by Joey Bush
“Oh trust me, I am going to check the stats and find the perfect team to completely demolish you,” Jax told me, his bright hazel eyes flickering with something like interest. I shrugged off the comments everyone around us made and took my leave of the frat. Even though I’d eaten snacks there in the past, I was not about to endure any of the guys’ attempts at home cooking in the kitchen, and besides, it only made sense to get some value out of the meal plan I had paid for. I wanted down to the dining hall, still buzzing a bit from the flirtation session with Jaxon but telling myself again and again that it didn’t mean anything.
Jaxon didn’t just get away with pranks and parties—he had managed once, or at least I had heard he had—to carry on three relationships at the same time, with none of the women knowing about it for months. They all thought they were the one and only girlfriend, they all cherished the idea that he loved them and only them—and one of them had nearly set the frat house on fire when she found out that Jaxon was banging two other girls at the same time. He had natural charm and good looks; of course he would flirt with the only girl in the room, even if most of the frat didn’t entirely see me as a girl.
I loaded up my plate in the dining hall, starving from a volleyball game and the long game I’d sat through at the frat. I’d had a few handfuls of pretzels and some goldfish crackers stolen from the brothers around me, but I was definitely more than ready for something substantial. I found myself thinking of Jaxon and the way that he had flirted with me. At least, I thought, it was definitely a proof of the fact that I was more than welcome in their ranks; no one pulled any punches, no one tried to be polite around me, and Jaxon had flirted with me over a football game. All in all, I thought as I sat with one of my roommates, it had been a good day. I’d head back to my dorm and get my homework done for the next day’s classes. If anything good as going on, I could count on Jeremy or one of the other guys to shoot me a text to let me know. But on a night like that, in the early part of the week, with midterms coming up, no one would be partying just yet. It’d be a day or two yet before anything really interesting was going on, and in the meantime I might as well make sure my grades wouldn’t get me kicked out of the school in my first semester.
CHAPTER 2
The next day, I had finished my classes for the morning and was heading in the direction of my dorm, cutting through the commons, when I ran into Jaxon. He had his backpack on and was going in the opposite direction—towards the Thompson building, I thought—and called out when he spotted me. “Yo, Mia!” he said, raising a hand in the air. I grinned and cut off to the side, the direction he was coming, and met him halfway as he walked towards me. “You snowboard right?” he asked, taking his backpack off of one shoulder and opening one of the zipper pockets.
“You’re damn right I do,” I answered. Maybe the guys were talking about taking a trip during winter break—that’d be a good time, I was sure.
“Well it’s still early days, but we’ve got a snowboard team we’re building.” I raised an eyebrow and he pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag, handing it to me. “Some good boarders, we’re looking to compete this year again.” The flyer fluttered in my hands from the wind; it wasn’t cold yet but the wind was already stiff heading into fall. I looked down at the flyer, holding it as steady as I could. The school had apparently put together a snowboarding team two years prior, though they didn’t publicize it as well as they did their other teams—especially the football team. The previous year they’d managed to go to a few competitions, win a few prizes, and they were starting to assemble a new team this year.
The flyer went on to explain that there was an off-campus practice facility where the team met up and included a few phone numbers and messenger contacts for people to ask questions. “Sweet!” I said, glancing up from the paper to look at Jaxon. “Thanks for thinking of me.” Jaxon shrugged. I looked down again at the pictures of the previous year’s team in their practice space and at competition. Snowboarding is a winter sport, so it was a bit early, but training would be important, and having a team put together before the first snow was a good strategy. Jaxon was saying something to me but I was barely listening as I took in more of the details.
I’d been snowboarding ever since I had first managed to convince my parents to buy me a board, sometime when I was thirteen or fourteen. I’d started competing by myself around the age of 15; while I wasn’t near a pro-level, I was getting better every year, and being on a team with other boarders would be great experience. Getting to go to competitions and show off my skills would be even better. “Hey, I’ve gotta go to class,” Jaxon was saying. I looked up from the flyer he’d given me and nodded.
“Oh, yeah, sorry man,” I said, grinning. “Just really excited about this. I’ll definitely be there.” Jaxon flashed another smile and then parted ways with me, heading off to his class. I kept the flyer in my hand and kept re-reading it as I made my way back to the dorms. It would be awesome to make the team; I wanted the experience as well as the potential friends. The frat was good, but if I saw right on the page, there were some girls on the team the last year, too—and girl snowboarders would at least be better than sorority girls or my roommates in the dorm.
The minute I was back in my room, I went into my closet and started digging out my gear. I’d brought my board with me since I had hoped that there might be a trip to the slopes at some point before winter break; it’d come home with me later for winter break, since I could count on my mom to finagle a trip to the mountains around Christmas or New Year’s. She’d started dating some rich guy before I’d gone away to college, and whenever I talked to her she was bragging about the house he lived in—which she called a mansion with as much pride as if she had bought it herself—and the places he took her and all the things they did together. I thought it was a guarantee that we’d make a trip, but it’d be good to have some practice under my belt before I got home. It’d be even better if I could maybe get in some competition time before I went home, have something to show for myself other than good grades.
It didn’t look like the practice facility was particularly cold—the practice ramps weren’t snow, they were composites, so I wouldn’t need any winter-wear, just my gear and my board. I’d been to one or two practice facilities when I was in high school, but I’d never been on a team, so I couldn’t afford to go regularly. If I could get on a team, I knew I’d get better at boarding by leaps and bounds, and I’d get a chance to show off to boot. The first practice was supposed to be at the end of the week, and I started making sure everything was in good shape immediately. If I needed a repair or a replacement for anything—especially pads or my helmet—I wanted to know about it immediately.
CHAPTER 3
I spent the next couple of days barely able to pay attention in class, preoccupied with the chance I was getting to join the team. In my head I was doing aerials, 360s and 180s, ollies, and ramp work that I knew I was good at. Between all the sports I’d done in school and the dinky dance classes my mom had made me take when I was a kid, I had good balance—and one of my instructors on the board when I’d first gotten it had told me that I had what he called “keen spatial awareness.” I had only started really learning tricks when I was 15, but after three years I knew I was pretty good at them. Maybe not the best, but I was making progress.
I was almost jumping out of my skin by the time practice day arrived. I grabbed my gear and loaded it up in one of the frat brothers’ cars; he was at least as excited as I was, telling me about what he’d heard of the competitions the team had gone to the year before. The parties after the competitions were always wild, he said as we were driving to the off-site practice. He was hopeful he’d get a spot on the team—he hadn’t made it the year before, but he’d been close to it, and he’d taken as much opportunity as he could to improve in-between, working out and doing as much board work as he could.
The practice space was in what used to be a giant, unused warehouse, and the sign outside proclaimed that
it was for skateboarding and BMX as well as for snowboarding. I went in with my gear and followed the sound of shouts and cheers over to the snowboard area, feeling my heart pumping faster and faster in my chest every moment. I had wondered who all would be trying out at the practice; I had been pretty sure that I’d see Jaxon there, since he was the one who’d invited me to come out—but for a moment, while I was getting my pads on and watching, I didn’t notice him among the people waiting to go up.
Instead, there was a girl on the track, dropping down the first slope at high speed. She hit the ramp as fast as she could, launching herself into the air and doing a quick 180 before darting down to land smooth, her board not even wiggling as it made contact. She kept up her momentum and tried a few other quick and easy tricks, and I was impressed; they weren’t the most difficult ones to master, but she was really nailing them, getting the form just perfect and keeping her speed, which were the most important things. When I’d started learning tricks my instructor had warned me against trying to be so flashy that I forgot form, or slowing myself up in the name of getting in a twist to make a more complicated combination. “If you do either of those things, you could really, really hurt yourself.” I’d bucked his advice once and nearly broke my collarbone in the process—so I followed his advice from then on and didn’t try to do any really complicated tricks on an actual track until I’d mastered the form on them.
She finished and everyone else watching gave her a cheer, me included. I knew I would have to wait my turn but I was anxious—I wanted to get on the track as fast as I could, really show my skills and get a feel for it. “Hey! Jax! Hit it! Show the newbs what you can do!” I looked up and saw Jaxon taking up his position at the top of the first slope. He shot a grin at the guy who’d called him out and took a deep breath before he tipped his board over the edge. I held my breath. Jaxon hit the slope full speed, screaming down, his board rasping against the artificial material as he zoomed past everyone watching. He hit the first ramp and went up, busting a front side shifty with a one-two grab and landing smooth. My eyes widened as I watched him going through the track, landing tricks I barely even knew existed, keeping speed and momentum steady the whole time. I didn’t know why I was so surprised that he was a good—really a great—boarder. I’d seen Jaxon. He had the kind of build that all snowboarders tend to take on, a little less built up on top with powerful legs, especially in the thighs. And he was almost obnoxiously athletic—I’d seen him come in from long runs around the track boasting about his times, and once or twice he’d been down at the gym while I was there, working out hard. But I’d never really put it together in my mind.
Jaxon went through and threw in a few more flashy tricks, coasting to the end of the track and pumping his arms while everyone cheered. He climbed back up to the area where a bunch of the people were watching—dangling his legs over the side of one edge of the next track—and one of the people next to me waiting for their turn said that it was the senior members of the team, the people who had formed the original group.
As the people in front of me—a mix of established team members and newbies looking for a spot—went through the track, I realized that of all the people I’d seen, Jaxon was clearly the best. As the line in front of me got shorter and shorter I started to get a mixture of nerves and excitement, wanting to show off my skills but daunted by how good Jaxon had been. How could anyone follow that? As I waited for the person directly in front of me to take his turn on the run, I went through the list of tricks I knew in my head. I hadn’t quite mastered some of the harder tricks for halfpipe and quarterpipe, but for a straightforward run like this one, I should be able to pull off some of my bigger, more complicated stunts. I took a deep breath, getting onto my board and to the edge. “Go Mia!” one of the guys from the frat called out from the sidelines. I grinned—it wasn’t Jaxon, but it was someone that I liked. I tilted over the edge.
As I dropped down along the slope, I got a feel for the surface. It wasn’t like snow—it was faster, slicker, grinding underneath my board in a constant, droning rasp. I slowed down just a bit—I didn’t want to go so fast that I wasn’t ready for the first aerial. I launched up off of the ramp and went into a half-cab, barely landing it. The surface was faster than I’d thought. I shook off the slightly rough landing and continued on, trying for some easier tricks: ollies, front side grabs, one or two 180s as I got closer to the end of the track. I focused on making sure I stayed on my feet and finished strong; the last aerial I got I managed a 270, landing it better than my half-cab.
Cheers echoed across the warehouse training area as I hit the end of the track, breathing heavy but mostly satisfied with my performance. “Good going, Mia!” someone called out. I grinned and got off of my board, flipping it up into my arms before I went to the sidelines. I wasn’t entirely happy with how I’d come off—I knew some much more complicated tricks, but the track had been unfamiliar enough that I hadn’t wanted to risk trying them and then face-planting when I came down; that would have been worse than doing some fairly unimpressive beginner tricks.
“Hey,” one of the girls said when I joined the group waiting and watching. “Not bad on that half-cab. The landing was a bit squirrelly, but you haven’t practiced here before, right?” I shook my head. One of the guys praised my clean front side grabs, another boarder commented on my straight 270. Jaxon didn’t say anything to me, but I knew that of all of the newbies in the group looking for a place on the team, I had done pretty close to the top. I wished that I’d been able to go through on a run before the practice; I might have known a little bit better about how speedy the track was, and I’d have been able to moderate my pace better. But I had done well enough.
It was a really good sign that a lot of the people praising how I’d done on the practice run were seniors on the team—people who had competed previously. I felt like I was a shoe-in for the team, which was a relief. If I’d managed to face-plant and screw up, I’d have hated myself for a week for either overestimating my skills or trying too hard, whatever had led to me messing up. I was used to doing well at just about every athletic pursuit I got interested in—either I started out good at it, or I got good at it quickly, learning from the best I knew at the sport. My mom teased me for being a showoff, but I’d learned when I was younger that the best way to get the guys to respect you is to kick their ass early on and establish that you were every bit as good as them, if not better.
The upperclassmen on the team, the people in charge, gathered up in a group to discuss everyone who had tried out in the practice. I stood with the others, fidgeting a little bit, mentally reviewing my performance and trying to decide whether or not I was better than the others waiting to join the team. There were some people—including the guy I’d ridden to the practice track with—who had to be at least as good as me, but if the rest of the team decided that someone had been better, I may not get a chance.
“Okay,” Jaxon said, stepping away from the group. “We’re going to send out emails with information about the next practice, but most of you are on the team. Unfortunately,” Jaxon paused, looking over the group I was standing with. “Katie, Alex, Pierson, and Clay—we don’t have enough room for you this year. Come out again next year, okay?” The four nodded and I let out a little sigh of relief at the fact that I wasn’t on the list of people dropped.
The practice continued; one of the older girls on the team led me over to a practice rail and showed me around the facility, pointing out the balance board, the practice boxes—there was even a trampoline area off to one side of the warehouse. For a while I worked the practice rail, looking around whenever I dared to see what everyone else was doing. I spotted Jaxon at one point in the trampoline area, practicing twists and spins as he leaped up into the air; one of the girls who had complimented my tricks did run after run on the practice track, going through the same routine over and over until she was able to land all of her combinations without staggering.
I did one more run on the pra
ctice track, better able to maintain the right speed now that I knew what the action on the material was like. I pulled off the half-cab properly on the first jump, and threw in a few front side and backside grabs that I had been too chicken to try for in my first run. By the time everyone decided practice was over, my legs were like jelly underneath me and I was dripping with sweat. “Like I said before,” Jaxon said, panting slightly from his workout, “you’ll get an email about the next session—we hit it here at least once a week while it’s still off-season and then three times a week when it gets closer to competition season. Otherwise you should work out as best as you can in the gym to improve your strength and maneuverability. We really want to win some big events this year, guys.” He dismissed us and I started stripping off my gear, ready to get back to the dorms and catch a shower before dinner. There was something going on at the frat house, I was sure—at least there might be a game on. I could bring my homework with me and hang out with some of the guys.
“Hey, Mia—wait up,” Jaxon’s voice came from behind and I turned to see him walking towards me, still flushed and slightly sweaty but with his gear off. His shirt was plastered to his chest, giving me the chance to make out the outlines of his muscles. I tore my gaze back up to his face to pay attention.
“What’s up, Jax?” I asked with a smile. I was terrified that he would say that I was off the team—that they had too many girls, or that the team itself had decided I just wasn’t quite good enough.
“Got a ride back to campus?” he asked. I shrugged, looking over at the brother who had driven me to the practice in the first place.
“If you’re offering?”
Jaxon laughed “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t offering.”
“I’ll catch a ride back with Jaxon,” I called out to Ben. He shrugged and headed for the exit.
