Snowboard Maverick (6 page)

“He can’t help it,” Robbie commented. “He was born that way.”

“Shut up, you little metal-mouthed chipmunk!” Rick shot back, and a fight might have started if Dennis hadn’t stopped it right
there.

“Everybody calm down,” he said, motioning to Robbie and Rick. “Just quit it, right now.”

Robbie may have been short, but he looked ready to fight with Rick and Pat, even if it was two against one, and both of them
were bigger. But Dennis, who always preferred to talk rather than fight, didn’t want anybody to get hurt — especially since
it would probably be Robbie.

“See ya, squirt,” Rick said to Robbie. “Come on, Pat, let’s get out of here. Hey, O’Malley, better go back to your easy-riding
skateboard before you hurt yourself.”

Dennis felt his face go red. He only hoped Rick and Pat thought it was from the snow and cold. The two of them walked off,
carrying their snowboards and laughing.

Robbie glared after them, then turned to Dennis. “You should have let me beat the stuffing out of them,” he said.

“Robbie,” Dennis said, shaking his head, “what would that accomplish? They’d still be just as jerky.”

Dennis was mad, too. But more than that, he was discouraged. He felt like throwing his board away and quitting, right then
and there.

“Come on,” Robbie said, tugging at Dennis’s arm.

“Come on where?”

“To the top of that hill over there, where Tasha is.”

“That hill? That’s the highest one here!”

“That’s right. And you’re going down it, with no biffing. Right now!”

“Robbie —”

“Just do it, Dennis. It’s important to finish your first day on a high note.”

“But your mom’s coming — see, there’s the van, coming down the road!”

“She’ll wait five minutes. Come on!” Robbie practically dragged him up the high hill, where Tasha was waiting for them.

“What happened?” she wanted to know.

“Rick and Pat were being their usual selves,” Robbie said. “Dennis stopped me from beating them up.

“Good thing, too,” Tasha said. “You ought to quit
picking fights with people, Robbie. At least until you have your growth spurt.”

She took off down the hill, and Robbie followed her. Then it was Dennis’s turn. Fighting off the urge to unstrap himself and
walk back down, he turned his board to the fall line and felt it begin to slide.

He coasted downward, carving out the turns carefully, not taking any chances, going slowly, slowly down the big hill. He made
it without even the slightest wobble!

Dennis felt a surge of triumph shoot through him. Only five minutes ago, he’d been on the verge of quitting for good. Now
he didn’t want to stop!

He looked around for Tasha and Robbie. Now that he was over his fears, he wanted to thank them again for pushing him to learn
to snowboard. There they were, over by the road, loading their boards into Mrs. Mclntrye’s minivan.

Suddenly a snowboarder raced gracefully down the hill toward him, calling his name. As the boarder approached, Dennis recognized
him. It was Dale Morgan, the best athlete in Moorsville. Dale was fifteen, and he could snowboard like a pro. He got to
the bottom of the hill and did a tight circle around Dennis before coming to a halt.

“Hi, Dale!” Dennis said, smiling. As good an athlete as he was, Dale Morgan never got a swelled head about it. He never made
fun of anybody else, no matter how bad an athlete they were. He was a truly nice kid.

“Hi, Dennis. This your first time out?”

“You figured that out, huh? I must have looked pretty bad.”

“Not at all,” Dale assured him, sounding sincere. “The couple times I saw you, you were doing okay. I heard Hogan and Kunkel
making fun of you, though.”

“You heard that, huh?” Dennis asked miserably.

“Yeah. Don’t worry — they’re just being jerks, as usual. You were doing great on that run until they distracted you. Then
they go and make fun of you, on top of it.” He shook his head disapprovingly.

“Don’t get discouraged, Dennis,” he said, before taking off for another run. “You’re going to be fine. Better than Rick and
Pat, for sure!”

“Thanks, Dale!” Dennis shouted after him. Wow. If Dale Morgan thought he was okay, then it really
must be true! Dennis decided he was going to keep at this sport until he got really good at it. No way was he going to give
up now.

I just need more time to practice, he told himself. After all, I didn’t learn to skateboard in a day, either.

The car horn brought him back to reality, and he trudged over to the van, smiling all the way.

T
he next day, Saturday, Dennis, Tasha, and Robbie were back out at the Breakers again — except that this time, Dennis’s parents
did the chauffeuring. After that, the three sets of parents agreed to share the driving over the holiday week. It was clear
to all of them that their children would be out snowboarding every single day.

By the end of the second day, Dennis had gotten to the point where he could do more than just keep his balance. He could actually
control the board a little, to make himself go faster or slower. His turns became more graceful, and he fell only occasionally.

By the middle of Christmas week, it was hard for Dennis to remember that he’d once felt afraid to go down these slopes. He
was having so much fun and getting better so quickly that it didn’t even matter
when Rick and Pat would speed by him, uttering some stupid comment or other.

At the end of Thursday’s session, Dennis turned to Tasha and said, “Let’s go to Schoolhouse Hill tomorrow.”

“Okay, but why, Dennis?” she wanted to know. “There are fewer people here, and the hills are higher, too. I like it better
here.”

“Yeah,” Dennis agreed, “but our parents have been driving us out here every day, and I think we ought to give them a break.
Besides,” he added, grinning, “I want the other kids to see me on Gizmo. I’m ready for them now.”

“So that’s it!” Tasha said, returning his smile. “Well, okay. Let’s do it.”

“And there are picnic tables and rails there!” Robbie chimed in. “We can teach Dennis to do some jibbing!”

“Jibbing?” Dennis repeated, confused.

“You know, doing stunts on stuff besides snow.”

“Way cool!” Dennis said excitedly. “All right!”

It would have been Dennis’s parents turn to drive the following day — New Year’s Day — and they were kind of surprised when
Dennis told them the
night before that they wouldn’t have to bother, since he and Tasha and Robbie were going over to Schoolhouse Hill.

“Oh. Okay. You’re sure, Dennis?” his mom asked. She and his dad were staying home on New Year’s Eve because of baby Elizabeth.
They didn’t think Dennis was old enough to be left alone with so young a baby. “I mean, it’s fine with me,” his mother went
on. “I’d rather have you kids nearby where we can keep an eye on you.”

“Mom!” Dennis moaned. She always treated him like such a baby!

All week, he’d insisted that his parents not stay at the Breakers and watch him. He knew they’d just get upset every time
he fell and probably make him come home if he went too fast. He didn’t want them watching him until he was really good at
snow-boarding. There’d be plenty of time to show off then.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, and went over to goo-goo baby Elizabeth, who was sitting up in her playpen. “I trust your judgment,
Dennis — you know I do.”

“Me, too,” his dad said. “Hey, it’s okay with me not
to have to drive him back and forth. The Bowl games are on TV tomorrow!”

“When is football season over?” his mom asked with a sigh.

“Just in time for hockey and basketball,” his dad answered with a good-natured laugh.

Dennis sympathized with his mom. He wished his dad would take up skiing again, instead of just watching sports on TV. Before
Dennis’s skiing accident, his dad had gone just about every weekend. After that, though, the joy of it seemed to go out of
it for Mr. O’Malley.

Maybe he wanted to go skiing with
me,
Dennis realized. Now he felt guilty for letting his dad down. Oh, well, soon he’d be able to teach his dad to snowboard!
And his mom, too — why not?

Schoolhouse Hill was pretty empty when they got there on New Year’s morning. Dennis figured a lot of kids had stayed up late
to watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV.

“They’ll probably start showing up soon,” Robbie said with a shrug. And sure enough, they did. By two o’clock, the hill was
full of snowboarders.

Dennis fit right in among them. No one made fun of him — why would they? In fact, one or two kids, realizing they hadn’t seen
him boarding before, asked him if he’d been doing it for long. When he told them he’d only done it a couple of times before,
they seemed impressed.

Dennis knew he’d actually been boarding more than a couple of times — this was his eighth time, if you wanted to get technical
— but “a couple” sounded good, and it wasn’t exactly lying.

By three o’clock, Dennis and his two pals were a little bored with Schoolhouse Hill. Having been out on the Breakers, it seemed
too tame and crowded for them.

Then Robbie perked up. “Hey, Tasha — how ‘bout we teach Dennis how to do jibbing stunts? Remember we talked about it?”

“Yeah!” she said, clapping her gloves together. “C’mon, Dennis — let’s go over to the picnic area!”

Overlooking the school yard on the side farthest from the street was a wooded area with picnic tables. You had to climb up
a set of concrete steps with handrails to get there.

“You can teach him to go off tables,” Robbie
told Tasha. “I get to show him how to do rails!”

“I already know how to do rails,” Dennis said. “On a skateboard, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Robbie said. “I forgot. But this is different. You’ll see. Here, I’ll show you how.” He ran over to the set of
steps that led down from the picnic area, then strapped on his board as he stood at the top of the handrail.

“Watch this, you guys!” he called.

Before either of them could stop him, Robbie vaulted himself up and slid on his board fearlessly down the rail, landing in
the snow and riding down the slope to the bottom — where he fell into the snow headfirst. Tasha and Dennis held their breath,
then cracked up when Robbie came up for air, yelling with triumph.

Then it was Dennis’s turn. His stomach was in knots, and he almost changed his mind. Then he tried to hypnotize himself into
believing he was skateboarding. He approached the rail, sliding down it just the way he slid down the banister at home. Then,
imagining it was his trusty skateboard below him, he leapt off at the last minute, staying on his board for a long, slow gliding
stop.

“Yahoo!” he shouted. He couldn’t remember ever having a better time in his entire life!

“You did great!” Tasha said admiringly when she got down the rail herself and caught up to him. “I thought you’d get spooked.”

“I almost did,” Dennis admitted. “You know, snowboarding can be kind of scary — sliding down hills and all. It’s not like
with a skateboard, where you can just jump off.”

“I know what you mean,” Tasha said, nodding. Then she grinned. “So, you want to see something
really
scary?”

Tasha went to the highest spot in the picnic area and shoved off, pushing against a tree. Heading right for a table, she grabbed
her snowboard and sprung into an aerial. She slid smoothly along one of the benches and then sprang off it, executing a clean
landing and coming to a stop at the bottom edge of the clearing.

“Wow!” Dennis gasped. “That was awesome!”

“Try it,” Tasha told him. “But be careful.”

“Dale can do it on top of the table!” Robbie said, trying to show how easy it ought to be to do it on the bench.

But it hadn’t looked easy. A miss could send you sprawling, hitting the table hard.

Dennis suddenly remembered his mother’s warning against trying anything risky. He’d promised his mom not to attempt anything
dangerous. And Tasha had been boarding a lot longer than he had. But Dennis was the best skateboarder in Moorsville. That
ought to count for something, he thought. “Okay, I’ll try it,” he said.

Robbie smiled, showing off his braces.

He tried to do what Tasha had done, but twice, he broke off at the last minute, coming to a quick stop or veering off to the
side. “I’m just getting the feel for it,” he explained to his friends, hoping he didn’t sound too lame.

On his third try, he went for it — even though he had to steady himself by putting a hand on the tabletop as he went. But
as he landed, his board went out from under him. He slid, spinning around and around, and nearly hit a big tree before he
finally stopped.

“I’m okay!” he insisted as Tasha and Robbie ran to his aid. “I don’t know what happened — I’ve done things like this on a
skateboard… .”

“It’s really different on a snowboard, I guess,” Tasha said. “Don’t worry, Dennis, you’ll get the hang of it.”

“It’s going to take a lot more practice than I thought to get good at this,” Dennis said. “I think I’m going to have to work
up to it before I try the tables again.”

He had been terrified trying the table stunt. And yet minutes before, he had felt on top of the world after riding the rail.
Snowboarding is a lot like riding a roller coaster, Dennis said to himself. One minute you’re up; the next minute you’re down.

He wondered what would be around the next bend.

H
e found out the next moment.

“Hey, Dennis, how about a race?” Tasha suddenly challenged him.

“Huh? I can’t race you — you’re the fastest kid around!” he replied.

“Not really. Rick and Pat and a whole lot of other kids are much faster than me.”

“Well, you’re sure faster than I am!” Dennis said.

“So far,” she agreed. “But you’re getting better really quickly. I’ll bet you could give me a good race. Wanna find out?”

“Sure, I guess so,” Dennis said.

“What’s going on?” Robbie asked, sliding up to them and skidding to a halt.

“Dennis is going to race me down the hill!” Tasha told him.