“You’ve got this, Snickers,” Grams said, using my nickname. “Just line yourself up, keep your eye on that ball, and swing.”
Determined, I’d done what she said. Lined up, kept my eye on the ball, swung . . . and missed again. Behind me, my own team joined in the laughter.
“One more try, Nic, okay?” my coach had said.
Tears in my eyes, I’d looked at Gram. She nodded, but it was the expression of complete confidence on her face that got me to line up one more time. I swung, and no one on the other team laughed as I ran past home plate a minute later.
Gram had believed in me. She’d known I could hit the ball. I’d worked just as hard for this opportunity. I needed to put the mistakes behind me and find that confidence in myself now.
Footsteps crunched through the snow behind me, and I whipped around.
“Hey.” Connor slid onto the table beside me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I went looking for you over at VMA, and Veena said you’d gone for a walk.”
I blinked back the tears the memory of Gram dredged up. “They threw a dance.”
“Yeah, saw that. Why are you out here?”
“I got . . . kicked out.” My teeth chattered.
Connor put his arm around me. I resisted for a millisecond, but it felt too good. I nestled into him. What could I say? He somehow put me at ease, despite my misgivings about him. Being with him felt natural, like I’d known him all my life. Another first.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I twisted a grabby boy into an unwilling pretzel with the head of school as my audience.”
He laughed. “Do I need to have a word with the kid?”
“Thanks, I can handle Jake. It’s the kidnappers I’m worried about.” After running out on him at lunch, I’d told him the bare minimum about what happened. I’m sure he’d pieced together the rest from all the media speculation since then.
He tucked me in closer. Above us, on the mountain, grooming vehicles trundled across the slopes, their headlamps shooting tiny beams of light through the dark.
“Do you think they’ll try something so soon after Copper?” he asked.
“I wish I knew.” I exhaled, my breath curling in the ice-bitten air, then I sat up to look at him. “Why did you come by, Connor?”
He kept watching the lights on the mountain. “I missed seeing you. It’s been a while.”
His expression was hard to read, but his voice was soft and genuine. Our eyes locked. He smelled soapy again, clean and inviting.
Screw it. I didn’t know what Connor might be up to, but I’d wanted to do this for a while now, and I didn’t know if I’d have another chance. I pushed him slowly back onto the table.
Did I say I wouldn’t hook up with Connor?
I lied.
Eighteen
The next morning was a flurry of packing the little stuff, double checking every bag, and stressing. Before I knew it, we were in the car with Bart. Brown had gone ahead to Switzerland a few days ago to make all of our arrangements. Everyone else on the SSA team, including Kovitch and Cooley, were in the rented van behind us, waiting to leave.
Veena was an F-5 tornado of nerves and excitement, and I had to admit, I wasn’t much calmer. I escorted her into the back seat, ready to climb in myself, when Newman ran out, waving some paper. His scarf was a patriotic red, white, and blue today.
“Veena, wait!” he called.
Bart made an impatient British sound, a sort of harrumph. Veena hesitated, but I pushed her in and got in myself. Newman could talk to her through the window. Squinting in the bright sun, he bent down to see her.
“Your final itinerary for Switzerland. You forgot to pick it up.” He thrust the paper past my face.
She folded it and slid it into her backpack. “Thanks, Mr. Newman.”
He smiled. “Don’t neglect your online assignments while you’re there.” Bart gunned the engine, but Newman was oblivious. “And good luck in your events. We’ll be watching and cheering you on.” He turned his smile to me. “Good luck to you, too, Nic.”
Newman stepped away from the car, and Bart pulled out of the parking lot. We were on our way to Switzerland.
Bart had planned every detail of our trip to Denver, down to where to stop for bathroom breaks. The weather cooperated, offering us blue skies and decent temps as we made our way to the airport. He dropped Veena and me at departures. The majority of the SSA team got out with us, and we all headed for security. As Veena drained her water bottle and shoved it in her backpack, a paper crunched.
“Whoops.” She extracted her itinerary, now crushed, and glanced at it. “Wait, Newman gave me the wrong schedule. This is Ali’s.”
“Don’t worry. He can always email you another, can’t he?”
I looked over the paper. Ali wasn’t flying for a few more days. She couldn’t afford to stay as long as Veena, she’d told us. “My daddy isn’t a Silicon Valley god,” she’d teased. She had a lot of the same activities that Veena did, like pre-Games meetings and coaching sessions, although she didn’t have as many media events. United 1774 was penciled in at the bottom. But right there on the schedule it said Ali was taking an American flight.
Wait—I asked Bart for my boarding pass, which he handed me. United 1774 was our flight number. Huh, weird.
“Do you recognize this handwriting?” I asked Veena. Bouncing up and down on her toes—she hadn’t stopped fidgeting all morning, even in the car—she glanced at it and shook her head. It must be Newman’s. He thought he was giving Veena her own itinerary, so he wrote her flight number on it.
After speeding through security, we hung out in
