Snowboard Maverick

by Matt Christopher

  “Or something,” Dennis repeated, nodding miserably. “I have to go. My parents are waiting.”

  “But what is it? Tell me!”

  “Oh, nothing. I just made the stupidest move of my life is all. Rick Hogan dared me to race him down Ford’s Mountain.”

  “And you accepted? Are you nuts?” Robbie’s brows knitted in concern.

  “Nuts is a good word,” Dennis agreed. “Don’t say anything to anyone about it, okay?”

  “Not even Tasha?”

  “Yes, you can tell her, but nobody else. I don’t want a crowd around to watch me when I break my neck.” Dennis sighed at the thought of it.

  “Tasha! Guess what?” Robbie called out, cupping his hands to his mouth. Tasha came over to them, and Robbie told her what Dennis had done.

  “Oh, no!” she said, shaking her head. “Why did you do such a bonehead thing? Dennis, you’re just a beginner!”

  “A newbie? Yeah, I know, I know,” Dennis said. “And I can’t get out of it, either.”

  “Why not?” Tasha asked. “You could just tell him you changed your mind.”

  “Yeah, right,” Robbie snorted. “He can’t do that, Tasha. Everyone would be laughing at him for being a chicken!”

  “Well, you could say you were sick or something,” Tasha suggested.

  “It would be true,” Dennis moaned. “I’ve never felt worse in my life — except for when I broke my bones last time I went up on Ford’s Mountain.”

  “Gee,” Robbie said, thinking hard. “I guess we’ll just have to get you ready for the big race.”

  “In one week?” Dennis asked incredulously. “No way I’ll be ready for Ford’s Mountain in one week.”

  “You looked pretty good out there today,” Tasha said. “You nearly beat me.”

  “You went easy on me, and you know it,” Dennis said.

  Tasha denied it, but he didn’t believe her. She was too good a snowboarder, and too good a friend.

  “Besides, it’s not just about skill,” Dennis added. “I had a bad fall last time I tried Ford’s Mountain. That kind of thing sticks with you.”

  “I guess so!” Robbie said. “You even got your picture in the paper, remember? ‘Second-grader in traction.’ They had it up in school for a month and a half!”

  The car horn sounded behind them. “My folks are waiting for me,” Dennis said, turning to go.

  “We’ve got to work on you this week,” Tasha said determinedly. “Starting tomorrow — at the Breakers. Ten o’clock sharp. Then every day after school for as long as the light is good.”

  “Okay okay,” Dennis said. He trudged off, still dreading the week to come. He was sure this whole thing was going to end in disaster. He could feel it in his bones.

  He knew he couldn’t possibly tell his parents about his plans. If they found out what he was doing, they’d flip, and probably confiscate his board or something. But he wasn’t accustomed to holding out on them.

  Dennis was racked with guilt. He knew what he was doing was wrong. And yet he couldn’t go back on things now without seeming like a coward. Seeming? No, being one. Dennis would have looked at himself that way, too, if he had backed down from the challenge.

  The smart move would have been never to have challenged Rick to begin with. But it was too late.

  Now he was piling stupidity on stupidity, keeping his big plans secret from his mom and dad. But Dennis couldn’t see what other choice he had. He’d made his bed of nails, and now he had to lie down on it.

  “Don’t worry,” Robbie told him the next day while they were practicing back at the Breakers. “Ford’s Mountain is just another ski slope.”

  “Just play it safe, and don’t take any foolish chances,” Tasha added. “If you lose, you lose. So what? I mean, Rick’s been snowboarding since last winter. Nobody’s expecting you to beat him.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dennis said. “You mean everybody knows about this already?”

  “You didn’t expect Rick to keep quiet about it, did you?” Tasha asked him.

  Dennis moaned. Great, he thought. He was going to be humiliated by Rick Hogan one way or another. Unless …

  Unless he won. Seized with sudden determination, Dennis launched himself down the hill, carving his edges deep into the new powder with every turn, tackling the slope as he’d never done before. At the bottom, he turned around to face his friends and let out a whoop of triumph.

  “Take that, Hogan!” he muttered.

  He was definitely getting better, day by day, run by run. His skateboarding skills helped, making the learning easier and faster. He tried to keep the thought of Ford’s Mountain out of his mind, and for the most part, he succeeded. That is, until his mother walked into the kitchen Tuesday evening…

  Dennis was on the phone with Robbie, talking about Saturday’s event, when he realized, to his horror, that his mother was standing there, looking at him. How long had she been there? What had she heard?

  "I’ll talk to you later,” he told Robbie, and quickly hung up the phone.

  “What’s this ‘big event’ you’ve got planned for Saturday?” she asked.

  “Um, it’s nothing, really — just — um — we’re getting together to go snowboarding.” Dennis’s voice cracked. It did that sometimes lately. Dennis’s voice was changing, and he hated the sound of it. He hoped he wouldn’t sound like this for too long. It was embarrassing when he squeaked in the middle of a sentence, and it usually happened when he was nervous anyway. Like now.

  “You go snowboarding every day,” his mother pointed out. “So what’s really going on, Dennis? It’s not like you to be secretive like this.”

  “We’re, uh …”

  “I hope you’re not doing something Dad and I wouldn’t approve of,” she said.

  “No, Mom,” Dennis lied, feeling awful. “I just can’t talk about it yet— that’s all. I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “All right. I trust your judgment,” his mother said after a long moment. That meant she was choosing to trust his judgment, not that she really believed what he was telling her. It made Dennis feel even worse.

  His mother left the room, and he sat there, his stomach tying itself in knots. He tried to tell himself that what he was doing wasn’t so bad, that his parents wouldn’t really disapprove if they knew. After all, they wouldn’t want him to walk away from a challenge, would they? They wouldn’t want him to let a bully push him around.

  Besides, he told himself, Ford’s Mountain was just a regular old ski slope, It wasn’t the Matterhorn or anything. He would snowboard carefully and safely, and that would prove to his mom and dad that he was a good, responsible boarder and that they didn’t need to worry about him.

  12

  After a few minutes of this, Dennis had succeeded in making himself feel at least a little better. Then the phone rang.

  It was Rick Hogan. “How’re ya feeling, O’Malley?” he asked. “Got rubber legs? Are your hands shaking yet? Ha, ha, ha!”

  Dennis could hear Pat laughing in the background. He wished he could punch them both, right over the phone, even though he had never really punched anyone in his life and probably never would.

  “I haven’t seen you around Schoolhouse Hill lately,” Rick went on. “Are you gonna chicken out? Or are we still on for Saturday?”

  It was a golden opportunity, Dennis knew. Here was the moment to back out of this whole stupid thing. All he had to do was say the word… and listen to Rick and Pat laugh at him the rest of the winter.

  “Yeah, we’re still on. Of course. I’m going to beat you, too.”

  “Right. Okay, I’ll see you there, at eleven o’clock Saturday. Intermediate slope.”

  “Intermediate?” Dennis tried to hide the panic in his voice, but it leapt out of his throat, making his voice squeak horribly.

  “Yeah, intermediate,” Rick repeated, mimicking the squeak and howling with laughter.

  “No way,” Dennis held firm. “That’s not what we agreed on.”
/>
  “Awww, baby wants to go down the bunny slope,” Rick mocked.

  “I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks,” Dennis correctly pointed out. “You’ve been snow-boarding a lot longer than that.”

  “So you admit I’m better than you,” Rick said in a self-satisfied tone.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You can’t beat me. You just admitted it.”

  “I did not!” Dennis felt the blood rush to his cheeks. “Okay, intermediate slope it is. Just lay off me, Hogan.”

  “All right!” Rick crowed in triumph. “You’re goin’ down, O’Malley!” He hung up, and Dennis let out a mournful sigh.

  The intermediate slope? “I am such an idiot!” he muttered under his breath.

  The next day after school something seemed to come over Dennis. His boarding skills deserted him along with his courage. Every run down the Breakers seemed to result either in a fall or in Dennis sideslipping himself to a stop every few yards to avoid a fall.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he told a concerned Robbie and Tasha. “I keep freezing up. It’s like a twitch or something. I can’t get through a run.”

  He sat in the snow, exhausted and miserable. Somehow, he had to find a way out of this nightmare. He had to find an excuse for not showing up on Saturday.

  “Come on, Dennis!” Robbie urged him. “Get up and try again. It’s the only way to get over it!”

  “He’s right,” Tasha agreed.

  “I’m exhausted,” Dennis told them, not moving. “Snowboarding really takes it out of you.”

  “It does,” Tasha said, nodding, “but you never let that stop you till now.”

  “I’m just not having any fun at it,” Dennis confessed. “I really didn’t want to come out here today and practice.”

  “You’ll get over that as soon as you beat Rick Hogan,” Robbie assured him.

  “And if I don’t beat him? If I wipe out and hurt myself or if he makes a fool of me? I’ll be lucky to make it halfway down the intermediate slope!”

  “What?” Tasha gasped. “You’re not racing on the beginners’ slope?” Her jaw hung open. Robbie, too, was speechless.

  “He cornered me into it,” Dennis explained lamely.

  “Dennis, I don’t think you understand what you got yourself into,” Tasha said. “The intermediate slope is steep and narrow, and it’s got moguls all over the place, and trees, and lots of people in the way. You could hurt yourself unless you’re really ready for it!”

  “Tell me about it,” Dennis agreed.

  “What are you going to tell your parents?” Tasha asked. She knew how concerned Dennis’s mom and dad were about his safety — and that his history with Ford’s Mountain would only add to their concern.

  “I’ll tell them the truth,” Dennis said. “Afterward.”

  “But that’s lying!” she blurted out.

  Dennis just looked at her. Robbie broke the silence.

  “Listen, Tasha, he’s got to do it. If anyone can show up that loudmouth bully Rick, it’s Dennis. Right, Dennis?”

  Dennis was quiet for a moment. “I — I don’t know, Robbie. Maybe Tasha’s right. I’m probably not ready for the intermediate slope, and even if I was, racing and not telling my parents would be wrong. I think maybe I just better tell Rick the race is off.”

  “You can’t do that!” Robbie insisted. “You could win this race! If you cop out now, Rick will tell everyone that you’re too scared to face him because you’re a lousy snowboarder. You’ll never be able to show your face at the Breakers or Schoolhouse Hill again after that. So you’ll have to quit snowboarding just like you quit skiing.”

  “Robbie,” Tasha cautioned, “that’s not fair and you know it.” She turned to Dennis. “Listen, Dennis, if you don’t want to race, you don’t have to. But if you want my opinion, you could beat that guy if you put your mind to it. It’s only when you hesitate that you freeze up and fall.”

  Dennis sighed. “I know,” he said. “Trouble is, I don’t know if I can stop hesitating.” He undid his straps and stood up. “That’s it for me today, guys. I’m heading home.”

  Robbie called out after him, “But what about the race? Are you going through with it?”

  Dennis didn’t turn around. He just kept walking with Gizmo under one arm.

  At school the next day, Dennis avoided Robbie and Tasha as best he could. He steered clear of Rick Hogan and Pat Kunkel, too. He still hadn’t made up his mind whether or not to call off the race.

  Between classes, he stopped at his locker to drop off one book and collect another. When he pulled the door open, a sheet of paper with a single word written on it fluttered out. Chicken! it said in a simple, scrawled handwriting.

  Dennis glanced around to see if there was anyone suspicious lurking near his locker. But the hall was practically empty. Not that it mattered; he was pretty sure he knew who had put the note there. It had to have been Rick or Pat. They were trying to rattle him. But how had they gotten the combination to his locker?

  Well, I’m not rattled, Dennis said to himself. He balled the piece of paper up and crushed it in his fist before slam-dunking it into a nearby trash can.

  But it didn’t end there. At the end of day, there was another note, this time taped to the inside of his locker. This one was a newspaper photograph from an old issue of the Moorsville Gazette. It showed Dennis in traction, and the caption underneath read, OOPS! Local boy suffers multiple fractures in Ford’s Mountain accident.

  Dennis ripped it down and stared at it, frowning. He felt a slow anger burning in his stomach. The first note he could shrug off as a joke. But this one was more serious. Rick and Pat were trying to intimidate him by reminding him of his last trip down the intermediate slope.

  The trouble was, it was working. Dennis s mind was flooded with memories of his accident. Against his will, fear took a place beside his anger in his stomach. He tried to quell it by wadding up the newspaper clipping and sending it into the same trash can as the first note.

  It seemed to help. On the bus ride home, he had managed to put both the fear and anger aside.

  When he got home, there was an envelope with his name on it waiting for him. Instantly suspicious, Dennis took the letter into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind him. Only then did he open the letter. Inside was a crude cartoon drawing showing Dennis, in pieces, littered all over a ski slope. History will repeat itself! read the caption beneath.

  Furious, Dennis crumpled it up and flushed it down the toilet.

  That’s, it! he thought, staring at himself in the mirror. If Rick and Pat want a fight, they’ve got one! I’m going to race, no matter what. Even though it means lying to Mom and Dad. I can’t let that bully Rick Hogan think his dirty tricks worked! I’ll show him who’s a chicken and who isn’t!

  13

  The next day in school, Dennis told Tasha and Robbie about his decision. They both said they were behind him one hundred percent.

  The following morning, Robbie and Tasha came over while Dennis was still eating breakfast. Robbie seemed excited. He kept hopping up and down in his chair while he waited for Dennis to finish eating, and his eyes darted this way and that impatiently.

  “Are you done yet?” he asked Dennis three times.

  “Let him eat,” Tasha told him.

  “Mphgmph,” Dennis agreed, swallowing a mouthful of oatmeal.

  Dennis could tell that it was hard for Robbie not to say anything about the race in front of Dennis’s parents. As far as they knew, the three friends were just going out to Ford’s Mountain for a day of practice on the bunny slope.

  “Come on, let’s go get out your board!” Robbie said as Dennis got up from the table and led them outside. It was a perfect day for a race. Brisk, but not too windy, with a thin layer of clouds overhead to blunt the glare of the sun. Felix barked excitedly and followed them into the garage.

  Dennis’s snowboard was against the wall. He picked it up, turned it to face him
— and gasped in horror.

  Spray-painted in red, all across the face of his beautiful snowboard, were the words NEWBIE CHICKEN!

  “I’m gonna kill you, Hogan!” Dennis said furiously. Hot tears of fury stung his eyes, and his heart hammered in his chest.

  “I can’t believe it,” Tasha said under her breath. “Are you sure it was Rick?”

  “Of course it was!” Dennis said. “Who else?” He told them about the notes.

  “But I mean, how did he get into your garage?” Tasha persisted. “He lives clear across town. And how’d he get into your locker those times?”

  “I don’t know,” Dennis said, frowning. “But it had to be him. Who else would do a dirty thing like this?”

  “I guess you’re right,” Tasha admitted. “What a jerk. That is so totally mean!”

  “I bet it’ll wash off,” Robbie said.

  “It better,” Dennis said, steaming. He took the board over to the laundry sink on the opposite side of the garage and ran the water till it was warm. Then he took a scrub brush and some soap and tried to get the paint off.

  Luckily it seemed to wash away easily, and when it was all gone, there was no damage at all to Gizmo.

  “I hate that Rick Hogan,” Dennis said. “Pat Kunkel, too. They are such sneaks.”

  “Rick’s just trying to scare you,” Robbie said. “Are you gonna let him?”

  “No way!” Dennis retorted. “Come on, you guys. Let’s get over there right now. Rick Hogan is about to receive major payback.”

  “Dennis, you’re not going to fight with him, are you?” Tasha asked anxiously.

  “No,” Dennis said, staring out into the distance. “I’m just going to beat the snow pants off him.”

  They went to the corner of Main Street and hopped on the bus to the ski area. Rick and Pat were waiting for them in the lodge at Ford’s Mountain.

  “Okay, Hogan,” Dennis said. “What’s the big idea of messing up my board?”

  “Huh?” Rick Hogan’s thick jaw dropped, and he blinked in confusion. “What are you talking about, O’Malley?”