Winter Fire Read online

  He reached out a hand to help me up and I hesitated.

  “What?”

  I opened my mouth to say Brianna’s name and changed my mind. “A friend of mine said this was the worst lift to get off of.”

  He smiled again, this time with a little self-satisfaction. “Obviously, your friend wasn’t with me.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that one.

  He put his hand out again.

  “I can do it,” I said.

  “It’s harder on the flats.”

  I raised my arm, imagining disaster as I slid around trying to heave myself to standing, but he pulled me up without any effort at all and held onto me while I unbuckled my back foot.

  At the lift, he told me to wait until a chair had turned the corner and was just in front of us, then move forward quickly for the next one. He held my arm until we sat. As we started up the hill, I let out a relieved sigh and reached up for the bar.

  “We don’t need that,” he said, waving it off.

  I didn’t want to seem like a snow geek, if there was such a thing, so I left the bar up and gripped the side of the chair. I didn’t like watching the ground fall away with nothing in front of me.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  And then the next horrible thought.

  “I don’t know how to get off this thing.”

  “When I tell you, just slide your board onto the snow and put your back foot on your stomp pad.”

  “Stomp pad.”

  “The rubber thing in front of your back binding.”

  I looked down, trying not to see the hill far beneath us.

  “Oh.” I turned to him. “But most people fall. I’ve seen it. It’s a mess.”

  “You won’t.”

  Then he opened his eyes and looked at me, the snow whipping between us. He smiled. “Don’t worry so much.”

  I smiled back, and worried.

  As the booth came into view at the top, I started to panic. I took a deep breath and held it. No Fear. The ground got closer, and just as I found a measure of relief in the fact that I wouldn’t die if I fell from our current height, the back side of the ramp passed underneath us and it was time to get off.

  I froze for a moment and felt Bren grab my arm with the hand furthest away from me. Wondering that he was still on the chair at that angle, I let the front of my board land on the snow and glide forward. Bren pulled at me and I took that as a cue to stand up. Once I did, I found the stomp pad with my back foot and let the board start down the ramp. The tip caught in the snow and I whimpered as I felt the back of the board lift, sure I was going to crash, but then Bren pressed his hand into my back, the other still holding my arm, and the ride felt smooth again.

  “You’re okay,” he said from behind me, “just lean on your front edge until we stop.”

  And we did, just a few feet from the lift. Still standing.

  He bent and unbuckled his bindings, and then did mine. When he stood, his hair was disheveled and his cheeks were even redder than before.

  “So?” He said.

  Snow danced all around him, sticking to him and dissolving on his skin. He looked at home in the cold, like he’d melt anywhere else.

  “So.” I said. “I’m Jenna, by the way. I guess you knew that.”

  He nodded.

  “Bren?” I asked when he didn’t tell me.

  A smile played on his lips for a moment, then faded. His eyes slid to the side - as though he was listening for something - and his jaw tightened.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He remained still, a crease forming between his brows. Finally, he looked up at me. “I have to go. I’m sorry. Don’t ride anymore tonight…it’s dangerous alone.” He picked up his board and held it in that shield clutch. “I’ll walk you back.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to go in yet, didn’t want my mother to catch me with a stupid grin on my face. And I wanted time to relive things.

  “I’m going to stay out here for a while.”

  He glanced at the board by my feet and then back up at me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m done for the night.”

  He pointed at me, backing away. “I hope I can trust you.” A hint of smirk still played in his expression. Then he turned and began to walk faster, disappearing into the flurry.

  I sat at the top of the bunny hill and stared down, my perspective new and different. That someone like Bren would be interested in a girl like Brianna didn’t quite make sense to me, but I supposed that if what Sydney said was true, then Brianna would be the same to him as any girl. And so would I, maybe.

  Taking the helmet off, I glanced up at the lift, realizing for the first time how close I had been to him. I was too scared to be aware of it in the moment, and now I remembered how strong and warm his hands were, even through his gloves and my puffy jacket, remembered the sound of his voice when he first found me lying in the snow, the way he had pointed and smiled at me as the distance grew between us. But this was the gushing and obsessing that girls like Brianna did over guys who did not even care about them, and now that I had had a few minutes of weakness, I would go back to my room and forget these things. Bury them in a book or homework. I had not come out here for help. I would learn on my own or not at all. And the next time I saw Bren, the first thing I would do is give him his helmet back.

  Chapter 6

  I looked for Bren all weekend, helmet in hand, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I could have bought my own helmet in the meantime -- I had a ton of babysitting money saved up and my own debit card -- but I decided that his had worked just fine to keep my brain in, at least temporarily.

  I could now make my way down the bunny hill on my front and back edges, but not without a lot of falling, both on the hill and getting off the lift. Things weren’t as easy as they had been that first night, but I had become a bit obsessed, and as a result, bruises covered both my knees as well as my arms and shoulders. I had also twisted my right ankle at some point, and since I had injured it over and over again in my childhood adventures, starting with a bad sprain I got jumping off my neighbor’s second floor porch into a pile of leaves, I knew it wasn’t really going to heal as long as I was learning, so I tried to ignore it. I woke up with my muscles screaming on Monday morning, but it was a good pain. I got ready for school in slow motion as I waited to loosen up.

  My mother frowned at me from her post at the counter as I lowered myself into a chair at our little kitchen table and plunged my spoon into my cereal.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you moving like that?” She asked.

  “Because I hurt.” I smiled up at her to let her know it wasn’t serious. “I’ve been learning how to ride.”

  Her eyes widened for a moment before she grinned back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s just been this past weekend.” I shoved a spoonful of milky flakes into my mouth.

  She curled two pearl-tipped fingers through her coffee mug handle and took a sip, gazing thoughtfully into the cup, then asked, “you just started up on your own?”

  “Kind of,” I said, swallowing. “I started to start, but it wasn’t really going that well. Then one of the instructors mercifully offered to help me.”

  “Really?” She raised a brow.

  “Just the first night.” I glanced back down into my bowl. “You were right, I needed a lesson.”

  “From whom?”

  “I told you, an instructor.”

  “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  “His name is Bren.”

  “Bren…”

  “Bergan. I think.”

  “Ah.” She took another sip of coffee. “They live here. The Bergans. Don’t they?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “And how old is this Bren?”

  I always cringed when she referred to people like that…this Bren or that Emily…like she was
talking about something she wanted to rid us of. I have to address this oil leak, or we have to deal with that mold situation on the side of the house.

  I shrugged again. “I don’t know. My age.” When she didn’t answer, I looked up at her. “Why?”

  “I’m so glad you decided to try it,” she said. “I just think maybe it would be better if you learned from somebody with a little more experience.”

  “It was one night, for a few minutes. And anyway, I haven’t seen anyone here ride better.”

  “To be fair, you’re not exactly an expert on the subject.”

  “To be fair,” I said, staring down into my bowl, “neither are you.”

  I felt her glare.

  “What?” I said. “Do you want me to get some geezer to give me lessons, and hope I learn before he falls and breaks his hip?”

  I glanced up. She had her arms folded across her chest now, but her thoughts were elsewhere. After a moment, she focused again.

  “So do we need to pay this boy?”

  “No,” I said, “it was a freebie.”

  “I see. Well, I want you to be careful.” She turned to top off her coffee, wrapped her hands around the mug, and stepped away from the counter. “We should get you to school.”

  By the time I got to the lunch table, Brianna was already talking at full throttle to anyone who would listen, but mostly to Tyler. She had strayed from her usual seat and now hovered at the other end of the bench, chatting up at him as he tore huge bites out of a sub and swallowed some of them without chewing.

  “And your dad already paid so it’s definitely ours?” She asked.

  He nodded. “Definitely.”

  “So I can tell people?”

  “Yes, you can tell people, as long as you tell people to bring their own alcohol because they’re not drinking mine. And no freaks. I don’t want anyone spasing out and getting us all in trouble.”

  She smacked his arm. “I don’t hang out with any freaks.”

  He gulped down another bite. “You are a freak.”

  “Oh, so you don’t want me there?” She raised her brows and grinned.

  He studied the last bit of his sandwich. “You will be tolerated. I guess.”

  She rolled her eyes, pulled her legs out from under the table, and stood up. Then she gave him a light swat on the back of the head - which he pretended not to feel - and returned to the rest of us.

  ‘What?” Dillon asked.

  “We have the bonfire at Yew Dales on Friday.” She was, as Dillon would have put it, giddy.

  “Nice,” Dillon said.

  “Last time we did that,” Lauren said, “Tyler was too smashed to drive us home and I had to call my sister. I’m not doing that again.”

  “So you’re not going to come?” Brianna cast a pout at her.

  Lauren smiled. “No, I’m coming, I’m just going to bring my own car and a twelve pack of Brisk.”

  “Do I have to drink Brisk if I ride with you?” Brianna asked.

  “No. I’ll have room for you and a max of three additional idiots.”

  Satisfied, Brianna turned her attention to me.

  “So…party at your house. Kind of.” She laughed.

  “So you can, like, rent the bonfire?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Tyler’s parents have a ton of money. They get us the bonfire grounds a few times a year so we’ll have something to do besides watch the trees grow. It’s cool. You have to come. And you don’t even have to worry about driving,” she chirped.

  Great, I thought as I gave Brianna a stiff smile. She took this as my R.S.V.P. and moved on to talking time and the weather forecast and what to wear. I didn’t know if I was up for standing around in the cold for hours watching people drink, but it would make my mother happy – the socializing, not the under-aged public drunkenness – so I resigned myself to going and ate my fries.

  After school, I signed a board out of the rental shop and trudged out to the bunny hill. Over the weekend, I had begun to get used to avoiding other people on the slope, but I wanted to get out before the ski clubs to warm up. Standing on the crest, I saw that the hill was still mostly empty. A girl sat in the very middle about halfway down, her board attached to her outstretched legs like one of those green plastic army men, and closer to the trees, a teenaged boy was teaching himself to ride switch – with his usual back foot forward – and concentrating hard to keep his balance. At the bottom, three small kids and an instructor, all on skis, were gathering at the lift.

  On the way up on the lift after my sixth run, I congratulated myself on having only fallen twice. Once on my badly bruised knees, a stumble so painful that I knelt in the snow with a wince frozen on my face for what felt like at least a full minute before I could push myself up again, and once on my back, which was nearly painless due to Bren’s helmet intervening on behalf of my head. My arm ached, but I couldn’t remember which fall had caused it, so I shook it off as my chair cleared the top of the hill.

  I had just registered that nervous feeling in my stomach that came with remembering my odds of making it off the lift without falling when I spotted Bren standing off to the left, clutching his board with a bare hand and waiting for me. I felt a flutter in my stomach.

  I broke eye contact and tried to push my mind onto the task of staying upright. As the chair approached the ramp, I let my board glide on the snow, careful not to catch the nose, leaned on the chair until I was standing, and let it push me forward. Once I was free and moving, I let my back edge dig in just a little so that I would curve toward him, but at the last minute I looked up at him and my board caught on a choppy mound of slush. I wavered, my arms windmilling, my pride seeping away, and felt a yank on my jacket as he pulled me toward him.

  “Thanks,” I said as casually as I could. “I hate this lift.”

  He laughed. We were close enough so that I could feel his breath on my face, but I was on my board and couldn’t back away.

  “You’ve been practicing,” he said.

  “A little, over the weekend.”

  “You’ll have to start working on your s-turns now.”

  I knew what he meant. I was going down on either my front or back edge, and not switching edges to turn because the switch entailed crossing over the flat of the board, which made it especially easy to catch an edge and fall hard.

  “I’m not ready for that,” I said. “I can barely make it down without falling.”

  “People stay on one edge for too long because they’re afraid,” he said. “It’s a bad habit.”

  “Yeah well, it hurts to fall. Do you even remember what that’s like? Or were you born on a board?”

  He laughed again. “Either you want to learn or you don’t.”

  “I do. I am.” His ability to aggravate me in the space of a second was as stunning as he was. I was glad for the balance.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “And you’re doing a good job. So now it’s time to learn your turns.”

  As I looked at him, I thought of Brianna. Had she really been with him, kissed him, touched him?

  “You know what?” I said. “You’re pushy.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t feel like it.

  “Because I’m trying to help you?” The sun shimmered off the top of his head and lit his face, but he didn’t squint. His eyes were wide and shot through with gold. They searched mine.

  “I didn’t ask you to.” I said. “I’m not trapped in a well or hanging out of a burning building. I’m just learning this stupid –“ I slipped on my board a little and struggled to remain upright “- sport. If that’s what you want to call it.” He watched me, grinning until I steadied myself. I narrowed my eyes at him. “And why are you, anyway?”

  “Why am I what?”

  “Trying to help me?”

  “You look suspicious.”

  I shrugged.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Do not shrug at me. I want to know what you’re implying.”

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling stupid now. “I
mean, people don’t usually just help other people for no reason.”

  “They don’t?” He cocked his head.

  “I mean, not people our age.”

  He raised a brow.

  “Not guys,” I finally clarified.

  “I see,” he said. He crossed his arms and stared at me. It was the same thing my mother had done that morning. “So you think I’m trying to sleep with you.”

  “I didn’t say that.” But that was exactly what I was saying. And now I had an even worse thought. What if he wasn’t? What if it had never crossed his mind?

  “Well, this puts me in a losing situation, doesn’t it?” He said. He was clearly amused. I was a teetering mess on my board, so I bent and undid my bindings, tripping as I stepped out of them. He held my arm while I stood upright.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling away. “What do you mean, ‘losing situation?’” Now I was aware that I was still wearing his helmet. I unbuckled it quickly and took it off, handing it back to him.

  “I don’t want it back if it means you’re not going to wear one,” he said.

  “I’ll get my own. What do you mean, ‘losing situation?’”

  Well,” he said, accepting the helmet, “If I say you’re right, that I’m only helping you hoping I can talk you into sleeping with me at some point, then I’m an ass. But If I say you’re wrong, that I want nothing to do with sleeping with you, then I’m basically telling you that you’re unattractive to me so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  He was actually waiting for my answer, as if I was going to admit I’d be upset if he didn’t find me attractive.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” I asked testily.

  “Which situation would you prefer?”

  “It really doesn’t matter what I’d prefer. What matters is what’s true. So why are you helping me?” I cringed inside at the hard sound of my voice. My mind often cowered when my mouth went on a rampage.

  “I want you to learn your turns.” His patience caused a swell of frustration inside me.

  With no warning to either one of us, I blurted, “You’re seeing Brianna, right?”

  And here was that deep laugh again, that hollow ha ha ha.