Golden Girl

by Mari Mancusi

  Caitlin grinned. “Yes! And then she punched him in the face!”

  I sighed, staring at the photo of Olivia and her mom. “I just don’t get it,” I repeated. Then I shook my head. “Oh well. I guess that’s it.” I made a move to close the window again.

  “Wait a sec! She has files on everyone? What about me?” Caitlin asked, grabbing the mouse from my hand. She clicked the folder to make the files list alphabetically. But there was no Caitlin in the C section.

  “What? Come on, Olivia!” she cried. “I don’t even warrant a brief mention?” She looked so offended I had to laugh.

  “Do you want her to have something on you?”

  “Duh! It would make me feel so scandalous.” She snorted. “Did you look at your file? I can’t even imagine the dirt she’s got on you.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  Caitlin gave me a skeptical look. “Seriously? You aren’t even the least bit curious?”

  Okay, I was. In fact, suddenly I was insanely curious and wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me to look before now. As I grabbed the mouse from her and guided it over to my name, Caitlin let out an excited squeak. I shot her a warning look. “Remember what I told you,” I reminded her.

  “It stays in the vault,” my roommate assured me, holding up her fingers in a Girl Scout–style salute.

  I clicked on the folder and it opened.

  “Whoa,” Caitlin breathed as the files revealed themselves. Unlike Becca’s folder, which contained only a few items, my folder was packed to the brim. Newspaper articles about my wins, articles about my losses. Stuff about the accident. Olivia had collected it all.

  “Dude, that’s creepy,” my roommate declared. “It’s like she’s totally obsessed with you!”

  “Yeah,” I said, scrolling through the files, feeling more and more sick to my stomach. My mouse hovered over a .mov file, and I swallowed hard. She had a video of me, too? My mind flashed to the open mic night at Bill’s. Becca had taken a bunch of pictures and video. Had she then handed them over to my enemy for future blackmail purposes?

  I clicked on the video. I had to know for sure.

  But as the player loaded up and the video started to play, I realized it wasn’t of me singing at all.

  “Dude,” Caitlin cried. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I stared at the screen in disbelief. Watching a scene straight out of my nightmares. A shaky home video of that fateful day on the snowboard cross course when Olivia had unofficially attempted to ruin my life.

  “Why would she keep this?” I asked, watching, horrified, as the camera panned across the course. “I mean, why would she want evidence lying around of what she did to me?”

  Caitlin looked at me, confused. “Wait, what did she do?”

  I sighed, pressing pause on the video. “You have to promise never to tell anyone.”

  “I already promised, remember? Geez, do you want it written in blood?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, actually, but I decided to tell her anyway. What did it matter at this point? There was a video. An actual video.

  “Are you serious?” Caitlin cried when I had finished. “I mean, I knew Olivia was crazy, but that’s like ‘go directly to jail, do not pass go,’ crazy. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It’s a long story,” I muttered. I dragged my mouse back to the video, and I wondered if I should just delete it and be done with it forever. But that would be a mistake, I realized. Because now I had something to use against Olivia. Something to ruin her life if she tried again to ruin mine. I didn’t want to have to stoop to her level. But I wanted to keep the option open, just in case.

  I unpaused the video. The camera panned up the mountain, revealing Olivia, Becca, and me racing down the slope. I was in a good position, right between my two competitors. We got closer and closer. I watched as I bent my knees, readying myself for—

  I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch as we came barreling toward the lip of the jump. I knew what was going to happen, and the last thing I wanted to do was to see—

  “Oh my gosh!” Caitlin screeched.

  “What?” I forced my eyes open, just in time to treat myself to a vision of year-ago me crashing into the old oak tree.

  “Argh!” I cried, throwing my hands over my eyes again. “I can’t watch this!” My stomach rolled, and I was this close to throwing up. “Stop the video! Please.”

  Caitlin reached over and stopped it. I opened my eyes to see a freeze-frame of me, on the ground, clutching my knee, sobbing pitifully. I quickly switched off the monitor, swallowing back the nausea.

  “Did you see it?” I asked in a trembling voice. “Did you see Olivia do it?” My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for her confirmation.

  “Um.” Caitlin shuffled from foot to foot, refusing to meet my eyes. Fear started thrumming through my veins, but I wasn’t sure why.

  “What?” I asked, confused. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t you see it happen?” Maybe the angle had been wrong. Or someone had stepped in the way.

  “I saw it,” Caitlin said in a tight voice that sounded nothing like her own. “Believe me, I saw it.”

  I swallowed hard. “You saw Olivia grab my jacket?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I saw Becca do it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  What?” I asked, obviously having heard her wrong. “What did you just say?”

  “Lexi . . .” Caitlin’s face was pained.

  “No!” I cried. “You must have seen it wrong.” I switched the monitor back on and grabbed the mouse, moving the pointer back over to the video. There had to be some mistake. Obviously. Because any alternative would be completely absurd. Becca grabbing my jacket? Becca destroying my life? Becca had been my best friend. There was absolutely no way Becca would ever—

  Then I remembered Becca’s terrified face in the bathroom. When I told her I’d seen the video. Of course I’d meant the video of her kissing Cam. But she’d meant . . . something else entirely.

  “I’m so sorry, Lex,” Caitlin was saying as the video started playing again. She pressed a hand to my back, but I shrugged it off, my eyes glued to the screen as the three of us came racing down the hill again. I didn’t want to watch. I really didn’t want to watch. But I forced my eyes to stay focused on the screen. I had to know.

  Even though, deep down, I already did.

  “Stop it,” I managed to choke out somehow after it was all said and done. “Stop the video.”

  I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, and it was all I could do to not throw up then and there. Becca was my friend. She’d never do something like this. This was the kind of thing Olivia did to people. Not Becca. Not my best friend Becca.

  “Maybe it was an accident,” I whispered, sinking down onto the floor. It was all I could do, at that point, not to curl up in a fetal position as everything started sliding into a sick sense of place. Olivia must have been holding this over Becca’s head all year long. Threatening to go public if Becca didn’t do what she said. Get her kicked out of school, maybe land her in juvenile detention . . .

  “An accident?” I could feel Caitlin’s incredulous stare. “Lexi, come on. How could someone just accidentally grab someone’s jacket and yank them down like that?”

  She was right. I knew she was right. There was no denying it now; we’d both seen the whole thing caught on video. Besides, if it had been an accident somehow, wouldn’t Becca have admitted it right away? Told everyone what had happened and forfeited the race? Instead, she’d gone on to win and take first place. Scoring a spot on the team and two new sponsors, all while I was being rushed to the ER.

  “Why, Becca?” I yelled to no one, stumbling over to my bed and throwing myself down on my pillow. “Why would you do something like that? To me!”

  Caitlin climbed onto the bed next to me, pulling me into a hug. For a moment we just lay there. Even cheerful Caitlin could think of nothing positive to say in a moment like this.

&
nbsp; “What are you going to do?” she asked at last. “Are you going to tell your dad? Or go straight to the school board?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t do anything,” I said slowly. “I mean, what’s done is done; it won’t change anything, right?”

  Caitlin jerked up. “Are you insane?” she cried. “She hurt you! Like, really bad! You can’t just let her get away with it.”

  I stared up at the ceiling, not knowing what to say. I thought about what would happen if the whole thing went public. Sure, it would destroy Becca’s life, and maybe she deserved that. But what about me? People had finally stopped treating me like an accident victim. Finally stopped bringing the whole thing up in casual conversation. But once this was out there—it would start all over again. Everyone would be talking about it. Everyone would be looking at me with pitying eyes.

  Poor Lexi. Sabotaged by her best friend.

  I’d have to go before the school board. What if I had to testify in court? I didn’t know if I could deal with that on top of everything else that was going on. I wanted to recover, to move on, to forget it ever happened. Not bring it all raging back with a vengeance.

  I slipped off the bed and walked over to the computer. I stuck a thumb drive into the USB port and copied the video onto it. Then I deleted it from Olivia’s files and closed out of her account.

  “I’m going to hold on to this for now,” I told Caitlin. “Until I decide what to do.” At least this way it would keep the decision in my hands. Under my control. And Olivia wouldn’t have anything else to hold over Becca’s head.

  Unless, of course, there were other copies lying around. But I couldn’t think about that now.

  Caitlin frowned, looking at me, her eyes filled with the very same pity I wanted so desperately to avoid. “You can’t just let her get away with this, you know,” she said.

  “I know,” I replied in a flat voice. But inside, I wasn’t sure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I ran to the gear room, tears blinding my vision. I pushed open the door and made a beeline for my locker, my mind whirling with thoughts I didn’t want to think. I needed an escape—a chance to lose myself for a few blissful hours. And I knew exactly how to do it. Out on the slopes, all alone, flying mindless and free.

  Becca’s and my lockers were next to one another. We’d planned it that way after one of the high school students had graduated two years ago, abandoning the storage space adjacent to mine. Becca had claimed it immediately, saying this way we didn’t have to pause our conversation for even a moment as we collected our gear on our way out to class.

  I remembered sneaking into the gear room, in the middle of the night, just before Becca’s eleventh birthday, armed with colored chalk and silk flowers, so she’d have something fun to greet her the next morning. I could practically still hear her squeals of delight as she jumped up and down and hugged me after laying eyes on my handiwork. She’d thought everyone had forgotten her birthday. But I hadn’t. I never did. And Becca spent the rest of the day with silk flowers entwined in her hair.

  Sighing, I grabbed my board and headed outside, trying not to think as I stomped my way up the side of the hill until I reached the top of the half-pipe. I plopped to the ground, attached my bindings to my feet, and stood up at the edge of the pipe, looking down. The last time I stood here, just before I’d met Logan, I had been paralyzed with fear. Now I wasn’t so much afraid as I was sad. So very sad.

  I dropped in. I rode the pipe to the bottom. Then I unstrapped my board and headed back up to the top. Up and down. Up and down. Not bothering to stop and catch my breath. Not bothering to care about style or technique as I hit each lip—harder and harder, higher and higher, until I was literally flying through the air on each and every hit.

  But eventually gravity and exhaustion ganged up on me and I hit the ground, hard, the shock of ice against bone rocking me to the core. Instead of getting up this time, I lay back, staring up at the sky, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. Why did everything have to be so messed up? Why had everything fallen apart?

  “Hey, hey! Are you all right?”

  I looked up. Lost in my unhappy thoughts, I hadn’t heard someone approach. Not just someone, I realized, but Logan.

  I scrambled to my feet, swiping the tears from my eyes. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Caitlin got my number from my mom and called me,” he said. “She told me everything.”

  I hung my head. “She shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “I told her to keep it a secret.”

  “Even from me?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I burst into a fresh set of tears. “It’s just . . . so embarrassing.”

  “For Becca, maybe. But you did nothing wrong.”

  I swallowed hard. “I thought she was my friend. My best friend. How do you do something like that to your best friend?” I knew I was babbling but found I couldn’t help it.

  Logan pulled me into his arms, hugging me tight. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “It’s like I keep thinking there must be some mistake,” I went on. “Like maybe Olivia was blackmailing her before all of this too, and forced her to do it.”

  Logan pulled away from the hug. “Lexi, I don’t know . . .”

  “Or maybe she was just trying to slow me down a little, you know? And she grabbed me a bit too hard?”

  Logan shook his head. “Lexi, you got seriously hurt. You lost a year of your life. All because some girl—no, not just any girl—your best friend—wanted to win some stupid sporting event. And now you’re making excuses for her?”

  “It was an important race,” I protested.

  He frowned. “Let’s say it was the Olympics themselves. And you were in Becca’s position. All you’d have to do is pull on her jacket and you could win it all.” His eyes drilled into me. “Would you do it?”

  I dropped my gaze to the snowy ground. “No,” I said after a moment. “Of course not.” My dad had instilled in me, at an early age, that a win wasn’t a win if you didn’t win it fairly.

  Oh, Becca . . . I broke into a fresh round of tears. Why?

  “That’s it,” Logan declared. “I’m taking you to Bill’s.”

  “What?” I looked up, startled.

  “If you stay here, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. You need something to get your mind off things. Something that doesn’t involve dangerous sports in the dark that could injure you.”

  “So . . . video games?” I said hesitantly. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. . . .

  He shook his head. “No. Singing.”

  • • •

  And that was how, one hour later, I found myself onstage at Bill’s, singing my heart out, with Lulu and Scarlet and Roland accompanying me. If my life were a movie, we would have had a sold-out house, with people screaming and cheering us on as I rocked the mic. But in real life it was a school night and last minute and so there were only a few people there, mostly concentrating on the video games, rather than the show. But it didn’t matter. I was onstage. I was pouring all my anger and frustration into the music. And I was already feeling a whole lot better.

  What was it Coach Basil had said? How music had healing properties? I’d had no idea how right she’d been. I still hurt, my stomach still felt a little nauseous, but at the same time the whole thing seemed . . . less important . . . somehow. On the mountain, with my friends, snowboarding was everything. Here, it was just another thing. No more or less important than anything else.

  As I finished a song and took a swig of my water, I caught Logan standing near the back of the room, watching me and smiling. I grinned back, giving him a thumbs-up.

  Becca had done her worst. But I wouldn’t let her defeat me. I wouldn’t let her—or Olivia, or anyone else—take me down. Keep me from the sport I loved. They didn’t deserve to win.

  Pride comes before a fall, Olivia had said. And she’d been right. I’d fallen badly. Both physically and mentally, my golden dream twisting into a
black nightmare. It was the worst thing that could have happened to me. And yet, in a weird way, it was also the best.

  Before my accident all I had was snowboarding. Winning was a reason to get up in the morning, to live, to breathe, to exist. Take that away and I was nothing, no one.

  Not anymore.

  I stole a peek at my bandmates. At Logan in the back of the room. My accident had somehow opened up an entire universe of awesome that I had no idea existed beforehand. I felt like some horse who had worn blinders her whole life, and only now could I really see.

  Sure, my father might call these things, these people, distractions, but for me they were . . . enhancements. They didn’t take me away from the mountain. They made the mountain feel like home.

  For the first time since I’d returned to Mountain Academy, broken and scared, I knew I wanted to stay. I wanted to keep snowboarding and maybe get back to where I had been if I could. To keep going for the gold. But if I did end up in the Olympics someday? I’d be competing as a different person than I was before the accident. One who knew Olympic glory was just one single dream. And that real life was filled with hundreds.

  I grinned from ear to ear as we launched into my favorite song, my heart feeling very full. Everything was going to be okay. No, everything was going to be—

  I froze as the door at the back of the coffee house opened, snow blowing in from outside. The band played on, but the words stuck in my throat, and suddenly I was unable to sing. Unable to move.

  My dad stalked up to the makeshift stage, grabbing the mic from my hand.

  “Come on, Alexis. We’re going home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  My dad didn’t speak to me the entire way home. Just drove up the mountain, staring out the windshield, a grim look on his face. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, wanting to explain. Wanting him to understand why I had to be there. What had driven me there in the first place. But I wasn’t ready to open up that can of worms. Once he knew what Becca had done, it would start an avalanche of inquiries and investigations that would flip my world upside down. I was finally starting to heal. The last thing I wanted was to yank off the scab and start all over again.