. But shortly before Jo Beth went to audition for the Olympic team, he cut things off.

“You’re going to be a star,” Blake told her. “You don’t need a dead weight like me.”

She swallowed back tears. She wouldn’t beg him to stay because sooner or later, she knew she’d leave him anyway.

“Okay,” she replied.

“Okay? Just like that?” He looked like a little boy, disappointed that she wouldn’t search for him in a game of hide-n-seek.

Jo Beth glanced at the clock even though she knew what time it was. “I have to go. I’m supposed to pick Skylar up from school.” She grabbed her purse, which had been lying on the same couch that she’d passed out on the first night they met.

He blocked her path. “Jo Beth, don’t leave angry.”

Honestly, she wasn’t angry until he said that, but suddenly she could picture herself seizing one of his dull kitchen knives, wrestling him to the ground, and slitting his throat. The blood wouldn’t faze her and the remorse would be fleeting. “Blake, either I leave angry, or I leave with your blood on my hands.”

He looked into her eyes. Blake must have been able to see that she meant it, because he stepped aside. She rushed down the stairs of his apartment building, out to the parking lot, and into her car. As she drove towards Skylar’s school, her surroundings blurred. There was no contrast, no difference between light and dark, only fear of self. It was the first time she ever felt capable of murder. And somehow, she knew with a scary certainty that it wouldn’t be the last time.

Turns out, it was over a year later when her bloodthirsty feelings re-emerged. She was competing in the Olympics and it began during her chance at Women’s Downhill. Jo Beth dug her poles into the ground and pushed off. She was a lightning rod, breaking the laws of physics. A gold medal was within reach, but then the spectators started to clang those damn bells. The noise echoed and reverberated, over and over, until Jo Beth swore the ringing came from inside her ears.

How could something so stupid faze her? This was the most important race of her life. Why couldn’t she just tune it out?

She tried to focus as she skied in between pole after pole, first red then blue and then red again, never missing one, never falling, not bending too deep and refusing to hold back. Onlookers and fans stood to the side, ringing those God-forsaken bells to cheer her on. But she wanted to rip those bells from their hands, to shove those bells down their throats. Because when she neared the finish, the ringing became so loud, so intense, that she faltered for half a second as she skied around that last red pole. That half second cost her. It was the difference between silver and gold.

“Wow! That was quite a run!” The sports announcer gushed to Jo Beth at the bottom of the slope and shoved the microphone into her face. “You’re already a legend, and only nineteen years old! How do you feel?”

Jo Beth held up her skis, fulfilling her sponsorship contract by making sure the name Rossignol was captured by the camera. Then she oozed out her answer. “Incredible! I couldn’t be happier.”

Nobody guessed her dark thoughts. And later, when she stood on that podium and they placed the silver medal over her shoulders, she smiled like the best thing in the world had just happened. Her face didn’t even twitch; she gave no clue that she wanted to blow up the whole auditorium and take out the smug skier from Denmark whose half-second advantage made her the best in the world, and made Jo Beth an afterthought.

That was the first time Jo Beth truly felt fear. It was deep, soaking into her muscles and bones. It was the type of fear she could only escape if she learned how to escape herself.