Black Chalk by Albert Alla

easy,’ I said and I went first. My instructor had taken my group down moguls for the first time this year. After the first fifty yards, my legs were burning but I’d managed not to fall. I looked up. James was stopped halfway down the slope, looking longingly at the safety of the chair.
    â€˜Come on!’ I shouted. ‘Hurry up.’
    Hesitantly, he launched himself across the slope, rising and dropping with every bump, somehow keeping his balance, until he got too close to the trees and he realised that he’d eat bark if he didn’t stop. Instinctively, he pointed his skis uphill until he came to a halt. There, facing the wrong way, he started to slip backwards, down the hill, gathering speed, until the top of a mogul flipped him the way he should have been, and he was rising and dropping with every bump, again somehow keeping his balance, towards the other line of trees.
    He turned once more, this time the right way, and then he skied past me, bolder and faster. Thirty yards later, he was flying over a mogul, and his skis had come off, and his head was full of snow. He’d learned his lesson, I thought, and I went down to help. Juggling his skis in my arms, one of my poles slipped out of my hands before I reached him. It slid down until it hit him, face down in the snow.
    â€˜That’ll teach you to be careful,’ I said.
    â€˜Shut up,’ he said, his head rising from the snow.
    â€˜Can’t you be nice for once? I’m bringing you your skis. You could say thank you.’
    He stood up, yanked the skis from my hands, and glared at me.
    â€˜Well, come on,’ I said, ‘put your skis on and give me my pole.’
    â€˜No,’ he said.
    â€˜What! I just brought you your skis. The least you could do is give me back my pole.’
    He turned away, hiding his face, and I knew it from experience: despite the day I’d spent nannying him, despite me picking up his skis for him, he’d decided that he had a right to be angry with me. My thoughts swam, and I shuffled up to push him down:
    â€˜Give me my pole!’
    He staggered up and pushed me.
    â€˜I hate you.’
    Pushing me, the little weasel! I couldn’t believe it. I shoved and pushed until he was sprawled in the snow, lesson learned, and I had my pole back, and I left him alone with the moguls. When I reached the bottom of the black run, where it met the green slope ambling down to base, I pictured my mother, and I told myself I’d better wait for my brother. There, I plotted my revenge, looked at my watch, thought he’d hiked back up and chaired it down, that he’d broken something, until half an hour had passed, and he emerged over a crest, getting closer one slow mogul at a time.
    When he came to the bottom of the run, he looked different. Up to that day, we’d fought often, twice a day it felt like sometimes, but we’d always made peace half an hour after he wanted to kill me. This time though, he kept his lips in a hard line for a whole day, and he looked distant for days afterwards. My mother sided with him as she always did – because he was younger, I was meant to be responsible, she said. But more than her reaction, it was his distance that stayed with me for years afterwards, that resurfaced and cooled me down whenever we were on the verge of a fight.
    And it was this distance that I thought about when he stood by my hospital bed. He looked changed; it was in the way he held himself. But a week was too little time for change. The mere idea of it was ludicrous. If anyone had undergone change, it was meant to be me. I could hear experts say it: what I’d gone through, it was only natural. And yet, after days spent within myself, I could tell them that I was the same person I’d been a week before.
    I decided to trust my first impression: he looked different. I was finding him awkward, almost shifty. I asked him about cricket training.
    â€˜We’ve got a new