Talk of the bonfire went on all day on Friday. By the time I got back from school, I felt like I had already been there. As had become my habit, I went up to the suite, dumped my backpack, fixed myself up and then went down to the main deck. I hadn’t seen Bren since that day at his apartment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why. It was possible that his girlfriend had gone nuts when she saw me there and forbid him to talk to me, but I hadn’t spotted any of the others, either. Then again, she'd looked mad enough to take them all out.
I looked out over the mountain. The sun was strong today and the snow was soft and slushy. I had only been on a board twice this week, and wondered if I should get out there. I liked the slush. It was a much softer fall, and since I was trying, largely unsuccessfully, to learn my turns, I could've used all the help I could get. Two days ago, I had reinjured my ankle so badly that I was still hobbling on it. I lifted my foot and rotated it to feel it out. Ouch.
After searching the faces above every yellow jacket in my view, I turned from the railing and went back inside. My mother was leaning over the reception desk with Ellen, the day manager, their heads together as they searched through the reservation book.
“It’s fine if they want 214,” my mother said, “but they’re either going to have to check in a day later or stay in another room for one night.”
“They’re going to be disappointed,” Ellen said. “This is the first time in five years that the room won’t be free right away. It’s their anniversary.”
My mother sighed. "You know, they could’ve booked earlier.”
Ellen smiled.
“Give them 312 for the first night, and tell them we will take care of moving them to 214 the following afternoon.” She paused, then said, “And give them dinner on us the night of their anniversary.”
“Could set a bad precedent,” Ellen said.
“Better than setting the precedent of them staying somewhere else.”
I stared, impressed. I knew my mother was smart, but it was different to watch her outside of our family, navigating other problems.
She closed the book and handed it to Ellen, smiling when she saw me.
“Excited about the big bonfire tonight?” She asked in a bright voice.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said.
“Well I’m glad you’re going. It sounds like a lot of fun.”
“I guess.”
She sighed, stepped around the desk and moved close enough to me so that only I could hear her.
“I really wish you would try to have a better attitude. I know things are hard for you right now, and I’m sorry. But you’re young. You’re supposed to be having some fun.”
For the last year or so we had been the same height, and as we faced each other I saw real disappointment in her eyes.
“Sorry,” I said. Then added, “I’m sure it will be fun. I’m just tired from school.”
Her expression softened. “Why don’t you take a nap? Maybe then you’ll feel more enthusiastic about it.”
I was about to protest, then realized she was right. I was exhausted.
‘Maybe I should. Sleep sounds good.”
“How’s the snowboarding going?” She asked too casually before I could turn to go.
“Okay. I didn’t get out a lot this week. Only a couple of times. By myself.”
“Hmm.” She glanced at her nails. “Well, go ahead upstairs. I’ll make sure you’re up in time.”
Once I was in the suite, I pried my sneakers off, went straight into my room, and let myself fall face down on the bed. I didn’t even remember falling asleep.
I woke in the dark. Pushing myself up on my elbows, I grabbed my phone off the night table next to my bed and looked at the time. Six-thirty. The bonfire started at seven. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and tried to shake off the drowse. As I was coming to, a text from my mother trilled on my phone.
Just making sure you’re up, it said.
I’m up, I texted back, then heaved myself to standing.
I was wearing my best jeans, so I changed into a heavy purple sweater and a pair of wool socks, then pulled on my gray furry boots and coat and brushed my hair. It was dark in the living room too, and I saw the flicker immediately through the picture window. At first I thought it was the bonfire, already blazing, but it was small, and too far up the mountain as it had been the last time I had seen it. I stood in the window for a few minutes, squinting, making certain once again that it was a flicker and not a solid light, and then my view of it and the whole surrounding area was washed out by a sudden flash. The bonfire had been lit. It was time for me to go.
My mother was in her office. I told her I was leaving in the cheeriest voice I could muster, and she told me to take my phone and have fun. I thought I could manage one of those. I went out the back and headed past the hotel buildings and condos. As I got farther away, moving toward the shadows of snow-covered trees, the amber light above and beyond them like a mirage, it got colder. My breathing quickened to short puffs, and was the only sound in the night for a while.
Finally, I rounded a thick copse of dark evergreens and a glowing scene filled with firelight and warmth opened before me. Kids in heavy coats, winter hats, boots, and mittens stood around the giant blaze laughing and talking and chugging beer or soda. I recognized a lot of them. Lexi, Julie, and Eileen – the soccer girls – were huddled on the far side, each with a can of some energy drink I didn’t recognize cupped in her mittened hands. There were a lot of kids I hadn’t seen before, and many I had glimpsed at school. Kevin, Brian, and Matt, all in their varsity jackets, were listening to Tyler talk, his exaggerated gestures punctuating his story. Several beer cans were screwed into the snow at their feet. As I watched, Tyler’s eyes flicked in my direction, and then again, lingering this time. When Brian started to turn, following his gaze, Tyler began to talk again, his first syllable loud and sharp enough to retrieve Brian’s focus. I let out sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was a fake Jersey accent shouted at me over a fire while everyone stared.
“Jenna!”
A squeal somewhere on my right. I turned, along with several other people in my vicinity, to see Brianna coming at me with Dillon and Laura a few paces behind her.
“You came.” She said.
“Yeah, I said I would.” I smiled at them.
“Want an iced tea?” Laura asked. She had been true to her word and was sipping a Brisk.
“Or something else?” Brianna raised her eyebrows at me and slid a small bottle of vodka out of her jacket pocket.
“Not right now, thanks.” I nodded at the bottle. “You drink that straight?”
“Mostly, I mix it with Dillon’s Red Bull,” she said, shaking the silver can in her other hand, “but I will if I have to.”
She looked like she already had a buzz. Her smile was a little dry, her eyes glassy.
I moved closer to the fire and they all took a few steps to keep the huddle tight. There were no coals yet and it was still chilly.
“You know what I just noticed?” Brianna said, staring across at Tyler and his group. We all turned to look at her.
“Brian is freaking hot. He’s hot, isn’t he?” She looked from one to the other of us, her grin sly.
“I guess so,” Laura said. Then, “he’s huge.”
“Yeah, but I kind of like that. Makes you feel smaller.” Brianna said. She was openly leering at Brian now.
Laura curled a hand around Brianna’s upper arm and pulled her close, speaking in her ear. “You could be a little more subtle. He’s going to know you’re talking about him.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “In fact, maybe I’ll just go talk to him.”
Laura opened her mouth to speak again, but Brianna was already walking away, her butt swaying a little too enthusiastically. She threw us a smirk over her shoulder about halfway around the fire and when she reached the boys, she took a long swig of her
drink and stepped between Tyler and Brian. She said something to Brian and watched as he fished in his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and held it out to her. She slid one from the box with her long nails and held it to her lips while he lit it. Tyler stared at her and then glanced across at us, his eyes settling on me again. I shrugged. After all, what was I supposed to do with her? He shrugged back and rolled his eyes, but it looked like Brian was already realizing the potential. He was smirking at Brianna over the top of her vodka bottle as he took a long gulp. Handing it back to her, he ducked and said something in her ear.
“Doesn’t anyone from the lodge ever come up here and check on things?” I asked.
“Tyler’s father’s good friends with Mr. Neil,” Laura said. “They leave us alone.”
“But the resort could get in a lot of trouble.” I watched as Brianna and Brian strayed a few paces from their group.
“Tyler’s father is good friends with just about everybody,” Dillon said.
“I have to go talk to Lexi for a minute.” Laura threw her can into a blue barrel nearby, and then it was just Dillon and me. We watched the fire for a few minutes.
“So,” I said, the heat finally starting to seep into my outer layers. “I think I’m learning how to ride…a little.”
He turned to me and smiled. “Really? That’s awesome. You’ll be able to come with us now.”
“Soon. Maybe.”
“Who taught you?” He asked. There was an odd tone in his voice.
“I mostly taught myself.” I didn’t need anyone telling Brianna that I had had anything to do with Bren. Girls like her were made of glass. Any tiny crack made them sharp and dangerous.
Dillon threw me a resigned grin. “Okay. You taught yourself, good for you. Just be careful.” He fixed his eyes on mine. “You know, about what you're getting into.”
I sighed. I was tired, and it was obvious he didn’t believe me. “What are you trying to say, Dillon?”
“I’m saying the guy’s as hot as they come, I get it.” He paused to make sure I wasn’t going to play stupid. I waited. “But he’s strange,” he said. “They’re all strange. You should see them up there, on the mountain. Some of the things they do. It’s dangerous, and some of it doesn’t even look remotely normal. The uncle makes all their boards and I think he does something to them. Maybe that’s why they don’t compete…” His voice trailed off for a moment as he thought about this, then his eyes found mine again. “And they disappear for hours and never come down, then just show up later like they’ve been making runs all night.” He closed his mouth, opened it, closed it again.
“What are you saying? That they’re into something illegal, or…” I thought now of the first time I’d seen Bren on the mountain, how he’d seemed frozen in the air…how he’d seemed to control the seconds.
“I don’t know. I…” He shook his head. “Have you noticed that when you ask Bren a question, he never really answers you? He just sort of stares, or asks one back. It’s too weird.”
I couldn’t argue.
“How did you know?” I asked him. I didn’t want to say ‘how did you know I liked him’ or ‘how did you know I had been hanging out with him,’ so I left it at that.
Dillon crushed his Red Bull can in one hand and tossed it into the barrel behind us. “The first Ski Club after break, when we were all out on the deck. The way you two were deliberately avoiding looking at each other. I didn’t know if it was because Brianna was there or what. But she saw it, too. That’s why she flipped out.”
“I don’t think she flipped out.”
“That’s because you don’t know her that well.”
“Well, it looks like she’s moved on,” I said, gesturing to where she stood with Brian. They were getting very friendly now. His hands were on her waist and she was gripping his collar.
“She never moves on. She collects.”
Dylan nodded across the fire. I followed his gaze and saw Kevin nod back at him.
“I thought she said Bren was a freak.” I said.
“Probably because everyone else thinks he is. And because he’s not really the kind of guy who’s going to cater to her." He shrugged and gave me a sheepish grin. "I also figured you liked him when you blew Tyler off.”
“Excuse me?” I said, turning to face him. “Blew Tyler off?”
“You know he likes you.”
“No,” I said, feeling like I had missed a whole chapter in a book. “I don’t know that. He has never done anything to…”
“First he tried picking on you, then he moved on to flat out gawking, and if you haven’t noticed, he’s been over there trying to get your attention since you got here. So I figure, if you’re not into a guy like Tyler…”
I couldn’t help glancing over at Tyler. His eyes flicked to mine again.
“It’s not like he’s just some dumb jock,” Dillon said. “He’s actually pretty smart. And he’s funny as hell.” He shrugged again, hand in his pocket. “Maybe you should give him a chance.”
“What are you? His pimp?” I asked. He didn’t hear me. He was gazing across the fire again, but it wasn’t Tyler he was focused on, it was Kevin. Kevin gave him a flat, sad-eyed smile.
“Something going on there?” I didn’t know how else to say it.
“Nope.” He said.
“So he’s not… I mean Kevin. He’s not…” It was strange how comfortable I had always been with the word ‘gay’ until this moment.
Dillon considered, tilting his head from one side to the other. “You never really know that about a person until they say it. And that’s their call, you know what I mean?”
I nodded. “And you’re not seeing anyone?”
“No,” he said, watching Kevin crack another beer.
“And you’re picking on me?” I said.
That broke into his thoughts. He looked at me and laughed, hit my arm with the back of his fingers. “I’m going to get another Red Bull and maybe stop by Brianna’s bar for a shot, you want to come?”
“Maybe in a few minutes."
I was glad for the chance to just stand and watch the fire. I listened to the conversations blend around me, a word or phrase breaking through here and there. The voices were louder now, and people were moving around to talk to each other or get more beer from their snowy stashes under the low boughs of the trees. I glanced around at them. A few couples were huddled in each other’s arms by the fire. A girl with her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder made me think of Frieda and Dag, and once again, that lonely feeling welled up inside me.
As my eyes lifted to follow a trail of hot sparks rising above the heads of Dillon and the others, I caught the pale flicker deep in the forest. It was small and high up on the hill, and barely gave off enough light to reflect against the sky. I was sure this was the fire I had seen earlier, and the one I had seen the night I fell asleep at the picture window. Someone was up there.
I thought of the girl I had glimpsed riding in the night, of the way she had curved off toward the flame. I thought of what Dillon had told me about Bren and his family disappearing for hours before they came off the mountain. Maybe they had their own bonfire of sorts, a place only they knew about where they could close the door on the world. If so, I wondered if Skye had been invited in.
“Hey.”
I was startled out of my musings. Tyler. I hadn’t heard his footsteps.
“Oh, hey Tyler.”
“I was getting bored over there. Why are you standing here all by yourself?” His voice was quiet. He didn’t seem drunk, but he held a beer in each hand, one of which hadn’t been opened.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s quieter over here.”
We glanced across to the little group - Brianna, Brian, Dillon, Kevin, and Matt – all laughing hysterically at something we could only guess at - and smiled at each other.
Tyler held out the unopen
ed beer and raised his brows.
“I don’t really drink,” I said. And other than wine on the holidays, that was true. My mother had always been home, and I was never allowed to go anywhere where there wasn’t a parent, so I didn’t even know if I would have been a drinker, if I’d had the chance.
“A beer won’t kill you,” he said. Then he pulled it back a couple of inches. “Not to push you. I’ll drink it if you don’t want it.”
I studied Tyler for a moment. He didn’t look much like his friends. For one thing, he wasn’t a beast. From my best judgment, he was a little over six feet, and solid, but not bulky. He had a refined appearance, an angular jawline and visible cheekbones, and if he replaced the varsity jacket with a pea coat and scarf he’d be ready for the Ivy League…or Hogwarts.
He dropped his arm, let the can dangle from his fingers and glanced at the fire. The light danced on his skin. When he looked back at me, half his face was thrown into shadow.
“It’s probably a little uncomfortable for you,” he said. “All these people you barely know all buzzed and obnoxious.”
“A little,” I said.
“We could go for a walk, if you want. There’s a trail near here that’s usually pretty clear. Just to get away for a few minutes.”
I didn’t want to leave the warmth of the fire, the little comfort I took from the light and the few familiar faces. But then my eyes strayed to the flame on the hill again, winking as the wind blew through the trees, and it seemed so far away, so unreal.
"Okay,” I said, nodding.
Tyler raised his brows again. “Okay?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not going to get us lost.”
He smiled. “Nah. I’ve been down this trail a hundred times.” He hesitated, then held out the beer again. “Did you want this, or….”
I stared at the can. My father drank a lot of beer, but I didn’t recognize the label. I reached out, meaning to get a better look, but Tyler popped the top with one finger before he handed it to me.
“My dad likes these microbrews,” he said.
“You were supposed to drink this.” I lifted the can at him as he began to lead me away from the fire.
“I have two more in my jacket,” he said over his shoulder. Then he reached back and took my hand, pulling me along.
We crunched on the packed snow for a few minutes, listening to the noise of the bonfire weaken and die out. Brianna’s cackle carried on the air one more time before the night went quiet and we laughed softly, our breath white against the darkness.
“Interesting girl, Brianna,” Tyler said, his voice almost a whisper. I heard him crush his can. He slid another beer out of his jacket pocket and replaced it with the empty. I took a small sip of my own beer, the cold from the can already seeping through my mitten.
“That’s a good word for her,” I said. “Interesting.” Then I quickly added, “She was nice to me when I first got here. Letting me sit with you guys and everything.”
“Yeah, very sweet.” He said. “Anyway, I’m sorry about all that. You know, teasing you about New Jersey and stuff. I was just kidding around.”
“I know.”
He took a long guzzle of his beer and I sipped mine. A few moments later, we came to a small clearing with a few evergreens dotting the middle. The snow was a bit thicker than on the trail, but had been packed in some places by skis and boards. Moonlight shone unhindered here, dusting everything in silver.
“This is part of the glades,” Tyler said. “It’s a system of ski trails that leads through the trees all the way to the bottom.”
“Looks dangerous.” I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate through a forest on a board.
“It can be,” he said, leading me to a huge boulder beneath a tree. He sat on the rock and pulled me down next to him. “They’re expert trails, and they’re not even open at night. There’s no light, and even if there was, it would be a mess.”
“I can imagine.” And I could. The carnage of people dangling upside down from boards, their edges stuck in trees…skiers wrapped around trunks and caught in evergreen boughs, their calls for help mere echoes in blind patches of dark. I laughed at myself and took another sip of beer. Tyler did too.
“What are you smiling about?” He asked. He reached out and smoothed a long strand of my hair between his fingers. When I turned my head to answer, he leaned over and kissed me. It was slow and wet for a closed-mouthed kiss, and as practiced as a textbook football play, and although I had kissed only two other boys in my life - short-term boyfriends during my Sophomore year - the cold, sinking feeling in my stomach told me it was wrong. That, and the image of Bren behind my closed eyes. But I hadn’t seen Bren in a week, since the angry blonde had found us together on his porch, and pushing Tyler away wasn’t going to change that.
Still, the clammy feeling in my stomach was too strong to ignore.
I broke away, but I couldn’t seem to make eye contact, so I glanced down at my beer. Tyler brushed my neck with the back of his hand, then lifted my chin and kissed me again. This time, he tried to push his tongue into my mouth and I pulled back.
“Wait,” I said.
"Sorry. You’re so pretty, I just…” He sighed hard and took another long sip of beer, shaking the last drops of the can into his mouth before crushing it and cramming it into his pocket.
I raised my beer to my lips, but found I didn’t want anymore and lowered it again. Tyler took this as some kind of cue. He smiled.
“Ready now?” He asked.
“Hmm?” I would have been relieved if he’d wanted to go back. In fact, I was fighting the urge to jump up and run, stopping only when I had gotten past the doors of the hotel and all the way back up to the suite. I imagined having tea with my mother and making up some harmless account of my blast of a night, but the comfort of the thought only brought a wave of panic.
“Ready?” Tyler asked again, and before I could answer he grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me hard, this time succeeding in pushing his tongue all the way into my mouth. He tasted like beer, smelled like second-hand ash and cologne. I pushed at his shoulders as he wound his fingers into the back of my hair.
“Stop it Tyler,” I said. He dragged his mouth down my neck, his hand holding mine down. My beer fell to the ground. Then, unbelievably, the first day I saw Tyler grew sharp in my memory. He had thrown something at a girl and she had responded in the same way I just did. She had said, “stop it, Tyler,” and then threw something back at him. She had played the game with him, and he had laughed at her.
“Stop,” I said again, and then I screamed the word as loud as I could.
Tyler grabbed both my arms, his fingers biting into my flesh, and shook me. “Stop screaming,” he said through his teeth.
I continued to fight him and he shook me harder. My arms numbed under his grip.
“You’re hurting me. Let go.”
He leaned in until his mouth was against my ear. “Then stop.” He said, as if I had missed the most reasonable solution to all of this. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” He let his lips brush against my neck again. “Unless you want it to.”
I felt the trunk of the tree against my back. I had not considered that I might be trapped between it and Tyler. Now he had his hands cuffed around my wrists and was pushing his body against mine, pinning me, the rough tree bark digging into my spine and shoulders.
“No.” I said, the word occurring to me like some magical command. But it held no power. It only made things illegal, which made no difference in this moment.
I repeated the word over and over again and heard it die on my lips. I tried to yank my wrists out of his grip, fighting the weight of his body as he pushed harder against me. Finally, he released one of my hands only to run his own hand over my stomach, his skin clammy and hot as he searched for the button on my jeans. I considered that this might be a nightmare, but it was too cold, and I
was too scared. Never in all my nightmares, even in those that haunted me while my parents were splitting up, had I been this terrified. I considered going limp and letting it happen, giving up and getting it over with, but I found that I couldn’t. The sensation was like peering over a bridge. The urge to jump never quite overpowered the survival instinct. So I kept fighting him, kept yelling ‘no’ despite the bite of his fingers, kept struggling beneath his force. But I was losing.
“Just let it happen,” Tyler said in my ear, as if he smelled blood in the water. “You won’t regret it. Don’t worry.”
As he took both my wrists in one hand and clamped down so hard I thought he would break me, a guttural scream rose in my throat.
Then I heard the thud.
Tyler sat bolt upright. He stared wide-eyed into my face for a few seconds, his mouth open, then fell backward into the snow.
I was afraid to move or breathe. My wrists throbbed and my ears rang in the silence. When I was finally able to heave in a gasp and push myself up on trembling arms, the first thing I saw was Tyler lying unconscious in a drift. The second was a pair of boarding boots, purple, planted wide above his head.
Skye stood with one hand on her hip, the other arm clutching her board. She stared at me as if she hadn’t noticed Tyler was there at all. While she waited for me to stop shaking, for my breath to even out, for my muscles to begin to relax, she scanned the scene around me. Her face was calm, the moonlight glinting in her wide eyes. Prodding Tyler’s shoulder with one boot, she crouched down and picked my half-full beer can out of the snow, then rose and held it up to peer at it.
“If you hadn’t been here…” My voice wavered.
“Is it some habit of yours to go off alone with boys you hardly know?” Her eyes shifted to mine as she dropped her arm, the can still clutched in her pale, slender hand.
I should have been angry at this, at her cold tone and her accusation, but I was still flooded with relief. I didn’t know how a girl her size had managed to knock Tyler out cold – she had nothing on her but her board, and there was no way she could have brought it down with the necessary force – but at the moment I didn’t care. I had been spared something unimaginable.
“No,” I said, "it isn’t. I know Tyler from school. This was just supposed to be a walk.” I felt like I owed her something else, but wasn’t sure what to say. “The other day…” I started.
“There’s a trail across the clearing that leads straight back to the lodge.” She pointed behind me, then dropped her board and slid her boots in. Hunkering to buckle the bindings, she glanced at me and held up the can. “Go home Jenna. You don’t belong here.”
She tossed the can onto Tyler’s chest, spraying beer onto his jacket. Then she locked in, stood up, and pushed off toward the woods.
“What about Tyler?” I called after her. I didn’t care about Tyler, but getting charged as an accessory to murder if he died of hypothermia or head trauma would be a little insulting after what he had almost done.
“He’ll come to in a few minutes,” she said without looking back. “He won’t tell. That’s up to you.”
Somehow, she found enough of a slope to take off. The violet streaks in her hair seemed brighter in the dark, flashing as they whipped around her head. As she made a switchblade turn behind a copse of trees, leaning hard, her bare hand grazing the snow, I knew she was the rider I had seen coasting toward the strange fire in the middle of the night.
Chapter 9