The Ex Games(7)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Until now. I thought I couldn’t feel any more adrenaline than was already pumping through my body in my first boarding competition ever. Apparently my body kept some adrenaline in reserve, because I flushed with a new rush at the realization that he was watching me. I could not let Nick distract me. It probably wasn’t even him but his father. Or was it? I’d seen Mr. Krieger at my parents’ health club. He had blond hair, not dark hair like Nick. And why would Mr. Krieger wear Nick’s puffy parka?

Okay, Nick probably didn’t recognize me from a distance. Though my red hair and hot-pink snowboard made me hard to miss. Okay, he might recognize me, but he hadn’t meant to watch me. He was out on the deck to fetch a few more sticks of wood for the fire inside. The fact that he’d come outside at exactly the moment I took my turn in the competition was just a big coincidence. An almost impossible coincidence, actually.

Believe it or not, every bit of this flashed through my mind in one second. My questions about Nick (Is he looking at me? Is he looking at me on purpose? What does it meeeeeeeean???) were familiar to me after four years. I had become very efficient. I thought them and then pushed them to the back of my mind before they made me fall down. I was one with the mountain. My body worked perfectly. I skimmed around the gates, torn between excitement that I could see the finish line and disappointment that I’d finished so fast. I always hated for a run to end.

I made a wide circle to slow down and skidded to a stop. Almost before the final curtain of snow I’d kicked up had fallen out of the sky, I was squinting at my time on the scoreboard.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. I was in the lead! Three chicks waited to take their turns, but I was so far ahead of them after my half-pipe score, they’d have to really hightail it down the mountain to beat my overall score now.

What if I won? I’d dreamed about placing, but I’d never expected to win!

And then, so predictably that I wanted to hold myself down and rub my face with snow as punishment, I glanced way up the slope at Nick’s deck to see if he was still watching me.

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.’”