He was gone.

And then I heard the cheers and applause of the spectators for me, with Liz and Chloe’s screams ringing above the noise even though they were near the top of the course, easing their way down through the crowd and the snow. I turned away from Nick’s empty deck, unlatched my boots from my board, and hiked over to the sidelines to meet the girls. I had two friends who I knew for sure had come out to support me, and who weren’t the least bit embarrassed to let everyone know it. They were the ones who were really important.

Besides, if I won this competition, I would be in big trouble, and Nick Krieger would be the least of my worries.

“So, what’s next?” Liz asked the instant she plopped down beside me on the seat of the bus. “Are you registering tomorrow for that amateur comp in Aspen a couple of weeks from now?”

I’d been afraid of this. After the competition, Chloe had walked back to her parents’ hotel. The bus would wind through the snowy streets from the ski resort to my house and then to Liz’s. This ten-minute ride was my only chance to convince Liz to drop this idea of pushing me into more competitions, before she dragged Chloe onto the bandwagon with her.

I’d been so thrilled when Josh won third place in his boys’ division. And I was absolutely ecstatic when the other times in my girls’ division came in and I found out I’d WON THE WHOLE SHEBANG! It still hadn’t quite sunk in. And now it never would. Because almost the second I realized I’d won, I started worrying about what came next.

“We already checked the Aspen contest,” I reminded Liz, careful to keep my voice even. “It requires a big air event.”

Liz spoke carefully too, using the fingertip of her glove to trace graffiti on the back of the bus seat, rather than looking at me. “Chloe and I thought that after you won the competition today—and we knew you would—you’d realize how good you are, and you’d start entering everything in sight.”

“You and Chloe thought wrong.” I looked past Liz’s dark curly hair, out the bus window so streaked with salt that shops flashing by outside were just blurs of color.

“Let me put it this way,” Liz said, looking directly at me now. “What am I doing after high school?”

“Getting a bachelor’s in English from the University of Colorado and a master’s in library science from the University of Denver,” I recited. Liz and Chloe both had been very consistent in their career plans since I’d known them.

“And what’s Chloe doing?” Liz prompted.

“Going to Georgetown and getting into politics.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Boarding,” I muttered. I should have seen this convo coming, and now she’d backed me into a corner, even though I was sitting on the aisle.

“Unless you’re planning on living with your parents forever, how are you going to board all day when you haven’t gone pro? And how are you going pro when you won’t enter any competitions to get there?”

She was right, of course. I’d known I would have to face this reality sooner or later. I wanted it to be later, after this year’s snow season was over.

She persisted. “The prize for winning first place in the competition is lessons with Daisy Delaney, right?”

“Right.” I felt myself grinning all over again at the thought. Daisy Delaney held a silver medal in the Olympics, an X Games title, and two world championships in women’s snowboarding. Last December I got a big head after landing the 900, and I called the office of the Aspen slopes where she worked to inquire about lessons. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to develop in the sport if lessons with this stellar athlete were in my reach.

They weren’t. The waiting list for lessons with her was three years long. And the cost was out of my league. But now I’d won this very prize: ten lessons with her.

“This is your opportunity to impress someone who can pull strings for you,” Liz said. “I’ve heard of three Colorado girls Daisy Delaney’s coached who’ve gone pro. But potential sponsors will want to photograph you snowboarding off a cliff. And after Daisy Delaney spends the morning drilling you on spins, she’ll expect the two of you to leave the main slopes and shred the back bowls. You’re not going to tell her, ‘No thanks, I don’t go off cliffs. Don’t bother coaching me in slopestyle or big air, either, because I don’t board off anything higher than my own head.’”

Liz was mocking me. Liz, who never said an unkind thing to anyone, was mocking me, one of her best friends! I gazed reprovingly at her and hoped my hurt look would shock her into an apology.

She folded her arms as best she could in her thick coat, and she raised her eyebrows at me under her dark curls and blue knitted hat. She was right again. Fear of heights would be a little hard to explain to a snowboarding coach who might want to take a chance on me.

I just didn’t want to hear it.

The bus squealed to a stop, which snapped us out of our stare-down. We both glanced around and realized we’d reached my street. “We’ll continue this discussion tonight,” she told me in an authoritative voice, as if I didn’t already have a mother.

“Give it a rest, would you, Liz?” I wailed. “I appreciate what you’re doing, I really do. But Chloe invited us over tonight so we can celebrate my win. At least let me enjoy the thrill of victory, okay? We can talk about how it’s ruined my life tomorrow.”

As I stood, I saw Josh crouched in the seat behind us. I’d thought he’d sat in the back of the bus. Maybe he had, but then he’d worked his way up the aisle for eavesdropping. When we locked eyes and he realized he was busted, he dashed past me down the aisle as best he could in snowboarding boots and disappeared through the door.

“Oh God, there’s been a security breach,” I gasped to Liz. “See you tonight.”

“See you,” she sang after me, her authoritative tone totally gone. In fact, she sounded eager and giddy, just as she and Chloe had last Friday in the hall when we’d discussed Nick. I had a feeling she and Chloe were not going to leave my fear of heights alone.

And neither was Josh. I did my best to dash after him, clunking down the bus stairs into the crisp air. He’d already pulled his snowboard out of the rack on the side of the bus and was hiking up the icy sidewalk. I slid my own board from the rack and chased him. “Hey!” I hollered. “James Bond! What’s the big idea?”

He stopped on the slick sidewalk and whirled to face me. “You’re supposed to take me with you,” he snarled.

“Pardon?” I played dumb to put off the inevitable, because I had a good idea what he meant.

“That’s what siblings do for each other, like Elijah and Hannah Teter, and Molly and Mason Aguirre. You’re supposed to make it as a pro snowboarder, then reach back and help me do the same.”

I stared blankly at him, waiting for him to acknowledge the irony of him scolding me, when I was older than him. I moved closer so I could stare down my nose at him. This didn’t work. He was almost as tall as me. He’d shot up a few inches lately and was about to catch up to me. And he was standing above me on the sloped sidewalk.

His dark eyes were shaped like mine. He had a scattering of freckles like I did, but not as prominent, even though I tried to even mine out with makeup. And he used to have hair almost as bright red as mine, but now his hair was dark brown. Flashes of red echoed in the strands only when he moved his head in the sunlight reflecting off the snowdrifts in our neighbors’ yards. He’d outgrown his red hair as easily as his peanut allergy. He actually wasn’t bad-looking. Eventually he might even land his crush, Gavin’s sister Tia. My hair, in contrast, was as red as the day I was born. As red as Shaun White’s, the greatest snowboarder ever. Strangers on the slopes were always calling to me that I could be his little sister.

But I wasn’t. “I’m no Hannah Teter,” I insisted, “or Molly Aguirre either.”

“You could be,” Josh insisted. “You’re supposed to have a fear of heights for a little while after you break your leg. You’re not supposed to have it four years after you start snowboarding. And you definitely can’t let it ruin your chance of impressing Daisy Delaney. I’m not going to let you.” He spun on the ice and stomped up the sidewalk again, dragging his board.

“What are you going to do, tell on me because I won a snowboarding contest?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he called haughtily over his shoulder.

Uh-oh. I definitely did not want my parents butting into my business, especially not about this. “You had better not,” I shouted after him. “Do you hear me, O’Malley? I will tell Gavin’s sister you slept with a stuffed bunny rabbit until you were in middle school, so help me God!”

Josh dropped his board, slid down to me, and clamped his hand over my mouth. “Shhhh! Mr. Big Ears was very special.”

It took me a full ten seconds to push Josh off me. I hoped no more buses passed by, because the tourists inside would probably grip the poles in the middle of the bus and edge a bit farther from the crazy locals. Last winter I would have beat Josh away with no problem. He was growing fast. I wouldn’t be able to overpower him much longer, so we needed to solve this issue before then.

Avoidance was so much easier. I’d had enough of him and Liz both dragging me down in the midst of my happy afternoon. “Don’t tell them,” I said again between gasps. I bent his fingers backward to make him let me go.

“Ow!” he barked, rubbing his fingers, face bright red underneath his freckles. I shouldn’t have bent his fingers back. This was another thing Josh and I had in common: a bad temper. We might seem good-natured to the point of ditsy, but push us too far and we’d snap. I was using yoga to work on this. Judging from our current convo, Josh was not.

He bent to snag his board and jogged up the slippery slope. He wanted to beat me home. What would he tell Mom when he got there?

“Josh!” I shouted, jogging after him as best I could. I tripped over my board and lost my grip. It zipped back down the sidewalk, past two houses, and crashed into a mailbox. At least I knew I’d done a good job of waxing it last night. I trotted after it and called pitifully to Josh as I picked it up. “Little bro, I love you so much!”

Way up the hill, he disappeared inside our house.

1440

1440

(fôr tn fôr t) n. 1. a quadruple spin, nearly impossible to pull off 2. Hayden’s fear of heights, nearly impossible to hide

When I finally made it into the mud room, panting with exertion and hot under five layers of clothing, Josh had only pulled off his boots. He sat on the bench and playfully grabbed at Doofus’s snout. He hadn’t spilled anything to mom yet. Whew.

I extracted myself from my parka. “You are, seriously, my favorite brother.”

Josh scratched Doofus’s ears and seemed to be telling the dog rather than me, “I’m your only brother. And you bent my fingers back and hurt them.” He poked out his bottom lip.

“I will kiss your fingers and make them better, kissy kissy,” I threatened him. That got him up pretty quickly. He kicked off the rest of his snow clothes and skidded into the kitchen in his long johns and socks. I stripped down to my long johns, too—tripped over Doofus—and scrambled after Josh, angry already about what he might tell Mom, depending on how mischievous he felt.

Mom was giving him a big hug, wearing her yoga leotard from work, holding the large kitchen knife she’d just been chopping dinner with. If they weren’t my family I might have been frightened. “Well, how’d you do?” she asked, pulling back to look him in the face.

“I won third place in the junior boys’ division!” Josh exclaimed with wide, innocent eyes like an adorable woodland creature in a Disney cartoon. I wondered what he was up to. I wanted to slap him. But then I would be forced to explain to my mom why I’d slapped the adorable woodland creature.

“That’s great, honey!” She wrapped him in another hug. He was facing me now. He gave me a wink and a thumbs-up. Ugh!

Mom eased out of the hug with him but kept her hands on his shoulders. “Why are you acting like a parody of yourself?” she asked him.

Josh blinked at her. “That’s just a function of being a teenager. I feel so empty inside. What’s for dinner?” He slipped out from under her hands and wandered to the refrigerator.

Mom turned to me, and the big grin she’d worn for Josh sagged a little. She didn’t expect much from my first snowboard competition. “And how’d you do, honey?”

“I did okay.”

“I’ll give you five seconds,” Josh called from behind the refrigerator door.

Mom looked at Josh, then back at me. “What? What is it?”

I looked into her eyes, dark like Josh’s and mine. I took in her long red hair tamed into a braid down her back, her freckles that made her look younger than forty-six. At least, I thought so, and I hoped so, because clearly I was going to look just like her. Maybe she’d take my side, whatever Josh was about to tell her. She knew how hard my injury had been on me.

“Actually …,” I said slowly.

With each of my syllables, her right eyebrow arched higher.

“I won,” I finished.

“Oh my God, that’s great, you won!” With her braid bouncing as she jumped up and down, she looked and sounded a lot like Liz—except for, you know, the knife. “That means you’re a lot better at snowboarding than I thought! You’ve finally gotten over your fear of heights! And—wait a minute—why didn’t you want to tell me?” Abruptly she stopped jumping. “What’s the prize?”