Snow Ride (9 page)

“How about collecting? We’re supposed to go out with Betsy today. Are you up for it?”

Dinah shook her head. “Cover for me, will you?”

“Okay,” Stevie said. She slipped into her clothes and went downstairs, leaving Dinah alone to sleep and heal. Not knowing what her friend was crying about bothered Stevie, but she knew there were times when you shouldn’t push. This was one of them.

Mrs. Slattery laid out a big breakfast of pancakes and the last of last year’s maple syrup for Stevie. Stevie explained that Dinah still wasn’t feeling well and wanted to sleep in. A look of concern crossed Mrs. Slattery’s face.

“It was a late night last night,” Stevie reminded her. “And Dinah really played hard at the Frisbee game. She outplayed everybody there. No wonder she’s tired!” Stevie put as much conviction into it as she dared.

“Funny,” Mrs. Slattery said. “She’s always sort of hated Frisbee games.”

“She’s changed, believe me,” Stevie said.

“Hmmmm,” Mrs. Slattery remarked.

Stevie decided to change the subject.

“Can I have more pancakes, and can you give me Betsy Hale’s phone number?” Stevie asked. “And, I wonder, how is it that the maple syrup flows only at this time of year?”

The pancakes appeared on her plate. Betsy’s phone number appeared on a piece of paper next to it. But best of all, Mrs. Slattery began telling Stevie all about maple sap.

“The tree is beginning its growth season, and it needs sap to carry nutrients to the areas of the tree that will grow the most when the warm weather comes. There will be leaves, too.…”

One thing Stevie had learned was that everybody in Vermont loved to tell anybody who didn’t happen to
come from Vermont all about the sugaring season. Mrs. Slattery was soon much too busy discussing nutrients even to think about her daughter’s mysterious ailment. That was just what Stevie had counted on.

Once Stevie had filled herself with all the pancakes she could eat, and listened to all the maple lore she could stand, she excused herself and called Betsy.

Betsy was disappointed to learn that Dinah wasn’t feeling well. Stevie wanted to tell her what was really wrong, but she had promised Dinah nobody would ever know. Even though she didn’t like keeping a secret from Betsy, it was better than breaking a promise to Dinah.

“I noticed she wasn’t looking like she felt great last night,” Betsy said. “It didn’t have anything to do with the makeover, did it?”

“I don’t think so,” Stevie assured her. “In fact, it seemed to make her feel better. She thought she was well enough to go out, but it turned out she really wasn’t. Anyway, it’s you and me again today for sap collecting. Are we a team, or what?”

“What?” Betsy joked. “No, really, we’re a team. And not just at sap collection.”

“How’s that?” Stevie asked. She detected a note of excitement in Betsy’s voice. Something was up.

“Well, after we collect, my father said he’d drive us over to the ski area two towns away. Want to come?”

“Wow!” Stevie said. “It would be great! I can see me
now,
schussss
ing down a mountainside, just like one of those Olympic skiers. I can’t wait!”

Something in Stevie’s eagerness gave her away.

“You’ve never skied before, have you?” Betsy asked.

“No, but it sure looks like something I could pick up quickly.”

Betsy laughed. “Either that, or else I’ll end up picking you up quickly! Anyway, it is fun, and it’ll be fun to teach you. Jodi’s working today. You can use her skis. What size shoe do you wear?”

It took another ten minutes on the phone to settle on whose equipment Stevie could borrow, and it took another few minutes after that to convince Mrs. Slattery that Stevie should go skiing. The Slatterys, it turned out, weren’t just nervous about girls on horseback. They were nervous about girls on skis, too. Finally it was arranged. Stevie and Betsy would spend the morning in the woods and the afternoon on the slopes. As far as Stevie was concerned, that would make it just about a perfect day. The only sour note was that it would have been so much fun to share it all with Dinah, too.

S
TEVIE HAD ALWAYS
thought of herself as a person who wasn’t afraid of very much. She wasn’t afraid of learning to ski. She wasn’t afraid of going up on the lift. She wasn’t afraid of getting off the fast-moving seat at the top of the hill. She wasn’t afraid—until she turned around at the top of the mountain and looked down.

“That’s where we came from?” she asked, pointing to what seemed to be a very distant ski lodge at the bottom of the hill.

“Yup,” Betsy said, looking amused. “And that’s where we’re going, as well.”

“How?” Stevie asked, gazing at the narrow strips of wood that were to serve as her transportation.

“Schusssss!”
Betsy declared. “Now, here’s how you put these things on.”

While Stevie watched, in case she would ever live to do this again, Betsy slid the skis under her feet, lined them up with the oversized boots Stevie was already wearing, snapped a few things, and declared the job done.

“They won’t come off?” Stevie asked.

“Not unless you want them to, or if you need them to,” Betsy said. “See, they are designed to snap off if you start tugging on them at awkward angles. That’s a signal to the ski that you’re in trouble. If you’ve fallen and are tumbling, the last thing you want is to have skis attached to your boots, so they simply snap loose and you’re free.”

“To fall?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Betsy said. “But I guess that’s what it amounts to. Now, are you ready? This
is
the beginner slope. It may be a little tricky for you, but I’m sure you can do it.”

Stevie took a pole in each hand and tried to lift her foot.

“Slide, don’t li—” Betsy began, but it was too late. The tip of Stevie’s ski had caught in a little clod of snow. As Stevie lost her balance, the other ski slid forward and she slid backward, onto her seat.

“Congratulations,” Betsy said. “That’s your first fall. Now you’re a bona fide snow bunny.”

She offered Stevie a hand and helped her back up. Before Stevie tried to move again, Betsy gave her a few pointers. She showed her how to walk, without lifting her toes.

Stevie tried again. This time she stayed upright. The skis made little pathways for themselves in the spring snow. When Stevie stopped walking, she even found that the skis continued sliding.

“I’m skiing!” Stevie declared. Betsy beamed because it was true.

They spent most of the next half hour stepping and sliding around at the top of the hill. Then Betsy said it was time to try some downhill skiing.

“Like the Olympians?” Stevie asked eagerly.

“No, like a beginning skier,” Betsy replied sensibly. She then turned, as she had shown Stevie how to do it, and faced slightly downhill. “We’ll make a zigzag pattern,” she said. “That way you’re never completely going downhill except, of course, when we turn from a zig to a zag.”

Stevie thought she had the idea. Betsy led the way; Stevie followed. It took a lot of concentration, but Stevie found she could actually control her direction and her speed, just a little bit. Of course, there was the time she lost control and whizzed past Betsy, straight into another beginner. The two of them fell down together and
laughed together. Then they tried to help one another up. It took Betsy’s help to succeed.

Soon Stevie realized that falling down wasn’t so bad. It usually meant sitting down more than anything else, and it also usually meant falling on the soft snow—except when Stevie toppled onto another skier, or one toppled onto her.

“Hey, I’m really getting the hang of this,” she said, having worked her way back to a standing position all by herself. “I think that was my seventeenth fall. Does that mean I’m still just a snow bunny, or have I become something bigger, like maybe a snow elephant?”

Betsy didn’t have time to answer the question before Stevie fell again. This time she announced “Eighteen!” on her way down.

As the afternoon wore on, Stevie fell less often and remained standing more often. She found that not only could she control the skis and her direction and her speed some of the time, she could even do it most of the time.

It took them more than an hour to get to the bottom of the hill the first time. The second time it was a mere twenty minutes.

“This is really great!” Stevie declared.

“I knew you’d love it, and I knew it wouldn’t take you long to get the hang of it,” Betsy said. “Anybody who is
as fast a learner as you with horses is sure to be good on skis as well.”

“Are they connected?” Stevie asked while she executed a near-perfect turn—meaning she didn’t fall down or hit anybody
and
she ended up in the direction she wanted.

“No, it’s just that you’re smart and coordinated. Those things are important.”

Stevie felt very proud of her accomplishment. Within the next hour she even found herself giving pointers to beginners she found floundering in the snow at her feet.

“Get up and try again,” she urged one person. “It’s really worth it once you get the hang of it.”

“Come on, let me show you this little side path,” Betsy said. “You’re good enough now, and it is part of the beginners’ trail.”

Stevie followed obediently. At first she didn’t see the trail at all. All she saw was a row of fir trees with their snow-covered branches hanging all the way to the ground. Betsy went straight up to one of the branches, lifted it up, and went under. Stevie did the same.

As soon as she went under the branch, it was as if she had entered a magical kingdom. Suddenly there was total silence. The blanket of snow on the branches made walls and a ceiling for a hideaway, muffling all the outside sounds. She and Betsy were standing in a naturally made cathedral.

Stevie was stunned. She was afraid to move. If she moved, it might shatter the dream and it would all disappear. Then she and Betsy would be back out on the noisy slope, surrounded by tumbling snow bunnies. “If I blink, will it go away?” she asked.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Betsy answered. “Dinah and I discovered this last year when one of her skis broke off and slid under that tree. This beginners’ slope is filled with people who have never been here before and probably will graduate to intermediate tomorrow. They never find it and they never come back. It’s ours.” Betsy began moving again, slowly. “Come on,” she said. “We can sit on that rock over there.…”

Stevie followed, very carefully. All of her senses were alert. She felt the cool air on her face, and the smooth motion of her skis beneath her. The muffled silence surrounded her. The scent of fresh evergreen filled her.

Betsy looked over her shoulder at Stevie and laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it will be here forever, at least until the snow melts. Then it just changes colors. Dinah and I walked up here last summer. It was different, but it was the same.” She leaned over and unsnapped her skis. Then she helped Stevie do the same. They propped their skis and their poles against a tree trunk. Betsy led Stevie up onto a rock. She dusted snow off the crest of it and sat down, inviting Stevie to do the same.

“Dinah and I called this the palace throne,” she said.
Stevie could see why. It was higher than anything else in the magical clearing and overlooked the whole kingdom. From there Stevie could even see a little stream, bubbling beneath layers of snow and ice.

“This is almost my favorite part of skiing,” Betsy said. “Jodi likes to do downhill racing. My parents are cross-country buffs. Me? I like both kinds of skiing, but mostly I like the beauty of a place like this.”

“So everybody in your family skis?” Stevie asked.

“Definitely,” Betsy said. “Just about everybody in Vermont skis. It’s a sort of unofficial state pastime.”

“And horseback riding? Are you all riders as well?”

“I guess so. Jodi and I have been riding for a long time.”

“She’s really good, isn’t she?” Stevie asked.

“Sort of,” Betsy said. “Personally, I think she’s more in love with the glamour of riding than she is with horses. She even wears her breeches to school sometimes. And you should have heard her boasting when she got the job at Sugarbush. She knows her stuff, but it’s like she almost doesn’t care.”

Stevie thought about the Jodi that Dinah admired so much. It seemed hard to think that Dinah’s Jodi was the same person Betsy was describing. How could somebody who didn’t care about horses be so worried about Dinah and about keeping her job?

“Aren’t you being a little hard on your sister?” Stevie asked.

Betsy shrugged.

Stevie picked up a handful of snow and automatically began shaping it into a snowball. She didn’t intend to throw it, however. That wouldn’t have felt right in this magical place. She merely tossed it from hand to hand. “What about your parents?” she asked. “Do they ride?”

“They’re trying to become riders,” Betsy answered. “One night at dinner last fall Dad announced that because Jodi and I were spending so much time at Sugarbush, he and Mom had figured that the only way they’d get to see us was if they started spending time there as well. They signed up for a bunch of classes and they ride regularly. Dad says he’s going to take a jump class this summer. Isn’t that neat?”