The Ex Games

by Jennifer Echols

  That’s why Nick looked familiar!

  Liz said that at the beginning of the year, Nick and Gavin had argued about whether Nick’s family money was the only reason he got any girl he wanted. So a month ago, when the English teacher let the class know a new girl was starting school, Nick bet Gavin he could get a date with the girl that weekend, sight unseen, without her knowing anything about his money. To make it fair, Nick and Gavin swore everyone in the class to secrecy.

  I was not, as I’d thought, a cool teen. I was not Nick’s dream girl. I was a bet.

  And Liz and Chloe, feeling guilty, thought I should know. Now that Nick had kissed me, the bet had gone too far.

  They also thought I would respond to this info by hugging them and crying in the bathroom, I’m pretty sure. They didn’t expect me to flounce back into the theater and scream at Nick for what he’d done to me.

  In the flickering light of the movie screen, he looked horrified. I held out hope that he would apologize and explain it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe I was a little starstruck after all. I couldn’t believe the heir to the Krieger fortune had actually come on to me, even if his heart wasn’t totally in it. He’d been so sweet to me for the past month. His kiss had felt real. I wanted him to like me for real.

  After he’d gaped at me and I’d held my breath for a few moments, Gavin prompted him, “Well?”

  Nick blinked and said in his fauxinnocent voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hoyden. I mean, Hayden.”

  The theater burst into laughter, and not at Will Smith.

  I stomped out. Liz and Chloe followed me, which sealed our friendship forever. Liz had told me what was up when no one else would, and Chloe was willing to leave her own intrigue behind, at least for the moment, to comfort me. We all trudged through the snow back to my house, made hot chocolate, and bitched about boys.

  But the second the girls weren’t looking, I escaped to my room, opened my dictionary, and looked up hoyden.

  And here we still were. In the four years since, every date I’d been on, every party, every school field trip, I remembered on two levels: how it went with my boyfriend at the time, and what Nick was doing in the background, with another girl, on the other side of the room or the other end of the bus. In other words, I was addicted to Nick.

  Now the stage was set. I’d been boyfriendless for about a week, ever since the Incident with Everett Walsh’s mama. Nick had dumped Fiona Lewis last week after three dates, which was one more date than he usually lasted in a relationship. I’d been watching him in class: check. I’d been dreaming about him at night: check check. He’d flirted with me in class for the past four years, but he’d never sat down with me in the hall and treated me to the low rumbly voice and hinted about the Poseur concert. Now I wished I could resist him, especially since I suspected he’d started the fire-crotch discussion in the lunchroom on Thursday just to see if he could seduce me after insulting me. Exactly how easy was Hayden, anyway? Nick’s inquiring mind wanted to know.

  I was afraid he was about to find out. Despite myself, and despite Liz’s lectures about disrespect, my blood raced through my veins every time I thought about his hand on my hand in the hall (not to mention my thigh). I didn’t think I would answer yes if I ran into him during winter break and he asked me out. I couldn’t answer yes. Still, I hoped against hope that he’d ask the question.

  But I also hoped he’d wait until after Tuesday, because he was distracting me enough already. I had more important things to worry about than Nick. Tuesday I had an appointment with a snowboard.

  I inhaled through my nose and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.

  I exhaled through my mouth and felt gravity pull the energy from my heart down through my legs, through my boots and snowboard, through the snow, to the rocks below. I was one with the mountain.

  “Good luck, Hayden!” Liz squealed. I opened my eyes to find her in the crowd of spectators behind the ropes on one side of the snowy course. I spotted her right away because she was bouncing. Her dark curls flew into the eyes of people around her.

  Chloe put one hand on Liz’s shoulder to hold her down. “Hush, Hayden’s doing one of her yoga things. Let her concentrate.”

  No chance of that now. Bouncing friends tended to break my concentration. At least my brother, Josh, and his friends weren’t around. I’d checked in on them between my events, and all four of them were kicking butt in the fifteen-and-under boys’ competition held on another course at the same time as my eighteen-and-under girls’ contest. If they’d been here, they wouldn’t have squealed like Liz. They would have made up a rap with beatboxing and very embarrassing pushing-up-the-house hand movements.

  It’s Hayden

  What?

  She’s a maven

  What?

  On the ski slope

  What?

  Give it up, folks

  What?

  Got the board slide

  What?

  Got the frontside

  What?

  Got the mad skillz

  What?

  For a sick ride

  What?

  It was sad that I could predict their lyrics. I boarded with them way too much.

  The warning buzzer sounded. In a few seconds I would begin my slalom run in my first-ever official competition. I’d run hundreds of casual races against friends and challenged my brother to comps in the half-pipe, but nothing like this. It was so strange to stand on my board as a competitor rather than as a spectator. I recognized the sensation of adrenaline bubbling through my veins. I felt it every time I stood behind the ropes and watched someone else start a slalom. The feeling was magnified by a thousand now that I didn’t have to picture myself in the racer’s place. I was really here.

  And all because of Liz and Chloe. They’d told me I was good enough to compete. When I’d seen this competition advertised, I’d ignored it as usual. They’d pointed out to me that this one had no jump, nothing higher than the half-pipe wall, so I had no excuse not to try it. I wouldn’t have been here without them. I winked at them on the sidelines, lowered my goggles, and slid my board forward to the starting line.

  Deep breath. One with the mountain.

  As a final touch, I twisted one of my four-leaf clover earrings. My dad had given them to me the day I got the cast off my leg, as an amulet for better luck in the future.

  And then I was flying down the slalom course, staying tight and tucking in, dodging around the gates as fast as possible. I knew my time would be good because I was in the zone. My body went on automatic, feeling exactly what to do when. I enjoyed the bright sparkling day, the white snow, the spectators in crazy-colored gear lining both sides of the course, the too-blue sky. There was no feeling in the world like this, having a body that worked.

  Then I hit my usual snag. For most people, the hardest part of this course was the moguls. For me, it was the straightaway past Nick’s house. His parents’ mansion had an enormous frontyard and a daunting front gate to scare away paparazzi and beggars. But the backyard bordered the slopes so the Kriegers could sit on their deck and watch the skiers. Every time I boarded past, no matter what trick I tried or who I was with, I glanced over at the deck while attempting to look like I wasn’t looking, just in case Nick was there. He never was.

  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.’”

  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.