A Chilling Thrill

得知我要參加學校組織的冰雪游，媽媽很高興，她忙前忙后地幫我找滑雪服，但是我卻提不起精神：我不會滑雪，而且我也不認識什么同學……

My new school’s ski trip seemed like a good idea to my mom, who was holding up the slick new ski jacket she’d just bought for me. Mom must have imagined me-her seventh-grade daughter, Carly—and my new rosy—cheeked friends sipping hot chocolate beside a roaring fire. Maybe she thought I’d spend the weekend dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, bells jingling.

After all, she knew I couldn’t ski.

"So? You’ll learn," she said, conveniently forgetting that I was nearly ten before I could manage a two-wheeler.

"But I don’t really know anybody...," I said, afraid to admit the whole truth. I’d been in school for months and still had no friends.

"And what better way to get acquainted?" she said.

Obviously I had no clue.

After hours on the bus with rival boom boxes blaring the entire length of the New York State Thruway, we finally arrived at the slopes. The wind chill made the temperature feel like ten below, so I distributed the tubes of lip balm my thoughtful mother had sent to prevent chapping.

After my classmates smeared on smudge-proof all-day protection, I snapped photos, the proof Mom wanted that I was having fun. My best shot was of some guys on the football team. Their lips had turned hot pink.

My ski lesson went well. I learned how to break skis. Bindings snapped off under my uncoordinated legs.

"It’s OK," the instructor said. "That’s supposed to happen. Sometimes it keeps you from getting hurt."

"Sometimes?"

He pointed to the plaster cast on his ankle. "Avoid the moguls," he said.

"Real estate moguls? Developers who turn mountains into ski resorts?"

"Nah," he said. "Moguls are mounds of snow. Bumps on the slope."

He repaired my skis and sent me toward a rope that was mysteriously moving up the mountain.

"Stick with the bunny slope," he said.

"Is the bunny named Godzilla?"

My pink-lipped classmates, who were either seasoned skiers or fearless fools, had deserted me and raced for the lift lines to Mounts Denali, Rushmore, and Vesuvius. I shuffled to Godzilla’s leash, tucked in my lucky scarf, and grabbed on.

The icy rope slid through my mittens. My frostbitten fingers gripped tighter and harder but to no avail. Fidgety four-year-olds stiffened up behind me. As I turned to apologize, a knot reached my hands and dragged me up the hill with the force of a tidal wave.

It was only fitting that Beach Boys music started blasting out of the speakers in the lodge: "Surfin’ USA". Little kids in goofy hats surfed by me on snowboards. Slush swooshed into my face. My nose dripped into my lip balm.

Higher and higher I went up Mount Bunny until I reached the peak from which, theoretically, I would ski down.

I wiped my nose and surveyed the situation. I considered riding the rope back down, but the snickers from the snowboarders would be too humiliating. Peer pressure is a terrible thing, especially from kids half your age.

I reviewed what I’d learned. The instructor had said to point your ski tips together to stop. He called it "snowplowing." Where I’m from, we use a pickup truck with a giant blade in the front.

He kept saying to "slalom" down the mountain, a term I later realized means to zigzag. Frankly, I thought he’d said "salami." I figured they had a gourmet deli on the hill. All these people would need to eat.

With this wealth of knowledge, I slid off. I followed the tracks of the child who’d gone before me. Since her ski tips eventually plowed together, I stopped. No problem. Turning, however, took some maneuvering. I couldn’t seem to do it.

Finally I squatted, figuring that the closer I was to the snow, the easier it would be to fall. Skis together, aimed directly at the ski-lodge door, I zipped down the hill.

The cold air suddenly turned fresh and exciting. I felt like an Olympic champion. At long last, the thrill of skiing! That my eyes were frozen shut only added zest.

I snowplowed to a stop and entered the lodge. My cheeks tingled from the warmth of the crowded room, and the biggest, most ridiculous smile took over my face.

"I’m still here," I said, practically bragging to the crowd. They didn’t erupt with applause, but they didn’t pelt me with snowballs either. Actually, nothing had changed. Just my attitude.

Without thinking twice, I went up to Marie, a girl from my math class. "Hi, I’m Carly," I said. "Fracture anything yet?"

We’d been studying fractions all week, but she missed the common denominator of my joke.

Her face reddened. "They had to stop the ski lift so I could get on," she said. "I wanted to die."

"Aw, that’s nothing," said a kid named Joey as he leaned in. He took off his cool sunglasses. "I had to change my name and put on a disguise after the Ski Patrol chased me for going too fast."

"Look what happened to me!" said a guy behind them. He wore a bike helmet, and the exposed hair that peeked out around his face was frozen into stiff, curly ringlets. Matt Hall. We rode the same bus every day but hadn’t said so much as "Hi" before.

"I did a belly flop to avoid the tree that jumped into my way," Marie and I laughed. And to my surprise, I discovered that my mother was right. I’d forgotten that I was a social misfit. What better way to get acquainted?

Matt, Joey, Marie, and I hit the slopes again.

The ski slopes? No way! Instead, we went dashing through the snow. No horse, no sleigh. We were the kids tobogganing near the lodge on the backs of our ski jackets.