Shredded, стр. 27
I nail it.
I fucking nail it, right before I land in the middle of the fucking worst grouping of trees I’ve ever seen. Then I’m speeding down the last section of the mountain, weaving between trees and praying that I don’t slam into one at fifty miles an hour.
Somehow, somehow, I manage to avoid them all and come to an abrupt—and somewhat anticlimactic—stop at the bottom of the mountain.
I turn and look as far up the mountain as I can see and decide two hundred feet was a really conservative estimate for that drop in the middle of the run. From here it looks more like two-fifty.
I lean down to unbuckle my board, but my phone’s ringing for the third or fourth time and I figure I should put my friends out of their misery before one of them has a fucking stroke. I rip open the Velcro on my pants pocket and pull the phone out, answering right before it goes to voicemail.
“Hey, Cam.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Omigod. Omigooooooood!” She’s shrieking by the end, then her voice gets muffled for a second as she yells, “He answered! He answered!
“How could you?” She’s talking to me again. “We thought you were dead. We thought you’d fucking killed yourself. We thought—” She starts sobbing.
Shit. Guilt slams into me, killing the endorphins from the ride. I knew they’d be worried, but I never thought—
“Give me the phone,” I hear Ash say in the background. Then he’s on the line. “Z? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“No, I’m fine. Totally safe. I’m at the bottom of the mountain.”
Long pause. “You’re at … you’re at the bottom of the mountain?”
“Pretty much.”
“You rode down the whole fucking mountain? The. Whole. Fucking. Mountain?”
“As much of it as I could. I mean, I’m not all the way at the base, but I’m pretty far down. In my defense, it’s a pretty small mountain.” I hear Luc swear in the background, and Cam finally seems to have the sobs under control. “I’m fine,” I say again. “No problem.”
“You’re an idiot, you know that, right? A total fucking moron.”
“I never claimed differently.”
Another long pause. Then, “So, was it front?”
I relax at the question, knowing I’m out of the woods. “So fucking front, man. You wouldn’t even believe it.”
“Was the camera on?”
“What? No. I never turned it on.”
“I did, right before I gave it to you.”
“Seriously?” I glance down at the camera still strapped to my chest. Sure enough, the little green power light is lit.
I stare at it for a second, trying to decide how I feel about that. Sure, part of me thinks it’d be wicked to have the ride recorded, but another part wants to keep it for myself. In some ways, what happened on the way down feels too intensely private to share with anyone.
Except Luc, Ash, and Cam deserve to see what happened. After what they’ve spent the last few minutes imagining, I figure I owe them that much. Showing them doesn’t mean it has to be posted on the website or YouTube. It could just be for us.
“Yeah, I got the footage.”
“Excellent! I want to see every second of it.”
“I figured.”
“I’ve got a question, though.”
“Yeah?”
“How the hell are you going to get back up here? I don’t think the snowmobile is going to make it down the route you took, and our trail doesn’t lead anywhere close to that far down the mountain.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking about that.”
“And what did you decide?”
Once I switch the phone to the local GPS/hiking app, it only takes a minute to find what I’m looking for. “I’m only about a three-hour hike from Lost Canyon Resort. You can pick me up there when you’re done boarding for the day.”
“Seriously? You’re going to hike through the mountains for three hours after that run?”
I think of all the shit cluttering up my head—April, my mom, the upcoming competitions, Ophelia. I don’t want to think about any of it, don’t want to deal with any of it. And since I can’t drink and I can’t screw, I might as well put in some hard physical labor. If I’m exhausted, then maybe I can actually fall asleep without being drunk off my ass.
“I think so.”
“All right.” He sounds doubtful, but he’s not going to argue. “Just call us when you get to the lodge so we know we don’t have to send the ski patrol out after your ass.”
“One time. One fucking time and you’ve never let me forget it.”
“And I never will.” There’s a long pause, and I’m about to hang up when he says, “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
I try to play it off. “Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah. Right.” He pauses for a moment, and I hear him talking to one of the others in the background. When he comes back on, he says, “Cam says to tell you you’re an asshole.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “I never pretended to be anything but. You’re the ones who keep thinking there’s something else there.”
Chapter 12
Ophelia
“Hey, Ophelia, you heading back to the dorms?” Harvey asks, running to catch up with me as I push my way through the heavy front doors of Lost Canyon Lodge’s main building.
“I am, yeah.”
It’s been a long crazy day and I’m exhausted, even though it’s only about four in the afternoon. I didn’t sleep well last night, haven’t slept well since that whole thing with Z, to be honest, and the hectic pace of the cafe today totally tired me out. The last thing I want to do right now is to walk the three miles of trails back to the dorm, but that’s what I get for refusing to drive.
“Do you mind if I catch a ride? My car’s in the shop. Busted alternator.”
“Ooh, bummer.” I’ve dealt with cars enough to know. “Those things aren’t cheap.”
“Tell me about it.” He looks at me expectantly. “So, do you mind giving me a ride?”
“I wouldn’t mind at all, but I’m walking myself. You can keep me company, if you’d like. We can talk about Anthem, if you’ve finished it.”
“I have, actually. But why aren’t you driving? Is something wrong with your car, too?”
Nope. My baby is in tip-top shape. Or at least she was the last time I turned her on. Which was just about two weeks ago, now that I think about it. The day I got here and got settled into the dorms. For all I know, she could be a holy-shit-what-have-you-done-to-me mess by now. She did spend her whole life in New Orleans before this. Utah’s probably a huge shock for the poor thing.
I don’t say any of this to Harvey, though. I don’t want to have to explain what I barely understand myself. So instead I just tell him, “I felt like walking this morning. Wanted the exercise.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy, but he doesn’t complain as we veer off the main path and onto the winding trail that will take us to the dorms. I’ve taken it twice a day, every day, for the last two weeks, so I’m pretty familiar with it. But still, on days like today, when clouds have moved in, darkening the sky, I can’t help but get freaked out by how ominous it feels. Especially since the path isn’t used very much.
“It’s nice to have company, though,” I tell him with a smile. “Makes the time go faster.”
We spend the next fifteen minutes or so talking about Ayn Rand and Anthem and how messed up it is that a woman who wrote a book like that also participated in the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s.
“It just makes no sense,” I tell him. “If she’s all about how individuality and ego are the only things that matter, how could she have any part in a panel whose sole purpose was to punish people it believed thought differently? I don’t get it.”
“Is that really surprising to you? I thought artists were known for not making sense. Or at least for being completely hypocritical.”
“Not all of them,” I say. “Some of my favorite people in the world are artists of one type or another. They’re really passionate and kind of self-absorbed, but I wouldn’t call them hypocritical.”