Winter Fire (Book I of the Winter Fire Series)

I looked for Bren all weekend, helmet in hand, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I could have bought my own helmet in the meantime -- I had a ton of babysitting money saved up and my own debit card -- but I decided that his worked just fine to keep my brain in, at least temporarily.

  I could now make my way down the bunny hill on my front and back edges, but not without a lot of falling. Things weren’t as easy as they had been that first night, but I had become a bit obsessed, and as a result, bruises covered both my knees as well as my arms and shoulders. I had also twisted my right ankle at some point, and since I had injured it over and over again in my childhood adventures, starting with a bad sprain I got jumping off my neighbor’s second floor porch into a pile of leaves, I knew it wasn’t really going to heal as long as I was learning, so I tried to ignore it. On Monday morning, I woke up with my muscles screaming. I got ready for school in slow motion as I waited to loosen up.

  My mother frowned at me from her post at the counter as I lowered myself into a chair at our little kitchen table and plunged my spoon into my cereal.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you moving like that?” She asked.

  “Because I hurt.” I smiled up at her to let her know it wasn’t serious. “I’ve been learning how to ride.”

  Her eyes widened, and then she grinned back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s just been this past weekend.” I shoved a spoonful of milky flakes into my mouth.

  She curled two pearl-tipped fingers through her coffee mug handle and took a sip, gazing thoughtfully into the cup. "You just started up on your own?”

  “Kind of,” I said, swallowing. “I started to start, but it wasn’t really going that well. Then one of the instructors mercifully offered to help me.”

  “Really?” She raised a brow.

  “Just the first night.” I glanced down into my bowl. “You were right, I needed a lesson.”

  “From whom?”

  “I told you, an instructor.”

  “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  “His name is Bren.”

  “Bren…”

  “Bergan. I think.”

  “Ah.” She took another sip of coffee. “They live here. The Bergans. Don’t they?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “And how old is this Bren?”

  I always cringed when she referred to people like that…this Bren or that Emily…like she was talking about something she wanted to rid us of. I have to address this oil leak, or we have to deal with that mold situation on the side of the house.

  I shrugged again. “I don’t know. My age.” When she didn’t answer, I looked up at her. “Why?”

  “I’m so glad you decided to try it,” she said. “I just think maybe it would be better if you learned from somebody with a little more experience.”

  “It was one night, for a few minutes. And anyway, I haven’t seen anyone here ride better.”

  “To be fair, you’re not exactly an expert on the subject.”

  “To be fair,” I said, examining my spoon, “neither are you.”

  I felt her glare.

  “What?” I said. “Do you want me to get some geezer to give me lessons, and hope I learn before he falls and breaks his hip?” I glanced up. She had her arms folded across her chest.

  “So do we need to pay this boy?”

  “No,” I said, “it was a freebie.”

  “I see. Well, I want you to be careful.” She turned to top off her coffee, then wrapped her hands around the mug and stepped away from the counter. “Let's get you to school.”

  By the time I got to the lunch table, Brianna was already talking at full throttle, mostly to Tyler. She had strayed from her usual seat and hovered at the far end of the bench, chattering up at him as he tore huge bites out of a sub and swallowed some of them without chewing.

  “And your dad already paid, so it’s definitely ours?” She asked.

  He nodded. “Definitely.”

  “So I can tell people?”

  “Yes, you can tell people, as long as you tell people to bring their own alcohol because they’re not drinking mine. And no freaks. I don’t want anyone spasing out and getting us all in trouble.”

  She smacked his arm. “I don’t hang out with any freaks.”

  He gulped down another bite. “You are a freak.”

  “Oh, so you don’t want me there?” She raised her brows and grinned.

  He studied the last bit of his sandwich. “You will be tolerated. I guess.”

  She rolled her eyes, pulled her legs out from under the table, and stood up. Then she gave him a light swat on the back of the head - which he pretended not to feel - and returned to the rest of us.

  ‘What?” Dillon asked.

  “We have the bonfire at Yew Dales on Friday.” She was, as Dillon would have put it, giddy.

  “Nice,” Dillon said.

  Laura threw us an anxious glance. “Last time we went, Tyler was too smashed to drive us home and I had to call my sister. I’m not doing that again.”

  “So you’re not going to come?” Brianna cast a pout at her.

  “No, I’m coming. I’m just going to bring my own car and a twelve pack of Brisk.”

  “Do I have to drink Brisk if I ride with you?” Brianna asked.

  “No. I’ll have room for you and a max of three additional idiots.”

  Satisfied, Brianna turned her attention to me.

  “So…party at your house. Kind of.”

  “So you can, like, rent the bonfire?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Tyler’s parents have a ton of money. They get us the bonfire grounds a few times a year so we’ll have something to do besides watch the trees grow. It’s cool. You have to come. And you don’t even have to worry about driving."

  Great, I thought as I gave her a stiff smile. She took this as my R.S.V.P. and moved on to talking time and the weather forecast and what to wear. I didn’t know if I was up for standing around in the cold for hours watching people drink, but it would make my mother happy – the socializing, not the under-aged public drunkenness – so I resigned myself to going and ate my fries.

  After school, I signed a board out of the rental shop and trudged out to the bunny hill. Over the weekend, I had begun to get used to avoiding other people on the slope, but I wanted to get out before the ski clubs to warm up. Standing on the crest, I saw that the hill was still mostly empty. A girl sat in the very middle about halfway down, her board attached to her outstretched legs as if she were one of those green plastic army men. Closer to the trees, a teenaged boy was teaching himself to ride switch – with his usual back foot forward – and concentrating hard to keep his balance. At the bottom, three small kids and an instructor, all on skis, were gathering at the lift.

  On the way up on the lift after my sixth run, I congratulated myself on having only fallen twice. Once on my badly bruised knees, a stumble so painful that I knelt in the snow with a wince frozen on my face for what felt like at least a full minute before I could push myself up again, and once on my back, which was nearly painless due to Bren’s helmet intervening on behalf of my head. My arm ached, but I couldn’t remember which fall had caused it, so I shook it off as my chair cleared the top of the hill.

  I had just registered that nervous feeling that came with remembering my odds of making it off the lift without falling when I spotted Bren standing off to the left, clutching his board with a bare hand and waiting for me. I felt a flutter in my stomach.

  I broke eye contact and tried to push my mind onto the task of staying upright. As the chair approached the ramp, I let my board glide on the snow, careful not to catch the nose, leaned on the chair until I was standing, and let it push me forward. Once I was free and moving, I let my back edge dig in just a little so that I would curve toward him, but at the last minute, I looked up at him and my board caught on a
choppy mound of slush. I wavered, my arms windmilling, my pride seeping away, and felt a yank on my jacket as he pulled me toward him.

  “Thanks,” I said as casually as I could. “I hate this lift.”

  He laughed. We were close enough so that I could feel his breath on my face, but I was on my board and couldn’t back away.

  “You’ve been practicing,” he said.

  “A little, over the weekend.”

  “You’ll have to start working on your s-turns now.”

  I knew what he meant. I was taking runs on either my front or back edge, and not switching edges to turn because that entailed crossing over the flat of the board, which made it especially easy to catch an edge and fall hard.

  “I’m not ready for that,” I said. “I can barely make it down without falling.”

  “People stay on one edge for too long because they’re afraid. It’s a bad habit.”

  “Yeah well, it hurts to fall. Do you even remember what that’s like? Or were you born on a board?”

  He laughed again. “Either you want to learn or you don’t.”

  “I do. I am.” His ability to aggravate me in the space of a second was as stunning as he was. I was glad for the balance.

  “Okay,” he said. “And you’re doing a good job. So now it’s time to learn your turns.”

  As I looked at him, I thought of Brianna. Had she really been with him, kissed him, touched him?

  “You know what?” I said. “You’re pushy.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t feel like it.

  “Because I’m trying to help you?” The sun shimmered off the top of his head and lit his face, but he didn’t squint. His eyes were wide and shot through with gold. They searched mine.

  “I didn’t ask you to.” I said. “I’m not trapped in a well or hanging out of a burning building. I’m just learning this stupid –“ I slipped on my board a little and struggled to remain upright “- sport. If that’s what you want to call it.”

  He watched me, grinning, until I steadied myself. I narrowed my eyes at him. “And why are you, anyway?”

  “Why am I what?”

  “Trying to help me.”

  “You look suspicious.”

  I shrugged.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Do not shrug at me. I want to know what you’re implying.”

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling stupid now. “I mean, people don’t usually just help other people for no reason.”

  “They don’t?” He tilted his head.

  “I mean, not people our age.”

  He raised a brow.

  “Not guys,” I finally clarified.

  “I see." He folded his arms and stared at me. It was the same thing my mother had done that morning. “So you think I’m trying to sleep with you.”

  “I didn’t say that.” But that was exactly what I was saying. And now I had an even worse thought. What if he wasn’t? What if it had never crossed his mind?

  “Well, this puts me in a losing situation, doesn’t it?” He said, clearly amused. I was a tottering mess on my board, so I bent and undid my bindings, tripping as I stepped out of them. He held my arm while I righted myself.

  “I’m fine,” I said, yanking away. “What do you mean, ‘losing situation?’ ” Now I was aware that I was still wearing his helmet. I unbuckled it quickly, took it off and handed it back to him.

  “I don’t want it back if it means you’re not going to wear one,” he said.

  “I’ll get my own. What do you mean, ‘losing situation?’ ”

  Well,” he said, accepting the helmet, “if I say you’re right, that I’m only helping you hoping I can talk you into sleeping with me at some point, then I’m an ass. But if I say you’re wrong, that I want nothing to do with sleeping with you, then I’m basically telling you that you’re unattractive to me so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  He was actually waiting for my answer, as if I was going to admit I’d be upset if he didn’t find me attractive.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” I asked testily.

  “Which situation would you prefer?”

  “It really doesn’t matter what I’d prefer. What matters is what’s true. So why are you helping me?” I cringed inwardly at the hard sound of my voice. My mind often cowered when my mouth went on a rampage.

  “I want you to learn your turns.”

  His patience caused a swell of frustration inside me. With no warning to either one of us, I blurted, “You’re seeing Brianna, right?”

  And here was that deep laugh again…that hollow ha ha ha.

  “What makes you think that?” He asked. Not an answer.

  “We’re friends, kind of.” I said.

  He stared at me for a long time, his head still cocked to the side, a slight smile on his lips. Then he said, “come on.” He lowered his sunglasses to his eyes and reached out for me. I looked down at his hand just as the sun glinted off of a silver ring on his right middle finger. It was thick and had a distressed, chiseled look. There was a clean gap about a centimeter wide just below his knuckle, as if a tiny slice had been taken out of it.

  “Where are we going?” I hesitated, then took his hand, telling myself I was exaggerating the feverish, raw charge of his skin on mine. He began to walk, leading me past the lodge and toward the buildings beyond. As we squeezed between a row of evergreens and the deck, a branch brushed through his hair and released the scent of pine.

  He glanced back at me. “You need better friends.”

  Chapter 7