It would be hard to leave home, but the idea of a bigger mountain in my backyard—not to mention being able to leave school and having Luke and Blair back—was too much. Tad knew it. He was a man who got what he wanted. Tad was a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps Libertarian, a social Darwinist who felt that his own ascent in the world gave him permission to take anything he wanted. And what he wanted right now was for his sons to be surrounded by potential champions, in order to sharpen them into ones. He didn’t want Luke to be distracted by the fact that his best friend lived elsewhere, didn’t want him to fall in with the freeskiers, who he saw as burnouts. Defying his father was giving Luke no shortage of satisfaction. If Tad brought me here, he’d be the hero again. He had spent the year rallying the support of other rich local ski fans, and now he needed to deliver additional talent that was not his progeny.

“We’ll think about it,” my father said once Tad had laid out his offer.

“Dad!” I wailed, as though taking a night or two to consider sending your fifteen-year-old daughter to live with someone else was deeply unreasonable.

“It’s a very generous offer,” my mom added. “But it’s a big decision.”

“Of course you should think about it,” Tad said. “Just so you know, the tutors can pick up wherever Katie leaves off. There will be no interruption in her studies whatsoever. And they’ll work around the kids’ training so that they’re not having to squeeze everything in all the time. It will be so much less stressful for them.”

I was relentless on the five-hour drive home the next day. I was half ready to divorce my parents as Macaulay Culkin had recently done—inspiring an entire generation into childish fantasies of freedom. Yes, I would emancipate myself! Of course I’d never have done it, I loved my parents too much, but I was so obsessed with glory, I was ready to bulldoze anything in my path. My parents tried to hold me off while they discussed it between themselves, but I thought the decision should be mine.

“Why don’t you just let me go?” I hollered at them over dinner one night while Penny was out with Emily. “God! Why don’t you worry about your other daughter?”

I wish I could bring myself to forget that I’d ever said such a thing, that I’d unintentionally cut to the quick the way only a teenager who both knows and doesn’t know the impact of her words can.

So it was decided, and in the midst of everything, I prepared to move to Sun Valley. I felt sad about leaving Pen, but she’d be off to college with Emily after the next year anyway.