The next day, Melissa’s mom drove them both to Dragon Mountain. “Nice to meet you, Matt,” she said, looking him over as he got into the car. Everyone was looking him over these days, and it was starting to make Matt feel really uncomfortable.
They said goodbye to Mrs. McCarthney at the resort’s gate and walked together to the main lodge to buy their lift tickets. “I’m not that good at boarding,” Melissa confessed. “So don’t make fun of me, okay?”
“I don’t make fun of my friends,” Matt told her. “Anyway, I haven’t been boarding that many times myself. I only learned last year at Christmas break.”
“So you’ve only gone like, what, seven times?”
He shrugged. “Maybe nine or ten. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not exactly the master. That would be my Uncle Clayton. He’s awesome. You should see him do jumps!”
Matt was enjoying himself, happy just to be in the company of someone so nice. But his good time was cut short almost before it got started. No sooner had they gotten their lift tickets than Riley’s voice rang out behind them.
“Well, look who’s here!” he said with an air of false cheer. “The two lovebirds. Tweet-tweet-tweet!” All the kids around Riley laughed, and Matt could feel his face get hot with the rush of blood.
Melissa stood her ground. “Riley, you’re such a jerk,” she said. “Come on, Matt. Let’s go.”
“Hey, Harper!” Riley said, stopping Matt in his tracks. “Not so fast. We’ve got a score to settle.”
“I’m not gonna fight you, Riley,” Matt said firmly. “There’s nothing to fight about.”
“Fight?” Nelson repeated, clueless. “There’s gonna be a fight? Cool! What about?”
Matt guessed that it wasn’t generally known that Riley still liked Melissa.
“Shut up, Nelson,” Riley said, waving him off like an annoying fly. “Nobody’s gonna fight anybody. We’re just talking about a gentlemanly contest.”
“Contest?” Now it was Matt’s turn to play echo.
“A snowboarding contest. I hear you’re world-class.”
Matt snorted and shook his head. “Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
Riley ignored the question. “Jumps and tricks, me against you.”
Matt disliked the idea intensely. Either he lost the contest and looked like a jerk in front of everyone, or he won and made a jerk out of Riley — which, much as he would enjoy it, he knew would only make things worse. “I don’t think so,” he said.
He started to protest that he wasn’t good enough to engage in contests yet, but he could see there was no point in arguing. Riley was intent upon humiliating him in front of Melissa and all the other kids. He decided that the worst thing of all would be for everyone to think he was a coward. “All right,” he finally agreed.
Riley led the way to the jump area. The way the other kids followed him reminded Matt once again of what Spengler had said about sheep and a sheepdog. Watching them made him more determined than ever not to be one of Riley’s flock.
“I still don’t get what this is all about,” Nelson said, as they pushed their boards along the flat area that led to the lifts.
“Harper here is supposed to be a world-class snow-boarder,” Riley explained.
Matt frowned. “I still don’t get where you heard that.”
Riley gave him a sly glance. “Rumor has it” was all he would say.
“Well, who started that rumor?” Matt asked.
Riley shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Maybe you.” He looked Matt right in the eye.
“Yeah, and maybe not,” Matt said with a scowl. This would get him nowhere. The only way to deal with Riley’s challenge was to beat him at his own game and deal with the consequences later.
When they got to the top of the hill and hopped off the lift, Riley laid down the terms of his challenge: “How ’bout five jumps each, everybody scores it one to ten, and we just add up the totals?”
“Fine,” Matt said. “Whatever you say.”
“And no points if you fall.” He stared hard at Matt. Matt stared right back at him. “I won’t fall,” he said. When he said it, he believed it. But when he lined up for his first jump, doubts started to creep into his brain. He’d really gone and done it now. He’d left himself totally out on a limb by guaranteeing he wouldn’t fall. Only yesterday, practicing with Uncle Clayton, he’d fallen a dozen times! And now, on the day after, he was sore and stiff all over. Why had he opened his mouth like that? What an idiot!
All of a sudden, Matt realized how much smarter it would have been just to walk away from the challenge. But now it was too late, so he tried to get himself ready. He would keep it simple on the first jump, then go from there, building his confidence one step at a time.
“You first,” he told Riley.
“What’s the matter? You chicken?”
“No. It was your challenge. So you should go first.”
“He’s right, Riley,” Melissa said, crossing her arms in front of her.
Riley gave her a long look. “All right,” he finally said. “Who cares? It’s all the same to me. This contest is only ending one way, anyhow.”
He lined up in front of Matt, waited until the field was clear between him and the ramp, then headed down it, crouching low as he gained speed. Right at the end of the ramp, he lifted off, high into the air, his arms spread out to either side. He landed smoothly, then arced in a half-circle and came to a stop. He looked up and waved, acknowledging the applause from the other kids, who were whooping it up.
“Ten!” Nelson crowed. “It’s a ten!”
“I give it a nine,” said Abby.
“Nine and a half,” Courtney ventured.
The other kids gave Riley similar marks. Even Melissa gave Riley a nine.
Now it was Matt’s turn. He tried to do just as Riley had done, keeping his first jump simple and smooth. His nerves, however, were fighting him all the way. He wound up going into his takeoff a second early, costing him height and making him wobble a little on the landing. He got sixes and sevens, and a single eight from Melissa.
On his second jump, Riley decided to get fancy. He did a wiggle-waggle with his legs in the air, back and forth twice, before making another perfect landing.
“Am I supposed to match whatever you do?” Matt shouted down to him.
“Do whatever you want!” Riley shouted back, as he collected another round of nines and tens.
Matt would have liked to do something incredible — a full somersault, or even a double full somersault —but of course he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do anything like that! All he could do, or at least had done once, was a 360 turn, and the chances of him pulling it off now were slim to none. He decided to go with another regular jump, just pulling up his knees to his chest in midflight before landing.
This he was able to do almost perfectly, and to his surprise, he got a nice round of applause from the spectators back at the top of the ramp. His marks were almost as good as Riley’s — which seemed to really tick Riley off. He shoved two kids on his way to the starting line. “Watch this!” he muttered under his breath, then shoved off, pointing his body as far forward as he could.
Maybe it was because he’d leaned forward too far, or maybe it was just from trying too hard, but from the moment he went airborne, Riley was off balance. He tried to right himself, but it was too late. He fell on his landing, head over heels, and was lucky to avoid getting hurt.
According to Riley’s own rules, that jump got him zero points. Matt started crunching numbers in his head, heart thumping when he realized that he had a chance of winning now — if only he didn’t fall himself.
And so he kept it simple, doing a straight but very high and smooth jump. By not taking any chances, he was daring Riley to catch up by taking more and more risks of falling.
“Gutless,” Riley commented after Matt’s third jump. “What a wimp.”
Matt laughed off his comment. “Whatever,” he said. “Your turn.”
“Oh, no,” Riley said, wagging his finger. “You go first the rest of the way.”
Matt shrugged. “Sure,” he said, pushing off and heading for the starting line.
“And let’s see a little something!” Riley said. “No wimping out!”
Part of Matt wanted to respond by doing a 360 turn, just to show Riley he was no wimp. But he’d been sucked in once that morning when he accepted Riley’s challenge in the first place. He knew Riley was just trying to goad him into failing, that it was a trap designed to make him mess up. So he stayed simple, doing a little zigzag in midair with his board and taking no major chances.
Maybe it was Riley’s taunting, but Nelson, Abby, Courtney, and the three other kids acting as judges gave Matt sevens and eights. Melissa voted last, and as she hesitated, he could tell she wanted to give him a higher number — maybe a nine — but she didn’t want to stand out too much, so she said “seven” instead.
“Okay,” Riley said, energized by Matt’s low tally. “Here we go.” He launched into his fourth jump, did a 360 turn, and made a perfect landing. Then he thrust both fists high in the air. “Yes! I rule! Give it up, you guys! That was a ten!”
The judges agreed. Not one kid gave him anything less than a ten.
Matt couldn’t figure out where he and Riley stood with one jump left to go, but Courtney had been keeping score on a candy box with a little pencil she had in her pocket. “Matt’s ahead, 254 to 248,” she said. “Close!”
“Ooo-ooo!” some of the kids said, getting a kick out of the tense match.
It was time for Matt’s last jump, and he knew that he had to do something special or risk losing. He wanted to beat Riley Hammett at his own game — just to teach him a lesson, just to show him that he wasn’t as big a cheese as he thought he was.
It was time for his own 360, he decided. He would risk it all on this one big jump. Taking a deep breath and blowing it out, he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to visualize what he was about to do.
Then he began his jump, holding back till the last minute before springing into a full extension just as his board left the ground. He twisted hard left with his upper torso, forcing the rest of him to follow around in a complete circle. As he came around front again, he tried to hold the fall line of the hill in his sights and point the front of his board straight down it. He spread his arms to his sides and landed softly, with only a little wobble.
He didn’t even hear the whoop that went up from the kids at the top of the ramp, but he knew it from the way they were jumping up and down and clapping. He knew he had put Riley Hammett on the spot — big-time.
Riley was silent, concentrated, still as a statue for a long, long moment. Then he made his jump — a 360, like Matt’s. It was higher than Matt’s and longer to the landing. But Riley’s landing was anything but smooth. He nearly fell down and had to touch the ground with his left hand in order to not go over.
The applause from the top of the ramp was polite but nervous. Matt got on the lift along with Riley, and they rode back up to find out what the final tally was.
“Nine,” Nelson was saying as they approached the group.
“Ten,” Abby said.
“Ten,” Courtney echoed. Riley went over to her and Abby and threw an arm around each of their shoulders.
“What are you talking about?” Melissa said hotly. “Didn’t you even see it? I give it a four, and that’s being generous!”
The three other judges, two boys and a girl, looked at each other furtively. “Ten,” said one.
“Nine,” said the second.
“Nine,” said the third.
Courtney was hard at work with her pencil and paper. “Riley wins by three points!” she squealed. “Yay!”
The kids all mobbed Riley, who accepted their congratulations with hugs and backslaps and high-fives.
“You were robbed,” Melissa told Matt, who stood there stony-faced. “Courtney, let me see that scorecard.”
“What, don’t you trust me?” Courtney asked, handing it over. “You think I’d cheat?”
“Oh, what’s the point?” Melissa said, handing it back without even checking it. “This was so fixed, it’s ridiculous.” She gave Riley a hard look. “And everybody at school’s going to know it, too.”
“What?” Riley said, his brows furrowing. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Come on, Matt. Let’s go have some fun for a change.”
Matt followed her, barely waving goodbye to the others.
He had just been given a graphic illustration of how things worked around here. This was Riley Hammett’s world, and there was no place in it for him. No place, that is, except at the very bottom of the pile.