Golden Girl by Mari Mancusi Read Free Book Online Page B

fetal position, staring at the wall. Pretty much the same position I’d been in since early that afternoon, after being dragged down the mountain by ski patrol. Which, I might add, pretty much ranked up there with the most embarrassing experiences of my life—with my entire advanced freestyle snowboarding class getting an up-close-and-personal look at my apocalyptic defeat on the Apocalypse.
    It was one thing to fall. That was humiliating enough. But then—when I realized I couldn’t get back up no matter how hard I tried? That was when I wanted to crawl behind a snowbank and never come out.
    Instead I lay there, sprawled out on the hill like the saddest of snow angels, with even the idea of standing up on my board making me sick to my stomach. My hands were shaking, and I could barely see through my tears. Coach Basil had to literally unstrap the board from my feet, just to get me to move. All while Olivia and the Boarder Barbies watched from their perches above.
    Pride comes before a fall, Olivia had told me that fateful day. She hadn’t been wrong.
    Seriously, what was I thinking—believing I could just pick up right where I left off before the accident, no big deal? It seemed crazy now that I thought back to it. The stupidest idea ever. But then I remembered their eyes, drilling into me. Olivia’s self-satisfied smirk. I’d wanted so badly to prove I still had it. That I was still Golden Girl. Still number one. And so I’d let common sense take a backseat to idiocy and managed to prove the exact opposite.
    At first I’d seriously thought the fall had triggered a heart attack. After all, I had all the textbook symptoms: shaking hands, shortness of breath, aching chest, numbness in my left arm. But when I asked the nurse in the first aid hut, she only shook her head. “There’s nothing physically wrong with you, dear,” she told me. “You just had a panic attack. Probably post-traumatic stress from your accident last year. You need to take it easy for a while. Take your time getting back up to speed. Maybe try the bunny slope?”
    A panic attack? I didn’t even know what that was. At least a heart attack was something real. A physical reason for me to have crashed and burned in front of my classmates. I could have redeemed myself from my hospital bed. Brave Lexi who tried to snowboard with a broken heart. That sounded almost noble.
    But no, according to some quick WebMD research, the cause of my epic fail was literally all in my head. And there was no quick fix for this kind of thing either.
    Feeling defeated, I’d trudged back to the dorm, where I lay in bed for the rest of the afternoon. Ignoring my father, who called three times and knocked on my door twice. The last thing I wanted to do was face him—Mr. Broken Collarbone at the Winter X Games. I bet he never let a little panic attack keep him from the sport he loved.
    â€œIt’s not my fault,” I moaned to my roommate. “You should have seen the way Olivia was looking at me. Like she was going to tell everyone in school how I’d lost it if I didn’t go and prove that I hadn’t.”
    â€œYeah, well, you sure showed her,” Caitlin snorted. I groaned.
    â€œThat’s it,” I declared. “I’m never, ever leaving my room again. Seriously. Not even to eat. They can drag out my corpse when it starts to out-stink Susan’s socks.”
    Caitlin rolled her eyes. “No way,” she protested. “You do that and you let Olivia win. So you fell. Big deal. We’ve all fallen. Olivia more than most, I might add. The best revenge is to get right back out there and show her you couldn’t care less. That it’ll take more than some silly tumble to bring Golden Girl down.”
    She sounded almost inspiring. But I knew she had an ulterior motive for the pep talk. Namely, to convince me to accompany her to the student ice cream social that evening.