by Jen Nadol
Sarah held my eyes, her expression unreadable.
“It’s definitely not our wishes,” Tannis said vehemently. “I saw kids in mine.”
“So?” I said.
“Dude. I do not want kids.” She chucked me the ball, and missed by a mile.
I jogged to where it’d landed. “Not now, Tannis—”
“Or later,” she interrupted.
I threw the ball to Trip. “Don’t all girls want kids?” I asked Tannis, only half-teasing. “Isn’t it like a biological imperative?”
“No, dumbass, not all girls want kids. And if it’s a biological whatever, it would be for guys, too, wouldn’t it? Last time I checked, it takes two. Do all guys want kids?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, I have,” Tannis said. “Because I’ve watched how it is for my mom, stuck in the house—every minute she’s not working, that is—washing and cleaning and cooking and then washing and cleaning and cooking again. She’s been doing it for twenty years, and my mom’s awesome, but she’s never done any of the stuff she wanted. Live in a city, fly on an airplane, do a job where she gets to wear a suit. Kids are a straight-up dead-end boring job, and it is definitely not for me.”
I had to agree with that. It was impossible to imagine Tannis as a mom.
“I want to get the hell out of Buford and race on the circuit,” Tannis said, swatting away the ball Trip had thrown, too upset or angry to play along anymore. “You thought that was my secret desire, huh?” Tannis demanded. “To be a slave to a bunch of rug rats? And Nat’s was for her dad to die?” She didn’t even wait for me to answer. “Jeez, Riley. You really think a lot of us, don’t you?”
“Hey, relax,” I soothed. “I’m just guessing, you know? Maybe it was our fears or stuff we worry about—”
“She’s coming,” Sarah said quietly.
The four of us turned simultaneously, looking toward school. I could almost see Natalie stiffen. Then she squared her shoulders and joined us with a smile.
“Well, that was a total waste of time,” she said breezily.
The four of us exchanged a look.
“Nat,” Sarah said gently. “What happened to your eye?” Nat’s smile faltered, and Sarah added, “For real.”
Natalie went totally still, then clenched her jaw. “I tripped.”
No one said anything. It was the longest, most uncomfortable silence I think I’d ever sat through. I wanted it to be the truth. We all did. Maybe it was.
Nat seized her chance to change the subject. “Everyone’s running the Dash on Saturday, right?” she asked brightly. “Lu really wants a good turnout. We need it after last winter.”
“The football team’s running together,” Trip said. They did every year, just like Nat’s ski team.
The Warrior Dash was a two-and-a-half-mile race through rocky paths and mud with no reward other than some trophies and a stocked bar at the end for anyone legal. The resort owners cooked it up years ago to lure people to Buford before ski season and sell winter passes, condos, and rentals. And the tourists love it—it’s Buford’s busiest weekend and the unofficial kickoff of the season for the town and the mountain, which are pretty much interchangeable. We all pitch in, one way or another, all of Buford holding its breath and on its best behavior, hoping this winter will be better than the last, in a series of tougher and tougher years since newer resorts opened a few exits north.
And after, we all celebrate. The ski team’s annual post-Dash party is not to be missed.
“I’m doing it with Jed and Tyler,” Tannis said, raising an eyebrow at Trip. “And we’re going to kick your ass.”
They probably would. Tannis and her brothers, one of them a marine, were built like Vikings. But Trip snorted. “Uh, yeah. Good luck with that, Janssen.”
“What about you guys?” Nat asked me and Sarah.
“I’m not sure—” I started, but Sarah interrupted.
“Riley and I are racing as Team Independent. And we’ll kick all of your butts!”
“Team Independent?” I asked.
“Lame, right?” Sarah admitted. “Best I could come up with on the fly. Got anything better?”
“How about Team Invisible . . . like, we don’t show up?”
But Trip was already on it. “I bet Ri doesn’t even cross the finish line.” He turned to me. “Have you even done it before?”
He knew I hadn’t. “I’m not sure.”
“What are the stakes?” Tannis asked. “Make it worth my while.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
Tannis thought for a minute, then grinned. “How about you come to the track and wax my car?”
“Oh, I’ll wax your car, baby.”
She laughed. “You’re a pig, Trip.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “If I win, you guys wax mine?”
“Fine,” she said. “But what about Nat and Team Indigestion over here?”
“Independent,” Sarah corrected.
“Whatever.”
“You guys can take turns carrying my gear for a month,” Nat suggested.
“A month?” Trip said dubiously. “What time do you start training?”
“Six thirty.”
Trip winced. “How about a week?” he asked, looking to the rest of us for approval.
Nat shrugged. “Fine by me.”
“And what about us?” Sarah asked Trip.
“What do you want?”
“Ri?” She turned to me.
I thought for a minute. “Come to the restaurant and do toilet duty for a week.”
“Will they let us?” Nat asked.
“I’ll sneak you in,” I told her.
“If I thought you had a chance in hell of winning, I’d say no way,” Trip said. “But, sure.” He grinned. “Why not? What about you, Sarah?”
“Shovel our driveway and walk for the first snowfall,” she said immediately. “My dad’s back has been killing him, and I hate doing it.”
“You could just do like us and not bother,” Nat suggested wryly.
Tannis snorted. “So we’re on. . . . Best time wins?”
We all nodded, and with that, we let it go, Nat’s mysterious injuries swept under the rug again.
Until the weekend that changed everything.
CHAPTER 5
I RAN INTO THE LIVING room after my shift, hoping I could make it to the mountain on time. It had been a brutal morning. “Georgie’s got his panties on extra tight because of the Dash,” Moose had told me as soon as I’d walked into the restaurant. He’d been right. Our manager usually saved his cursing for Moose, but today we’d both been fair game. He’d had us scrub every surface, roll extra tubs of silverware, mix vats of coleslaw. I was over an hour late getting out of there and would have just enough time to shower and change before I was supposed to meet Sarah near the starting line. It was probably stupid to get cleaned up, but there was no way I was going to show up smelling like bacon and eggs.
But I stopped short in the living room, seeing my mom on the sofa. It had been almost a week since our night at the hospital, and she’d gone back to work a few days ago, but she wasn’t one to sit still, much less lie down in the middle of the day.
“What?” she asked, looking up from her book.
“How are you feeling?”
She smiled. “Fine, Riley. Really.” She swung her legs over the edge of the sofa, stood, and turned around in a circle. “See?”
She looked solid and steady, the way I’d always pictured her. She’d been a runner in high school, had always hiked the trails behind our house and gone camping with me and my dad when I was little. I’d thought of her as strong like that long after it was true.
“Do I pass?” she asked, returning to the sofa.
“Yea
h,” I said, thinking that if she were just honest with me about stuff, we wouldn’t have to go through this.
“Are you going to the Dash?”
I nodded, starting up the stairs. “You running this year?” I teased.
“Ha-ha.”
Twenty minutes later I hopped onto my bike after telling her, “I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”
“I’m working till five in the morning,” she said. “Try to beat me home, ’kay?”
***
Sarah was watching for me, and waved when I swung off the bike. “Hurry,” she called. “The juniors are almost done.”
I nodded, locked up, and jogged to the base lodge patio, where the Stones were blaring across a crowd of at least a hundred people. As much as we complained about Buford, there was something pretty special about Dash weekend. People were smiling and laughing. Bill Winston, one of the mountain partners, moved through the crowd, glad-handing the seasonal people and chatting up the weekenders. A good winter was important to all of us—no one ever forgot that—and at this time of year there was always the sense it could happen. This could be the year people rediscovered Buford, the season we got record snowfall. It was probably like spring is in most places—the sense of a fresh start, new blood, a chance to re-create our town and ourselves.
I saw it in Sarah’s face, her eyes shining with excitement as we wove through people toward the red banner at the starting line.
Trip and Tannis were already there.
“You’re late,” Tannis told me. “The ski team’s about to take off.”
I craned my neck and saw Nat clustered with her teammates, all of them wearing red-and-white T-shirts emblazoned with the mountain logo.
“Sorry,” I said. “Had to work.”
“We’re going with the two forty-five group,” Sarah said, handing me our number.
I taped it onto my shirt, glancing at the huge clock on the peak of the base lodge. Thirty-five minutes. That should be enough time to get my heart rate down from the five-mile ride over.
“When are you guys running?” I asked Trip and Tannis.
“Trip’s in the third group, just after all the ski teams,” Tannis said. “My brothers and I are with you. We can say good-bye at the starting line,” she added, “since you’ll be looking at our butts the rest of the way.”
“Puh-leeze,” Sarah said, flipping her palm at Tannis.
People ran the Dash individually or in whatever haphazard teams they cared to put together, a semi-organized free-for-all. The starts were every fifteen minutes up until the last runner, which, by the looks of this year’s crowd, might be near dark. Times were posted on the lodge windows as teams came in, with trophies for each age category as well as a Worst Time, Dirtiest Finish, Youngest Runner, Oldest Runner, and a bunch of other nonsense. The course wasn’t long but it was tough, a combination of hiking; running; rope climbing; and sloshing through streams that, depending on how rainy it’d been, could be three feet deep. Pretty much everyone in town ran it at least once at some point or another, and lots of people did it every year. While we’d been rolling silverware that morning, I’d asked Moose if he was going.
“Are you crazy?” he’d said. “I get my recommended daily allowance of tourists right here.”
“You’ll miss the after-party.”
Moose had given me a funny look, like he was going to say something, then thought better of it. “Thanks, but I get my daily allowance of assholes at school,” he’d finally said, adding, “No offense,” as an afterthought.
“Gee, why would I be offended by something like that?”
“I didn’t mean you,” he’d said. “But that guy you’re friends with . . .”
“Trip?”
He’d nodded. “Yeah. That dude’s a jerk.”
I’d shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Anyway,” Moose had said, “I’ve got my own after-party planned.”
I knew better than to ask him about that.
The loudspeaker announced the next group, and a few minutes later we heard the starting gun pop, and Natalie’s team took off. Within a minute they were around the first turn and disappearing into the woods.
“How are we going to beat that?” I asked Sarah.
“Where’s your positive attitude, Riley?”
“I knew I forgot something.”
Sarah smiled. “Remember, their whole team has to cross before their time counts. So having more people isn’t necessarily better.”
“Even if they’re all strong, well-conditioned athletes who know this mountain like the inside of their own house?”
She nodded. “Even if.”
Trip checked his watch. “I’d better get with the team. Good luck,” he said, adding suggestively to Sarah, “I can’t wait to watch you wash my car, baby.”
“That’s too bad,” she answered. “Because it’s going to be a loooong wait.”
“I like confident women.” He winked.
“Oh my God.” Tannis rolled her eyes. “How can you stand him?” she asked Sarah.
“I don’t know.” Sarah considered Trip with a grin. “He has a certain je ne sais quoi, don’t you think?”
“That’s French for ‘ridiculous arrogance,’ right?” I asked.
Even Trip laughed. “Nice smack talk, Ri, but let’s see how you race. Later, losers.” He jogged toward the starting line and a few minutes later took off.
They called us soon after. Tannis lined up with her two huge, muscular brothers. Sarah and I were at the other end of the starting line with a motley assortment of townies and tourists.
“Nervous?” she asked as we waited for the gun.
“Why do you ask?”
“The foot-to-foot dance is sort of a tip-off.”
“Maybe I just have to use the bathroom.”
She frowned. “Do you?”
“No. I’m nervous.”
She reached out, squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t be. It’ll be fun.” Her cheeks were flushed pink with the cold, her eyes still sparkling. She looked beautiful, and I felt scared and excited being there as her partner. I hoped I didn’t screw it up.
Then the gun went off and we were running hard, a pack of twenty or so headed up the long, slow slope of the bunny hill. I could feel the burn in my lungs as we neared the turn where I’d watched Natalie’s team disappear. Already Tannis and her brothers had fallen back, not as light or nimble as me and Sarah. I wondered how they liked the view of our butts. I let Sarah set the pace, and I trailed a few steps behind. Trip had told me she ran regularly, and even though I didn’t, I was pretty sure I could keep up, thanks to having to bike whenever our car broke down or my mom needed it.
Sarah veered onto the first of the hiking paths that wove through the woods. I kept my eyes down like I did whenever we went to the cave, watching for loose stones. Behind us I heard someone call out as they stumbled. I knew from the course map that this trail kept going up about a quarter mile before we got to the first obstacle—a rope wall twenty feet high. Beyond that was the stream and the mud pit and a rock wall that was part of one of the terrain parks when the snow fell. And in between each, lots and lots of running.
I glanced behind, saw no one. We were clearly in the lead, though I had no idea by how much or how our time would stack up against anyone else’s. I didn’t expect to win, but it sure would feel good to beat Trip and his football friends. Not that they were bad guys—not all of them, at least—but I couldn’t help holding a small grudge at the way they’d become his go-to buddies at exactly the wrong time.
It had started the summer before eighth grade. Trip had been playing Pop Warner for a few years by then but had somehow gotten it into his head he was destined for more. He’d gone down to the rec field almost every day that summer, and I’d gone with him. Eventually I’d drift to the bleachers with a book, bored wit
h the repetitive drills he was willing to run endlessly with whoever was there that day. Maybe I’d have joined in if I’d had any idea how not joining would come back to bite me. In August, he tried out for the team. I did too, but when they posted the final roster, his name was on it. Mine wasn’t. I remember standing outside the coach’s office, looking at that list, not surprised but feeling a bitterness in my throat as Trip high-fived the other guys. “Bummer, Ri,” he told me, not bothering to suggest I try again next year. He walked away chattering with all of them without a backward glance. I tried to shrug it off. Told myself it was just one small part of his life. But I already knew it wasn’t. If I’d made the team, I realized belatedly, I’d have been along on their bus trips and practices, I’d have been going to the Hull after. But since I hadn’t, from then on a huge part of our days and weeks had no overlap.
“How you doin’?” Sarah called back breathlessly. We were nearing the top, but she kept a steady pace up the steep hill.
“Good,” I panted. “You?”
“Fine. We’re almost to the ropes.”
Sure enough, a big net stretched across the trail around the next bend.
“Hello, warriors,” the attendant called as we ran toward her. “Up the rope—one at a time, together, however you like. Continue onto the trail to the right.”
I could see a yellow sign with an arrow pointing the way she’d said.
Sarah ran to the net and started to climb without hesitation. I waited a beat for her to scale about two feet of it, then started up myself, feeling the tug and pull of the ropes, our weight causing them to swing at odds and together.
And then another tug, harder, as someone else started up. I looked down to see Jed, Tannis’s marine brother.
“Thought you’d lost us?” He grinned up at me.
I didn’t answer. But I did climb harder. Sarah had already swung her leg over and was descending the other side as I reached the top.
“We’re doing great,” she said through the net, her voice low. We were close, as close as we’d been in the cave, and I could see sweat on her brow, her messy hair, not unlike how it had looked in my vision. “Keep it up,” she said, continuing down. Then she jumped to the dirt, and I clambered down the ropes and followed her onto the next trail.
