My legs are shaking twice as much as they normally would by the time I reach the midstation. I intended to ride the cable car straight down, but now that I’m here, that seems like the ultimate admission of defeat. What would I do down there anyway? Pace the floor in my tiny apartment? I’m so wound up. Maybe I can ride this feeling out.

Blindly, I head to the bubble lift. There’s no queue, and I dive straight into an empty cabin.

As the door starts to shut, Curtis throws himself in. He leans his board against mine, shrugs off his backpack, and sinks to the bench opposite. I press my hands to my lap, willing them to stop trembling. I don’t want him to see me like this.

“You okay?”

“Yep.” Glad of my mirror lenses, I turn to the window.

“She went too far.”

I turn back to him, stunned that he’s finally spoken out against her.

He stares down at his snowboard boots, jaw tightly set, body rigid. Pity briefly overrides my anger. How many situations has his sister dragged him into over the years? Was she like this at school? I can just imagine her: the Beautiful Bitch, queen of the sixth form. The girl that all the guys had the hots for, and all the other girls wanted to be friends with, because they were terrified of what she would do to them if they weren’t.

What can I do to get back at her, except outride her at the Brits? “So help me beat her,” I say.

Curtis lifts his gaze. “Why do you want this so much, Milla?”

Something—either the feeling of coming close to death or the relief of having survived—makes me open up. “You know the happiest day of my life?”

“The Brits last year?”

“No way. I fell on the last-but-one hit and embarrassed myself. And I didn’t win. No, my happiest day was school sports day when I was about twelve. I won the four-hundred-meter, eight-hundred-meter, and the final leg in the one-hundred-meter relay, one after the other. And I wasn’t even in the school running club. I just wanted to win more than any of the other girls.”

Curtis sighs. “Talk me through your pipe run.”

I scramble my thoughts. This is so not the best time but it might be the only chance I get. “Okay. So I drop in, Backside Air, Frontside Indy . . .” Hit by hit, I list each trick. It’s no secret; he sees me doing it every day.

“First thing you’ve got to fix is your boot grabbing.”

I hang my head. Boot grabbing, when you grab your boot instead of your snowboard, is not cool.

“You’re doing it when you grab your fives and sometimes your threes.”