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  “What makes you think that?” He asked me. Not an answer.

  “We’re kind of friends,” I said.

  He stared at me for a long time then, his head still cocked to the side, a slight smile on his lips. Then he said, “come on.” He lowered his sunglasses and reached out for me. I looked down at his hand just as the sun glinted off of a silver ring on his right middle finger. It was thick and had a distressed, chiseled look. There was a clean gap about a centimeter wide just below the center of his knuckle, as if a tiny slice had been taken out of it.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. I hesitated, then took his hand, telling myself I was exaggerating the feverish, raw charge of his skin on mine. He began to walk, leading me past the lodge and toward the buildings beyond. As we squeezed between a row of evergreens and the deck, a branch brushed through his hair and released the scent of pine.

  He glanced back at me. “You need better friends.”

  Chapter 7

  The employee housing was a walk across three resort parking lots and over a wooden bridge that straddled a small lake. Bren and I didn’t speak on the way. I knew where we were headed, and although I was pretty certain he wasn’t trying to lure me into his lair for dubious reasons, his comment about my needing new friends made me nervous. I slowed on the bridge, pretending interest in the icy sheet beneath which no life moved or grew. Bren stood a few feet away and waited for me to regain my nerve.

  Once we stepped off the bridge, I stopped and stared up at the row of white, two-story buildings in front of us.

  “This is where you stay?” I asked.

  He nodded and pointed to the one in the middle, then started walking toward the red double doors in the center of the building.

  “Which floor is yours?” I called, sticking to my spot.

  “The bottom,” he said over his shoulder. “The first floor rooms have kitchens.”

  “Kittens?” I told myself I was trying to be funny, but he turned and looked at me like a mother whose kid was asking for a second glass of water at bedtime.

  “Yes, kittens.” He said. “We insist that all our rooms have kittens. They are the fastest way to lure women. Without kittens, we would have to rely solely on our charm.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to stifle my laugh into sarcasm, “then you’re lucky the kitten rooms were available.”

  When he reached the doors, he opened the one on the left and held it, standing to the side and making a sweeping motion with one hand. After a moment, he raised his brows. “You want to see the kittens, right?”

  I laughed this time, and crossed the space between us. Once I stepped over the threshold, I let him lead the way again.

  His apartment was directly on the right. The door wasn’t locked. He made another sweeping motion and then closed the door behind us. It was a small space. The kitchen opened immediately to the left. The countertops, appliances and floor were white. A microwave sat to the left of the sink, with a coffee pot on the other side of it. The refrigerator stood against the far wall, and directly across from it was a small wooden dinette with four chairs.

  “Hey,” I said dragging the word out, “This is a kitchen, not a kitten.”

  He pressed his hand to his forehead and grinned. “Yeah, I always get those two confused.”

  Across the room was the start of a dark hallway that looked like it continued left behind the kitchen, and I assumed that’s where the bathroom and bedrooms were. To our right was the living room. A set of sliding glass doors hung with long vertical blinds faced the lake, and a large T.V. flickered against the far wall. The news was on. An earthquake somewhere. Two identical tan couches – one facing the T.V. and the other dividing the living room from the kitchen – and a long glass coffee table were the only furniture.

  The girl with the red braids lounged on one end of the sofa watching T.V. The tall boy was stretched out across its length with his head in her lap. Her long fingers were creeping through his hair. Beneath the warm brown strands, I saw a thinner version of Bren’s ring circling the middle finger of her right hand.

  She looked up at us and gave me a feline grin.

  “Hello.” Her voice was soft. Everything about her seemed soft, right down to her fuzzy blue and white sweater with the brown snowflakes and her white pajama bottoms.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The boy in her lap raised himself up on one elbow and craned his neck to peer at me. Then his gaze shifted to Bren, his brows arching high on his forehead. I threw a quick glance at his hand and saw what I expected, thick silver ring on his middle finger, gap slicing through the width.

  “This is Jenna,” Bren said.

  “Hi Jenna.” The girl’s voice was a purr. There was something in her smile. Not sarcasm exactly. More like satisfaction.

  “Hi,” I said again.

  “This is Frieda, and my brother Dag,” Bren told me. He tossed his helmet on the table and opened the refrigerator. I tried to keep my expression from registering the strangeness of their names. I nodded and tried a smile.

  “You want a soda or something?” Bren was crouched behind the refrigerator door. It sounded like he had shoved something in his mouth while he was searching. A few seconds later he emerged with two sodas and closed the fridge with his elbow.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  He tossed me a long black can with some blue lightning scrawled across it and I cracked it open, taking care not to slurp the first sip.

  “So Jenna,” Frieda said, sitting up straighter, her green eyes like kryptonite. “You live here?”

  I stepped forward and rested my soda on the back of the empty sofa.

  “Yeah,” I said, “we just moved here. My mother and I.”

  A chunk of hair fell into Dag’s eyes and he let himself collapse back into Frieda’s lap. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them on the news once more. Frieda swept the lock from his forehead with one long, black fingernail.

  “Good for you.” she said. “It’s nice here.”

  “Except I don’t do any snow sports,” I said.

  “Oh well, you’ll learn.” She waved a hand at me. “Bren will teach you. He’s reasonably competent.” She threw him a sly glance.

  He stepped up beside me and flicked his soda tab at her. She batted it away without taking her eyes from mine. It hit the T.V. screen and bounced onto the carpet.

  A moment later, I heard a door open and footsteps trudging down the hall. The boy with the blonde dreadlocks rounded the corner, shirtless, his jeans unbuttoned and a white towel slung over his shoulders. Every line and muscle in his torso stood out against his pale skin. A black, spiny tattoo circled his left bicep, and at first I mistook it for branches or thorns, but then I spotted the subtle outline of a stag head and realized that they were antlers, winding their way in both directions around to the back of his arm.

  He smoothed a hand over his jaw and I noted the ring on his middle finger. Clean-shaven now, he appeared much younger than when I had first seen him. He grabbed the damp towel around his neck with both hands.

  “Are you trying to make us believe you shower?” Frieda said to him.

  “At least once a month.” He grinned, slid the towel off his shoulders and snapped it in her direction. Then he caught a glimpse of us. He tossed his towel on the couch and stood up straight, looking from Bren to me.

  “Who’s this?” He asked, but his eyes were firmly on me now.

  “Jenna,” Bren said.

  “Jenna,” he repeated, taking two large strides across the room toward us. He was too close to me, but his grin charmed me out of my discomfort, half-naked or not. Maybe they didn’t need the kittens after all.

  “Frey is Frieda’s brother,” Bren said, pressing a hand against Frey's chest to back him off. “They’re twins.”

  I took this as an excuse to step back, and glanced from Frieda to Frey.

  “You two don’t look anything alike,” I said.

  Frey grinned again. “That’s because we’r
e fraternal,” he said. “If you look very closely, you can just about tell that Frieda’s female.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Well, we can all tell that you’re an ass from a mile away.”

  I laughed and so did she, raising her eyebrows twice at me before turning her attention back to Dag.

  “Where are the quakes?” Bren asked, nodding toward the T.V.

  “South America. One in California.” Frieda said.

  “Typical,” he said, but it sounded like a question. She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. I didn’t get it. I’d never met anyone my age particularly interested in things like that.

  Bren turned to me. “Come on.” He headed for the sliders.

  There was a sort of porch beyond the doors, a concrete rectangle with a white iron railing around it. Two white, plastic chairs flanked a tiny matching table in the middle. It was chilly, but bearable with the sun. We sat down and sipped our drinks.

  “So when will we work on those turns?” Bren asked.

  I made a choking sound.

  He laughed. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “So did you all go to school in Norway?” I asked him. He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. The wind blew his hair back, turning him, for a moment, into the cover of a romance novel.

  “We went in lots of places,” he said.

  “Did you graduate?” I asked.

  He nodded once.

  I tried to squash my frustration. He didn’t seem to want to elaborate.

  “How did you finish so early?” I asked, leaning forward until he looked at me.

  “Homeschooling.” He smiled, and something in his face told me that he was done talking about it. He turned and looked out over the lake.

  “So what brings you all here?”

  “Snow,” he said, and when I lifted my hands and let them slap down in frustration, he smiled and added, “we like to travel.”

  “That older guy I saw you with,” I said, changing course, “is he related to you?”

  “My uncle Val.”

  “Is he, like, your guardian?”

  “Something like that.”

  “None of you are eighteen?”

  He turned to me again. “If we were, would we need a guardian?” He said it like he had just delivered the punch line of a joke.

  I stared at him for a few moments, then opened my mouth to ask how long he was staying, but he jumped in before me.

  “When are you going to learn your turns?” Now it was a debate.

  “Okay fine,” I said, showing him my palms, “no more questions.”

  He laughed under his breath, one amused huff, and took a long gulp of soda. As he lowered the can, his eyes narrowed. I followed his gaze to where a petite blonde in a slim-cut purple jacket was moving up the walk toward the front doors. When she saw us, she veered off the path, folded her arms across her chest and picked up speed. Her strides were impossibly long for a girl her size. She didn’t stop until her hips were pressed against the railing.

  She glared at Bren, then turned to me, her hair sweeping against her shoulders. I noticed now that there were violet streaks shot all through her white-gold locks. Her face was a small oval, her lips pink and full. Her eyes - a strange indigo - seemed to take up half her face. She was striking, and her angry brood made her appear exotic and fierce. I shifted in my chair and looked to Bren.

  “This is Skye,” Bren said, his eyes hard on hers. He nodded in my direction. “This is Jenna.”

  I smiled, but she didn’t even glance at me.

  “We need to talk,” she told him. Her voice was husky, and though she was small, it suited her.

  Bren nodded.

  My heart fell. There was a history in their gazes, so much weight that I had to stand up to shed myself of it. This was probably his girlfriend. And I was probably not what she wanted to find here. And the worst part was, she looked as if she had found this kind of thing before.

  “I have to go anyway,” I said.

  Bren stood up. “I’ll walk you back.”

  “No,” I put a hand up as I stepped over the rail, “it’s fine. I have some things I have to do for my mom. I’ll just see you later.”

  “Jenna…” Bren called after me.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said again, now moving at a slow jog to get away from them. I headed for the bridge, feeling exactly like the girl Sydney had warned me not to become. Feeling like I didn’t need new friends after all.

  Chapter 8

  Talk of the bonfire went on all day on Friday. By the time I got back from school I felt like I had already been there. As I had for the past few days, I went up to the suite, dumped my backpack, fixed myself up and then went down to the main deck. I hadn’t seen Bren since that day at his apartment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why. It was possible that his girlfriend had gone nuts when she saw me there and forbid him to talk to me, but I hadn’t seen any of the others, either. Then again, she had looked mad enough to take them all out.

  I looked out over the mountain. The sun was strong today and the snow was soft and slushy. I had only been on a board twice this week, and wondered if I should get out there. I liked the slush. It was a much softer fall, and since I was trying, largely unsuccessfully, to learn my turns, I could've used all the help I could get. Two days ago, I had reinjured my ankle so badly that I was still hobbling on it. I lifted my foot and rotated it to feel it out. Ouch.

  After searching the faces above every yellow jacket in my view, I turned from the railing and went back inside. My mother was leaning over the reception desk with Ellen, the day manager, their heads together as they searched through a floppy brown book.

  “It’s fine if they want 214,” my mother said, “but they’re either going to have to check in a day later or stay in another room for one night.”

  “They’re going to be disappointed,” Ellen said. “This is the first time in five years that the room won’t be free right away. It’s their anniversary.”

  “You know,” my mother sighed, “they could’ve booked earlier.”

  Ellen smiled.

  “Give them 312 for the first night, and tell them we will take care of moving them to 214 the following afternoon.” She paused, then said, “and give them dinner on us the night of their anniversary.”

  “Could set a bad precedent,” Ellen said.

  “Better than setting the precedent of them staying somewhere else.” My mother said.

  I stared, impressed. I guessed I knew my mother was smart, but it was different to watch her outside of us, navigating other problems.

  She closed the book and handed it to Ellen, then smiled when she saw me.

  “Excited about the big bonfire tonight?” She said in a bright voice. It seemed that she was more excited than I was.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I said.

  “Well I’m glad you’re going. It sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “I guess.”

  She sighed, stepped around the desk and moved close enough to me so that only I could hear her.

  “I really wish you could try to have a better attitude,” she said. “I know things are hard for you right now, and I’m sorry. But you’re young. You’re supposed to be having some fun.”

  For the last year or so we had been the same height, and as we faced each other I saw real disappointment in her eyes.

  “Sorry,” I said. Then added, “I’m sure it will be fun. I’m just tired from school.”

  Her expression softened. “Why don’t you take a nap? Maybe then you’ll feel more enthusiastic about it.”

  I was about to protest, then realized she was right. I was exhausted.

  ‘Maybe I should,” I said. “Sleep sounds good.”

  “How’s the snowboarding going?” She asked too casually before I could turn to go.

  “Okay. I didn’t get out a lot this week. Only a couple of times. By myself.”

  “Hmm.” She glanced at her nails. “Well, go ahead upsta
irs. I’ll make sure you’re up in time.”

  Once I was in the suite, I pried my sneakers off, went straight into my room, and let myself fall face down on the bed. I didn’t even remember falling asleep.

  I woke in the dark. Pushing myself up on my arms, I grabbed my phone off the end table next to my bed and looked at the time. It was six-thirty. The bonfire stared at seven. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and tried to shake off the drowse. As I was coming to, a text from my mother beeped on my phone.

  Just making sure you’re up, it said.

  I’m up, I texted back, then heaved myself to standing.

  I was already wearing my best jeans, so I changed into a heavy purple sweater and a pair of wool socks. Then I pulled on my gray furry boots and coat and brushed my hair. It was dark in the living room too, and I saw the flicker immediately through the picture window. At first I thought it was the bonfire, already lit for the night, but it was small, and too far up the mountain as it had been the last time I had seen it. I stood in the window for a few minutes, squinting, making certain once again that it was a flicker and not a solid light, and then my view of it and the whole surrounding area was washed out by a sudden blaze. The bonfire had just been lit. It was time for me to go.

  My mother was in her office. I told her I was leaving in the cheeriest voice I could muster and she told me to take my phone and have fun. I thought I could manage one of those. I went out the back and across the deck, heading past the lodge and the hotel buildings. As I got further away, moving toward the shadows of snow-covered trees, the amber light above and beyond them seeming like a mirage, it got colder. My breathing quickened to short puffs, and was the only sound in the night for a long time.

  Finally, I rounded a thick copse of dark evergreens and a glowing scene filled with firelight and warmth opened before me. Kids in varsity jackets, heavy coats, winter hats, boots, and mittens stood around the giant blaze laughing and talking and chugging beer or soda. I recognized a lot of them. Lexi, Julie, and Eileen – the soccer girls – stood in a huddle on the far side, each with a can of some energy drink I didn’t recognize cupped in her mittened hands. There were a lot of kids I hadn’t seen before, and many I had, if only briefly, at school. Kevin, Brian, and Matt, all in their varsity jackets, were listening to Tyler talk, his exaggerated gestures punctuating his story. Several beer cans were screwed into the snow at their feet. Tyler’s eyes flicked in my direction, and then again, lingering this time. As Brian started to turn, following his gaze, Tyler began to talk again, his first syllable loud and sharp enough to retrieve Brian’s focus. I let out sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was a fake Jersey accent shouted at me over a fire while everyone stared.