“How are you feeling today?” Connor asked as we followed them out the door.
“Much better.” I snuck a peek at his boots. Unsurprisingly, he had on different ones today. “I’m sorry again.”
“No worries. Altitude sickness happens.”
“You should get that printed on T-shirts and hand them out to tourists.”
“Think it would help?”
I grimaced, remembering my own stupidity in not eating or hydrating properly. “Probably not.”
His eyes crinkled when he laughed. Cute. Very cute. A few yards away, the lift churned, taking skiers and riders up the hill on what looked like a bunch of porch swings. Connor grabbed a black board from a rack, and we headed toward the line.
“So, you ride?” I’d learned that most students at VMA specialized in either snowboarding or skiing.
“I ski, too. I grew up in Vermont. Some great hills there. Not like the West, but still really good.” He pulled on his helmet, leaving it unbuckled, and tugged a pair of goggles down over his eyes. The afternoon sun jabbed my eyeballs on repeat until I slid on my sunglasses.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Vegas. Born and raised.”
He turned toward me; I couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored shades. “Yeah? I’ve never met anyone who was from there.”
I smiled. “Before you ask: I don’t gamble. I don’t know any hookers. None of my family are dealers—casinos or drugs—and I don’t live near the Strip. I haven’t even been to the Strip in over a year.” The last time I went was with my friend Jamie to shop for prom dresses. “Sorry—people ask really weird questions when they hear I grew up there.”
“I’ll bet.” He laughed. “I’ve never been. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the West, in fact.”
“I thought you came from Park City?”
“Oh, yeah. I was there for a little while with the U.S. Team’s training staff.”
He wasn’t lying; Brown checked him out. So why did he sound guilty?
“I haven’t been East much.” Or at all. But I didn’t want to advertise my lack of travel experience on top of everything else.
“All right, let’s get you on the lift. It won’t be too bad without a board.” Holding his board, he led me to the side of the lift line. Waving at the liftie, he snuck us in after two younger kids in tight ski suits that looked built for speed. “Ready?” Connor asked me. “Just walk in front of the next chair, sit when the seat hits your knees, scoot back, and enjoy the ride.”
I followed him, and when the chair came, sat. It lifted us smoothly into the air. He pulled a bar down in front of us and laid an arm behind me.
“Easy, right?” he said.
Thirty seconds later we floated over the halfpipe. A boy on skis swept back and forth below us, hurling himself into the air above each wall. He did a trick each time involving flipping, twisting, or both. The power, the danger of it, was breathtaking.
“Damn,” I said.
“These kids are incredible.” Connor’s expression was sort of wistful.
The boy finished his run, and a girl started down on a board. She didn’t get as much height as the boy had, but the elegance—and the sense of chucking safety out the window—remained. My pulse picked up every time she flew in the air for a trick. It felt like watching a Hail Mary pass go up in the last few seconds of a football game.
At the top, Connor pushed the safety bar up and over our heads. “Now just hop off and jog forward a few steps to get out of the way of the chair.”
I did it in boots no problem, but with the way the snow sloped down from the drop off point, I could definitely see how it could be a challenge when you were half-strapped to a board like the other riders were. We walked down to the deck of the halfpipe from there.
In the sunlight, the pipe looked like it was made of marble. Veena stood at the top on Sona, listening to Nate. He spoke intently, and she nodded, her helmet and goggles tipping up and down each time like a bobblehead toy. I glanced around. People stood on the decks, watching. Cooley, dressed in a ski suit and wearing skis on his feet, stood near the exit of the pipe, another spectator to anyone else.
Nate finished his pep talk, knocked fists with Veena, and she shimmied her way to the entrance of the pipe, where she paused. I’d read that elite athletes imagined themselves running through a perfect routine, part of their psychological prep work.
Then she launched. First, she surfed down the left wall, then up the right, got a little air, turned and came back down. Seconds later she’d crossed the base and was zooming up the left wall again. This time she flew much higher. She hung in the sky, hand reaching behind her to grab her board. Her bright green jacket and orange helmet flashed like feathers on a high-altitude parrot.
Up and down the pipe she went, each trick more complicated than the last. I hadn’t watched many snowboarders, but she clearly outclassed the girl and boy who went before her. Nate watched from the edge, his gloved hands behind his back.
“This last trick should be the double V,” Connor said from beside me. “That’s her signature hit. It’s phenomenal . . . when she lands it.”
Veena flung herself into the air as Connor spoke. To be honest, I couldn’t even pick apart what all she did up there, flying through the sky. A rapid series of flips, twists, and grabs that together were, like Veena would say, super sick.
The front of her board touched the snow coming down. Connor relaxed, and I put my hands together to clap.
But at the last second, Veena’s body wobbled, and she fell, her head bouncing off the ground. I almost ran straight down into the pipe to check on her, but
