“It’s everywhere!” I overheard her say tearfully to my mother one evening as they sat at our kitchen table. She was finding hair on her pillow in the morning, clumps in the drain in the shower; it came out on her hairbrushes and when she ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m like a chemo patient in a movie.”

“Oh, honey,” my mom said. “We’ll get to the bottom of it. It could just be stress.” Stress could do strange things. Was Penny stressed? There was the matter of Ryan, the boyfriend from the other school, who my parents weren’t so fond of. He seemed controlling. He had a lot of opinions about what Penny should and should not wear and do and say. Even easygoing Emily wasn’t a fan.

At school, Penny’s hair loss became the melodrama of the moment. There’d been a much-buzzed-about story in a recent issue of Seventeen magazine about a beautiful teenager who suffered from a disease called alopecia, and so the population of CDA High was surprisingly well-informed on the obscure condition. What could be more horrifying for a teenage girl than having her hair fall out? Worse still, alopecia had no known cause and no known cure. Penny was a sudden and tragic celebrity at school. One of the most popular girls in her class boldly offered to take her wig shopping when the time came. For the good-looking boys who also cared about seeming nice, she became the babe du jour: “Penny Cleary? Yeah, she’s cute.”

My parents were at their wits’ end, and I’m sorry to say that I was no picnic during this time. For one thing, my competition schedule was getting more intense, with more out-of-state junior competitions. I still talked to Luke all the time on the phone and saw him at the bigger races, but I feared he was slipping away into a life that no longer included me. And I was wracked with envy of peers I was falling behind, like Sarah Sweeny, whose family had just relocated to Vail and who, at sixteen, was competing well at the FIS level with adults, while I had to continue to go to regular school.

During midwinter break near the end of February, my parents agreed to go to Sun Valley for a visit. They rented a condo on the hill—turning down Tad Duncan’s offer to stay at the chalet. (“With the child bride?” my mom said. “No thanks!”) But they said that it was okay if I stayed in the Duncans’ guest room. Penny stayed home for a week of sleepovers at Emily’s house and sneaking around with Ryan.