CHAPTER 3
Brian and Hannah glanced at each other, shocked.
They weren’t sure they heard the boy right, and they weren’t sure what to say to him.
“I’m sorry, is there something wrong?” Brian said, still trying to be polite.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” the boy said. “Your halfpipe is weak.”
Hannah looked the boy up and down.
He was tall, and looked a little older than them.
His snowboarding suit was perfectly matched and looked nearly brand new and expensive.
The pants and the jacket both had the same logo: Blair Mountain Ski Resort.
This wasn’t regular clothing you could buy at the resort, either. It looked like some kind of team outfit.
Both Hannah and Brian recognized it.
Blair Mountain was one of the best and most expensive resorts in the Rocky Mountains.
Neither Hannah nor Brian had ever been there.
But they both had talked about how cool it would be to go and snowboard there someday.
The ski runs were supposed to be twice as long as the ones at Snowstream.
The boy’s board was top of the line, too. Hannah and Brian didn’t have the gear that this new boy had.
They both wore red Snowstream jackets, but they were the normal kind you could find at a store. Nothing special.
Their snowboard pants didn’t match their coats, and they had been bought from a discount store on the Internet.
Their boards were average brands, too.
None of that had ever mattered to Brian and Hannah until this boy showed up.
Both of them felt a little jealous of the boy, but they weren’t ready to accept the insult to their home.
“Weak?” Hannah said. “It may not be Blair Mountain, but we like it here.”
“Well, we need to make some changes,” the boy said.
Now Brian was getting angry. “We? We need to make some changes?”
“That’s what I said,” the boy said. “We need to make some changes around here.”
The boy reached down and unstrapped his snowboard from his back leg.
He began to push down toward the chairlift again.
Brian and Hannah looked at each other in amazement.
Neither one of them was sure what to do next.
Brian headed after the boy. “Excuse me,” he yelled.
The boy kept walking to the chairlift.
“Excuse me!” Brian shouted.
This time, the boy stopped.
“Just who the heck do you think you are, hotshot?” Brian asked. He could feel that his face was red with anger.
The boy spun back with a sly smile on his face.
“I’m Zach,” he said. “My mom is the new manager here. And like I said, we need to make a few changes.”