Just Not Sure - Chapter 5

"We’re going to the snack bar. Do you want anything? --- Courtney? Hello? Earth to Courtney!"

"Huh…what?" Courtney brought her mind back to the lodge, where everyone except for Jenna and Chris were hanging out.

"We’re going to go get food. Do you want any? God, Courtney, I think you’re on a different planet tonight." Jesse sighed as he pointed out that Courtney had been spacing out all evening.

"Yeah, well getting four hours of sleep, two nights in a row, on a couch, no less, will do that to you!" Courtney complained. She ached all over; not even a back massage from Jesse had helped.

It was Tuesday night, the last possible night for snowboarding; they would all be leaving early Thursday morning. Monday morning they had all woken up to realized the boys had kind of spent the night. The guys spent the whole rest of the day at the Taylor’s cabin, only going home because they needed to shower and change their clothes. Tuesday, they took a break; they didn’t see each other until Kristin came to pick up Frankie, Chris, Jesse, and Matt. Greg stayed at the Ballinger’s cabin because of a cold. Kristin drove because the parents allowed them to go unsupervised; when they came last time, they had done nothing except "freeze our butts off". The only catch was that everyone had to keep a walkie-talkie on them at all times. So far, they had not been of much use, since everybody except Chris and Jenna had stayed together, mostly hanging out in the lodge.

"Anyway, you guys go ahead. I don’t think I can move from my chair." Courtney said. No sooner had they left, Matt’s cell phone rang from inside his jacket. He had taken it off and draped it over a chair to dry, so Courtney, groaning as she stood up, fished it out of a pocket. "Hello?" She felt odd answering someone else’s cell phone, even if it was Matt’s. She heard a girl’s voice, but it sounded oddly familiar to Courtney.

"Hi, is Matt there?"

"No, he just stepped out for a moment. Who is this?" Courtney knew the voice so well, why couldn’t she put her finger on it?

"It’s Matt’s girlfriend, Katy. Who is this?"

Courtney jumped up, her eyes lighting up. Of course, she hadn’t put two and two together! Courtney had known Katy Sayre since 6th grade; they had been in the same classes all through middle school. She had known Katy was dating a "Matt" who was two years their senior, but Katy had never mentioned that he sang or that he was a member of any boy band. In fact, Katy had a reputation for her loathing toward boy bands and made fun of Courtney often for her listening to Dream Street. "Katy!?!?" She cried out and Katy laughed.

"Yes, that is my name. I just told you that. Who are you?"

"No, Katy, it’s me! Courtney Taylor!" She clued Katy in.

"Oh my God, Courtney what are you doing on Matt’s cell phone? You didn’t like stalk Dream Street or something irrational like that did you?" Katy’s tone grew worried as she imagined what her friend could have done to gain possession of her boyfriend’s phone. Courtney laughed.

"No. We came skiing and Matt left to go get the food with Jesse and Frankie. You never told me Matt was Matt Ballinger!"

"Yeah, well I knew what would happen if I told you. Why are you with Jesse and Frankie?"

"Actually I’m also here with Kristin, Jenna, and Chris. Greg caught a cold." Courtney explained. "Jesse’s my boyfriend. We met on Friday night at this party and have been together since! Oh guess what! You’re coming with us to NYC on a Friday night for dinner. We’re setting Amanda up with Greg."

Katy squealed. "He’s perfect for her! She needs someone like him, especially after David."

"That’s exactly what Jenna said. So anyway, what’s been going on over there?" Courtney and Katy continued to catch up over the phone as they waited for Matt to come back from the snack bar

*

Jesse, Matt, Frankie and Kristin stood in front of the snack bar, gazing in awe at all of the choices of what they could order. Matt licked his lips and grinned. "I could spend all night here."

"Let’s keep it down to four minutes." Kristin said as she stepped up to the counter and ordered for herself and Courtney. After they had all given their selections, the four stood in a corner waiting for their food. As they waited, Kristin suddenly felt a shiver run down her spine.

"What’s wrong?" Frankie asked, noticing Kristin’s shiver.

"I dunno. Something doesn’t feel right." Kristin frowned and shrugged it off. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that serious.

"Don’t worry. Look around you. Everything’s fine." Frankie assured her as he wrapped his arms around her.

*

Meanwhile, on top of one of the mountains at Camelback, Chris and Jenna stood next to a tree as Chris finished inscribing their initials surrounded by a heart into the tree with a pocketknife. Their snowboards lay nearby in the snow.

"There" Chris stepped back to admire his handiwork. "JM + CT. It’ll be there always."

"Perfect" Jenna said and smiled at Chris. She had never felt this way about anyone before and couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She looked back at the heart and squinted, then laughed. "You know what I never noticed until just now? Our initials are the same as Jess and Court’s! See, Jenna Miller and Chris Trousdale, and Jesse McCartney and Courtney Taylor! What a coincidence."

Chris raised his eyebrows. "Coincidence or fate?"

"You don’t really believe in that stuff do you?"

"Why do you think we ended up at the same party? How come the three of you met the three of us? You never know, Jenna."

"Whatever." Jenna was the cynical type; she didn’t really believe in all of the fate stuff, which was exactly the opposite of her sister and best friend. "Let’s get out of here. I don’t know why I let you talk me into going off the trail in the first place." She complained as they strapped their bindings into their boots. She struggled to get up as they both got ready to head down the path. After coming up to the harder trail, Chris had found a path off of the designated trail and had convinced Jenna to come with him. The path had proven to be difficult, and above Jenna’s ability, so they had stopped to take a rest.

This time, Jenna was doing well, she had gone almost fifty feet without falling. But as she went on, she started to go faster and faster, hitting the thick clumps of snow harshly. The ice made her board swerve as she sped down the unlit path. "CHRIS!!!" She cried out in terror, calling for help. Chris tried to catch up with her, but slid and fell in doing so. The screws in Jenna’s bindings came loose and she completely lost control of the board, tumbling and almost somersaulting down the hills. She hit a giant rock, causing her board to crack and for her to slam into a tree.

Chris was too far up the mountain to be able to see her and know what happened. All he knew was that he couldn’t hear her screams anymore. He became frantic and raced down the mountain. As he arrived at the scene of the crash, tripping over rocks and ice, he was shocked and frightened at the sight of Jenna lying on the ground. "No." He whispered, quickly ripping off his gloves and unstrapping his bindings. He stared in terror at the huge gash from the tree on her forehead, and her twisted leg, still tightly held in the bindings on the cracked board. "Jenna" He called out, hoping she would open her beautiful brown eyes and let him know she was okay. However, she didn’t open her eyes, and she didn’t answer him; she was unconscious from the impact. "Oh my God, this is all my fault. What am I going to do?" The only thing he could do was take her boots out of her broken bindings. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around Jenna. With absolutely no medical knowledge (he’s only sixteen here!), he couldn’t do anything else to help her. "Help" He cried out, but the surrounding trees swallowed his voice. As he stood up and walked around in a circle, he noticed the weight of a walkie-talkie in his jacket. "Thank you God!" He grabbed the walkie-talkie and searched the channels to see if anyone was there. He knew Courtney and Jesse were, but they were out of range. "Hello? Is anybody out there? Please! I need help."

"What do you need?" An inquiring voice came on the line and Chris let out a huge sigh of relief.

"I need help right away. My girlfriend fell when we were snowboarding. She’s unconscious and she has a cut on her head and her leg’s hurt."

"Okay. Stay calm and tell me approximately where you are. I’ll go to the lodge and send out a Ski Patrol."

"Um, I don’t really know where we are. We got off the trails, but the last one we were on was Laurel Glade. Hurry, please!" Chris was beginning to feel numb. He sat down next to her, crying as she brushed a lock of her brown hair out of her eyes. As she lay there, he spoke to her, opening his soul up to her, hoping she would awake. "You know sometimes I think this is all just a really good dream. Everything…" he gestured to his surroundings. " You, Dream Street, my whole life seems too good to be true. It’s kinda funny; until I met you, I was never really sure about anything. But when I’m around you, I know exactly what I’m talking about."

Since Chris had calmed down a little bit, he took a look at Jenna’s leg. It looked pretty bad; it was most definitely broken.

Jenna opened her eyes and gave a weak smile to Chris. "How’s it going." Chris asked. Jenna couldn’t reply; she was shivering uncontrollably. Chris struggled to keep his composure. "Jenna, I love you, I always will."

Jenna nodded. "I love you too…" She whispered just before she slipped back into unconsciousness, and Chris started to cry again.

*

"Jenna’s good at everything! It’s so not fair that she’s out there snowboarding and I’m in here, practically crippled! She has all the luck." Courtney pouted as they sat at the table eating and waiting for the couple to come back to the lodge. They were all going to head out until they went outside and felt the cold air. Kristin and Courtney had refused to go out in such temperatures.

"Except for the fact that she doesn’t believe in luck." Kristin pointed out.

"Yeah. But that’s her thing I guess." Courtney shrugged.

Kristin took out a hand mirror from her pocketbook. "Aughh! My hair looks horrible." She groaned as she tried to fix the strands of hair that had pulled out of her braids. She rubbed at her cheeks, which were red from windburn.

"You look beautiful." Frankie said grinning.

"You’re just saying that because I’m your girlfriend and I would kick you butt if you didn’t say that." Kristin laughed, and she dropped her hand from her face. As her hand came down, it knocked the mirror out of her hand, causing it to break into many pieces on the lodge floor.

"Uh oh. Bad luck for seven years." Jesse joked.

"I may believe in luck, but I’m not superstitious."

Courtney just couldn’t shake the feeling off. Something was wrong, she knew it. Jesse looked at her worriedly. "What’s wrong?" He asked. She was tugging at her cross again; he knew something was bothering her.

"I don’t know." Courtney said uneasily, her eyes darting all over. "Something is wrong; it doesn’t feel right."

"What do you mean? Like someone’s in trouble."

"I’m not really sure" She frowned, the shrugged it off, just as Kristin had. But they were right; something was very wrong. Matt walked up to the table after finishing his conversation with Katy. "It’s so cool that you and Jenna know Katy! How long have you known her?" Trying to forget about her bad feeling, Courtney gladly continued on the topic of Katy. "Well, I’ve known her since 6th grade. We were in the same english class and had the same friends and stuff. Then, last year, I think our whole schedules were identical. That’s when we really became good friends."

All of a sudden, they were interrupted by a man running into the lodge shouting frantically. "Ski Patrol! We need a medic!"

The six of them ran over to the crowd forming around the man as he gave details. "On my walkie-talkie, there was this kid. He said his girlfriend fell and was really hurt. She’s unconscious, and she hurt her leg and her head." The man described the voice to be a teenager’s, no older than 16 or 17. Courtney’s face turned white and Kristin almost collapsed, grabbing Frankie’s shoulder for support.

"Oh my god." Jesse grabbed the walkie-talkie from his pocket and tried to find their line. Frantically, he clicked through all 14 frequencies over and over.

Matt walked over to his young friend and put his hand on his shoulder. "Jesse, you know they went out of range an hour ago. You don’t know the couple is them; there are most likely at least a dozen 16 year old guys up there snowboarding with their girlfriend. We can wait for them to come back if it makes you feel any better."

They all went back to the table and sat there in silence, too tense to talk. As time passed, they noticed each other’s nervous habits. Courtney tugged on her cross; Kristin drummed her fingers on the table; Frankie bit the inside of his lip; Jesse tapped his foot continuously; Matt constantly ran his fingers through his hair.

"Okay, I can’t stand this anymore!" Jesse stood up, banging his hands on the table. "We have to do something, like talk. We are leaving on Thursday and probably won’t see each other for a while." He pointed out.

"Oh yeah, you guys are opening for Aaron Carter, right?" Kristin said remembering when her sister had begged her mom to buy tickets for the show when they went on sale. Her mother had said no and Kristin recalled Jenna’s disappointment.

Matt sat there relieved to see everyone’s minds focusing on something else. Of course he was worried; but Matt was recognized for his ability to keep a cool head in crisises. He knew the worst that could happen was a couple of nights in the hospital. He had also realized long ago that when you hit rock-bottom, the only way to go is up…

*

Chris finished singing the last verse to "Someone to Hold Me Tonight" when he heard distant voices. He had begun to sing in order to keep himself awake, to prevent sleep from moving in on him. He wanted to watch over Jenna and make sure nothing else happened to her.

"Is anyone out there?" He heard the muffled voices of his rescuers shout out to him.

"Yes, we’re over here!" Chris weakly shouted back, using all of the strength he seemed to have. He was so glad they had finally found him after almost three hours of being in freezing temperatures and no jacket. As the men on the snowmobile came up to him, he looked up into the sky. It was pitch black and no stars were out, contrary to when Jenna had fallen. But he knew that the worst of their ordeal was over.

The only thing he remembered was being wrapped in blankets and being examined by the paramedics. He felt comforted knowing they were both in good hands now. As more time passed, everything seemed to move slower, and Chris couldn’t keep his eyes open. He was so tired…

*

A voice came over the walkie-talkie that Jesse had long forgotten about. They had managed to keep their thoughts off of Jenna and Chris for the past two and a half hours. But their attention quickly turned to the walkie-talkies as a paramedic communicated with the First Aid center.

"We’re going to need two ambulances for the nearest hospital. We have a 13 year old female with a gash on her head; it needs stitches, a broken leg or dislocated knee, we can’t really tell, and mild hypothermia. She’s been unconscious for about three hours. We also have a 16 year old male by the name of Christopher Trousdale, with hypothermia, frostbite, and he’s been slipping in and out of consciousness." Everyone’s faces turned white as they listened to the reports on Jenna and Chris’ conditions.

Kristin grabbed Frankie’s arm tightly and looked him in the eye. "We have to get over there."

"Where?"

"First the First Aid Station, then the hospital." Jesse instructed them and the quickly headed for the small building attached to the lodge. As they ran over there in the snow, Jesse and Courtney held hands, as did Kristin and Frankie. Nobody noticed it, but while Courtney walked, her aquamarine cross fell from her neck and was buried in the snow by the passing feet.