Snow in Love by Claire Ray Page B

lobby, leaning forward and reading her book. She looked up and arched an eyebrow. “No. Why?”
    I sighed and bit my lip. “Double date. I agreed to go.”
    Erin flipped her book closed and smiled broadly. “That’s the spirit. Make him jealous.”
    I took off my coat and hat and gloves and handed them to her.
    “This coat weighs a hundred pounds.” I could hear her but couldn’t see her. Will’s coat was obstructing her from view. She waddled away and threw all my stuff on a chair behind her. She walked back to me and produced a book from beneath the desk. The words INSTRUCTOR SCHEDULE were written across the front in the scratchy hieroglyphics of Mean Agnes. She flipped a few pages and then dragged her finger down the page. “He’s teaching. He’ll be done in about an hour. So, tell me where we stand.”
    “Where we stand, where we stand,” I said, taking a butterscotch candy from the dish on the table. “Well, we spent yesterday skiing.”
    Erin’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “You did? That’s fantastic. Did Sabrina see you?”
    “No,” I said, annoyed. “Me and Jake. ”
    “Oh,” she said flatly. “Let me guess. You had a great time and then the minute he saw Evie, it was like you didn’t exist.”
    “No!” I said snottily, even though, really, um, yes.
    “You’re a terrible liar.” Erin snorted, and reopened her novel.
    “How do I ask Will to do this?”
    “Just ask. He’ll go. He’s cool about that stuff.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You’re right.” But I couldn’t figure out why I felt so nervous about asking him.
     

    Mean Agnes chased me out of the lobby, or else I would have passed the hour happily with Erin, procrastinating. For some reason, the thought of approaching Will and basically asking him out on a date was making me nauseous. But Mean Agnes cared not for my teenage angst and so I found myself wandering through the grounds of the resort, trudging through the snow from one mountain to another.
    With each footstep, my stomach rumbled. I’d never noticed that Will made me this uncomfortable before. I tried to remember whether my stomach flipped when I’d see him in the halls of Willow High, but I didn’t think so. Maybe it was because I’d never really had anything to say to him before, and now, the entirety of my happiness was held in his hands.
    I finally found him. He was coaching two upper-middle-class couples how to snowboard on the far hill, the one that was out of the way and had the gentlest slopes of all the mountains. He caught my eye while I was leaning against the fence, and winked at me. My stomach began flopping around like a fish. I waved at him, then turned immediately and walked away. I didn’t want him to think I was waiting for him, even though I was waiting for him. I was so caught up in thinking how strange I was behaving that I barely noticed that I was now standing at the base of the sledding peak. Also, I failed to notice the two inner tubes careening around like bumper cars, the people on them steering so that they were ramming into each other. In fact, I didn’t notice them until they were closer to the bottom of the mountain. I wondered if I should get Will so he could tell them to knock it off. That’s when I saw that they were gunning for one of Evie’s little sisters, who was on a tube of her own and looked terrified to be going as fast as she was. Sure enough the little girl was hit from behind by one of the careening tubes, and as I heard the cackle of laughter, I also heard a sound coming from the other inner tube—the sound of my brother making blowup noises.
    I stood there fuming, only to become a target in my own right.
    Over the whining of the overturned sister, my brother shouted his orders to Tiffany. “Get Jessie! Get Jessie!”
    I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Brian had set his sights on me and was moving like a bullet. “Yah! Yah!” Tiffany shouted. Soon enough I felt myself go down, cut off at the knees by my