by A. G. Henley
I nodded. “Thanks, Veena. I’m not sure why you did whatever you did, but you clearly saved my butt.”
She grinned. “Had to. You’re the right woman for this job.”
I was tempted to hug her. No. Professional distance.
“Hey, new girl.” Jake had wandered over. “Where have you been hiding? I looked for you at breakfast.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” I said.
The Russian girl stood to one side, packing up. I could tell she was listening. Her eyes were dark and flat, like two black beans on a white plate.
“Yeah, I bet. I heard you puked yesterday,” Jake said. “Altitude sickness sucks.”
I sighed and glanced at Veena, who held up her hands. “It wasn’t me!”
“Ali?” I asked.
Veena looked sheepish. “The way she told the story was really funny.”
“See you at lunch,” Jake said. “Just don’t hurl on me, ’K newbie?”
I didn’t answer, but it didn’t deter his cocky grin. The Russian girl stayed. For some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, I positioned myself a little closer to Veena.
“You ride?” Russian girl looked me up and down.
“Mostly I walk,” I said. “Oh, I can roller skate, too.”
Veena laughed. The girl’s face didn’t even flicker.
“Are you training today, Veena?” Her voice was as flat as her eyes. The only color on her was her bright red backpack.
“Yeah. You?”
“You haven’t landed the double V yet.” The way she said it was more fact than question.
Veena stiffened. “Not yet.”
The girl smirked. “Tick tock, tick tock. Olympics are coming.”
“Oh, shut up, Darya.” Ali busted through the door behind us and clearly heard the conversation. “Leave V alone.”
Veena’s expression clouded. “Why do you have to be like this, Darya? Just be chill and leave riding on the mountain like everyone else.”
“No one leaves riding on the mountain.” The girl stepped toward Veena.
To be fair, we were between her and the door, but it got my hackles up anyway. I slid closer to Veena myself. A few intriguing ideas came to mind involving a sharp pencil lying on the floor by my toe, or the bottle of dry erase cleaner a few steps away, but I imagined what Brown would do if I injured a student less than an hour after I told him I’d get my act together. It wasn’t worth it. Instead, I touched Veena’s arm.
“We should go.”
Darya’s eyes flickered to me, then back to Veena. With a smirk, she pushed past us out the door.
“What’s her problem?” I asked after she left.
“Um, she’s a bitch?” Ali pulled lip moisturizer out of her pocket and opened the lid. It was covered in fuzz, which she picked off.
Veena shook her head. “I just don’t get that girl. She’s a great rider, but she’s got serious attitude. We’re all competitive on the hill, right Al?”
Ali snorted in obvious agreement.
“But at school, we put it aside. We’re friends.”
“She’s just jealous of your skillz.” Ali drew out the z.
“She’s beaten me tons of times.”
“Twice,” Ali said to me while raising an eyebrow.
“Well, she threw down some sick runs when we were in Japan,” Veena said. “She’s peaking right on time for the Games.”
I held the door for them. “Where’s she from?”
“Belarus,” Veena said. “Her family owns like half the oil supply there or something.”
Gage jogged up in a sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants, his hair pulled up in a spiky ponytail on top of his head. “C’mon, kids. Class is about to start.”
No time to ask anything else. Honors chemistry was next, and I’d almost failed regular chemistry once already. Atomic structure and moles. Someone kill me now.
I could be wrong, but I had a feeling Darya would be game.
Seven
I was lost in chemistry, not to mention honors pre-calculus. English and Spanish weren’t as bad; I took enough Spanish in high school to get through it. But seriously, how many honors and AP classes could one person take? Veena’s schedule was full of them.
I had to keep up appearances for the teachers and staff long enough to keep Veena safe. And I wasn’t above cheating.
“Do you seriously need to know all this stuff?” I grumbled as we left her last class, heading for our room. “Won’t you ride through the Olympic rings next month and live off all those sponsors you have?”
“No, I’m going to college. I’ll keep training for the next Olympics, as long as I don’t get hurt. And when I get too old to ride, I’ll need a job.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe something in foreign policy or economics. I’d like to work for an NGO one day.”
“What’s that?”
“A non-governmental organization. A lot of them work in developing countries to help people. Non-profits and aid organizations, that kind of thing. If I can use whatever platform I have from snowboarding to help bring attention to problems like poverty and human rights, even better.”
If I was feeling stupider by the minute, it was only because Veena kept getting more impressive. And I hadn’t even seen her snowboard yet.
She changed into her snow gear, and I threw on a pair of thermal leggings under my jeans, a tip from Xene for cold weather assignments. I guess bodyguards usually stood around outside—a lot. At least I’d eaten lunch. And I’d been pounding water and nibbling on protein bars I’d bought at the café. No more altitude sickness for me.
We passed Muth in the lobby. I nodded at the head of school, determined to be professional. I might as well have been covered in green snot from the look he gave me.
“Ass,” Veena said as the sliding door shut behind us.
“Well, I was kind of a bitch to him when we met.”
“You were? What’d you say?”
I waved it away.
She elbowed me. “C’mon, we’re legally required to talk smack about Muth.”
“Later,” I said. “Where are you going? I need to tell Dad.” That was Veena’s new name for Brown. I doubted he’d be happy about it if he found out, but it made us both snicker.
“The clubhouse and then the pipe.”
I’d been told that almost all of the students at VMA were members of the Vail Ski and Snowboard Team. The clubhouse, up the path from the school, was their home base at the mountain. I’d passed it last night on my trudge up the icy hill to find Veena. I voice texted where we were going to Brown.
The back door of the clubhouse led to a line of lockers and benches where a few chattering teens and tweens pulled on ski gear outside of the restrooms and locker rooms. No one paid any attention to us as we stopped at a faded blue locker with VV written in sparkly nail polish on the surface.
Veena sat to tighten her snowboard boots. Her eyes gleamed as she took a hot pink snowboard out of her locker. The brand, Burton, her snowboard sponsor—not to be confused with her hair care or sunscreen sponsors—was on the bottom, surrounded by a colorful design. I caught her whispering to it.
I grinned. “You talk to your board?”
“Yeah. All of them.” She looked embarrassed. “This one is my favorite, though.”
“Does it have a name?” I was joking, but her sheepish expression stopped me from laughing.
“Sona. It’s a Hindi word.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing.” It was Veena’s turn to wave me off.
She tucked Sona under her arm and stomped off in her giant boots, helmet swinging from her arm. She was a few inches shorter than me, and she looked even tinier in that getup. All those puffy rainbow layers, and yet it would be all too easy for someone to hurt her.
I caught up to her at a staircase around the corner. I was genuinely curious. What does a snowboarding princess name her snowboard? “I won’t tell anyone.”
Sh
e bit her lip. “Promise?”
I held up my three middle fingers and touched the pinky and thumb together.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You weren’t a Girl Scout, huh? It’s the promise sign.”
“Oh. No. But I like their Thin Mints.”
“Don’t change the subject.” I breathed hard. Even a set of stairs stole my breath at this altitude.
She sighed. “Sona means gold.”
Gold, like Olympic gold. I couldn’t laugh at that. I understood having goals and a passion for something that others don’t totally understand.
“Nice name,” I said.
The stairs opened to a high-ceilinged room with sets of tables and chairs, a café area with refrigerator cases of drinks, snacks, and packaged foods like sandwiches and salads, and a check-in type desk. A fire crackled in a fireplace. Through the walls of windows, I could see the chairlift.
“You haven’t met my coach Nate yet, have you?” Veena asked.
She beelined to a tall, tanned man in a blue ski suit with VSSC embroidered on the back. I recognized him from the pictures Brown sent. Talking to him, his hair mussed, and stubble glinting gold on his jaw, was Connor. They turned when they saw Veena and me coming.
“Nate, this is my friend Nic,” Veena said.
We shook hands, and Nate jerked his thumb at the hill. “You ready, VV?”
“Absolutely. Nic, you can watch from the deck of the pipe if you want. Wait, have you ever ridden a ski lift?”
I shook my head, embarrassed there was yet another thing that I didn’t know how to do.
Connor spoke up. “I can ride with you. I need to head back up anyway; my break’s over.”
“Great!” Veena’s smile was dazzling. “See you there.”
Nate and his pupil popped their helmets on their heads, pulled on their gloves, and took off, already deep in conversation about the upcoming training session.
“How are you feeling today?” Connor asked as we followed them out the door.
“Much better.” I snuck a peek at his boots. Unsurprisingly, he had on different ones today. “I’m sorry again.”
“No worries. Altitude sickness happens.”
“You should get that printed on T-shirts and hand them out to tourists.”
“Think it would help?”
I grimaced, remembering my own stupidity in not eating or hydrating properly. “Probably not.”
His eyes crinkled when he laughed. Cute. Very cute. A few yards away, the lift churned, taking skiers and riders up the hill on what looked like a bunch of porch swings. Connor grabbed a black board from a rack, and we headed toward the line.
“So, you ride?” I’d learned that most students at VMA specialized in either snowboarding or skiing.
“I ski, too. I grew up in Vermont. Some great hills there. Not like the West, but still really good.” He pulled on his helmet, leaving it unbuckled, and tugged a pair of goggles down over his eyes. The afternoon sun jabbed my eyeballs on repeat until I slid on my sunglasses.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Vegas. Born and raised.”
He turned toward me; I couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored shades. “Yeah? I’ve never met anyone who was from there.”
I smiled. “Before you ask: I don’t gamble. I don’t know any hookers. None of my family are dealers—casinos or drugs—and I don’t live near the Strip. I haven’t even been to the Strip in over a year.” The last time I went was with my friend Jamie to shop for prom dresses. “Sorry—people ask really weird questions when they hear I grew up there.”
“I’ll bet.” He laughed. “I’ve never been. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the West, in fact.”
“I thought you came from Park City?”
“Oh, yeah. I was there for a little while with the U.S. Team’s training staff.”
He wasn’t lying; Brown checked him out. So why did he sound guilty?
“I haven’t been East much.” Or at all. But I didn’t want to advertise my lack of travel experience on top of everything else.
“All right, let’s get you on the lift. It won’t be too bad without a board.” Holding his board, he led me to the side of the lift line. Waving at the liftie, he snuck us in after two younger kids in tight ski suits that looked built for speed. “Ready?” Connor asked me. “Just walk in front of the next chair, sit when the seat hits your knees, scoot back, and enjoy the ride.”
I followed him, and when the chair came, sat. It lifted us smoothly into the air. He pulled a bar down in front of us and laid an arm behind me.
“Easy, right?” he said.
Thirty seconds later we floated over the halfpipe. A boy on skis swept back and forth below us, hurling himself into the air above each wall. He did a trick each time involving flipping, twisting, or both. The power, the danger of it, was breathtaking.
“Damn,” I said.
“These kids are incredible.” Connor’s expression was sort of wistful.
The boy finished his run, and a girl started down on a board. She didn’t get as much height as the boy had, but the elegance—and the sense of chucking safety out the window—remained. My pulse picked up every time she flew in the air for a trick. It felt like watching a Hail Mary pass go up in the last few seconds of a football game.
At the top, Connor pushed the safety bar up and over our heads. “Now just hop off and jog forward a few steps to get out of the way of the chair.”
I did it in boots no problem, but with the way the snow sloped down from the drop off point, I could definitely see how it could be a challenge when you were half-strapped to a board like the other riders were. We walked down to the deck of the halfpipe from there.
In the sunlight, the pipe looked like it was made of marble. Veena stood at the top on Sona, listening to Nate. He spoke intently, and she nodded, her helmet and goggles tipping up and down each time like a bobblehead toy. I glanced around. People stood on the decks, watching. Cooley, dressed in a ski suit and wearing skis on his feet, stood near the exit of the pipe, another spectator to anyone else.
Nate finished his pep talk, knocked fists with Veena, and she shimmied her way to the entrance of the pipe, where she paused. I’d read that elite athletes imagined themselves running through a perfect routine, part of their psychological prep work.
Then she launched. First, she surfed down the left wall, then up the right, got a little air, turned and came back down. Seconds later she’d crossed the base and was zooming up the left wall again. This time she flew much higher. She hung in the sky, hand reaching behind her to grab her board. Her bright green jacket and orange helmet flashed like feathers on a high-altitude parrot.
Up and down the pipe she went, each trick more complicated than the last. I hadn’t watched many snowboarders, but she clearly outclassed the girl and boy who went before her. Nate watched from the edge, his gloved hands behind his back.
“This last trick should be the double V,” Connor said from beside me. “That’s her signature hit. It’s phenomenal . . . when she lands it.”
Veena flung herself into the air as Connor spoke. To be honest, I couldn’t even pick apart what all she did up there, flying through the sky. A rapid series of flips, twists, and grabs that together were, like Veena would say, super sick.
The front of her board touched the snow coming down. Connor relaxed, and I put my hands together to clap.
But at the last second, Veena’s body wobbled, and she fell, her head bouncing off the ground. I almost ran straight down into the pipe to check on her, but Connor caught my arm.
“Nate’s got it.”
I hesitated, searching for Cooley. He wasn’t far from where she landed, but he waited, too.
She hadn’t moved.
“Does this happen every time?” If so, why in the hell would she do this sport? The Olympic dream suddenly seemed like an Olympic nightmare.
“No. Well, not that bad. That was a bad fall. But they’re usually okay
.”
“Usually?”
Nate got to Veena around the same time another ski patroller did. The two men crouched over her. After a minute, they helped her up.
“Look, see? She’s okay.” Connor glanced at my hand where I was clutching his sleeve. I let go.
Everyone around the pipe clapped, and Veena waved weakly. That’s when it hit me. I was hired to protect this girl from the extortionists who were threatening her family. But the greatest danger to Veena’s life might actually be . . . Veena.
“Hope she has some ibuprofen around. She’ll probably have a wicked headache later,” Connor said, wincing as he watched Veena gingerly take her board off. “I have to get back to work. You can ride the lift back down or walk. Downhill’s not so bad.”
“Thanks for the lift lesson.” My eyes were on Veena. Cooley had taken his position again as Veena and Nate glided slowly down to the lift together. She looked shaken up.
“You know, Nic, if you’re interested . . . I could teach you to ride,” Connor said.
I thought about it. Learning to ride was part of my cover story. But learning from him, with his warm brown eyes and sexy smile would be way too distracting. I couldn’t afford to have friendships—or any other kind of relationship—on the job. I was already too close to Veena.
“No, thanks.”
He rubbed his jaw, looking puzzled. “You sure?”
I nodded. “Thanks for the offer, though.”
He still hesitated like he couldn’t believe my answer. What, had no one turned him down before?
“Okay. Well, good to see you, Nic.” His tone was definitely cooler.
“You, too.”
I moved on down the deck. On my way past Cooley, I texted him to call if he needed me.
A few minutes later I was back in the clubhouse. A couple of older people chatted at the desk, a noisy group of kids in ski gear were getting hot chocolate in the kitchen, and one middle aged guy sat at a table in the middle of the room, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. Must be nice to be so rich you could hang out here reading the paper in the middle of the afternoon.