Golden Girl by Mari Mancusi Page A

“Yes?” he asked.
    â€œTake me with you.”
    He raised an eyebrow, and I felt my face flush. Where had that come from? Did I sound cool? Or desperate?
    â€œYou mean, back to town?” he asked, just as the commuter bus pulled up to the parking lot behind him. A few passengers—mountain employees by the looks of them—started unloading. I bit my lower lip.
    â€œIf that’s where you’re going,” I managed to bluster.
    It was totally against the rules, of course. Underclassmen weren’t allowed to leave campus without permission—or adult supervision. Never mind leave with a random boy they’d been expressly forbidden to see. If my dad found out, I’d probably end up grounded until the Olympics themselves.
    But what choice did I have? Logan couldn’t hang out here. And I couldn’t let him go.
    â€œPlease?” I said, now pretty sure I was coming off as desperate. But I no longer cared.
    The bus driver honked, signaling his departure. It was now or never. Logan stood still for a moment, as if trying to decide. I held my breath. Please let me come. Please don’t leave me behind.
    â€œOkay,” he said at last, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the bus. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    E ven though I’d lived on the Mountain Academy campus for most of my life, I hadn’t spent a lot of time in the neighboring town of Littleton, Vermont, just down the hill from the school and ski resort. If we were to go out for groceries or maybe catch a movie, my dad always preferred to head in the opposite direction, toward the vacation town of Paddington, just up the road. Paddington was the kind of town everyone thought of when they pictured traditional New England towns. It had white-steeple churches, cozy bed-and-breakfasts, antique shops, independent bookstores, and even a completely restored covered bridge from the 1900s.
    Littleton, on the other hand, was Paddington’s poorer cousin, a postindustrial wasteland that probably should have been put out of its misery once the engines of industry ground to a stop in the mid-1800s, leaving crumbling factories, decaying Victorian mansions, and abandoned storefronts behind.
    But somehow Littleton struggled on, and eventually the ancestors of these industrial pioneers found new hope and opportunity when Green Mountain opened its resort. Today most of the town’s residents worked either at the mountain itself or for some other tourist-fed side business that had grown up along the access road, their entire livelihoods dependent on each year’s snowfalls and the winter warriors with fat wallets who visited.
    I rubbed my sleeve against the grimy bus window, trying to get a peek outside. I’d never cared much about Littleton before now, but suddenly I was intensely curious about the town that had produced a boy like Logan. This was where he’d grown up, where he went to school. Where he worked and played and ate and slept. I wanted to know everything about it.
    â€œThis is our stop,” he announced as the bus pulled up to a nondescript intersection. I followed him out of the vehicle and onto the street.
    â€œSo, um, where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound casual even though I was more than a little nervous. I’d never snuck away from school before.
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    He led me down the snow-caked sidewalk until we reached a redbrick building with no windows and a flickering neon sign that read BILL’S with the B burned out. Logan chivalrously opened the creaky door, allowing me to step inside first.
    My eyes widened as I entered. It was a coffee house—but also an arcade. Not just any arcade, though, but an arcade packed with vintage games popular back in the 1980s—the kind my dad used to play when he was a kid. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Crystal Castles, even Dragon’s Lair. I’d tried a lot of them out on our PlayStation—Dad had bought