Curtis pulls his helmet on. Of our little group, only he and Saskia wear them. I probably should, but they’re not cheap and I haven’t gotten around to buying one.

I hear Saskia quizzing Julien in French as they reach us. Odette walks behind them, looking pissed off.

“Who’s going to be the guinea pig?” Curtis says.

“Me!” I say immediately. I’m the weakest rider of the group and I need to show them I can keep up.

Straight-line, I tell myself. Because they’re all watching.

Down I speed, into the hollow, then up the takeoff and into the air. The jump throws me higher than I expected, but I hold my nerve and grab my heel edge, pushing out the tail of my board so I’m flying through the air with my board perpendicular to my direction of travel. Method grab. You know if you’ve got it right because you feel it. And I feel it.

Gravity tugs me downward. I release the grab. It’s a big drop and I’m going to feel the impact. My body weight slams down through my quads. I ride it out, glad of all those leg presses.

Cheers drift down from the top. As I unstrap, Curtis sails off, then Odette, with Methods that make me see how I could improve mine. I watch where they land: only a couple of feet farther than me, ha!

Saskia jumps next, then Julien and Brent, and I smile because they do Methods, too. Dale does one, holds it as he rotates 180 degrees, and releases his hand to grab Indy before he lands. I’m not surprised Oakley picked him up. He has style of his own.

“Pah! Double grabs,” Julien says to no one in particular. “I don’t like them.”

I walk back up alongside Odette. I was over at her place last night and we stayed up late watching French snowboard DVDs. Odette’s different when Saskia isn’t around—more relaxed, and I guess I am, too. She didn’t say where Saskia was and I didn’t ask, sensing they’d had some sort of falling-out. We discussed our goals for this winter: the comps we plan to enter, the tricks we hope to learn. If she were a Brit, there’s no way I would have shared that sort of stuff with her, but she’s so far ahead of me it didn’t seem to matter.

Julien and Saskia are right behind us. Saskia’s French must be better than Julien’s English, because they’re speaking French again. From the way he’s pointing at the jump, he’s giving her advice.

“Does he sound like an arsehole in French as well as in English?” I ask Odette quietly.

I expect her to laugh but she doesn’t even smile. “Yes.”