Snowboard Champ Read Free

surgery?”
    “No, you dweeb,” Riley replied, twisting his knuckle into the top of the second boy’s head. “They do it with a staple gun.”
    “Ow! Really?” the second boy asked, as the others erupted into gales of laughter.
    “Nelson, you are such a space cadet,” Riley said, shaking his head pityingly. “Yes, of
course
it’s plastic surgery. The kind
you
oughta have on your
whole face.
” The girls screamed with laughter at this, but Nelson could only manage a halfhearted smile.
    Geez,
thought Matt. He’d hate to have those kids talking about
him
like that. Back in his old neighborhood in Chicago, kids were tough, but they usually didn’t spend much time gossiping. If they did, they’d get jumped for sure. Kids back home didn’t like being disrespected. Besides, in his huge school, kids broke off into groups — groups that sometimes argued and caused each other trouble. So you needed all the friends you could get — and you didn’t trash-talk about them behind their backs because you never knew when you might need them to watch
your
back.
    Uncle Clayton returned with the lift tickets. “Okay, we’re set,” he said. “Ready to hit the slopes?”
    “Let’s go!” Matt replied, happy to get out of the crowded building, away from that obnoxious foursome of kids, and onto the lift.
    As they left the ground, Matt leaned forward over the safety bar and breathed in the cold, clean mountain air. It burned his lungs, but he loved it anyway. It left his whole body feeling clean and ready for the future.
    At the top of the trail, he and Uncle Clayton got off and prepared for their first descent. It had been a year since Matt had last been snowboarding and, not surprisingly, he was a little nervous. Daydreaming about going down the mountain wasn’t the same as actually doing it, and he wasn’t sure the skills he’d learned last year were still sharp. Still, when Clay said, “After you,” he shoved off just the same.
    He took it slow at first, being cautious. Clay didn’t pass him, instead hanging back to see how Matt was doing.
    He did fine, considering. He did get rattled a couple of times when faster boarders whizzed by him, startling him. And at one steep stretch of this intermediate slope, he carved too steep an angle, started going too fast, and was out of control for a few seconds. He had to windmill his arms and contort his upper body to keep from doing a serious face-plant.
    “Not
too
bad, for starters,” Clay commented when they got to the base of the hill. “Let’s try it again, and this time, try to relax more. You can’t concentrate if you’re all tense.”
    Matt nodded and lowered his snow goggles over his eyes as they got back onto the lift. In the four-person chair ahead of them were the same kids he’d heard talking in the lobby of the lodge — that kid Riley and his freckle-faced friend Nelson, along with the blond girl with the braces and the one with red hair who couldn’t stop giggling. Riley sat between the two girls and was obviously the center of their attention.
    He was a good-looking kid, Matt guessed, but not enough to explain the adoring looks he was getting from the two girls. Matt figured Riley had something else going. He must have been the coolest kid around or something. He also noticed that all of them were wearing expensive designer ski outfits. Matt thought they looked pretty sharp, but truth be told he preferred his own worn leather jacket and jeans. Keeping up with the latest fashion trends had never been his thing.
    “Guess what? Spengler broke his arm,” Riley was telling the other kids.
    “Word?” Nelson said, his eyes widening. “What’d he do, get it caught in the trash bin looking for food?”
    More giggles from the girls and a sly smirk from Riley greeted Nelson’s little joke. “I heard his old man broke it when he caught him stealing his stogies,” Riley said.
    “He asked me to sign his cast,” said the redheaded girl.
    “So, did you?”