Matt woke up the next morning and raised the blinds, only to realize that the sun was already high in the sky. He’d overslept! “Hey!” he complained as he ran downstairs, still buckling his belt. “Why didn’t you wake me? The day’s half over already!”
Clay looked up from his plate of eggs, which he’d nearly finished. “Sleeping Beauty!” he said with a grin. “I figured you needed the rest.”
“Sooo wrong,” Matt said. He went to the stove and scraped some egg out of the frying pan into a clean plate. “I need to go boarding, not to sleep.”
“Relax, we’ve got all — hey, Matt, will you slow down? You’re gonna choke if you eat like that!”
“I’m done,” Matt said, ditching his already empty plate in the sink. “Let’s go.”
“Sheesh!” Clay said with a laugh. “Slow down, partner. The sun doesn’t set till four in the afternoon!”
Matt didn’t waste another moment. He threw on his old leather jacket, grabbed his snow goggles and gloves, and hurried out to Clay’s truck. Clay had already loaded the boards into the back. Minutes later, they were on the road to the mountain.
Dragon Mountain dominated the valley. With its jagged peak sloping downward for several miles from north to south, it looked like the scaly spine of a dragon, ending in a long, curved tail. The mountain was featured on every postcard sold in every store on the town’s main street. Matt had also seen the famous silhouette on snow-boards, on ski jackets, and in lots of movies. The beauty of Dragon Mountain was spectacular. In fact, if there really had been a Snowboard Champ like the one in his daydreams, this would have been his home. Some cave high up on the mountain’s crest, where he could see everything for miles around and ride to the rescue whenever someone was in trouble . . . .
Bolts of lightning are snaking out of the blackness, crashes of thunder bouncing off the mountains. The vibrations loosen a boulder, and it starts rolling down the hill. Picking up snow and size and speed, it hurtles toward an unsuspecting child innocently snowboarding below.
“Billy! Billy, where are you?” The child’s parents call in vain from the deck of the lodge, scanning the hillside for their son. “There he is — omigosh, there’s an avalanche! It’s going to catch up with him.”
But wait — what’s that streak of red and black dashing out of the cover of the trees? The figure carves a sharp diagonal right in front of little Billy, scoops up the child in its arms, and skirts the edge of the gathering snowfall, surfing it like a giant white wave.
At the last instant, the figure in black and red goes airborne, flies over a low rock wall, and lands safely on the other side, safe from the onrushing avalanche!
Little Billy’s parents fall into each other’s arms with relief. “Thank you, Snowboard Champ!” they sob in gratitude. He hands them their baby, then boards off into the darkness, slicing sharp edges between bolts of lightning until they can see him no more . . . .
“Hey, man, you are really out of it this morning,” Clay said, elbowing him. “Earth to Matt! Do you read me?”
“Huh?” Matt said, blinking rapidly. “What?”
“We’re here, dude. You wanna board, or you wanna sleep some more?”
Matt grinned, yawned, and hopped out of the truck. He grabbed their boards and boots off the back and waited for Uncle Clay to park. Then they went inside and got in the long line to buy lift tickets.
“Man, this place is crowded!” Matt said.
“Gets worse every year, ’specially Christmas week.”
Matt looked. There were dozens — no, hundreds — of kids milling around, strapping on their boards or boots, shopping for gear or clothes, waiting to buy tickets or sign up for group lessons. He wondered how many of them were local kids and how many were from out of town. Some of them were his age and might even go to his new school. Maybe they’d wind up being future friends of his, he thought, as he looked them over.
You couldn’t tell much about a person at first glance, Matt realized. But he couldn’t help speculating about each kid. He couldn’t help imagining what it would be like hanging out with them.
“You are sooo making that up, Riley Hammett!” said a pretty blond girl with braces, punching the boy next to her playfully.
“It’s true,” the boy named Riley said, a sly smirk on his face. “I have it on good authority.”
“Get out of here, he is not!” said a red-haired girl, giggling hysterically.
“If you had ears like him, wouldn’t you have them pinned back?” the first girl said, and now all three of them giggled together.
“How do they do that anyway?” a second boy, smaller than Riley and with a heavy dose of freckles, chimed in. “Is it plastic surgery?”
“No, you dweeb,” Riley replied, twisting his knuckle into the top of the second boy’s head. “They do it with a staple gun.”
“Ow! Really?” the second boy asked, as the others erupted into gales of laughter.
“Nelson, you are such a space cadet,” Riley said, shaking his head pityingly. “Yes, of course it’s plastic surgery. The kind you oughta have on your whole face.” The girls screamed with laughter at this, but Nelson could only manage a halfhearted smile.
Geez, thought Matt. He’d hate to have those kids talking about him like that. Back in his old neighborhood in Chicago, kids were tough, but they usually didn’t spend much time gossiping. If they did, they’d get jumped for sure. Kids back home didn’t like being disrespected. Besides, in his huge school, kids broke off into groups — groups that sometimes argued and caused each other trouble. So you needed all the friends you could get — and you didn’t trash-talk about them behind their backs because you never knew when you might need them to watch your back.
Uncle Clayton returned with the lift tickets. “Okay, we’re set,” he said. “Ready to hit the slopes?”
“Let’s go!” Matt replied, happy to get out of the crowded building, away from that obnoxious foursome of kids, and onto the lift.
As they left the ground, Matt leaned forward over the safety bar and breathed in the cold, clean mountain air. It burned his lungs, but he loved it anyway. It left his whole body feeling clean and ready for the future.
At the top of the trail, he and Uncle Clayton got off and prepared for their first descent. It had been a year since Matt had last been snowboarding and, not surprisingly, he was a little nervous. Daydreaming about going down the mountain wasn’t the same as actually doing it, and he wasn’t sure the skills he’d learned last year were still sharp. Still, when Clay said, “After you,” he shoved off just the same.
He took it slow at first, being cautious. Clay didn’t pass him, instead hanging back to see how Matt was doing.
He did fine, considering. He did get rattled a couple of times when faster boarders whizzed by him, startling him. And at one steep stretch of this intermediate slope, he carved too steep an angle, started going too fast, and was out of control for a few seconds. He had to windmill his arms and contort his upper body to keep from doing a serious face-plant.
“Not too bad, for starters,” Clay commented when they got to the base of the hill. “Let’s try it again, and this time, try to relax more. You can’t concentrate if you’re all tense.”
Matt nodded and lowered his snow goggles over his eyes as they got back onto the lift. In the four-person chair ahead of them were the same kids he’d heard talking in the lobby of the lodge — that kid Riley and his freckle-faced friend Nelson, along with the blond girl with the braces and the one with red hair who couldn’t stop giggling. Riley sat between the two girls and was obviously the center of their attention.
He was a good-looking kid, Matt guessed, but not enough to explain the adoring looks he was getting from the two girls. Matt figured Riley had something else going. He must have been the coolest kid around or something. He also noticed that all of them were wearing expensive designer ski outfits. Matt thought they looked pretty sharp, but truth be told he preferred his own worn leather jacket and jeans. Keeping up with the latest fashion trends had never been his thing.
“Guess what? Spengler broke his arm,” Riley was telling the other kids.
“Word?” Nelson said, his eyes widening. “What’d he do, get it caught in the trash bin looking for food?”
More giggles from the girls and a sly smirk from Riley greeted Nelson’s little joke. “I heard his old man broke it when he caught him stealing his stogies,” Riley said.
“He asked me to sign his cast,” said the redheaded girl.
“So, did you?” the other girl asked her.
“Yeah.”
“Eeeuw! Courtney!”
“What?” Courtney asked, raising her voice. “Abby, cut it out!”
“That’s almost like, I don’t know — kissing him!” Abby said. The boys laughed and clapped their hands.
“You guys need to chill!” Courtney said, blushing.
“All I wrote was ‘Give me a break, Spengler.’ It’s not like I signed it, ‘Love’ or anything.”
“Courtney loves Spengler,” Nelson crooned. “How romantic.”
“Puhleez,” Courtney said, lifting the safety bar and hopping off the chair before any of the others.
Matt watched as they all got off. Then he lifted the bar on his and Clay’s chair. He wondered who this Spengler kid was and why they all thought he was so horrible.
“Ready?” Clay asked, and Matt strapped his back foot onto his board.
Riley and his friends had already started down the hill and were out of earshot. But Matt could still see them. Riley was in the lead, speeding down the hill with skill and ease. The girls were next, going pretty slowly. And bringing up the rear was Nelson, who was having a hard time just staying vertical.
“Ready,” Matt said. But he wasn’t really. He wasn’t concentrating the way Clay had told him to. It wasn’t that he was tense. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those four kids and the way they’d acted. He sure hoped they weren’t from around here, that he never saw them again after today.
He took another moment to collect his thoughts, then let his back heel down to get himself going. This time around, his ride was better. He could feel himself getting into a rhythm as he picked up speed. He made his turns with less effort, letting the board do most of the work for him. He could tell he was going faster, but at the same time, he felt more under control. His hands and hips anticipated every turn, every bump and mogul, and he glided to a stop at the bottom with a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt since — well, since the last time he’d been here.
“Awesome!” Clay shouted as he came up behind him. “Hey, dude, you don’t need me riding behind you anymore. Just go for it!”
“How ’bout we go do some jumps later?” Matt suggested.
“Sure thing!” Clay said. “Do you remember any of the stuff I showed you last time?”
“Kind of . . . not really,” Matt had to admit. “Well, maybe.”
“Okay, we’ll start over,” Clay said with a laugh. “Once a year on the slopes isn’t nearly enough to really get good. But this is gonna be your year, Matt. You’ll see. Olympic Village, here you come!”
Just then, Clay’s cell phone rang. “Hello?” he said into it, then listened for a minute. “Um, I’m kind of busy right at the moment. Did you look at the plans I sent over?” More listening. “But I’m on a sick day . . . . No, I’m fine, it’s just family stuff I’m taking care of . . . . Okay — okay. I’ll tell you what. I can be over there in an hour, but I’ve only got a little while . . . . Okay, see you there.”
He hung up and turned to Matt. “Sorry, I’ve gotta do a quick sales pitch. Can you entertain yourself without me for a couple of hours?”
“Sure,” Matt said casually, hiding his disappointment. Clay was a master boarder, especially on the half-pipe and the jumps. Without him, Matt probably wouldn’t get to learn anything new today. He certainly wouldn’t do any jumps without a little refresher course from Uncle Clayton. Waving goodbye to his uncle, he headed back over toward the lift for another run down the hill.
After three hours, Uncle Clayton still hadn’t returned. The time had flown by, with Matt doing several more runs on the same slope. By now, he knew its every contour by heart and was making easy, effortless runs.
His boarding was now almost as fluid as last year, when he’d spent every minute of Christmas vacation learning the basics. He remembered falling thousands of times the first two or three days, and laughed to himself. Yes, he’d improved a lot in that one week. Here he was, on the intermediate slope on his first day back — and already bored with it! He felt like he could go up to the next level, but he knew Uncle Clay wouldn’t like him doing that without him there.
He could go try some of the other intermediate slopes — Dragon Mountain Resort had more than a dozen of them — but then how would Uncle Clayton find him when he came back?
Matt looked up the hill from the area outside the main lodge. There was the slope with the jumping ramps. If he did some jumping, he might be able to spot Clay in his bright orange parka when he got back from his business meeting.
Clay had taken him jumping once at the end of last Christmas vacation. It had been scary, but Matt had actually landed on his feet once or twice. It was a rush like no other, and Matt had promised himself to really get good at it next year.
Well, next year was now, and Uncle Clayton or no Uncle Clayton, Matt was tempted to give it a try right now. In fact, that’s just what he was going to do.
As soon as he got off the chairlift at the top of the jump area, he wished he hadn’t been so impulsive. Why was it that, in a place as big as Dragon Mountain, with more than fifty slopes and hundreds of people on them, he kept running into the same four kids? Actually, there were more of them now. Matt counted seven standing in a group around Riley, who was fooling with one of his bindings.
One of the new kids in the group, a tall, chubby boy, was complaining about how crowded it was today. “I don’t know why all these people have to come here and ruin everything,” he said. “I mean, can’t they go snowboarding someplace else? Does everyone have to come to Dragon Mountain?”
“I’ve got an idea, Perkins,” Riley said, looking up with a half-smile. “Why don’t you leave town and make some space for the rest of us?”
The other kids laughed, but Perkins ignored him.
“Seriously, there must be some other slopes in this part of the country. In fact, I know there are. Why don’t they go over to Snowbottom, or Craigsmeur, or wherever?”
“Because those places stink compared to here,” Nelson said.
“Really,” Abby said, rolling her eyes at Perkins. “Maybe you should go check them out, Jeff.”
“I will if you come with me,” Perkins said in a joking tone.
“Whoo-ooo!” everyone in the group said, looking at Abby to see how she would react.
“Not worth it,” Abby said. “I’d rather be stuck in a crowd than alone with you.”
“Whoo-ooo!” everyone said again.
“Dissed!” Nelson crowed. “Man, she dissed you bad!” “Shut up!” Perkins said, shoving Nelson, who fell right onto Riley, knocking him over.
“Get off me, you peanut-head!” Riley shouted, pushing Nelson facedown into the snow and scrambling to his feet. “What is wrong with you?”
“He pushed me!” Nelson complained, pointing at Perkins and wiping the snow off his face.
“So? Push him back.” And with that, Riley gave Perkins a shove, sending him reeling backward into the snow. “Like that.”
The snaps on Perkins’s down parka popped open, revealing a black sweatshirt underneath. “DRAGONS” was written on it in red letters, surrounded by a yellow tongue of fire. And below that, in smaller yellow letters, was “Dragon Valley Middle School.”
Oh, no, thought Matt. These kids were from here, all right. And although they didn’t know it yet, he was about to become their classmate.
One of them.
Matt waited his turn, watching as the others took their jumps. The girls, Perkins, and Nelson all took safe, ordinary, simple jumps — and every one of them except Abby went sprawling on their landings. Then Riley showed them how it was done. He got so much air under him that it seemed like he was sailing through space. At the top of his arc, he twisted his arms and made himself spin around 360 degrees, landing perfectly with his arms raised in triumph to cheers and applause from his friends.
So that was his big appeal. Matt realized suddenly that in a town like Dragon Valley, being the best boarder among your friends made you popular. Or at least it helped.
And he did want to be popular here, if only to escape being made fun of. He wished to heaven he hadn’t come up here on the jump slope, but it was too late now. There was no way down but to jump. And so he concentrated extra-hard. He wanted to make a good first impression in case they happened to be watching. Maybe he wanted it too much, because he couldn’t seem to shake the tension that was coursing through him.
People were waiting behind him. He couldn’t stand there any longer. He started his descent, then pulled himself up into the jump. But he was early and way out of balance. He twisted his body, trying to right himself in time for the landing, but it was no use. He fell, tumbled down the slope, and barreled right into the group of kids from Dragon Valley Middle!
Someone was underneath him. A sudden, hard shove from below rolled him over and off to the side. Riley rose from the snow, his face red with fury and dripping with ice. “Get off me!” he shouted.
“I am off you!” Matt shot back before he could stop himself.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going!” Riley barked. Stepping toward Matt, he shoved him again, just as Matt was getting up. “Geek.”
Matt didn’t answer this time. He just sat there in the snow and watched as the whole group of kids boarded away toward the lift. He could see them commenting to each other, laughing and looking back at him as if he were from Mars.
Great start, he told himself. The way he was going, it would be a long, long year in Dragon Valley.