Double Black Diamond
the nicely made bed.The door to the balcony gaped open.
Kovitch and I slunk toward it, pulling open each closet door as we went. A handful of clothes hangers and a few dust bunnies hung out in the first. Brightly colored ski coats and pants, plus some shirts, jeans, and miniskirts, hung askew in the second. Shoes and boots tumbled on the floor.
Between the closets, a bright red cloth was laid on top of a little wooden bookcase. On it, a painted ceramic figure sat cross-legged on a ceramic flower. Bowls of rice and water and a brass incense holder were arranged around it. Unlike the closet and the bed, the bookcase was tidy. What was Veena into?
The balcony was dark and the room was lit, which meant we couldn’t see anything outside, but we could be seen. I gripped my stick firmly, flipped the dim balcony light on, and stepped out. Two dilapidated chairs and a small table stood alone.
The sun had set, and lights flickered around the town and ski hill. A tall evergreen next to the balcony blocked some of the view. I peered over the handrail at the ground, from left to right, even up at the snowy roof. No sign of Veena.
I felt even sicker. “What now?”
My watch vibrated with a call from Brown. “She’s at the halfpipe. Get up there.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“We called her. No teen girl goes anywhere without her cell phone.”
I closed my eyes, relief pulsing up from my feet to my head. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I had her cell already programmed in my phone. “Is she okay?”
“For now. Get going.”
“I’m on my way.”
I started out of the room, Kovitch following. I stopped him. “I got this.”
He raised a very skeptical eyebrow. “You think so?”
I retracted the baton with a snap. “Yeah, I do.”
“My team and I will follow.”
“Fine.”
I jogged downstairs and outside while zipping my coat and pulling on gloves. The night air brushed icy fingers across my cheeks, and wood smoke tickled my nose. A lighted path led from the school around a few homes and buildings to the bottom of the quiet ski hill. Feet slipping on the crispy snow, I hiked up toward the halfpipe under the ski lift, following the chairs suspended in the night air above me. Based on the maps I’d studied, it wasn’t far.
I’d seen halfpipes on the internet. In person, at night, it was a different experience.
A standard pipe, like this one, I’d read, was U-shaped, about sixty feet wide, one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet long, with walls sixteen feet high. Skiers and riders flew almost twice that high performing their tricks—and made it look easy in the videos. Standing on the hard-packed snow inside, with the vertical walls looming over my head, I had a new respect for what Veena and her friends did every day. And Olympic halfpipes, called superpipes, were even bigger than this.
“Veena?” I called. The wind whistling down the hill and past my ears was the only sound for a second. Was she still here?
“How did it go with Muth?”
The voice came from above. I jumped and reached for my stick again, but relief jellied my muscles as I recognized my principal’s voice. I flipped on the light of my flashlight baton. She sat at the top of the pipe wall in boots, snow pants, and a jacket, shielding her eyes.
“Sorry.” I turned the light off. “Can I come up?”
“Sure.” She sounded different, sad. Not the vivacious girl I’d been with all afternoon.
I touched the slick ice wall. “Um, how?”
“Walk back to the end of the wall and go up and around. There’s a path.”
I clicked on the flashlight again so I could see where I was going and let myself breathe a little easier. Veena was safe; I hadn’t lost her yet. I voice-texted Brown the good news as I picked my way up the berm that led to the top of the ice wall. Peering over the side made my heart skip a beat. She threw herself into the air over this wall every day?
Veena sat on the edge of the deck, legs dangling into the pipe. She didn’t look at me as I settled next to her. I wish I had on snow gear. I’d have a buttsicle in minutes out here.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Physically or mentally?”
“Start with physical.”
She nodded. “Fine.”
“Okay, then mentally?”
She shrugged.
“What happened, Veena? Why didn’t you meet me in your room?”
She stared across the pipe. I could barely make out the outline of trees against the sky on the other side. “Did you know some bristlecone pines have been here for a thousand years?”
I said I didn’t. I couldn’t really see the trees, but the ones I’d seen earlier didn’t look that old. And trees in general weren’t my jam.
“That’s because most of the pines around here are lodgepole. Bristlecones only grow in a few spots, and you have to hike to most of them. They look kind of . . . tortured. Like ghosts frozen in weird positions.”
Okay. What did this have to do with her mental state?
“They sound like the Joshua trees in Nevada.” Gram, Mom, and I took a driving trip through the Mojave Desert one time.
“You’re from Las Vegas, right? Or am I allowed to know?” She shot me a glance, and even in the low light, I could tell she’d been crying. Runny eye makeup. She couldn’t be this broken up because I said I couldn’t be her friend, could she? Did something happen while I was talking to Muth?
“That’s right.”
She looked up in the sky where stars pricked the blackness. “In India, where some of my family still lives, some buildings are older than bristlecones.”
“Have you been there?”
She nodded. “My parents took me a few times. Not recently, though. I’ve been training so much…” She trailed off. “Where’s your family from? Like, originally?”
I swiped at the hard deck of snow beside me. I shouldn’t tell her much