I gasped as her skis caught deep powder, and she began swishing back and forth. She was going fast! My heart leapt into my throat.
Better go now or you’re gonna lose her, my mind warned.
I wanted to turn back the clock. Go back twenty minutes and remake the decision to step into the gondola one last time. We could be in the lodge right now, sitting before the fire. Drinking hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua, alongside the twenty-five or so other UMASS students who were wrapping up our much-needed winter break with us.
Faith was almost gone from sight. She was a tiny pink dot, zigging and zagging, with a blizzard of snow swirling around her.
Dammit.
This was it. My YOLO moment. Only, if you checked the internet, not every YOLO moment ended well for everyone.
No. Some ended horrifically, in fact.
Morgan!
I slipped on my goggles. Tightened the grip on my poles…
And pushed off, over the edge.
Two
MORGAN
I was right. The slope was steep. Steep and narrow and choked with loose snow; almost as if no one else on the entire mountain had made this run all day.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind I could do it. While sports had never been my thing, skiing was the one physical activity I was really good at. Chalk that victory up to my parents, who forced me to travel virtually everywhere with them, all throughout my childhood.
Really Morgan? Are you complaining?
No, not really. My parents were great, for the most part. Great when they were present, anyway. I hadn’t seen much of them since they’d dropped me off at school, of course. It was my third year at UMASS, and they’d still never once come to visit.
Probably for the best.
Right now I had to focus — had to concentrate on keeping myself upright against the speed. Otherwise…
I made the first turn with relative ease. The trail leveled out, turned left, then plunged downward again. It even got narrower. Steeper, if possible. And there were a lot more trees.
This is crazy!
Suddenly I realized something: I’d lost Faith. Against the blinding sea of swirling white, I could no longer pick out her pink jacket.
Did she even make the turn?
I almost skidded to a stop. Something told me to go back and check. Then again, she’d been way ahead of me. She was probably just too far up to see her anymore. Either that, or—
WHOOSH!
Someone whizzed by me — someone else in a red and white UMASS jacket! Another student. They even shouted as they went past.
“GOOOOO!”
I took it as a challenge. Pointing my skis I raced downward, cutting a thin swath through the powdery snow. I’d catch him, whoever it was. I’d catch him and pass him, and then I’d already be
undoing my boot-bindings by the time he got to the bottom.
Suddenly I felt a rumble beneath my skis. Which was weird, because my skis were barely touching the ground to begin with. I glanced up. Started looking around…
“DON’T LOOK BACK!”