Double Black Diamond
his head at the walkway. “Go on. Half-hour till close.”Veena shrugged at me with an apologetic smile. “Tubing is expensive. The lifties let us go for free at the end of the day sometimes.” She grabbed a tube and jogged onto the moving walkway. I wondered why the cost was a problem for her . . . until I remembered her friends probably didn’t have access to the same kinds of funds she did.
I followed her onto the walkway. After years of running several days a week and weight-training in the gym, I was in decent shape. But by the time I reached the top of the hill, I gasped for air, my head pounded, and my lungs burned. Veena and friends were barely out of breath.
“Veena, hold on,” I panted.
Too late. They’d climbed into their tubes and slid down into one of the grooves, screeching as they went. After a second, I followed them down. They waited for me at the bottom.
“Fun, right?” Veena asked me, a huge smile on her face, before jumping back on the walkway with Ali and Gage on her heels.
We slid down the hill again. It should have been a blast, like Veena said, but I couldn’t seem to fully catch my breath, and my brain beat against my skull. After the third run, I stopped at the bottom, wincing and holding my head.
Seeing me, Veena came back and touched my arm. “You okay, Nic?”
Dizziness blurred my vision. I collapsed into a low wood chair a few feet away.
“Ali! Gage!” Veena called as she squatted beside me, concern on her face.
“Veena . . .” A warning note rang in Ali’s voice. “Ski patrol!” She pointed subtly behind me.
“Oh, squash.” Veena stood.
Squash? I glanced back, squinting through the pain jabbing my head. A guy, hands in his pockets, strolled up from the direction of the gondola. He wore a red ski coat with a big white cross on the sleeve and black pants. No ID tag. He stepped close to Veena, setting off alarm bells in my head.
Who was this? Brown had sent me headshots of most of the school and coaching staff as well as a lot of the full-time resort employees, including the ski patrol, to memorize so I could spot anyone pretending to be an employee. This guy’s face wasn’t familiar.
Black spots swam around in my peripheral vision, but I moved my hand into my jacket pocket to find the small can of pepper-spray I’d stowed there after getting off my flight. In Colorado, pepper spray was considered a self-defense tool rather than a weapon. I had a few other tricks up my sleeve, too. Now, if I could just hold off from passing out long enough to use them.
“Hey, Veena. What’s up?” The guy looked about twenty-one, around the same age as the lift operators I’d seen so far, but a lot less furry. His brown hair was cut short and tousled at the top, and his jaw was shaved. He was pretty handsome, actually. He didn’t look like a Hollywood-style bad guy, but I didn’t look like a Hollywood-style bodyguard, either. As I studied him, he eyed me right back.
“Nothing. Having some fun on our day off,” Veena said. “Please don’t get us in trouble, Connor.”
A smile tickled his lips. “Is tubing a reportable offense at VMA now?”
“Probably,” Ali muttered.
Okay, so they knew him at least. I relaxed a little.
Connor tilted his head toward me. “Who’s this?”
I stood to be closer to Veena, but my legs gave out halfway up and I dropped back into the chair. His brown eyes pinched with concern.
“Nicole. Nic. My new roommate,” Veena said.
“Brand new? As in you came up to altitude today?” Connor kneeled and touched my forehead with his palm. “Have you drunk any water? Eaten recently?”
I shook my head, wincing against the pain. Veena gasped and slapped a hand against her mouth, as if she figured something out. Connor pulled his backpack off and rummaged through it. I kept my hand on the spray, but I wasn’t getting dangerous vibes off the guy. Instead, my throat felt stiff, and my mouth pooled with spit, giving me I’m-about-to-vomit vibes instead.
“We’ll take you down the mountain, get you some help,” he said to me. “In the meantime, drink this.” With a quick twist of the cap, he handed me an orange bottle of Gatorade. My nose wrinkled. I didn’t like Gatorade; it tasted like cough syrup.
“Drink it, Nic. Please. It’ll help,” Veena said. Ali and Gage nodded. I sipped at it.
Connor stood and pressed a button on the side of a walkie-talkie hooked on his backpack strap. “I need a snowmobile at the bottom of the tubing hill. Transport to the ED.”
I choked. “No. I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital.” What would my team say if I ended up in the emergency department on my first day? An avalanche of nausea hit me, and I swallowed hard.
A minute later, a snowmobile bounced into view, its engine revving. Connor stayed close to me as the other ski patrolman parked and jogged toward us. Behind him, I saw Cooley and another member of his team watching us. I cringed, knowing what they must be thinking.
Veena clutched the arm of my chair. “I’m so sorry, Nic. This is my fault. I never should have brought you up here on your first day.”
“What’s . . . wrong with me?”
“You have alt—”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish—because I threw up orange Gatorade all over Connor’s boots.
Four
“Altitude sickness. Very common.”
The ED doctor was middle-aged, blond, fit, and had the leathery skin a lot of older people ended up with in the sun-drenched West.
“People experience altitude sickness when they live at low elevations and come to the mountains. The air is thinner here, which means there’s less oxygen. Dehydration doesn’t help, and neither does strenuous exercise, like running around at 10,000 feet the first day you get here.” Her glance was pointy.
I laid in