You don’t own friends. That’s what Mum always told me when I was little. But Mum’s wrong. There’s always a hierarchy of loyalties. I thought Odette was my friend just as much as Saskia’s, yet all along she belonged to Saskia alone.

Now that I know, I wonder how I didn’t realize earlier. The signs were all there. The secret little smiles they send each other; the way they always sit together. I knew Saskia spent a lot of time at Odette’s place but I thought it was to avoid the rest of us.

Why do they hide it? Because they’re both in the public eye? Or they don’t want their families to know?

All our conversations about grabs and flips. I was flattered by Odette’s interest, but she was probably feeding it straight to her girlfriend. I feel betrayed.

Odette flashes me an apologetic smile but I don’t smile back.

The cable car swings into the midstation.

When I get out, Saskia is waiting for me on the platform. She leans in close and whispers in my ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll get him back.”

Brent, Curtis, and I ride the bubble lift up to the glacier, leaving Saskia and Odette behind, and I force my thoughts to snowboarding. The conversation with Curtis earlier, whether deliberate on his part or not, reminded me what got me into half-pipe riding. That feeling of sticking to the wall and defying gravity. I could never get enough of it and I still haven’t. I can’t let Saskia scare me off.

That’s why I have to keep fighting. And to have a chance of making the top three, I need to fight with everything I’ve got.

Curtis’s advice about falling plays through my mind as we build a jump, because this is the perfect time to try it out. To deliberately fall goes against anything I’ve ever done, but Curtis is right. My fear is holding me back.

I ride down and fly Superman-style through the air, landing splat on my front. The air wheezes out of me, but it’s not as bad as I expected. The powder is so soft and pillowy it’s like sinking into a frozen cushion.

Brent is at my side in an instant. “Are you all right?”

I laugh weakly and pull my snow-covered goggles off my face. “Yeah.”

From way up the slope, Curtis gives me a nod of approval. It’s snowing again, fat wet flakes that settle on my cheeks like kisses. I haul myself upright and head back to the top.

And make myself fall again. And again.

Poor Brent doesn’t know what’s going on.

“I only said to try it once,” Curtis says quietly the fourth time I do it.

“I’m still scared,” I tell him. “And I’m going to keep falling until I’m not scared anymore.”

CHAPTER 39