Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin Read Free Book Online Page B

sticker.”
    “Exactly.” She grabs my arm and tries to drag me off the bench.
    I hold firm with my other hand. “Get off me, you psycho.”
    Ramie lets go and stamps her foot on the wooden floor. “I can’t believe you want to just sit here and wait for—”
    I leap up and slap my hand over Ramie’s big fat mouth. “Ramie, we promised ‘Melissa’ we’d be waiting in the cocoa shack when she got here. Remember?”
    She tears my hand from her face and squeezes it hard. “I’m sure ‘Melissa’ will understand if we take one eensy weensy run on the Bump. After all, we must look like a couple of idiots sitting here waiting for ‘Melissa’ when we could be skiing.” She flicks her eyes to Norm.
    Norm is staring at us, mouth opened, but only vaguely intrigued.
    As much as I hate to admit it, Ramie’s right. Norm must know Tommy. It’ll be suspicious indeed if we sit around in the cocoa shack until Tommy arrives.
    “Fine,” I say. “One time.”
    Ramie bounces in glee, then goes to Norm and rents me a pair of skis.
    Let the record show that it was under the influence of too much cocoa that I made what will undoubtedly stand as one of my top five worst decisions.
    The rope tow is out of the question. I am simply not grabbing on to that high-speed rope-burn machine to get dragged uphill at a million miles an hour with a pair of chopsticks bolted to my feet. But so zealous is Ramie to make a skier out of me that she risks her own cred to teach me how to use the much kinder J-bar—basically a hunk of metal shaped, as the name would suggest, into a J and hanging from a very slow-moving rope tow. We have the J-bar to ourselves because, as Ramie explains, “only bed-wetting babies have ever been seen on the J-bar.”
    Now, the secret to successful J-bar mastery amounts apparently to one golden rule: Don’t Sit Down.
    “Whatever you do,” Ramie says, “just lean against the bar like this.”
    Ramie demonstrates by positioning herself between two slow-moving and widely spaced J’s, then lets one tap her just above the tailbone. She then holds on to the upright part of the J and lets it carry her slowly up the hill. After a few seconds, she skis away from it and back toward me.
    “Easy as pie,” she says. “Your turn.”
    I wait for a J to pass, then slap my big dumb skis into position.
    “Keep them straight,” she says.
    I straighten my skis into a perfect parallel, then look over my shoulder until I feel the J-bar tap me just above the tailbone. Grabbing the upright bar with my right hand, I cling to the horizontal bar with my left.
    “Keep your skis straight!” Ramie shouts.
    I straighten them out and slowly, very slowly, the J-bar carries me up the hill. To my right, rope-tow jockeys point and snicker at me. Like it’s some big accomplishment to hold on to a piece of rope.
    “I’ll meet you up there!” Ramie shouts.
    I don’t turn around or acknowledge her because I’m focused on leaning, not sitting, while keeping my skis perfectly, mathematically parallel. Plus I’m gripping both bars of the J as if my life depended on it. Eventually, Ramie passes me on the rope tow and blows me a kiss.
    That’s when tragedy strikes.
    I raise my left hand from the horizontal bar to wave at her when, lo and behold, the bar slips past my tailbone. Gripping it firmly, I try to adjust it back into position but it keeps sliding down the backs of my thighs. Before I know it, I’m toppling backward over the J-bar. My head and shoulders land in the snow. The horizontal bar snags behind my knees, and in the struggle to slide my legs off, my skis crisscross and somehow get stuck together.
    Slowly, very slowly, the J-bar hauls me up the hill like a side of beef.
    I struggle to jerk my legs off the bar but can generate no traction against the slick snow sliding beneath my back and head. Dropping my ski poles, I grab the bar and try to push it forward beyond my knees, but the moving surface beneath me and the natural