"Oh, it wasn't that. It was how high you were. I was afraid I'd look down the hill and see pieces. Guess you had good boarding up there in Canada."

I shrugged again.

A pickup came down the hill and turned around on the flat. The road had been plowed and graveled, but it was still somewhat slick. The truck had chains.

The driver looked younger than me and I recognized him from school, too. He collected money and made change, working down the line. The truck filled up and the driver stopped the loading right before me.

Brett, already in the truck bed, shoved over, raising a faint protest from the guy next to him. "There's room for one more," he said.

The driver looked in the bed and then back at me, lifting his eyebrows.

"I'll wait," I said, tilting my head toward Tara and Jade. "We're together."

Brett opened his mouth to say something, but then his friend shoved him back into the corner of the truck bed.

I turned back to Tara and Jade, not looking at the truck.

As soon as the truck pulled away, Tara started laughing and not that quietly.

I felt my ears get hot.

Jade blinked. "Oh. My. God. Was he hitting on you?"

Tara laughed again. "Definitely."

"He was just being friendly," I said.

Jade shook her head. "Really friendly. He didn't have to move over. You could've ridden in his lap."

I stooped and slowly made a snowball, looking pointedly at Jade as my hands patted it firm.

Jade took a step back. "Oh ... kay. He was just being friendly."

Tara laughed some more until the snowball hit her in the forehead.

A brief period of snowy violence ensued.

The line started building up again. A different truck came down the hill and we paid our fare and climbed in. "How many people do this truck thing?"

Tara shrugged. "Depends on the day. It can be tricky if there's only one guy running. Sometimes they jack up the price."

Jade nodded. "But that can backfire. There was a day that Ronnie Arkle tried to charge two bucks when he was the only one here."

"Yeah," said Tara. "Kids have phones. He may have gotten a fare or two, but then there were moms with SUVs running kids up the hill for free. He'd have made a lot more money if he hadn't gotten greedy."

Brett's snowboarding buddies had gone down the hill already, but he was still waiting at the top.

Tara started giggling and I said, "There's just as much snow up here."

"Er, right. You going to do that jump again?"

"Sure," I said.

"Let me get down first, so I can see, okay?"

"You just want to get out of range, don't you?"

She started giggling and slid away on her tube, this time sitting, face up.

When Jade and I had fastened our bindings, we slid off to the left and paused. Brett stood up and slid off down the hill in front of us.

"He's showing off," said Jade.

He was doing ollies and aerial to fakies, popping off the ground and switching the ends of his board a hundred and eighty degrees, then back. Then he went to wider, high-speed carved turns, building up velocity as he lined up on the ramp. In the air, he did a 720, two full revolutions, upright-what Dad calls helicoptering when it's on skis-but he caught an edge on landing and went head over heels down the last bit of the slope.

I bit my lip, but he got back up again, beating the snow off, and took off one binding and started kicking across the flat.

"Well," Jade said, "It was spectacular."

"Yeah," I said.

"Can you do that move?"

"I can. Sometimes just like he did."

"Well, I'm going to try for some more speed this time, when I take the jump," said Jade.

I nodded vigorously. "Sure. If you clear the lip of the hill, you'll actually have an easier landing than if you land on the flat."

She looked doubtful. "Right. Why don't you go first?"

I headed down the hill, doing wide carving turns to build up speed and line up on the ramp. I did a layout backflip, a nice slow turn, leaning back, head tilted, to spot the landing. I hit the downslope like before, smooth and friendly. Tara whooped as I cut wide across the flat. I reached her at the road just as Brett kicked across the last few yards to where the line formed.

I was intensely aware of Brett, but I turned back to watch Jade, pumping her fist in encouragement. She ollied off the end of the ramp and flew, just reaching the top of the downslope, which really lessened the impact. Though she wobbled there for a moment on landing, she brought it together without falling, and made it most of the way to the road on momentum. Tara and I whooped.

One of Brett's friends said something I couldn't hear and Brett said, "Oh, like you could even reach the edge of the hill last year."

I smiled, but not where they could see me.

When the truck came there was room for all of us. I ended up sitting next to Brett, but I talked to Jade. "You nailed it, girl. Nice distance on that jump."

Jade shrugged, trying to look cool, but her mouth kept breaking into a grin.

"You ever board?" I asked Tara.

Tara shook her head. "Nah. Tubing is more my style."

Jade's smile dropped and she went from exhilarated to worried in nothing flat.

"Tubing's fun," I said.

Tara glanced at Jade and smiled. "Tubing's cheap. We can't all afford to spend weekends in Telluride."

Jade looked away, frowning.

"Telluride is awesome," said one of Brett's friends.

Brett shrugged. "So is Durango, though, and easier to get to." He jerked his chin sideways at the hill. "Even this is nothing to sneeze at. I learned to board on this hill. And no lifts, not even trucks. I walked back up the hill."

I found myself nodding. "There's a hill by our house in Canada, too. That's where I learned. There wasn't a lift but at least the stairs were covered."

He turned to me and smiled. "Do you still own that house? Are you a Canadian citizen?"

"It hasn't sold yet," I said, not exactly lying. "I've got dual citizenship. I was born in Canada but my parents are both U.S. citizens." Really, I had no citizenship, since neither country knew of my birth. Millicent Ross was a manufactured entity. Fake name with fake papers. I was a fake.

I liked his smile, though. I liked how I felt when he smiled at me.

Next jump, Brett did the 720 again, this time nailing it without falling.

I meant to do an upright 360 myself, but gave it just a little too much twist. Fortunately I was able to bring it around and landed fakie with a 540, riding like that all the way to the road.

Jade let her speed increase even more this time, definitely clearing the top of the hill. But her landing wasn't as clean and her board toed in, and she went head over heels. My hand went to my mouth, but when she finally stopped tumbling and slid to a stop, I could hear her laughing.

Tara started to run back across the flat, but Jade was already climbing to her feet so Tara stopped short and waited.

The truck was loading and Brett called. "You coming?"

I smiled at him and said. "No."

He frowned and shrugged and the truck went on up the hill.

Jade asked me about it when they finished walking across the flat. "Why'd you wait?"

"What do you mean?"

"You could have ridden up the hill with Brett."

"Yes, I could have. You all right?"

"Sure. What did I do wrong?"

"You brought your toe down ahead of your tail. Bend and unbend your knees together. Meet the slope even or tail first."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Jade's fall had put a lot of snow down the neck of her jacket. While we waited for the next truck, she took her jacket off and Tara brushed off the snow she couldn't reach.

"So why didn't you ride up with Brett?" Tara asked it this time.

"Who asked me to go sledding?"

She laughed. "It's not like you're my date." She glanced at Jade.

"Of course not," I said. "But he certainly isn't. Even if he does have a cute butt."

Back up top Jade said, "I'd better do this again, right now."

Tara shook her head. "You don't have to."

Jade said, "But if I don't..."

I nodded. "You want to get back on the horse."

"Well, yeah."

"This isn't macho bullshit, is it?" Tara said.

"No," said Jade. "I just want to get it one more time without falling."

I went first, keeping my speed down, ollied off the ramp, and grabbed the edge of my board Indy, between the bindings toeside. I hit the downslope smoothly, then cut over sharp to the left, to stop out of the way of the run, but near enough to render aid if Jade fell again.

She didn't fall, landing even farther than before, both legs coming down together, and I grinned.

I slid off to follow her and I heard the scrape of a board on snow. Someone yelled, "Oh, CRAP!" I sensed movement and jumped-not far, just a few yards ahead.

Brett passed through the space I'd just been. His board hit the snow tail first and he cartwheeled head over ass for several rotations before actually landing on his board and carving into a drunken turn.

He fell over when he'd killed most of his speed and I slid down and skidded to a halt next to him.

"I'm so sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have crossed the hill there."

He was shaking his head. "I don't see how I missed you!"

"I ducked," I said. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"You're holding up fingers?"

I popped his bindings and turned to wave for some help, but Jade and Tara were already running over through the snow.

When Brett stood on his own I decided it was probably okay to help him walk over to the truck. Jade and I each took an arm and Tara brought the board.

He seemed to know who the president was and what the day and year were and even what the Advanced Biology homework for Monday was. His right shoulder was stiff, though, and he decided to call it a day when we helped him out of the truck, at the top of the hill.

"Do you have a ride?" I asked.

"I drove," he said. He pointed to a beat-up Honda parked on the opposite shoulder of Thunderbird.

One of his friends climbed up the hill, hauling his own board. "I was halfway down. I didn't see the fall but I saw you tumble out below. Wow."

I glanced down the hill. From here you could barely see the downslope. From further down, the crest would've blocked the view. I hoped nobody saw my jump. Nobody else had mentioned seeing anything weird as we drove up. The direction I'd jumped was almost directly toward Jade and Tara so they wouldn't have seen much of a shift even if they were looking.