STOKED
A Going the Distance Novella — Tyler’s story
By Lark O’Neal
(Unedited page proofs)
––––––––
c hapter ONE
I’m at the top of the mountain, wind whipping hair around my head. From where I stand, I can nearly see the Continental Divide to the west, Kansas and New Mexico to the east and south. The city of Colorado Springs isn’t even a toy town, just a scattering of tiny gray blocks nearly 8000 feet and seven miles down.
The trail is a rocky zigzag across the stark red moonscape of the peak. Three miles down, it meets tree line, then dives across tree roots and swoops around boulders and hikers panting their way up. Once, I slammed into tree and fell at the feet of a mountain lion sunning himself on a flat-topped pink boulder. He’d been sleeping when my crash startled him awake.
The breath was knocked out of me and I couldn’t do a damn thing but stare straight up into gold eyes and a face so wild and perfect that it would have been noble to be eaten by him. His whiskers caught the light. His paws were white at the front. For what seemed like six years, we stared at each other, then he turned and disappeared. A couple of hikers came around the bend, and didn’t even see me. Or the mountain lion.
Would he have eaten me if they hadn’t come?
I breathe the thin, oxygen-poor air at 14,000 feet, breathe out, trying to get rid of the memories of Jess at the airport this morning. I found her getting ready to go to security, her backpack heavy with too many books, her face a mix of apprehension and hope. Excitement shone around her like a shiny gold aura, so bright you could almost touch it, and that’s the part I’m trying to get out of my head. She was flying away, not from me exactly, but to something else where I won’t be part of the landscape.
My own damned fault. I turn the handlebars right, then left, gauging the play, pulling my focus in.
Forget Jess. At least for this minute. If I don’t, I’ll kill myself on this hill.
The wind whistles under my helmet and I bounce a little on the bike, feeling it beneath me, bonding with it. It’s never like the board, not like flying off a jump and sailing in circles in the air and landing super sweet and soft in a skim of fresh powder. Not like that.
The smell of lightning is building, crackling along the back of my neck, raising the hair on my arms. Tourists farted out by the train, munch on doughnuts and buy t-shirts. They peer at me curiously.
I launch, sailing down, slamming over rocks, dancing the bike over dips and down a set of steps. My left hip feels it, but only barely these days. My twice-broken left wrist doesn’t feel it. My ribs are finally solid. The muscles in my shoulders and across my back hold the bones together, in my hands and wrists powerful from cooking, stirring, chopping. Bizarre what pulls you together sometimes. My legs are stronger maybe than they’ve ever been. The bike requires it.
All around me is open sky and rugged trail. I’m pounding down, then sailing across the switchbacks. And now we’re sailing, past the worst of the upper trail and into dizzying speed. My body is pure power, pure adrenaline, the bike an instrument of drug delivery. I can see for three miles straight down and there’s not a hiker or runner in the way. A thin crack of lightning/thunder splits the silence, so close the hair on my arms rustles. Gotta get outta here.
I let loose, faster and faster, slamming now and then into a hole, a rock, sliding sideways, catching it, control and ease and mind-busting adrenaline rocketing through me. I whoop into the thin mountain air.
My mother sneers that I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I’m telling you if you ever felt that rush, the way it erases everything, you would be, too. It erases the memory of Jess going down that security line, taking off her shoes and belt, leaving me to go 4000 miles away. My own idiotic fault.
Adrenaline erases her. Erases the possibility of going
A Going the Distance Novella — Tyler’s story
By Lark O’Neal
(Unedited page proofs)
––––––––
c hapter ONE
I’m at the top of the mountain, wind whipping hair around my head. From where I stand, I can nearly see the Continental Divide to the west, Kansas and New Mexico to the east and south. The city of Colorado Springs isn’t even a toy town, just a scattering of tiny gray blocks nearly 8000 feet and seven miles down.
The trail is a rocky zigzag across the stark red moonscape of the peak. Three miles down, it meets tree line, then dives across tree roots and swoops around boulders and hikers panting their way up. Once, I slammed into tree and fell at the feet of a mountain lion sunning himself on a flat-topped pink boulder. He’d been sleeping when my crash startled him awake.
The breath was knocked out of me and I couldn’t do a damn thing but stare straight up into gold eyes and a face so wild and perfect that it would have been noble to be eaten by him. His whiskers caught the light. His paws were white at the front. For what seemed like six years, we stared at each other, then he turned and disappeared. A couple of hikers came around the bend, and didn’t even see me. Or the mountain lion.
Would he have eaten me if they hadn’t come?
I breathe the thin, oxygen-poor air at 14,000 feet, breathe out, trying to get rid of the memories of Jess at the airport this morning. I found her getting ready to go to security, her backpack heavy with too many books, her face a mix of apprehension and hope. Excitement shone around her like a shiny gold aura, so bright you could almost touch it, and that’s the part I’m trying to get out of my head. She was flying away, not from me exactly, but to something else where I won’t be part of the landscape.
My own damned fault. I turn the handlebars right, then left, gauging the play, pulling my focus in.
Forget Jess. At least for this minute. If I don’t, I’ll kill myself on this hill.
The wind whistles under my helmet and I bounce a little on the bike, feeling it beneath me, bonding with it. It’s never like the board, not like flying off a jump and sailing in circles in the air and landing super sweet and soft in a skim of fresh powder. Not like that.
The smell of lightning is building, crackling along the back of my neck, raising the hair on my arms. Tourists farted out by the train, munch on doughnuts and buy t-shirts. They peer at me curiously.
I launch, sailing down, slamming over rocks, dancing the bike over dips and down a set of steps. My left hip feels it, but only barely these days. My twice-broken left wrist doesn’t feel it. My ribs are finally solid. The muscles in my shoulders and across my back hold the bones together, in my hands and wrists powerful from cooking, stirring, chopping. Bizarre what pulls you together sometimes. My legs are stronger maybe than they’ve ever been. The bike requires it.
All around me is open sky and rugged trail. I’m pounding down, then sailing across the switchbacks. And now we’re sailing, past the worst of the upper trail and into dizzying speed. My body is pure power, pure adrenaline, the bike an instrument of drug delivery. I can see for three miles straight down and there’s not a hiker or runner in the way. A thin crack of lightning/thunder splits the silence, so close the hair on my arms rustles. Gotta get outta here.
I let loose, faster and faster, slamming now and then into a hole, a rock, sliding sideways, catching it, control and ease and mind-busting adrenaline rocketing through me. I whoop into the thin mountain air.
My mother sneers that I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I’m telling you if you ever felt that rush, the way it erases everything, you would be, too. It erases the memory of Jess going down that security line, taking off her shoes and belt, leaving me to go 4000 miles away. My own idiotic fault.
Adrenaline erases her. Erases the possibility of going
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