“What’s your encouraging and helpful point, coach?” I prompted her.
“The jump’s just mind over matter. It’s not like you’re falling off a cliff. When you go off the jump, you’ve got so much momentum that you fall gently, and the ground keeps sloping gently away from you as you go, so you have a longer ride.” She demonstrated with her pink-gloved hands. One of them was the jump and the gentle slope. The other one was me, going off the jump and then falling to my death.
As if I needed instruction on this. As if I didn’t live here in Snowfall and stare in awe at the jump every day of my life. “Thanks for the tip, professor. Okay, watch this.” I turned around so I could see the jump behind us through the trees, and I put out my hands to spin Chloe around on her board. We watched a little kid go off the jump. “See how he loses his balance and moves his arms in wild circles like he’s rolling down the windows on an old car? That means he’s lost most of his balance and all of his control. I’m not going off anything where I might lose control. Ever. Again.”
Chloe pushed her goggles off her face. Then she put both hands on the sides of my head and lifted my goggles so her blue eyes stared straight into my eyes. “Then you know exactly what you have to do. You have to take back control.”
Midafternoon, I left the mountain. No loss there, since I didn’t need any more practice at not going off the jump. I was scheduled to help my mom with yoga class. I didn’t have the certification yet to teach yoga by myself. But we had a lot of elderly and disabled members at the health club, and my mom liked me to hang in the back of the class in case anyone needed special assistance. One time last year, she had to stop instruction when somebody got totally stuck in the Downward-Facing Dog.
On the hour, I walked into the main classroom and knelt in front of the stereo. I adjusted the music from the heinous Sweatin’-to-the-Oldies aerobics beat for the class before ours to the calming ohm-like chords for yoga, complete with running water and chirping birds in the background. Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized all the regulars for this class and waved to them as they came in: new moms trying to lose the baby weight, a couple of men in rehab after skiing accidents, and old folks maneuvering slowly through the door, some with canes or walkers. Then came a few folks I didn’t know, probably tourists who’d bought a temporary membership for their week or two in town. And then Nick.
Okay, it probably wasn’t him. I was so angry with him that I had him on the brain and I was seeing him everywhere, just like I thought I saw him watching me from his deck during the competition yesterday. Oh, wait, that really had been him.
Anyway, I forgot all about phantom Nick when my mom bustled in. She liked to stay at the front desk, greeting guests, until the very last second, which was another reason she needed me there—to socialize before class and to set up the equipment for her. As I handed her the headset mic that would project her voice around the mirrored studio, she looked me up and down. “Well? Did you go off the jump?”
“Did she ever!” called an elderly lady at the back of the class. “Congratulations, Hayden! We saw your picture in the newspaper.” Several people broke into applause.
My mother raised one eyebrow at me. “I haven’t seen the paper today. Were you in the paper?”
“Uhhhhh.” Without answering, I turned and hurried toward the back of the room, weaving around bodies on yoga mats in the center of the polished wood floor, thinking unkind thoughts about well-meaning old people who wanted to push me into being successful.
My mom got settled on the raised platform at the front of the class. She made her voice soothing as she coaxed everyone into Child’s Pose. They curled into balls with their foreheads down on their mats and their arms out in front of them. I skirted one last mat to curl up on mine. Listening to my mom, I relaxed heavily into the pose. There was a reason I was so into yoga. I was high-strung (news flash!). Yoga helped me focus and keep a handle on what was important, so I didn’t wig out over the small stuff. Only the big stuff.
Speaking of which, I followed my mom’s instructions and slowly rose into Mountain Pose (that’s standing up, if you want to get technical) and opened into Warrior One with one foot ahead. At the same time the man beside me, obviously a novice, got confused and held Warrior One with his other foot ahead. Mom moved us into Warrior Two, so our arms opened toward each other and I was able to glance at him out of curiosity without being obvious.
It really was Nick.
goofy
goofy
(gü f) adj. 1. riding the snowboard with your right foot forward, unlike most people 2. Hayden, trying to act sophisticated
As I’ve said, Nick was no stranger to the health club. I’d whiled away many a shift behind the front desk, watching his love/hate relationship with the abdominal machine unfold on the surveillance cameras.
But he’d never, ever come to my mom’s yoga class. When he’d showed up at the jump a few hours ago, I’d felt befuddled. Not angry, though. Not about that. He had as much right to the mountain as the rest of us, and he’d only happened upon us by accident. Now I was angry.
I supposed he had as much right as I did to use the health club, too, since his family was paying for a membership. I’d even told him this afternoon that I helped my mom with yoga. But after a fight like the one we’d had last night, he did not have a right to follow me to my family’s business, to my job, insulting me.
He grinned at me and shook his dark hair out of his eyes. He was still holding Warrior Two and he didn’t have a pinkie free to flick it. “You offered to show me some stretches,” he murmured.
Not quietly enough. As my mom brought us up and around into Reverse Warrior with our arms pointed toward the ceiling, her calming yoga voice rose a notch.
I should have ignored Nick—though this had never worked for me in the past. Instead, I said in a stage whisper, “You shouldn’t have poked fun at my offer before, if it sounds like a good idea now.”
“Return to Warrior Two,” my mom intoned. “Breeeeeathe. You are strong like a warrior, with strong and stable roots down into the floor.”
“I was being subtle.” He wasn’t facing me now. He directed his words forward, over his fingertips pointing ahead, with his perfect body in the perfect Warrior Two Pose. Except for, you know, the talking.
I did not speak over my perfectly pointed fingertips. Screw Warrior Two. I turned my head toward Nick, and it was all I could do to keep my arms out rather than putting my hands on my hips as I scolded him. “You don’t care about yoga. You’re here because I told you that you couldn’t do it, and you can’t stand to pass up a challenge.”