Stepbrother Wow! (Bad Boy Frat #1) (3 page)

It didn’t look like the practice facility was
particularly cold—the practice ramps weren’t snow, they were composites, so I
wouldn’t need any winter-wear, just my gear and my board. I’d been to one or
two practice facilities when I was in high school, but I’d never been on a
team, so I couldn’t afford to go regularly. If I could get on a team, I knew
I’d get better at boarding by leaps and bounds, and I’d get a chance to show
off to boot. The first practice was supposed to be at the end of the week, and
I started making sure everything was in good shape immediately. If I needed a
repair or a replacement for anything—especially pads or my helmet—I wanted to
know about it immediately.

CHAPTER
3

I spent the next couple of days barely able to pay
attention in class, preoccupied with the chance I was getting to join the team.
In my head I was doing aerials, 360s and 180s,
ollies
, and ramp work that I knew I was good at.
Between all the sports I’d done in school and the dinky dance classes my mom
had made me take when I was a kid, I had good balance—and one of my instructors
on the board when I’d first gotten it had told me that I had what he called
“keen spatial awareness.” I had only started really learning tricks when I was
15, but after three years I knew I was pretty good at them. Maybe not the best,
but I was making progress.

I was almost jumping out of my skin by the time
practice day arrived. I grabbed my gear and loaded it up in one of the frat
brothers’ cars; he was at least as excited as I was, telling me about what he’d
heard of the competitions the team had gone to the year before. The parties
after the competitions were always wild, he said as we were driving to the
off-site practice. He was hopeful he’d get a spot on the team—he hadn’t made it
the year before, but he’d been close to it, and he’d taken as much opportunity
as he could to improve in-between, working out and doing as much board work as
he could.

The practice space was in what used to be a giant,
unused warehouse, and the sign outside proclaimed that it was for skateboarding
and BMX as well as for snowboarding. I went in with my gear and followed the
sound of shouts and cheers over to the snowboard area, feeling my heart pumping
faster and faster in my chest every moment. I had wondered who all would be
trying out at the practice; I had been pretty sure that I’d see Jaxon there,
since he was the one who’d invited me to come out—but for a moment, while I was
getting my pads on and watching, I didn’t notice him among the people waiting
to go up.

Instead, there was a girl on the track, dropping
down the first slope at high speed. She hit the ramp as fast as she could,
launching herself into the air and doing a quick 180 before darting down to
land smooth, her board not even wiggling as it made contact. She kept up her
momentum and tried a few other quick and easy tricks, and I was impressed; they
weren’t the most difficult ones to master, but she was really nailing them,
getting the form just perfect and keeping her speed, which were the most
important things. When I’d started learning tricks my instructor had warned me
against trying to be so flashy that I forgot form, or slowing myself up in the
name of getting in a twist to make a more complicated combination. “If you do either
of those things, you could really, really hurt yourself.” I’d bucked his advice
once and nearly broke my collarbone in the process—so I followed his advice
from then on and didn’t try to do any really complicated tricks on an actual
track until I’d mastered the form on them.

She finished and everyone else watching gave her a
cheer,
me
included. I knew I would have to wait my
turn but I was anxious—I wanted to get on the track as fast as I could, really
show my skills and get a feel for it. “Hey!
Jax
! Hit
it! Show the
newbs
what you can do!” I looked up and
saw Jaxon taking up his position at the top of the first slope. He shot a grin
at the guy who’d called him out and took a deep breath before he tipped his
board over the edge. I held my breath. Jaxon hit the slope full speed,
screaming down, his board rasping against the artificial material as he zoomed
past everyone watching. He hit the first ramp and went up, busting a
frontside
shifty with a one-two grab and landing smooth. My
eyes widened as I watched him going through the track, landing tricks I barely
even knew existed, keeping speed and momentum steady the whole time. I didn’t
know why I was so surprised that he was a good—really a great—boarder. I’d seen
Jaxon. He had the kind of build that all snowboarders tend to take on, a little
less built up on top with powerful legs, especially in the thighs. And he was
almost obnoxiously athletic—I’d seen him come in from long runs around the
track boasting about his times, and once or twice he’d been down at the gym
while I was there, working out hard. But I’d never really put it together in my
mind.

Jaxon went through and threw in a few more flashy
tricks, coasting to the end of the track and pumping his arms while everyone
cheered. He climbed back up to the area where a bunch of the people were
watching—dangling his legs over the side of one edge of the next track—and one
of the people next to me waiting for their turn said that it was the senior
members of the team, the people who had formed the original group.

As the people in front of me—a mix of established
team members and newbies looking for a spot—went through the track, I realized
that of all the people I’d seen, Jaxon was clearly the best. As the line in
front of me got shorter and shorter I started to get a mixture of nerves and
excitement, wanting to show off my skills but daunted by how good Jaxon had
been. How could anyone follow that? As I waited for the person directly in
front of me to take his turn on the run, I went through the list of tricks I
knew in my head. I hadn’t quite mastered some of the harder tricks for
halfpipe
and
quarterpipe
, but for
a straightforward run like this one, I should be able to pull off some of my
bigger, more complicated stunts. I took a deep breath, getting onto my board
and to the edge. “Go Mia!” one of the guys from the frat called out from the
sidelines. I grinned—it wasn’t Jaxon, but it was someone that I liked. I tilted
over the edge.

As I dropped down along the slope, I got a feel for
the surface. It wasn’t like snow—it was faster, slicker, grinding underneath my
board in a constant, droning rasp. I slowed down just a bit—I didn’t want to go
so fast that I wasn’t ready for the first aerial. I launched up off of the ramp
and went into a half-cab, barely landing it. The surface was faster than I’d
thought. I shook off the slightly rough landing and continued on, trying for
some easier tricks:
ollies
,
frontside
grabs, one or two 180s as I got closer to the end
of the track. I focused on making sure I stayed on my feet and finished strong;
the last aerial I got I managed a 270, landing it better than my half-cab.

Cheers echoed across the warehouse training area as
I hit the end of the track, breathing heavy but mostly satisfied with my
performance. “Good going, Mia!” someone called out. I grinned and got off of my
board, flipping it up into my arms before I went to the sidelines. I wasn’t
entirely happy with how I’d come off—I knew some much more complicated tricks,
but the track had been unfamiliar enough that I hadn’t wanted to risk trying
them and then face-planting when I came down; that would have been worse than
doing some fairly unimpressive beginner tricks.

“Hey,” one of the girls said when I joined the group
waiting and watching. “Not bad on that half-cab. The landing was a bit
squirrelly, but you haven’t practiced here before, right?” I shook my head. One
of the guys praised my clean
frontside
grabs, another
boarder commented on my straight 270. Jaxon didn’t say anything to me, but I
knew that of all of the newbies in the group looking for a place on the team, I
had done pretty close to the top. I wished that I’d been able to go through on
a run before the practice; I might have known a little bit better about how
speedy the track was, and I’d have been able to moderate my pace better. But I
had done well enough.

It was a really good sign that a lot of the people
praising how I’d done on the practice run were seniors on the team—people who
had competed previously. I felt like I was a shoe-in for the team, which was a
relief. If I’d managed to face-plant and screw up, I’d have hated
myself
for a week for either overestimating my skills or
trying too hard, whatever had led to me messing up. I was used to doing well at
just about every athletic pursuit I got interested in—
either
I
started out good at it, or I got good at it quickly, learning from the
best I knew at the sport. My mom teased me for being a showoff, but I’d learned
when I was younger that the best way to get the guys to respect you is to kick
their ass early on and establish that you were every bit as good as
them
, if not better.

The upperclassmen on the team, the people in charge,
gathered up in a group to discuss everyone who had tried out in the practice. I
stood with the others, fidgeting a little bit, mentally reviewing my
performance and trying to decide whether or not I was better than the others
waiting to join the team. There were some people—including the guy I’d ridden
to the practice track with—who had to be at least as good as me, but if the
rest of the team decided that someone had been better, I may not get a chance.

“Okay,” Jaxon said, stepping away from the group. “We’re going to send out
emails with information about the next practice, but most of you are on the
team. Unfortunately,” Jaxon paused, looking over the group I was standing
with
. “Katie, Alex, Pierson, and Clay—we don’t have enough
room for you this year. Come out again next year, okay?” The four nodded and I
let out a little sigh of relief at the fact that I wasn’t on the list of people
dropped.

The practice continued; one of the older girls on
the team led me over to a practice rail and showed me around the facility,
pointing out the balance board, the practice boxes—there was even a trampoline
area off to one side of the warehouse. For a while I worked the practice rail,
looking around whenever I dared to see what everyone else was doing. I spotted
Jaxon at one point in the trampoline area, practicing twists and spins as he
leaped up into the air; one of the girls who had complimented my tricks did run
after run on the practice track, going through the same routine over and over
until she was able to land all of her combinations without staggering.

I did one more run on the practice track, better
able to maintain the right speed now that I knew what the action on the
material was like. I pulled off the half-cab properly on the first jump, and
threw in a few
frontside
and backside grabs that I
had been too chicken to try for in my first run. By the time everyone decided practice
was over, my legs were like jelly underneath me and I was dripping with sweat.
“Like I said before,” Jaxon said, panting slightly from his workout, “you’ll
get an email about the next session—we hit it here at least once a week while
it’s still off-season and then three times a week when it gets closer to
competition season. Otherwise you should work out as best as you can in the gym
to improve your strength and maneuverability. We really want to win some big
events this year, guys.” He dismissed us and I started stripping off my gear,
ready to get back to the dorms and catch a shower before dinner. There was
something going on at the frat house, I was sure—at least there might be a game
on. I could bring my homework with me and hang out with some of the guys.

“Hey, Mia—wait up,” Jaxon’s voice came from behind
and I turned to see him walking towards me, still flushed and slightly sweaty
but with his gear off. His shirt was plastered to his chest, giving me the
chance to make out the outlines of his muscles. I tore my gaze back up to his
face to pay attention.

“What’s up,
Jax
?” I asked
with a smile. I was terrified that he would say that I was off the team—that
they had too many girls, or that the team itself had decided I just wasn’t
quite good enough.

“Got a ride back to campus?” he asked. I shrugged,
looking over at the brother who had driven me to the practice in the first
place.

“If you’re offering?
”.

Jaxon laughed “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t offering.”

“I’ll catch a ride back with Jaxon,” I called out to
Ben. He shrugged and headed for the exit.

Jaxon walked out to his car with me, glancing down
to see me hobbling slightly. My legs were not quite up to the demands of a lot
of practice just yet—but I was going to make sure that they got up to it as
soon as humanly possible. “
Gonna
have to toughen up,”
he said with a little grin.

“Yeah, well, I’m out of practice, but I still
shredded.” Jaxon laughed out loud.

“Nearly face-planted after that first half-cab,” he
pointed out.

“I didn’t know the action on that track. Maybe I
should’ve gone safe—but would you have noticed me if I had?” Jaxon’s bright
eyes were sparkling as he grinned slowly.

“I already noticed you, stupid,” he said, reaching
out and tousling my hair. I couldn’t help feeling just a little tingle work its
way down my spine at it, but I told myself it was nothing.