Snowboard Maverick by Matt Christopher Read Free Book Online

it felt to have snow underneath his
     board instead of wheels and pavement.
    Now it was time to climb up the nearest hill and actually make a run down the slope. Dennis trudged to the top and when he
     got there, looked down.
    It wasn’t all that much of a slope, really. It wasn’t that high up, either — just a little higher than Schoolhouse Hill. But
     suddenly Dennis felt that old terror creeping back up his chest to his throat. He gulped it back down again, trying to wipe
     the memories of his terrible skiing accident from his mind and concentrate on the task before him.
    He stood sideways to the hill, strapped himself in, and took his position. Panic rose inside him, and he nearly grabbed on
     to Tasha, who was standing next to him.
    “Relax, Dennis,” she said. “You already practiced biffing. No big deal if you do a face plant.”
    “That means fall on your face,” Robbie explained.
    “Oh,” Dennis said. “Thanks. Face plant. Good phrase to learn just before I do my first official run down the hill.”
    “Honestly,” Tasha said, “you’re going to be fine. Just go! Now! Go!”
    Dennis turned his board and set off down the hill. The sensation of the bottom rushing up at him made him freeze, just when
     he should have been relaxing into his first turn. He overshot the level area and went flying, landing in the snow headfirst
     before somersaulting onto his back.
    “Great. My first face plant,” he commented as Robbie ran over to lift him back up.
    “Never mind — try it again,” Robbie urged him. “And don’t be so tense! What are you worried about?”
    “Nothing,” Dennis lied.
    But Robbie had known him a long time. “If you’re thinking about the time you hurt yourself skiing,” he said, “just forget
     it. There are no trees or rocks here, no other people to bump into — it’s not even that high or steep!”
    Robbie just didn’t understand, Dennis realized. The fear wasn’t reasonable — it was just
there,
inside him, and it stubbornly refused to go away.
    “You bailed on that turn,” Tasha said as he got back up to the top of the rise, where she was waiting.“Follow through on it — don’t freeze up like that.”
    “I’ll try to remember that,” Dennis said. His second run was better. He got almost halfway down before losing his balance
     and wiping out.
    “You’re doing great!” Tasha shouted from up top. “Get back up and try again!”
    Dennis did — again and again and again. He fell ten or twenty times in a row. In spite of what he told Tasha and Robbie, he
     was starting to get discouraged. Maybe he just didn’t have what it took to be a snowboarder.
    Tasha must have sensed his feelings, because after a particularly bad wipeout, she came boarding down the hill, stopping next
     to him. “Don’t get down, Dennis,” she told him. “It’s like this for everybody. I’m not kidding. Nobody just gets on a snowboard
     and takes off. Nobody.”
    “Yeah, right,” Dennis said, looking away from her.
    “Hey, remember when you first started skateboarding?” she reminded him. “You kept on saying how you’d never get the hang of
     it!”
    “That’s true,” Dennis admitted. He smiled at the memory of it. “I guess you’re right.” And that waswhen he realized there was a good side to falling — in his total focus on how badly he was doing, he’d totally forgotten about
     his terror of going down the slopes!
    “I guess there’s a bright side to everything,” he said, getting up and dusting the snow off his jacket.
    “Huh?” Tasha said, not understanding.
    “Never mind,” Dennis said. “Come on, let’s get back up there.”
    On his next run, he concentrated hard on staying relaxed. He tried picturing the slope as a street and his snowboard as a
     skateboard. It seemed to help — he made it all the way to the bottom, with only a few awkward wobbles.
    “I did it! I did it!” he shouted back up to his friends. He saw them raise their arms skyward in