As if.
I nodded and smiled, incapable of forming a verbal response that didn’t contain a put-down.
He stalked off to round up some other kids while I scrambled to think who could be my partner. All the other girls in my grade—aside from my clique—were out of the question. I couldn’t let anyone use the opportunity to have an “in” with Missy.
“Hannah!” Ms. Hanrahan approached me with a clipboard under one arm and her cellphone jammed between her shoulder and her ear. “I’m making notes for when we meet up later and Andre said you’ll be with his group for the day. Who’s your partner?”
She took out the clipboard and unfastened the pen.
Oh crap
.
The black felt-tip poised over the paper. She frowned.
“Hannah? The snow is heavy today and the Whiteface staff insisted all the school groups use the buddy system—”
“She’s with me, Ms. Hanrahan.” Julian appeared at my side, a tall shadow on skis.
Wearing—I’m not even kidding—a cape.
I was too freaking speechless to argue.
“Oh. Well, good.” The phys ed teacher smiled and scribbled something on her paper before speaking into the phone. “We’re all set here, Dave. I’m heading home now.”
She disconnected the call and then tucked the phone and clipboard into a big floral bag on her shoulder. “Have fun and don’t forget to listen to Andre. I’m heading home now, but I’ll be back with the buses at five. Although it sounds like some of you will be riding back with Andre?”
She checked her notes and headed into another direction, calling for the lacrosse coach.
“Ready?” Julian’s voice reminded me of my latest problem.
“For what?” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my tone. Didn’t even try.
“To ski, Hannah. To have fun.” He gestured toward the mountain with a gloved hand. “Or do you even know how to have a good time?”
He said it to be a jerk. But it was too close to Missy’s latest insult for me to let it slide. My muscles tensed. Anger bubbled beneath the surface of my skin and I felt the hot flush everywhere.
“You don’t know me, Geekster. So don’t even pretend you do.” I sent him the evil eye.
He absorbed it. I don’t know how else to describe it, because he didn’t flinch or look away. He stared at me with as much detachment as if I was some new character in the latest role-playing game that techno-junkies like him spent hours trying to conquer.
“I know a whole lot more than you think,” he said finally.
“And unless you want to share a ride up the chairlift with
Andre
, I suggest you go with me.”
He skied toward the dwindling line now that the masses of school kids had already gone up to ride the trails. A handful of younger kids remained behind, having a snowball fight and waiting for a ski instructor to take them to a freebie lesson that all the new kids got. If I waited around here, there was no telling when Missy would be back. If they took a short trail, they could be down at the lodge all too soon.
And possibly see me with Julian.
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath even as I followed him. Because he was right. I did not want that alone time with Andre. My mother might chase after every guy she met, but that wasn’t me. Julian might be a weirdo, but I knew him from camp and that made him sort of harmless. I mean, we’d barely spoken since that day when we were ten and I’d warned him he’d better not ever tell anyone at Northstar that he knew me from camp. I’d been paranoid that he would tell the kids at our snobby boarding school that he’d seen me doing the hokey pokey and wearing a noodle necklace. Even at ten, Northstar kids didn’t act like that. They went to Europe in the summer, not the Pisgah Forest.
I didn’t say anything as I skied up to the oncoming chair and waited beside him.
“You’ll never get on the chairlift with a cape,” I muttered, knowing the ski instructor running the lift would make him take it off.
“Right.” He unfastened the collar and wadded up the wool before jamming it into a nylon backpack that’d been hidden under his coat. “I only took it out for your benefit.”
He never cracked a smile, although I assume he was teasing me.
With a group of four behind us, we were on our own for the ride up, even though this lift—Summit Quad—was meant for four people.
“Watch your hands,” the lift attendant barked as the chair came around and we took our seats.
Together.
I watched Julian while pretending not to watch him as he pulled down the bar in front of us, locking us in for the long climb to the top. The chair swung for a moment before it steadied. There was an awkward silence filled with nothing but the click and hum of the gear mechanism drawing the lift higher.
Higher.
I pretended to be interested in the skiers on the trails below us, but mostly, I was trying to figure out the silent shadow next to me.
“Why are you talking to me?” I snapped, unable to stand the silence any longer. “I mean, what gives with you today? We don’t talk for six years and then all of the sudden you’re in my face?”
I glared at him. Maybe I just wanted a second chance at the evil eye to figure out why it didn’t work on him the first time. But then, while I was glaring my hardest, a simple truth hit me.
Julian Berwick, King of the Nerd-Boys, had turned…
Borderline hot.
Not that I liked him. But if I’d just met him for the first time today—and he’d worn normal clothes and not some fantasy world gear—I would put him closer to the “sizzle” end of the spectrum. I could not have been more blown away.
And, I don’t know, maybe a teeny-tiny part of me admired the fact that he could throw on a cape at a moment’s notice and not give a rat’s ass. I mean, who did that? I kept seeing John Snow in
Game of Thrones
, my guilty-secret obsession.
“I don’t know,” Julian said suddenly, reminding me I’d asked him a question. “I guess I hoped you’d tell Missy Watson to get lost.”
I blinked away some snow that fell on my eyelashes and wished that Julian would go back to looking like his old self. I had too much friend drama to deal with today without this irritating realization about Julian.
“I did. Duh.” I tilted my face up to the sky and let the flakes fall on my cheeks. It prevented me from looking at Julian and thinking mega-stupid thoughts about him. “But now that I put her in her place, she’s going to make me pay.”
“Her place?” Julian leaned his head back on the bar next to mine, his helmet clanking as he looked up at the sky, too. “She doesn’t have a place, Hannah. She’s just an immature girl, and you don’t need a friend like her.”
“How would you know what I need?” I snapped. “And since when do you know the first thing about Missy? Or me?”He went quiet again.
The chairlift thunked through a big gear overhead, jarring the seat enough to jiggle me closer to him. I scooted away again, but not before my arm brushed his. My knee knocked against his thigh. So awkward to fight with a guy you were falling all over.
“If we’re going to be partners today, maybe we should agree to disagree,” Julian said.
I noticed he hadn’t answered my questions. But this whole ride had been so totally awkward, I was just glad to call a truce.
“Cool by me.” I readjusted my poles from one hand to the other now that we were ready to exit the lift. “Thanks for telling Hanrahan we were together so she’d get off my back, but I’ll be fine on my own.”
“I don’t think that’s safe.” Julian sat forward, ready to ski off the chair as we neared the top station. “Especially if we’re going off-trail with Andre.”
“Well, guess what, Geekster?” I jammed my goggles into place and got ready to hop off. “I don’t need your permission.”
Chapter Two
Hannah
“Dudes!” Andre shouted from the lift overhead as I skied toward the top of a run called Upper Skyward. “Ready to rip some moguls?”
I’d almost forgotten that hanging out with Andre—or at least the ability to
brag
I’d been hanging out with Andre—had been my whole reason for coming up here with Julian.
I knew Bella and Missy both thought Andre was super gorgeous, but I couldn’t forget the fact that he’d flirted with my mother, which made him a ten out of ten on the slime scale.
For example, today he was rocking an old neon green Burton jacket that made him almost pass for a real ski bum. Except that his attempt at bed-head hair looked a little too carefully spiked. Plus his $500 shades pegged him as another wanna-be trust-fund baby.
“Head toward The Slides!” he shouted, pointing away from the Upper Skyward trail toward a more forbidding part of the mountain I didn’t normally ski. “I’ll meet you over there.”
I forced a smile and skied to a halt near the crowd gathered where he pointed. Six kids were already there—two giggling sophomore girls, a couple from the school’s tennis team, and a pair of skateboarders carrying off the ski bum look with only a little more success than our chaperone.
Kill me now.
I ignored Julian as he skied up behind me, and I took out my vibrating phone instead. Maybe Missy had forgiven me…
Any ideas what 2 get Brian 4 Xmas?!
The message from my mom did more damage than Missy at her most evil. How could Mom ask for help picking out her boyfriend’s gift when she hadn’t left one damn thing for me? I pictured her running aimlessly around a random shopping mall on the day before Christmas.
“Everything okay?” Julian asked over my shoulder, shrugging his way back into his cape.
“I’m stuck with Lord Elrond for the day. You tell
me
if everything is okay.” I jammed my phone in my coat pocket before the snow ruined it. My mittens were covered in flakes.
“For a girl who doesn’t like geeks, you have an impressive command of
LOTR
.” He worked his backpack underneath the cape while I gritted my teeth.
“Who’s ready to rip?” Andre asked as he joined the group, pumping a fist. “BC, baby!”
We stared at him blankly. Well, the skateboarders nodded with vague smiles, but they did that all day back at school whether they were executing tricks or smoking pot in the parking lot.
“Dudes…that means back country.” Andre stuffed his poles in a mound of snow and leaned on them. “We’re going to bisect the Slides and head toward the back side of the mountain. You all can ski for real, right?”
The sophomores exchanged nervous glances, but in the end, everyone nodded. Even Julian.
“Hannah?” Andre halted on his skis, his ear buds dangling off his lobes like ugly earrings. “You might have more fun up here with me.”
I bit back a retort.
“Sure. Sounds great.”
If I could snap enough pics of me with Andre, I’d be able to send them to Missy and be done with the back country “adventure.” Because even if I’d been able to tolerate Julian’s weirdness for the rest of the day, the sophomore girls had matching ponytails, color-coordinating helmets, and had already started singing Christmas carols. Gag.
I jabbed my poles in the snow to push off and move to the head of the line, but a hard tug on the back of my jacket kept me in place.
“Actually,” Julian shouted to Andre over my protest. “Ms. Hanrahan was super strict about pairing up the skiers for safety.”
With a shrug, Andre shoved his ear buds back in place, and the sophomore twits trilled another chorus of “Winter Wonderland.” I whirled on Julian but nearly fell on my ass since he still had the tail of my ski coat balled up in his fist.
“Are you out of your mind?” Mad now, I didn’t care that his hand on my elbow kept me from sprawling in the snow. “How dare you lay one finger on me?”
The rest of the crew kept skiing, which at least took the ear-splitting sopranos farther away.
“I thought you told Missy that Andre was trouble.” He released his hold on my coat and my elbow, making me realize how awkwardly close we’d been.
“I thought you told me that was a mean girl thing to do.” I crossed my poles in front of me.
“Depends. Is it true?” His voice hit a deep note. The serious tone caught me off guard. Or maybe it was those dark brown eyes that didn’t dart away from mine any of the times I expected them to. I was used to girls challenging me. I wasn’t used to guys trying it. And I sure as hell wasn’t used to anyone getting in my face in such a quiet way.
It was all weird. He was weird. I had no idea why I felt tongue-tied. I forced my gaze down to his gray cape, appreciating the reminder of who I was talking to.
“None of your business.” I ground my teeth together. “You don’t seem all that concerned with my safety by separating me from the rest of the group.”
His eyes went from me to the mountainside ahead. Snowflakes fell in a heavy curtain all around us, the quiet so thick you could practically hear them fall.
“We’d better hurry.” He yanked my poles out of the snow and handed them to me. “Come on.”
“Go right ahead, Superman.” I poked at his cape with the basket end of one of my poles. “Why don’t you use the super powers your lame clothes give you so you can catch up?”
“Clothes can’t give you super powers.” He slowed his pace to match mine since I’m not a great skier.
“No? I’m pretty sure Bella thinks her latest $3,000 purse makes her invincible.” I followed the ski trails left by the rest of the group.
“You all think the same way.”
“I don’t.” I ducked under a low-hanging branch and listened for the sound of Christmas carols up ahead.
“Of course you do. Bella wouldn’t think a piece of leather was so great if her friends didn’t perpetuate the myth. If you all hated it and told her it sucked, she wouldn’t care about it either.”
“Is that so? How about you leave the opinions on fashion to someone who doesn’t dress like a
Lord of the Rings
character?”
He grinned. “Did the Elvish give it away?”
He glanced down at his shoulder where a bunch of green embroidery scrolled down the hem.
“I have no idea what an Elvish is and hope I never do.”
Did he have any idea how geeky he sounded? I quickly changed the subject. “Can you see everyone else?”