by Piper Lennox
This gem slams into me at about the same speed as the ground. Clever, Andresco. Between my sparkling wit and the bloody nose I just sustained, it’s a wonder I’m single.
Correction: it’s a wonder I haven’t gotten my dick wet in months. Singlehood is just a much-enjoyed side effect of being me.
I spit the gritty soil from my mouth and let gravity roll me a few feet down the incline.
“Trail maintenance” must’ve been the lake’s latest budget cut. My board keeps snagging on ruts and breached tree roots. I think this wipeout was courtesy of an actual fucking boulder, rising out of the ground like a middle finger from Mother Nature herself.
Blood and sweat smear down my arm as I wipe my face and turn my eyes skyward.
“Sully, baby—look how blue.”
How blue, indeed. The sky’s clear and gorgeous and hurts my eyes so bad, I turn back to the bloody dirt just to thank it for reminding me where I really belong.
Then I punch it into a tiny dust storm, using the force to get to my feet and snatch my board from the mess of dead leaves where it landed.
That’s it. I’m nailing this jump, and I’m doing it now.
Should’ve brought the cameras.
I shake my head at myself. Or, really, at this whole stupid situation I’m in, where every undocumented run feels like wasted opportunity. I left the cameras in my car for a reason—namely, so I could skate for just one hour without worrying about angles, lighting, or usable footage.
Life was a lot better when all I had to worry about while skating…was skating.
At the top of the hill, I tighten my helmet strap, secure my wrist guards, and strap my feet into the bindings.
Breathe.
Do it.
I launch myself down the trail. My tires rip across the ground. Wind shreds my eardrums into deaf little pieces.
My heart pounds harder the closer I get to the rock, but I veer hard around it, leaning so far to one side a shot of dust gets in my mouth.
I don’t care. True, I hate landing in this stuff. I get tired of blowing my nose and finding more mud than snot. But the churned dirt of a trail has something special about it. It might be my favorite thing about this sport.
As the trail bends, I lean with it and swipe my hand through some wild grass along the sides. The jump creeps closer, so I don’t let myself get caught up in the view.
There isn’t much of one, anyway. When you’re going this fast, all you get is a traffic blur of trees and bushes.
And when all that separates you from packed dirt are four small tires and some maple laminate, you get a bit of tunnel vision.
Like now, when all I can focus on is the jump coming for me.
No. I’m coming for it.
The trail is clear and level the entire way to the jump. It’s what made me stop and ride this stretch during my hike: the way the earth went still, woods yawning open to the sky while sunlight poured across this manmade jump. It taunted me for not already flying off the damn thing.
I lean forward, gaining speed. Five seconds. Four.
Three.
Two—
“Ow!”
When it comes to jumps, there’s a microscopic window of opportunity in which you have to do several tiny actions just so, at just the right time, to get what you’re after.
In my case, that’s stabilizing my core. Crouching the smallest bit. Letting the momentum of the ride travel up my body so I lift with the board, and—since the drop is steep—reaching underneath to keep my feet in the clips. And, kind of, because it looks badass to do it.
I do none of these things.
Because in that impossibly small window of time, I hear a girl shriek in pain, then see a flash of blonde hair.
Unfortunately for me and my board, my tunnel vision isn’t that good.
It’s too late to stop myself from going over the jump, even knowing my form is awful. I’m going to eat so much goddamn dirt coroners will find a botanical garden in my colon.
My board lands long before I do. All the momentum I built crashes down into my lungs, stomach, and every last limb as I slam into the earth like a meteorite.
I have returned to dust. Absolutely pulverized.
“Shit,” I groan, when the pain hisses out of me long enough for some oxygen to slither into my lungs.
“Are you okay?”
A hand lands on me. I throw it off and push up on my forearms, the top of my helmet-covered head still planted in the dirt. Whether I can’t lift it from pain, shame, or anger, I don’t know.
“You made me miss the jump.”
The feet in my periphery step back in alarm. “Wh— Me?”
“Yes, you. You can’t just bust your way out of the woods like the fucking Kool-Aid pitcher when people are on these trails.” I heft myself up and start away from her, hunting for my board, determined to try again even though I feel like a bag of broken glass. My lungs tighten with every step.
“I got stung by a wasp,” she says from behind me—but not nearly far enough behind.
This girl’s following me.
Something about her voice sounds familiar, but I keep stabbing my way uphill. Turning to look would guarantee conversation, which I don’t do much on my best day.
On a day like this one? I don’t even want another human breathing the same air as me.
God, breathing. That sounds like an impossible luxury, right now.
I pat my shirt, relieved to find my inhaler still intact.
I’ve cracked more than a few during rides, which is why I started wearing them around my neck. Limbs, faces, skulls—they get battered to hell and back. But very rarely will you directly injure your chest during a fall.
“Van Andreas,” the girl says, while I fish out the inhaler from my collar.
Big mistake: I look at her, thinking she must recognize me. Damn vanity.
She was actually reading it off the back of my helmet, and now looks from it to me with mild fascination. At least, I think so. She’s wearing a hat that makes it hard to tell.
I turn forward and keep walking. She keeps following.
“Van?”
“On my helmet, isn’t it?” My smartass comment wheezes out. I fumble with the inhaler, tear off my helmet, and pump albuterol down my windpipe until death doesn’t feel so imminent.
Suddenly, the girl’s at my side, peering into my face like she’s lost something. Her mind, probably, since I could not be making it more clear I don’t want company. Yet here she is.
I speed up; she does the same.
“Van Durham-Andresco,” she says.
Finally, I stop.
“It’s me.” The girl laughs, nervous, before removing her hat and shaking out that distracting sunshine hair.
“Juniper Summers,” I say quietly, before she can. Her name melts across every centimeter of my mouth.
I think I preferred the dirt.
Two
“Juni,” she corrects.
Of all the people on this godforsaken planet, out of all the trails in all the mountains…of course it had to be her who found me here. That’s the kind of shit fate likes doing to me.
“Oh...right,” I nod slowly, like she’s just a faded photograph in my head.
I wish she was.
A rattled laugh slips past her lips. “So, uh—how are you?”
“Been better.” I punctuate this with another blast from my inhaler, enjoying the way she winces when she sees the blood Pollocked up and down my arms.
“I’ve got a First Aid kit in my car, if....” Her sentence fades, and she laughs to herself. “Well. Of course you don’t want it.”
Good memory. Bandages are worse than the actual injuries, always in the way.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks.
Wordlessly, I hold up my board.
“Oh, right. The all-terrain thing. I heard you’re doing that for Spiral now.” She cringes. “Or you were, I mean. Sorry.”
I give a tight line of my
mouth and shrug, then start back up the trail. So kind of her to season my wounds with sea salt like that. Spiral, my sponsor, jumped ship several months ago. Ditto on Creigh Supply Company.
Actually, they didn’t jump ship: they shoved me overboard. God knows they’re still doing just fine without me, my unprofessional mouth, and unsportsmanlike conduct. Their words.
If I had to guess, the final straw was probably when I punched another skater in the middle of a competition, right in his shit-talking mouth. Right on camera, with all my gear logos blazing across the screen.
Probably didn’t help that the skater was on my team, or the son of Spiral’s CEO.
And it definitely didn’t help that the competition was for a children’s hospital charity.
“Can you help me find the hiker’s trail?” Juniper stands in my way as soon as I turn and set my board down, ready to tear down the run again. And this time, no wipeouts.
But first, I let my eyes to do one glorious molasses drip down her body, from head to toe.
Well, more like from that pale pink mouth I could bite into like frosting, to hips encased in such tiny denim shorts they’ve gotta make her squirm every time she sits down.
And, somewhere in between, my gaze also takes a moment to appreciate the perfect sheen of sweat painted across her tits. I wish I’d been the one to put it there.
No, you don’t.
Let it be known throughout all lands and for all generations to come: Juniper Summers is not. Fucking. Worth it.
“I’m lost,” she mumbles, hugging her arms to herself. “If you could just get me to the footpath, I can find my way back from there.”
My chest still aches. I pump my inhaler again, wondering why she stares at it like she does until it’s tucked back behind my shirt.
“Follow this to the bottom,” I tell her finally, motioning for her to clear the hell out of my way. She hesitates, then does. “Swing a right at the signposts, and you’ll be on a back road that curves around the whole mountain. Main road should be somewhere off that.”
Weight shifting across her feet, she’s quiet.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Her eyes roll at her own tiny lie. “I mean, it’s just—that’s gotta be a good mile more than the route I took.”
“Sorry I can’t retrace your exact steps, Fairy Lights. Next time bring your baggie of bread crumbs.” For drama, I wave her out of the way more. This time, she doesn’t move.
“What? You need a sherpa to go with you?”
“It would be nice if you offered.”
I gawk at her. Since when the hell do I do “nice?”
“Look.” Spitting a little more dirt from my mouth, I nod down the trail ahead. “I didn’t say my way is the fastest. You’re definitely going around your ass to get to your elbow. But that’s the only way I know, and I’m not the one who’s lost. So take it or leave it.”
Her eyes don’t waver from me as I step onto my board and fix my helmet. Between my bitch-ass lungs and a storm creeping from the west, my time to do this is limited.
“Can I watch?” she asks.
“Watch what?”
Her eyes ping from the board to the trail.
“Free country. But I’m not doubling back after. Going straight to base camp.”
“That’s okay. I’ll wait at the bottom.”
“I’m riding back, not walking.”
In other words: I’m not walking with you, so don’t bother waiting.
Taking my own advice, I don’t wait for a response and instead just push off.
Focus. Usually I do all right with an audience. In fact, I tend to skate even better, with the right people watching me. But she’s not one of them.
When the jump appears, I ignore the pain in my leg.
I ignore the coppery smell of my own blood, caked under my nose.
I ignore the hazel eyes tracing my every move down this winding river of dirt.
As soon as my board hits it, I go through the motions my muscles know even when my head can’t name them.
I lied earlier, by the way. Dirt isn’t my favorite thing about this sport. Neither is the speed.
It’s being airborne, just like this. Weightless and flying against the sky, ready to slap the sun before you slam your way back to earth.
Up here, I feel like a god.
When I feel my tires touch down, my stomach and heart still hovering above me, I grin like an idiot and skid to a stop, spraying a tidal wave of soil in front of me before I fall back in sheer relief.
“That was awesome!”
I sit up and twist my body to look at her. She’s practically skipping down the terrain (I won’t lie; it pisses me off to see this girl ballerina-bounce over obstacles it took me hours to memorize) while her hair swishes around her shoulders.
The length is new, at least to me. Same with the highlights. It used to be the color of fresh hay, spilling down her back like a waterfall. Now it’s closer to platinum, shorn right at her collarbone. I hate that I even notice.
I hate how damn good it looks on her.
In her hands, she’s got a phone. The lens is trained on me.
“You caught it?” I unstrap my feet and stand, scooping the board under my arm. “The whole thing?”
“Yeah, look.” She huddles close.
Way too close.
The smell of her gets to me. She’s sweaty, but not in a bad way. No, B.O. would be far too easy to handle, and the universe doesn’t like giving me easy.
Juniper smells like she’s sweating sugar—like she applied lotion before she barreled off into the woods and got herself lost. Her hair puffs its way into my face, a mix of green apple and that crisp, dried-by-sunlight kind of smell.
I stick my hand in my pocket and adjust myself. No sense giving the poor girl ideas.
And certainly not the ones running through my head, right now. I don’t even want them in there.
We watch the video together. Sure enough, she captured everything. The quality’s decent too, even if it’s lacking the close-ups and multiple POVs my usual recording system gets.
“When I get back to my camp,” she says, “I’ll email it to you. I’ve got a hotspot.”
“You have internet? I’ve been trying to find some for days, I can’t get my hotspot to work at all.”
I don’t like the way my voice sounds: how obvious it is that I’m now being nice to her because she’s got something I want.
Then again, it’s not like she doesn’t know this about me. I find it much easier to be a halfway decent person when there’s something in it for me.
Which is probably why she just smiles, flashing those deceptive dimples, and says, “Come over tonight and use it, if you want. I’ll cook dinner. We can catch up.” For a second, she blushes. “It’s been a long time.”
Distantly, I realize I’m nodding. “It has.”
Also distantly, I realize I’m walking alongside her, my plan of riding back to the car completely forgotten. How the hell did she do that?
“Seven years.” The trail cuts sharply to the left; Juniper pushes off from a tree to turn herself, hip bumping into my board. “Well, almost.”
“Yep.” I think of the last time I saw her: across from me at the dinner table in our North Dakota farmhouse, all fake innocence and smiles. Plotting her betrayal behind a sweeter-than-syrup face.
My anger creeps back.
But I really do need internet, so I don’t let her hear it. “Still doing all that...travel shit?”
Honestly, I’m not sure what she does. I don’t pay her much attention online. She’s one of those “look them up when I’m wasted” acquaintances by this point, and her social media pages are a mash-up of traveling, van life, yoga, and God only knows.
To her credit, though, the girl’s got some fans, and apparently earns enough to keep doing whatever the hell she does.
“If by that you mean living out of a Transit, yeah.”
I wait for her to volley the small talk
back to me, but she doesn’t. Maybe she’s followed me way more in-depth than I have her, and already knows all the basics.
In the silence, she drags her teeth over her lip and releases it with a snap I’d love to recreate.
God, I need to get laid. By this point, even the mountains look perky. If I start jacking it to landscapes, me and my blue balls are going straight into a psych ward.
Voluntarily, if that matters. At least I’m self-aware.
“What’s that look for?” I ask.
“What look?”
My head snaps up and down her entire frame.
She pulls her mouth to the side. It’s like how Drew Barrymore smiles, except Juniper only does it when she’s nervous. I wish I didn’t remember that.
“I was about to ask how your dad is. But maybe I shouldn’t.”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Nothing ever happened, Van.” Her hands pull down her face and smear some foundation along her jaw, uncovering a pimple. It’s worth a fanfare from the highest peak on this mountain: Juniper Summers has a flaw.
I mean, I know she’s got flaws. A whole fucking truckload of them. But one the rest of the world can see, not just me? I’d very much enjoy sticking a camera in her face and broadcasting it online.
“Which ‘nothing’ are you referring to?” I spit. “Kissing him? Or robbing the poor bastard?”
My voice grates harder on the second thing, but the first is definitely the one that sends razors down my windpipe. Too bad inhalers can’t help with that.
Juniper shrinks into herself. Another old habit she hasn’t outgrown.
It’s much more subtle than when she first arrived at Dad’s old ranch. Back then, she crumpled inward like a malnourished dog about to be kicked, no matter how slight the insult or small the threat. All that was missing was a gut-twisting score of Sarah McLachlan.
Now, it’s more of a flinch that lingers just a couple seconds too long.
I wonder why it still gives me a pang of guilt.
It’s followed by fury, because why the hell should I feel guilty? Not my fault someone broke her and she can’t find all her pieces.
Not my fault she never told us who or what broke her, either. Dad tried to learn.
I tried even harder.
