“Just that?” An Indy—back hand grabbing the toe edge of your board—is the first grab I learned. It’s probably the first grab everyone learns.

Dale smiles. “Style is everything.”

A skier spins his final hit, landing backward, an impressive feat in this visibility. Saskia looms out of the fog and speeds past, followed closely by a short guy in a green-and-gray camouflage jacket.

“Who’s that?” I say, because he’s pretty good, whoever he is.

“Julien Marre,” Dale says.

French number one. No wonder.

He and Saskia disappear into the fog. She and I haven’t spoken since the comp, but it’s impossible to avoid her completely in such a tiny resort. She’s been behind me in the lift queue a couple of times and I’ve braced for her to say something, but she hasn’t. Does she feel bad about what she did? She shows no sign of remorse.

Someone lands a flip on his outstretched hands and lets out a scream of pain.

“Fucking hell, they’re dropping like flies today,” Dale says, and runs up the pipe into the whiteout to warn the riders above.

Curtis sits nearby talking to a photographer. Poor woman hasn’t picked the best day for a photo shoot. She’s all swaddled up against the cold, only her eyes visible.

Dale returns, and I open my mouth to ask him about my Indies, but Heather approaches.

“Hi,” I say.

Heather gives me a dirty look. She may be a fellow Northerner but so far that’s the only thing we have in common. She doesn’t seem to like me. She turns to Dale. “Ready to go?”

“Two more runs?” Dale says.

“I’m freezing,” she says.

Hardly surprising in that cropped leather jacket. She’s come up to watch Dale, presumably. I’ve yet to see her with a snowboard on. I don’t know what she’s doing in a ski resort if she doesn’t want to ski or snowboard.

“See you later.” I pick up my board.

Brent’s sitting on the snowbank, chatting with the pretty Japanese girl who came third in the Le Rocher Open. I nod at them and strap my front foot in.

“Thanks for last night,” I told Brent when I woke in his bunk up on the glacier two days ago. “Can we keep this between you and me?”

“Sure.”

“Will Curtis—”

“I’ll tell him not to say anything.”

So we played it cool in front of Saskia at breakfast, and anyone watching us could never have guessed what we’d been doing just hours earlier.