At first the snow was too deep to slide over. Kids were sort of leaping out over the slope to try to get on top of the snow to build momentum, but they’d inevitably dig down into it. Everyone tramped up the side of the course, and some of the Astor kids yelled at Evan that he was too far in the middle and chopping up the snow bed. But eventually the course was flattened down enough, and four Astor kids sat on their trays at the top, scootched forward at the same time, and verged over the point of no return, two of them rotating so that they ended up sliding down the last half of the slope backward. The runs got faster and faster. Two guys showed up with a full three-person toboggan, and they ended up ten feet past the farthest mark, buried to their shoulders.

Hutch and Evan went down together, and then Ben dove with a tray under his chest, the first one to go headfirst. Halfway down, the front corner of the tray caught and lifted Ben off the course and he tried to tuck his body together so he would roll, but he landed hard on his back, the sky absolutely gray with so little depth that it could have been hanging a foot above his face. He stood up to a huge mocking cheer with an edge of sincerity, and he raised his arms above his head. When he got back up to the top he saw Ahmed letting someone else go ahead of him.

“How are you doing, Ahmed?”

“Good. I have on long underwear top and bottom.”

“You going to take a go?”

Out of the woods came a group of girls, the Paige girls, it looked like.

“Yes,” and Ahmed went to the edge of the slope like a harried shopper emerging from a department store. He sat down on Hutch’s flying saucer and paddled himself forward. He disappeared, and Ben ran up to the side of the pitch to see him, his earflap hat almost like antlers, his giant boots lifted, jacket gathered tight around his legs, going down so fast that it looked slow. He came to the bottom and lay back for several seconds as though beautifully dead.

The Paige girls hiked to the top of the slope, and Ben saw Alice’s light blue snowflake hat. She was wearing a long L.L.Bean insulated parka.

“Ladies,” said Hutch.