by Joanne Rock
“Are you out of your mind?” Mad now, I didn’t care that his hand on my elbow kept me from sprawling in the snow. “How dare you lay one finger on me?”
The rest of the crew kept skiing, which at least took the ear-splitting sopranos farther away.
“I thought you told Missy that Andre was trouble.” He released his hold on my coat and my elbow, making me realize how awkwardly close we’d been.
“I thought you told me that was a mean girl thing to do.” I crossed my poles in front of me.
“Depends. Is it true?” His voice hit a deep note. The serious tone caught me off guard. Or maybe it was those dark brown eyes that didn’t dart away from mine any of the times I expected them to. I was used to girls challenging me. I wasn’t used to guys trying it. And I sure as hell wasn’t used to anyone getting in my face in such a quiet way.
It was all weird. He was weird. I had no idea why I felt tongue-tied. I forced my gaze down to his gray cape, appreciating the reminder of who I was talking to.
“None of your business.” I ground my teeth together. “You don’t seem all that concerned with my safety by separating me from the rest of the group.”
His eyes went from me to the mountainside ahead. Snowflakes fell in a heavy curtain all around us, the quiet so thick you could practically hear them fall.
“We’d better hurry.” He yanked my poles out of the snow and handed them to me. “Come on.”
“Go right ahead, Superman.” I poked at his cape with the basket end of one of my poles. “Why don’t you use the super powers your lame clothes give you so you can catch up?”
“Clothes can’t give you super powers.” He slowed his pace to match mine since I’m not a great skier.
“No? I’m pretty sure Bella thinks her latest $3,000 purse makes her invincible.” I followed the ski trails left by the rest of the group.
“You all think the same way.”
“I don’t.” I ducked under a low-hanging branch and listened for the sound of Christmas carols up ahead.
“Of course you do. Bella wouldn’t think a piece of leather was so great if her friends didn’t perpetuate the myth. If you all hated it and told her it sucked, she wouldn’t care about it either.”
“Is that so? How about you leave the opinions on fashion to someone who doesn’t dress like a Lord of the Rings character?”
He grinned. “Did the Elvish give it away?”
He glanced down at his shoulder where a bunch of green embroidery scrolled down the hem.
“I have no idea what an Elvish is and hope I never do.”
Did he have any idea how geeky he sounded? I quickly changed the subject. “Can you see everyone else?”
“Seriously.” He frowned. “How did you know about LOTR?”
Besides the one Star Trek convention, there might have been a Comic-Con. Not a big, West Coast one. Just a small one. But still, Missy would freak if she knew.
“Can we go back to ignoring each other? Please? Because we’re not speaking the same language anyway.”
“Right.” He went silent.
Which was what I wanted, but when the only noises around us were the sounds of our breathing and the soft shush of our skis through snow, I felt a little twinge of worry. Visibility sucked, but even so, why couldn’t I hear the brainless singing duo?
Or did I?
“Do you hear something?” I stopped to listen and put my hand on his arm to halt him, too.
“What?” He stopped, staring down at me patiently.
I swallowed hard. No one ever looked at me the way he did. Like he really saw through me. Which was totally unnerving because, obviously, he didn’t know me at all.
“Do you hear something?” I strained my ears, listening hard.
“Yeah. Not from up ahead, though.” He looked behind us and then went all He-Man on me, shifting his body to stand between me and whatever was headed our way.
“Something’s coming.”
I had visions of a bear. Did the Adirondacks have mountain lions? I gripped his arm harder, my heart rate speeding up because I heard a sound, too.
A rustling of brush or branches.
“What is that?” I hissed, glad that his six-foot-four inches hid me completely if necessary. I peeked around his shoulder just as a moving shape broke through the brush and into view.
“OMG.” Bella Hopkins skied to a stop ten yards away, her eyes wide as she gaped at us. “Hannah?”
Missy was a half-step behind her, but visible now as she stopped beside her new BFF, aka, my replacement.
“And Julian?” She snorted. Laughed. Held Bella’s shoulder to keep her upright during the waves of hilarity.
“Is this your partner?”
“What are you even doing?” Bella’s eyes raked over us both, pausing on where I clutched Julian’s forearm in a death grip.
I released him like he had the plague. Which, he kind of did, because nerdiness was a transmittable disease.
“I’m sacrificing Geekster to the bear we saw a few minutes ago,” I lied. “I looked around our group and asked myself, ‘Who is the most expendable?’”
“Really?” Bella’s eyes went cartoon-wide as she moved closer to us.
Missy raised an eyebrow. I think she was skeptical, but not even the fiercest mean girl was a match for a full-grown bear. Julian said nothing. He just skied away from us toward the quickly disappearing trails left by the rest of the back country group. Guilt—just a little—gnawed at me as I watched his cape flap behind him in the wind. For a second, I wished I hadn’t pretended that I didn’t know what Elvish was. One of Mom’s boyfriends had been a Lord of the Rings nut though, and I’d watched all the movies with him in a marathon the weekend before my mom broke up with him.
I’d felt bad for the guy since I’d read the writing on the wall that she was over him.
The Trekkie convention had been long ago, with some cousins we visited in Vegas when I was just a kid. I’d only thrown out my tricorder a few years ago and it had been a sad, sad day. It had been like Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”…a constant reminder in the back of my closet that my darkest secret could be discovered if Missy dug in there to assess my shoe collection.
“Come on,” I urged, skiing in Julian’s path. “Andre’s just up ahead. That is, if you’re here for the back country trip?”
I could kill Julian for not letting me go with Andre when he’d asked me to. I should have been skiing with the boys’ lacrosse coach when Missy and Bella showed up.
“Are you here for the back country trip?” Missy poked her ski pole into my back. Half friendly, half mean. “Or are you trying to mess with Julian Berwick?”
My heart rate jumped. I could not afford to be associated with the Nerd King when my standing with my friends was already iffy. Mind racing, I debated what to say.
For all of a second.
“Of course I’m messing with him.” I gave Missy a conspiratorial smile. “Andre’s group is full of hopeless cases like that. I had to have some form of amusement without my besties around.”
“Aww!” Bella made a kissy face at me. “Love you, too, girlfriend.”
Some of the tension in my chest eased. But I hadn’t won over the big guns yet. Missy wasn’t as easily fooled. She hadn’t reigned supreme at Northstar since ninth grade by being gullible.
“Tell us your plan then, baby girl.” She used an endearment she knew I hated. But it was progress, right?
“How can we help?”
My stomach knotted at the thought of pranking Julian.
It made no sense since he and I had a truce of sorts at school all these years. He’d never ratted me out on my summer-camp double-life to my friend at Northstar. That counted for something.
Or at least, it should have.
With Missy breathing down my neck, hungrily waiting for the details of some new mean scheme, I had to ignore any softening toward Julian. I took a deep breath.
“Just little stuff.” I played it cool, hoping I
could get away with something small and snarky that wouldn’t make me seem like a total jerk to him. “And I’m making a couple of annoying sophomore girls do the dirty work for me.”
That way, I didn’t have to.
Chapter Three
Julian
Dumbest thing I’d ever done was like Hannah Trudeau.
I had a competitive top ten list of stupid stuff in my life. Skipping Comic-Con the year my friends got to play a beta version of a Final Fantasy game that was never released to the public. Trying to wean myself off of my Mac. (What was I thinking?) Once I’d even tried giving up my capes for a girl.
Word to the wise? Never change who you are for someone else.But crushing on Hannah ranked up there as numero uno.
God knows she’d never tried being someone she wasn’t. She’d been the class mean girl since junior high. The camp mean girl for just as long.
Except…
I remember when she wasn’t. When I’d held her hand and talked her through fifth grade stage fright right before she went on to play Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore. I knew that scared girl who was behind the whole Queen of Mean act. I guess I just kept hoping she’d snap out of it.
Ducking behind a tree, I pulled out my compass to check our headings since Andre the Unwise had no clue what he was doing off-trail. I’d only taken the side trip with the guy because Hannah was hell-bent to be here for reasons I didn’t fully get. I’d hoped today would be different since she’d seemed like maybe she’d changed at camp last summer. I hadn’t been around her until this week because I’d spen tthe fall in Spain as a foreign exchange student.
Back at camp, I’d seen her laugh and goof around the way she hadn’t in years and I thought maybe—
“Whatcha doing?” An energetic sophomore appeared at my elbow, her white-blond ponytail swinging into my vision as she leaned between me and the compass. “Is that like…GPS?”
Hard to believe we attended one of the most competitive private schools in the country. Then again, money and family legacy can get you into Northstar Academy.
“It’s a compass.” Surely she’d heard of one? “Where’s your ski partner?”
“Hovering around the Queen Bee Trio.” She rolled her eyes. “No clue why everyone thinks they’re so great.”
Sticky terrain. Avoid conversation. Those were the alerts that flashed on my brain’s personal heads-up display. Not because queen bees intimidate me. Take Galadriel, for instance…totally cool. I just avoided drama, and those girls—mostly Missy—brought it by the truckload.
“I mean, I know they’re juniors so they’re supposed to have more clout than me, but still.” She folded her arms and smiled my way. “I do my own thing. I’m Linnea, by the way.”
She stuck out her hand for me to shake and I took it, fast, like a hot potato. Serious weird vibes coming from this girl.
I started skiing away and she skied with me.
“I think you left your partner behind,” I reminded her, needing to lose the shadow.
“So did you,” she chirped, chewing her gum in a way that reminded me of this girl—Alex—back at Camp Juniper Point.
Why couldn’t I have crushed on a girl like Alex, who was in the cabin that my crew hung out with? A girl like that didn’t care what other people thought of her. She howled during every round of BINGO we’d sung since we were kids. But no. Instead, I had to like a redhead who thought status was more important than real friendship. And now…someone who turned to nerd bashing when it suited her purposes even though I happened to remember she’d come to camp with a tricorder once. Did she even remember that year when we’d still been kids and she’d won my heart pretending to beam me up during a particularly disgusting mess hall dinner? She’d transported us both to the local bbq joint and thrown out my untouched tray of mashed peas that had made me want to gag.
But that was a long damn time ago. I hadn’t appreciated the bit about being “expendable,” even if I’d seen her twitch a little when she said it. She might not remember that I knew she was a Trekkie at heart. Yet she had to recall the year she’d been too scared to go on stage during the talent show…
Cursing myself for thinking about the past, I tried to focus on Linnea.
“Hannah found new partners, so I don’t need to worry about her.” Although her poisonous best friends never had her best interests in mind. “They’ll look out for her.”
I hoped. If she was going to ski with Missy and Bella, Hannah would have been better off on the Whiteface trails where there were clear paths and an active ski patrol.
“Those girls?” Linnea laughed while I struggled to figure out if Andre’s skiing side trip revealed any kind of intelligent plan. “I wouldn’t turn my back on any of them. Do you like Hannah or what? I mean, like, why is she your partner?”
I nearly tripped on my skis. Literally. I hadn’t crossed one on top of the other since I was five years old. How had this chick guessed a secret I’d kept since junior high?
“Uh. Her friends left ahead of her.” I straightened the skis and tried to make sense. “Hanrahan was being pretty strict about the buddy thing.”
“Then Hannah grabbed you so she’d have someone?” Linnea shook her head, making the ponytail swing like crazy. “Typical.”
Missy’s laughter rang out nearby us, a throaty reminder that trouble wasn’t far behind.
Linnea looked back. “I’d better find my friend.”
“Wouldn’t want to be caught talking to me.”
“I know, right?” Her nervous giggle told me that was exactly what she was afraid of.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Mostly because I didn’t care. Also because I hoped she’d return the favor. I didn’t need rumors spreading that I liked Hannah.
Especially since I was over her. Starting when she’d called me expendable. Normally, I didn’t care about stuff like that, and Hannah left me alone in our unspoken truce. Today had been different. Hannah and I had talked. She’d touched me.
And she’d recognized my cape from LOTR, when she pretended she didn’t know what Elvish was. But then—Hannah was far smarter than most people guessed.
“Thanks, Julian.” Linnea seemed relieved before she scurried back to her friend—the other ponytail girl—who didn’t look too happy to see Linnea near me.
Geekitude was contagious. Yeah, I got that.
I was more concerned with the fact that Andre the Unwise was getting us more and more lost by the second. We were going in circles, and while it was one thing to follow a clueless chaperone around a museum or historical site, it was another to trust a twenty-something joker on a mountain dangerous enough to warrant daily ambulance calls. Besides, none of us had Nordic skis—the kind that would be able to handle this terrain. You had to respect Whiteface.
Double-checking my compass, I hoped it would have better news, but we were still circling. Since Hannah was deep in conversation with her crew and didn’t need a partner at the moment, I figured I’d try talking to Andre. I’d keep an eye on Hannah though. Because even though I was over her, I took the whole “partner” thing seriously. No way would anything happen to her on my watch.
“Andre.” The dude was easy to find in his lime green coat, but he couldn’t hear jack squat with his ear buds in. Shouldn’t that be illegal or something when you were supposed to be watching over a bunch of kids? He’d never make it as a camp counselor. Our camp director, Gollum, would have chewed this guy up and spit him out before the first week was done.
“Hey,” I shouted, waving a glove in front of Andre’s nose. He took his ear buds out.
“Isn’t this great, man?” He held up both arms, clearly high on life and not caring that we’d seen the same pine trees a few times already.
“Yeah. Nice.” I gave a thumbs-up and then pointed to my compass. “Just wanted to see where we were headed. I noticed we’ve been going in circles.”
Andre threw his head back and laughed. “No agenda out here. That’s the cool part of going off-trail.
No rules. No one bombing the trails and plowing you over. Just fresh mountain air and glades for as far as you can see.”
“With the weather coming in, though, I thought it would help to have a definite heading so we can get back.”
“Get back?” More chuckling. “Point your skis downhill. That’s all there is to it.”
The ear buds were back in before I could argue with him. Great.
Hannah was ready to feed me to the bears. Linnea had a suspicion about my secret and now Andre the Wannabe Adolescent was determined to get us lost. It was turning out to be a hell of a ski club trip.
At least one thing was going my way. I was definitely over Hannah.
I’d just make sure she stayed safe on this trip, and then I wouldn’t have any reason to talk to her again.
Chapter Four
Hannah
“There you are!” Andre shouted when we rejoined the group about fifteen minutes later. “And you brought your friends.”
His gaze wandered over Missy and Bella with the kind of appreciation you would hope no one over twenty-one would show for a teenager. Eww.
I tried not to notice Julian off to one side, staring at some kind of furry creature tucking back into a den rather than looking at me. For a second, I really resented my friends. If they hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t be forced to prove my loyalty.
“Hi,” Missy and Bella chorused. Then Missy took the lead. “We thought maybe your trip could use a few less”—she peered around at the kids who were with us—“losers. Where are we headed?”
Before he could answer, he had Bella on his right and Missy on his left, effectively distracted. This left me time to put my plan into action. Predictably, Julian stayed far away from me. I had been prepared to sacrifice him to a bear, after all. Too bad I couldn’t quit there.
“Hey girls,” I called to the Ponytail Matchers. They looked stunned to be summoned by the second—make that third—most popular girl at school. Much as I hated the bronze medal in that category, it would be good enough until the end of high school. I hoped.
