It's All Downhill from Here
Read It's All Downhill from Here Online
Authors: P.J. Night
“So, exactly how far away from home is this place?” asked
Maggie Kim as she slouched down in the backseat of her parents' car. It was
Thursday evening and the start of a long weekend. Maggie should have been excited, but
was anything but.
The car sped along through the suburban streets. Maggie glanced out the
window longingly. The first swirling flakes of snow had just begun to fall, illuminated
by the bright house lights. Maggie ran her fingers through her dark, shoulder-length
hair. She squirmed in her seat, her thin frame twisting to find a more comfortable
position for what she was certain was going to be an endless car ride.
“Just a little more than four hours,” Maggie's mother
replied cheerfully from the front passenger seat. Maggie's mom
had long brown hair with strands of gray beginning to work their way in. She always wore
her hair in a ponytail and preferred T-shirts and jeans to suits and high heels, when
she wasn't working.
“Might as well be four days,” Maggie mumbled to her best
friend, Sophie Weiss, who sat in the backseat beside her. Sophie smiled, trying to make
Maggie feel better. Her freckled face beamed out from under a mop of thick, curly red
hair. She was taller than Maggie, despite the fact that they were the same age. In fact,
their birthdays were just a couple of weeks apart.
Maggie and Sophie were seventh-grade classmates in a big middle school in
a suburb of Denver, Colorado. The two were inseparable, and so when Maggie learned last
night that she had to make the trek to the mountains for a long weekend, she invited
Sophie along. After all, a sleepover with her best friend was better than being stuck in
a strange house with only her family all weekend. She wondered how many sleepovers she
and Sophie would have left together, if her parents' crazy plan went through.
“As long as the skiing rocks, I don't care how far
away it is,” said Maggie's older brother, Simon. Simon
was captain of his high school ski team. He lived to ski and felt most at home schussing
down steep slopes.
“That's not a surprise, Simon,” Maggie replied.
“You spend nearly every weekend on the slopes.”
“I can't believe there aren't any ski resorts up on this
mountain already, Mrs. Kim,” Sophie said.
“That's why this would be the perfect investment,
Sophie,” Mr. Kim chimed in from behind the wheel. His partially bald head gleamed
in the oncoming headlights. Mr. Kim wore glasses, which rested on his slightly wrinkled
face, giving him the appearance of someone older than his years. His youthful, sunny
personality, however, more than made up for his appearance.
“A perfect investment in boredom,” Maggie quipped.
“We'll be, like, a million miles from civilization. Not to mention all my
friends.” She reached around Sophie's shoulder and gave her a hug.
“What friends?” Simon teased.
“Shut up,” Maggie shot back. “All you care about is that
this place has mountains and snow. You don't care about people.”
“Sure I do, Mags,” Simon said.
“People have to make the skis, and run the lifts, andâ”
“You'll be able to visit your friends on the weekends,
honey,” Mrs. Kim interrupted, knowing that the current backseat conversation could
only move in one directionâescalation into full-fledged sibling warfare.
“I've managed somebody else's hotel for years,”
Mr. Kim pointed out.
“And done a fantastic job at it too,” Mrs. Kim added.
“Thank you, dear. And your mother has been the maître d'
at some of the finest restaurants in Colorado. We've always dreamed of starting
our own hotel.”
“And you know how much we enjoy skiing,” Mrs. Kim added.
“So when the Wharton Mansion was posted for sale yesterday and for
such a steal, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to realize our dream,” Mr.
Kim said.
“You like skiing too, Maggie,” Mrs. Kim pointed out.
“Yeah, but I don't need it to be my lifeâ”
“What life?” Simon teased her again.
“Simon, leave your sister alone,” Mr. Kim scolded.
“Gladly,” Simon said. He popped his earbuds in. His
dark-brown hair flopped around as he bobbed his head to the
music.
Maggie peered back out the window. By now the multitude of lights had
given way to occasional but bright neon strip malls illuminating the darkness. The
earlier snow flurries had accelerated into a steadier curtain of white, descending in
the night sky, visible in the headlights of the oncoming traffic.
“Your mother and I will be able to run the hotel, lodge, and ski
slopes, all while living in a beautiful mountain setting,” Mr. Kim said. “It
really sounded perfect from the description the realtor gave us when we grabbed the keys
from her office this morning.”
“What a nice woman Nancy McGee is,” Mrs. Kim continued.
“She also told us that the previous owner of the house, who was known to everyone
as Old Man Wharton, died about a year ago. She said that no one has even been inside the
house since then, because several distant cousins of the late owner have been battling
over the will. They finally settled the estate just two days ago, and want to sell the
mansion immediately. So Nancy posted the listing before she had even gotten a chance to
clean it up.”
“We'll be the first ones to see it!”
Mr. Kim said enthusiastically.
“What about neighbors?” Maggie asked. “Are there
any?”
“Sure!” Mr. Kim replied.
“Like five miles away?”
“No!” Mr. Kim cried, as if Maggie had just said the most
ridiculous thing in the world. “More like three miles.”
“Oh, that's a lot better,” Maggie said
sarcastically.
“I'll come and visit,” Sophie said, trying to make her
friend feel better. “After all, BFFs are BFFs.”
“I know,” Maggie said and smiled. Sophie was trying so hard to
cheer her up. “But you'll get to go home. To a real town. With real people.
I'll be living full-time up in the middle of nowhere, with real bears.”
Mrs. Kim turned to face Maggie. “Please just give this a chance.
This is very important to your father and me. At least indulge us and take a look at the
place before you decide it's going to be a living nightmare.”
“Fine,” Maggie said. Feeling satisfied, her mother turned
around. Maggie slid even farther down into her seat.
A living
nightmare. That's the perfect description
for this. The
only thing missing now is zombies.
She stared out the window again. This time she saw long stretches of
darkness broken only by the occasional house glowing invitingly like a warm oasis in the
frozen rural landscape.
Simon looked over at his sister and saw that she had slipped into one of
her rare quiet moods. He figured the time was right to broach what had been on his mind
since the moment he had climbed into the car.
“So Mom, Dad, can I go skiing tomorrow?” he asked. “I
threw my skis onto the roof rack before we left, and I have my helmet and equipment bag,
so I've got what I need.”
“I don't know, honey,” Mrs. Kim replied. “From the
pictures I saw online, the house is pretty dilapidated, and the slopes look like they
haven't been groomed or maintained in quite some time. We might have a lot of work
ahead of us before anyone can go skiing.”
“Luckily, the mansion is so cheap that any amount of fixing up would
still be worth it,” Mr. Kim added.
“There's nothing to worry about, Mom,” Simon said, fully
prepared with his comeback. “I've skied lots of rough slopes
before.”
“Can we just wait until we see the place and then
decide?” Mom asked.
“Sure,” Simon replied, though his mind had been made up the
moment he'd attached his skis to the rack.
The next few minutes passed in silence. The snowfall continued to pick up,
and the
whish-whish, whish-whish
of the windshield wipers
lulled everyone into a deep quiet.
“Maybe there's something on the radio,” Mrs. Kim said
finally when she grew uncomfortable with the silence that had overtaken the car.
As she scrolled through the dial, country music blared from the speakers,
followed by pop, classical, and talk. Unsatisfied with any of the offerings, Mrs. Kim
kept pushing the scan button, hoping to land on something she liked.
Maggie turned to Sophie and leaned in close.
“Dilapidated?” she whispered under the clatter of the radio.
“They didn't mention that detail before.”
“Maybe it won't be that bad,” Sophie said hopefully.
But Maggie was nervous. “And what about school? If my parents need
to move right away to start getting set up for next year, then that would mean leaving
school before the spring play and before softball season and
before
the yearbook committee starts to work on this year's book. Starting a new school
in the middle of the year is the worst!”
“Well, the good news is that they'll probably have all that
stuff at your new school.”
The phrase “your new school” sent shudders down Maggie's
spine. It brought home the depth of what this move would mean. If this crazy plan
actually came to pass, every part of Maggie's life would completely change.
“Great,” Maggie moaned quietly to Sophie. “They'll
probably do a fully staged production of
She'll Be Comin'
'Round the Mountain: The Musical
. And who will I play softball against,
a team of chipmunks? And their yearbook is probably black and white and one page
long.”
“Come on, Mags,” Sophie said. “You know that stuff
isn't true.”
“I know, I know,” Maggie admitted. “It's just that
I'm not going to know anybody, and I'll be the weird kid from
suburbia.”
“You're already the weird kid from suburbia,” Simon
chimed in.
“Seriously, Simon?” Maggie gave her brother a look.
“What, honey?” Mrs. Kim said from the
front seat. This last bit of conversation had penetrated through the blaring of the
radio.
“Nothing, Mom. Nothing.”
Maggie looked out the window again. This time she could barely see past
the heavy snow swirling around outside.
The last leg of the trip passed in complete silence. Maggie felt the car
slow down.
“Are we here?” she asked.
“Almost,” Mr. Kim said. “We're in the closest
town. It's called Piney Hill, population three hundred.”