Snowboard Champ (3 page)

One of them.

Matt waited his turn, watching as the others took their jumps. The girls, Perkins, and Nelson all took safe, ordinary, simple jumps — and every one of them except Abby went sprawling on their landings. Then Riley showed them how it was done. He got so much air under him that it seemed like he was sailing through space. At the top of his arc, he twisted his arms and made himself spin around 360 degrees, landing perfectly with his arms raised in triumph to cheers and applause from his friends.

So
that
was his big appeal. Matt realized suddenly that in a town like Dragon Valley, being the best boarder among your friends made you popular. Or at least it helped.

And he
did
want to be popular here, if only to escape being made fun of. He wished to heaven he hadn’t come up here on the jump slope, but it was too late now. There was no way down but to jump. And so he concentrated extra-hard. He wanted to make a good first impression in case they happened to be watching. Maybe he wanted it too much, because he couldn’t seem to shake the tension that was coursing through him.

People were waiting behind him. He couldn’t stand there any longer. He started his descent, then pulled himself up into the jump. But he was early and way out of balance. He twisted his body, trying to right himself in time for the landing, but it was no use. He fell, tumbled down the slope, and barreled right into the group of kids from Dragon Valley Middle!

Someone was underneath him. A sudden, hard shove from below rolled him over and off to the side. Riley rose from the snow, his face red with fury and dripping with ice. “
Get off me!”
he shouted.

“I
am
off you!” Matt shot back before he could stop himself.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going!” Riley barked. Stepping toward Matt, he shoved him again, just as Matt was getting up. “Geek.”

Matt didn’t answer this time. He just sat there in the snow and watched as the whole group of kids boarded away toward the lift. He could see them commenting to each other, laughing and looking back at him as if he were from Mars.

Great start, he told himself. The way he was going, it would be a long, long year in Dragon Valley.

3

M
att’s first morning at school brought back memories of kindergarten. That was how nervous he felt, washing up, staring at his face in the bathroom mirror. Was that a zit on his nose? No . . . at least he didn’t
think
so. Why did he have to have a cleft in his chin? He hated it, even though his mom always told him it was a good feature.

He got dressed with fashion in mind. Normally he didn’t consider that kind of stuff, but he wanted to make a good first impression. So he put on his baggy cargo pants; oversized logo sweatshirt; unlaced, beat-up sneakers; and worn leather jacket. He moussed his hair and made sure his teeth were clean. He stared at his reflection once more, then sighed, turned out the light, and went downstairs to wait for the bus.

He tried to calm his nerves by reminding himself that today was Thursday. School was starting midweek because of the holidays, so he’d only have to endure two days of school before having the whole weekend to go boarding with his uncle.

Getting on the bus, he scanned the seats but didn’t see any faces he recognized from that first day on Dragon Mountain. But there was a kid with his arm in a cast sitting way in the back of the bus, surrounded by empty seats. Matt threaded his way down the aisle, not really returning the curious glances he was getting from everyone, and went up to the kid with the cast. “These seats taken?” he asked, deadpan.

The boy with the cast grinned. He had long, greasy-looking dark hair, pimples, and an eyebrow ring and a nose ring, and he was missing one of his teeth — the one that would have been his left fang if he’d been Dracula. “Take your pick,” he said, gesturing with his cast toward the empty seats that surrounded him.

Matt looked at the cast. “You’re Spengler, right?” he said.

“Right,” Spengler said, looking surprised. “How’d you know that?”

“I’m psychic,” Matt said, nodding his head like Mr. Cool. “Matt Harper. I’m new in town, staying with my uncle.”

“Cool,” Spengler said, nodding slowly. “Welcome to the armpit of the universe.”

Matt laughed uneasily. “Wh-what do you mean?” he asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

Spengler’s smile was slightly mysterious. “You tell me. You’re psychic, right?”

“Ha-ha. No, I mean, it’s beautiful here, and I’m into snowboarding, so . . . ”

“Yeah, maybe you’ll like it here, then. The boarding is unsurpassed . . . .”

“But . . . ?”

“But what?”

“Then why is it the armpit of the universe?”

“Oh. It’s the people that stink, not the place.”

“All of them?”

Spengler shrugged and made a face. “Most people are sheep, in my humble opinion. Wherever the sheep-dog tells them to go, they go. So if the dog’s a good one, everything’s cool. If the dog’s . . . well, a
dog,
so to speak, then you’re in trouble.”

Matt pictured Riley Hammett in his mind. He wondered if that was the dog Spengler meant, but he didn’t ask him. Not yet.

Spengler was different,
Matt thought. Probably that was why the other kids thought he was weird and made fun of him. Dragon Valley might or might not be the armpit of the universe. But either way, it obviously stank to be Spengler.

Suddenly, in spite of the fact that he kind of
liked
this kid and his weirdness, Matt wished he’d sat next to someone else.

“Wanna sign my cast?” Spengler asked.

“What for?”

“Everybody’s signing it. You might as well join in. Baaa . . . baaa,” he added, making sheep noises. A couple of girls seated ahead of them turned around, then looked away again, giggling.

“No thanks,” Matt said.

“You don’t have to write anything nasty,” Spengler assured him. “Just sign your name. It’ll help me remember it.”

Matt laughed, took out a pen, and signed his name, right next to
SPENGLER YOU DWEEB.

The bus pulled into the school driveway, and everyone started piling out. “Nice to meet you,” Matt said.

“Yeah. Later,” Spengler said, struggling to put his backpack over his shoulders. Matt knew he should have offered to help, but he didn’t want to be seen as the friend of the school outcast right off the bat.

In homeroom, he spotted the first of the group he’d seen at the ski slope — the blond girl named Abby. He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Instead, she looked him up and down, then turned away and tapped another girl on the shoulder. She whispered something in her ear, and the second girl looked at Matt and giggled.

Now it was Matt’s turn to look away. This second girl was really cute, with dark, wavy hair and green eyes the size of quarters. She probably
already
thought he was a geek. A surge of hatred for Abby and her group coursed through him, and he remembered Spengler’s words: “Most people are sheep.”

Other kids were giving him curious looks, too. Matt noticed that most of the boys were dressed more preppy than he was. He was going to have to either get all new clothes or give up trying to fit in. He remembered Uncle Clayton’s short haircut and what he’d said: “You’ve got to go along to get along.” Could Matt get along in this strange new place, so different from what he’d been used to his whole life?

The homeroom teacher, Mr. Evans, an overweight, bald man of about fifty, walked into the room and clapped his hands for attention. “Everybody listen up,” he told the class. “We have a new arrival I want to introduce you to. Matt, would you stand up, please?” Embarrassed, Matt got to his feet. “This is Matt Harper. He’s from the big city — Chicago.” A murmur rippled through the classroom. Matt could feel everyone looking at him differently, as if he were not just new but somehow menacing.

Were they scared of the big city out here in the boonies?
Matt wondered. It was possible most of them had never traveled very far from Dragon Valley — but they couldn’t really believe what they saw on TV about big cities, could they?

He could hear Spengler’s voice in his head: “Baaa . . . baaa . . . ”

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Spengler was in his Spanish class, but since Matt was assigned a seat on the other side of the room from him, they didn’t speak. Still, Matt took a moment to really look Spengler over.

Spengler wasn’t good-looking, and Matt knew that many kids would make fun of him just for that. He dressed differently from the others, too, but he took his look further than just clothes. Spengler went to extremes — the nose ring and the eyebrow ring were a bit much for Matt’s taste, and the kids here, he could tell, were even less down with it.

Come to think of it, Matt didn’t see any kids here with spiky green hair or black gothic makeup or anything like that. It was a small school — there couldn’t have been more than a few hundred kids altogether — and Spengler was the only one who seemed so set apart from the others.

In English, Matt sat next to Nelson. Nelson gave him a high-five welcome and spoke to Matt in what he must have thought sounded like genuine inner-city lingo. “Yo, bro, wuzzup?” he asked Matt, bopping his head and grinning knowingly. “You be my dog?”

“Hey,” Matt said, but gave no other reaction. He could tell Nelson was making fun of him, showing off for the other kids. But to him, Nelson just looked ridiculous, trying to be something he was most definitely not.

Then again, Matt suddenly realized, wasn’t
he
thinking of doing the same thing? Hadn’t he thought about trading in his clothes for a new, freshly creased pair of Dockers, a polo shirt, and a V-neck sweater? He blew out a big breath as he sat down at his desk. This was
hard,
this fitting-in business. He wished again, with all his heart, that his mother had turned down that stupid job with the government.

At lunch, he caught his first sight of Riley Hammett. The cafeteria itself was pretty small compared to the one at Matt’s old school. Riley sat at a table in the center of the room, in the middle of a large group of kids. When Matt walked by on his way to the food line, every head at the table swiveled to follow his progress. A low murmuring began, and he knew they were talking about him again.

But what were they saying? He was dying to know, even if the answer was something horrible. The worst thing was
not
knowing.

The girl from homeroom with the huge green eyes got in the lunch line behind him. “Um, hi,” she said, giving him a tentative smile. “You’re Matt, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m Melissa. Melissa McCarthney.”

“Matt Harper.” They shook hands awkwardly.

“You and your family just moved to town?”

“Yeah. Well, not my family. Just me, actually.”

“Just you?”

They’d reached the place in line where you ordered. “What’s good here?” he asked her.

“Good?
Nothing.
” She laughed, and so did he. “Well, let’s put it this way — what’s not poisonous?”

“Try the pasta,” she said. “It’s hard to kill pasta, and it probably won’t kill
you.
”

He ordered the pasta, and so did she. Weird, getting a choice of things to eat. In the cafeteria back home, you ate what they gave you — and it was real slop, too. Not like here. This at least
looked
like real food, even if everyone still complained about it.

Everyone, everywhere, complained about cafeteria food, he knew. So he didn’t take the girl’s remark too seriously. She was nice, he thought, to come up and introduce herself. She must have guessed how he felt, being the new kid. He wondered if she was just curious, or if maybe she thought he was cute or something. He hoped so, because he sure thought
she
was.

“So, you’re like, living with
who,
exactly?” she asked him.

“My Uncle Clayton. He’s really cool.”

“Uh-huh.” She looked faintly troubled for him. “But, um, your mom and dad . . . ?”

“They’re divorced,” Matt told her. “My mom’s away in Asia for a year, and I didn’t want to go. She’s on some big government job.”

“What kind?”

“I dunno, she didn’t exactly explain,” Matt said with a shrug.

“Maybe she’s a spy,” Melissa said, giving him an excited look. “You should’ve gone with her. You could’ve been a spy, too.”

Matt laughed, although he didn’t find it funny. It was just that he’d thought the same thing. Wouldn’t that be something — his mom, a real spy?

“What about your dad?”

“Huh?”

“How come you didn’t go live with him?”

“I didn’t want to, that’s all.” His tone of voice must have told her not to ask any more questions about it, because she quickly changed the subject.

“So, what do you think of this place?”

“The area, or the school?” he asked her, fishing in his pocket for lunch money.

“Both, I guess.”

“I don’t know about the school yet,” he said. “But the valley is cool. I like snow.”

“Yeah, I guess you pretty much have to around here. Did you get much snow back in Chicago?”

“Not enough to go snowboarding. Anyway, there aren’t any hills.”

“You snowboard?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cool!” she said. “I used to board, but this year, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time.”

He followed her to a table and sat down across from her. There were no other kids near them. He could feel her eyes on him, checking him out. He didn’t know what to say, so he concentrated on his pasta.

“Maybe we could go boarding sometime,” he heard her say.

He looked up, hoping his face wasn’t all red from blushing. “You mean together?”

She shrugged. “If you want to.”

“Yeah, that’d be all right,” he answered, trying not to sound as pleased as he felt.

“How about Sunday?” she asked.

“Uh, sure! Sunday’d be fine.”

“Great.” She gave him a look that melted him. “Give me your address, and my mom will drive us.”

He wrote it down for her.

“See you then!” she said. “Gotta go now.”

He stared after her, trying to wipe the smile off his face. “See you before then,” he said under his breath. “Way before.”