by Joanne Rock
“You can’t talk smack about camp rumors and then walk away. What gives?” I loved camp. No one there knew about my mom, serial dater of rich men. No one at camp noticed if I wore last year’s clothes. Or if I forgot to be too cool for campfire songs and trilled a chorus of “Kumbaya” with the girls in my cabin.
I really missed them.
“Nothing. I just thought…” He folded his arms across his chest, taking up way too much space for a boy I’d always thought of as gangly. He started to lean against the side of the lodge, until an underclassman approached and handed him his lift ticket. “Thanks, man. Would you mind getting Hannah’s, too? You can take a turn down the mountain with my video camera.”
The younger kid looked at me, nodded at Julian and then ran off as fat snowflakes fell all around us, a waterfall of icy lace.
“Thanks,” I said, figuring my friends weren’t going to miss me too soon anyway. Better to give Missy a little time to cool down. “So what’s the deal with camp? And who’s trash-talking me behind my back?”
I hadn’t been the reigning queen bee of our cabin, Divas’ Den, for the last seven years by letting the rumor mill get the best of me. I worked the system, not the other way around.
“No one.” Julian reached toward me and I tensed. But he just lifted the heavy bag with my skis off my shoulder and propped it up against the lodge. “I just saw you hanging out with the Munchies’ Manor girls at the end of camp last year.
The word around camp was that you’d made peace with your nemesis.”
Leave it to Julian to make it sound like the rival cabin was from the Klingon Empire. Not that I would ever admit to familiarity with Klingon culture. It was one thing to lust after Chris Pine. Another entirely to admit I’d ever attended a Star Trek convention in my own brush with nerd-dom.
“Oh.” Last summer at camp had been weird. But then, it wasn’t easy being fabulous all the time, especially not when other girls were letting down their guards and having fun.
Not when that was exactly what I wished I could do, too.
“Maybe. But Northstar Academy is a long way from Camp Juniper Point.”
My eyes went to his neck where I’d seen a hint of a tattoo. Something dark green and black. I was curious.
“Seven hundred seventy miles.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I am aware of that.” His brown eyes studied me in a way that made me self-conscious. And not because of last year’s clothes. “I’m telling you, it’s not that different here.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” I grabbed my bag again, ready to be done with this conversation. Since when did Julian-Freaking-Berwick get to judge me? “It’s different for me and you know it.”
“Because you’re a girl?”
I rolled my eyes and remained silent while my phone started to vibrate. My friends must have finally noticed I was missing.
“Do you think I’ve never felt like an outsider?” Julian asked.
Perfectly serious.
I forced a laugh as I pulled my phone from my pocket. No way was I letting him see how much that question got to me.
“I think you’ve tried hard as hell to be an outsider. Who goes around with a wand and a cape at summer camp except a total freak? Or…” I let the word hang, toying with him and not one bit sorry. “…a boy with enough money he can afford not to care what people think.”
This time, it was my turn to walk away and I did. Julian could take the high road since his rich family made him untouchable. I almost ran right over his lackey friend who held out my ticket.
“Thanks.” I snatched it away and headed behind the main lodge toward the ski lifts. I’d find a minion of my own to put my bag in a locker once I had my boots and skis on.
For now, I just wanted to get away from Julian.
What the hell? He hadn’t talked to me for the better part of a decade and now he was suddenly trying to be my conscience? Or worse, comparing his life to mine, when my own mother ditched me for Christmas to be with her latest boytoy?
While Julian was opening a mountain of presents from his family, I would spend the day alone fielding calls from creditors who never took a day off. Ever. I checked my messages to see where my friends were.
Buddy system means we hit mountain in twos. Guess U R odd girl out.
Missy’s text felt like the bitch-slap she’d meant it to be—especially when I looked up to see my friends already on the chairlifts. Bella’s designer fur boots swung a few feet off the ground, her long honey-blond waves trailing down her back while Missy waved at me through the haze of snowflakes.
I tried not to snarl.
“Did you get a partner, Hannah?”
Andre, the chaperone Bella had been drooling over, was suddenly at my elbow and way too close. He wasn’t really under investigation by the Feds. But that didn’t make his hitting on high school girls any less pervy.
Then again, my view of him was skewed by the fact that Mom had flirted with him at the last parent-teacher meeting. Gross to the infinity power.
“I’ll find my own partner, thanks.” I dropped onto a bench and yanked on my ski boots, my throat thick with emotion. If I hadn’t been such a bitch to Missy, I’d be on the mountain now with my friends. Popularity was a dance.
Sometimes the steps changed too fast for me to keep up.
Andre leaned closer when I stood and stepped into my skis. “I’m taking a small group of the better skiers to go off-trail, if you’d like to join us.”
I glanced down at my short blades. “I don’t have the right skis.”
“So? People do it all the time. Be adventurous.” I shivered when he snapped my buckles closed and peered up at me.
“Don’t you want to do it with me?”
Ew. Disgusting. Like, never. Then again…
With no effort on my part, the key to one-upping my clique had been tossed in my lap. My gaze flew to the chairlifts where Missy and Bella peered over their shoulders at me. I could just text Missy and apologize. Shake Andre off like the bad cold that he was.
But stubborn pride had been my best friend on a lot of lonely days. I lifted my hand to my lips and blew a kiss at my girls before giving them a cheeky wave.
Bitch-slap returned.
“Does that mean you’ll go?” Andre smiled at me.
I huffed out a sigh as I laced my boots. “Count me in.”
“Great. And if you don’t find a partner, you can stick with me. Okay?”
As if.
I nodded and smiled, incapable of forming a verbal response that didn’t contain a put-down.
He stalked off to round up some other kids while I scrambled to think who could be my partner. All the other girls in my grade—aside from my clique—were out of the question. I couldn’t let anyone use the opportunity to have an “in” with Missy.
“Hannah!” Ms. Hanrahan approached me with a clipboard under one arm and her cellphone jammed between her shoulder and her ear. “I’m making notes for when we meet up later and Andre said you’ll be with his group for the day. Who’s your partner?”
She took out the clipboard and unfastened the pen.
Oh crap.
The black felt-tip poised over the paper. She frowned.
“Hannah? The snow is heavy today and the Whiteface staff insisted all the school groups use the buddy system—”
“She’s with me, Ms. Hanrahan.” Julian appeared at my side, a tall shadow on skis.
Wearing—I’m not even kidding—a cape.
I was too freaking speechless to argue.
“Oh. Well, good.” The phys ed teacher smiled and scribbled something on her paper before speaking into the phone. “We’re all set here, Dave. I’m heading home now.”
She disconnected the call and then tucked the phone and clipboard into a big floral bag on her shoulder. “Have fun and don’t forget to listen to Andre. I’m heading home now, but I’ll be back with the buses at five. Although it sounds like some of you will be riding
back with Andre?”
She checked her notes and headed into another direction, calling for the lacrosse coach.
“Ready?” Julian’s voice reminded me of my latest problem.
“For what?” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my tone. Didn’t even try.
“To ski, Hannah. To have fun.” He gestured toward the mountain with a gloved hand. “Or do you even know how to have a good time?”
He said it to be a jerk. But it was too close to Missy’s latest insult for me to let it slide. My muscles tensed. Anger bubbled beneath the surface of my skin and I felt the hot flush everywhere.
“You don’t know me, Geekster. So don’t even pretend you do.” I sent him the evil eye.
He absorbed it. I don’t know how else to describe it, because he didn’t flinch or look away. He stared at me with as much detachment as if I was some new character in the latest role-playing game that techno-junkies like him spent hours trying to conquer.
“I know a whole lot more than you think,” he said finally.
“And unless you want to share a ride up the chairlift with Andre, I suggest you go with me.”
He skied toward the dwindling line now that the masses of school kids had already gone up to ride the trails. A handful of younger kids remained behind, having a snowball fight and waiting for a ski instructor to take them to a freebie lesson that all the new kids got. If I waited around here, there was no telling when Missy would be back. If they took a short trail, they could be down at the lodge all too soon.
And possibly see me with Julian.
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath even as I followed him. Because he was right. I did not want that alone time with Andre. My mother might chase after every guy she met, but that wasn’t me. Julian might be a weirdo, but I knew him from camp and that made him sort of harmless. I mean, we’d barely spoken since that day when we were ten and I’d warned him he’d better not ever tell anyone at Northstar that he knew me from camp. I’d been paranoid that he would tell the kids at our snobby boarding school that he’d seen me doing the hokey pokey and wearing a noodle necklace. Even at ten, Northstar kids didn’t act like that. They went to Europe in the summer, not the Pisgah Forest.
I didn’t say anything as I skied up to the oncoming chair and waited beside him.
“You’ll never get on the chairlift with a cape,” I muttered, knowing the ski instructor running the lift would make him take it off.
“Right.” He unfastened the collar and wadded up the wool before jamming it into a nylon backpack that’d been hidden under his coat. “I only took it out for your benefit.”
He never cracked a smile, although I assume he was teasing me.
With a group of four behind us, we were on our own for the ride up, even though this lift—Summit Quad—was meant for four people.
“Watch your hands,” the lift attendant barked as the chair came around and we took our seats.
Together.
I watched Julian while pretending not to watch him as he pulled down the bar in front of us, locking us in for the long climb to the top. The chair swung for a moment before it steadied. There was an awkward silence filled with nothing but the click and hum of the gear mechanism drawing the lift higher.
Higher.
I pretended to be interested in the skiers on the trails below us, but mostly, I was trying to figure out the silent shadow next to me.
“Why are you talking to me?” I snapped, unable to stand the silence any longer. “I mean, what gives with you today? We don’t talk for six years and then all of the sudden you’re in my face?”
I glared at him. Maybe I just wanted a second chance at the evil eye to figure out why it didn’t work on him the first time. But then, while I was glaring my hardest, a simple truth hit me.
Julian Berwick, King of the Nerd-Boys, had turned…
Borderline hot.
Not that I liked him. But if I’d just met him for the first time today—and he’d worn normal clothes and not some fantasy world gear—I would put him closer to the “sizzle” end of the spectrum. I could not have been more blown away.
And, I don’t know, maybe a teeny-tiny part of me admired the fact that he could throw on a cape at a moment’s notice and not give a rat’s ass. I mean, who did that? I kept seeing John Snow in Game of Thrones, my guilty-secret obsession.
“I don’t know,” Julian said suddenly, reminding me I’d asked him a question. “I guess I hoped you’d tell Missy Watson to get lost.”
I blinked away some snow that fell on my eyelashes and wished that Julian would go back to looking like his old self. I had too much friend drama to deal with today without this irritating realization about Julian.
“I did. Duh.” I tilted my face up to the sky and let the flakes fall on my cheeks. It prevented me from looking at Julian and thinking mega-stupid thoughts about him. “But now that I put her in her place, she’s going to make me pay.”
“Her place?” Julian leaned his head back on the bar next to mine, his helmet clanking as he looked up at the sky, too. “She doesn’t have a place, Hannah. She’s just an immature girl, and you don’t need a friend like her.”
“How would you know what I need?” I snapped. “And since when do you know the first thing about Missy? Or me?”He went quiet again.
The chairlift thunked through a big gear overhead, jarring the seat enough to jiggle me closer to him. I scooted away again, but not before my arm brushed his. My knee knocked against his thigh. So awkward to fight with a guy you were falling all over.
“If we’re going to be partners today, maybe we should agree to disagree,” Julian said.
I noticed he hadn’t answered my questions. But this whole ride had been so totally awkward, I was just glad to call a truce.
“Cool by me.” I readjusted my poles from one hand to the other now that we were ready to exit the lift. “Thanks for telling Hanrahan we were together so she’d get off my back, but I’ll be fine on my own.”
“I don’t think that’s safe.” Julian sat forward, ready to ski off the chair as we neared the top station. “Especially if we’re going off-trail with Andre.”
“Well, guess what, Geekster?” I jammed my goggles into place and got ready to hop off. “I don’t need your permission.”
Chapter Two
Hannah
“Dudes!” Andre shouted from the lift overhead as I skied toward the top of a run called Upper Skyward. “Ready to rip some moguls?”
I’d almost forgotten that hanging out with Andre—or at least the ability to brag I’d been hanging out with Andre—had been my whole reason for coming up here with Julian.
I knew Bella and Missy both thought Andre was super gorgeous, but I couldn’t forget the fact that he’d flirted with my mother, which made him a ten out of ten on the slime scale.
For example, today he was rocking an old neon green Burton jacket that made him almost pass for a real ski bum. Except that his attempt at bed-head hair looked a little too carefully spiked. Plus his $500 shades pegged him as another wanna-be trust-fund baby.
“Head toward The Slides!” he shouted, pointing away from the Upper Skyward trail toward a more forbidding part of the mountain I didn’t normally ski. “I’ll meet you over there.”
I forced a smile and skied to a halt near the crowd gathered where he pointed. Six kids were already there—two giggling sophomore girls, a couple from the school’s tennis team, and a pair of skateboarders carrying off the ski bum look with only a little more success than our chaperone.
Kill me now.
I ignored Julian as he skied up behind me, and I took out my vibrating phone instead. Maybe Missy had forgiven me…
Any ideas what 2 get Brian 4 Xmas?!
The message from my mom did more damage than Missy at her most evil. How could Mom ask for help picking out her boyfriend’s gift when she hadn’t left one damn thing for me? I pictured her running aimlessly around a random shopping mall on the day before Christmas.
/> “Everything okay?” Julian asked over my shoulder, shrugging his way back into his cape.
“I’m stuck with Lord Elrond for the day. You tell me if everything is okay.” I jammed my phone in my coat pocket before the snow ruined it. My mittens were covered in flakes.
“For a girl who doesn’t like geeks, you have an impressive command of LOTR.” He worked his backpack underneath the cape while I gritted my teeth.
“Who’s ready to rip?” Andre asked as he joined the group, pumping a fist. “BC, baby!”
We stared at him blankly. Well, the skateboarders nodded with vague smiles, but they did that all day back at school whether they were executing tricks or smoking pot in the parking lot.
“Dudes…that means back country.” Andre stuffed his poles in a mound of snow and leaned on them. “We’re going to bisect the Slides and head toward the back side of the mountain. You all can ski for real, right?”
The sophomores exchanged nervous glances, but in the end, everyone nodded. Even Julian.
“Hannah?” Andre halted on his skis, his ear buds dangling off his lobes like ugly earrings. “You might have more fun up here with me.”
I bit back a retort.
“Sure. Sounds great.”
If I could snap enough pics of me with Andre, I’d be able to send them to Missy and be done with the back country “adventure.” Because even if I’d been able to tolerate Julian’s weirdness for the rest of the day, the sophomore girls had matching ponytails, color-coordinating helmets, and had already started singing Christmas carols. Gag.
I jabbed my poles in the snow to push off and move to the head of the line, but a hard tug on the back of my jacket kept me in place.
“Actually,” Julian shouted to Andre over my protest. “Ms. Hanrahan was super strict about pairing up the skiers for safety.”
With a shrug, Andre shoved his ear buds back in place, and the sophomore twits trilled another chorus of “Winter Wonderland.” I whirled on Julian but nearly fell on my ass since he still had the tail of my ski coat balled up in his fist.