The Ex Games(8)
Author: Jennifer Echols

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.”