Free Redline by Alex Van Tol

Chapter One
    Time for a change.
    I spin my thumb around on my iPod, looking for a different playlist. I glance up at the road, then back down. The highway is quiet tonight. Must be because it’s a Monday. Everyone’s back in town. Back from a weekend in the mountains, getting those last few runs in before the hills close down for the spring.
    I used to like driving west, toward the mountains. Sometimes, if I was out late enough after work, I would see the aurora borealis. The northern lights. Usually they’re just a green fringe moving slowly across the sky. This one time they were a brilliant, crazy violet.
    No matter the color, they always take my breath away.
    But tonight, instead of heading west, I point my car south, toward McCandless Creek. The mountains hold too many painful memories.
    I drive through ranch country. Sometimes I take the hilly back roads through the huge, barn-studded acreages.
    Sometimes.
    Usually I just take it out the six-lane and punch it. It helps me outrun the pain.
    I reach for a cigarette, then pause. Maybe not. Maybe that’s one thing I should let go of. I punish my mind enough by reliving that awful day on Mount Watson. I don’t need to punish my body too.
    Without my permission, my mind drifts back. To a day that will forever be burned into my brain. Every detail of it.
    It was November, just before midterms. Adrienne and I had been about to wrap a primo day of boarding. The sun was out. Conditions had been perfect. We’d been chatted up by some sweet boys in the lift lineup and had plans to meet up with them later, back at the resort.
    It was almost four o’clock. Ade was tired. I could see that. I was too.
    We’d just come off what we had agreed would be our last run of the day. Swooping to a stop at the end of the lift line, I glanced at the clock over the lodge. Still enough time. If we went now, we could catch just one more run. I was feeling pretty flush, ready for another crack at the Terminator 2. A triple black diamond. I’d smoke it this time. I was sure of it.
    But Adrienne hadn’t wanted to. She was cold and hungry, and she wanted to go in.
    â€œJust one more, Ade,” I said, hoping the energy in my voice would somehow flow into her and make this possible. “Let’s run T2.”
    The look on her face told me she didn’t want to do it.
    â€œCome on,” I said as she started to shake her head. “You did it this morning. You killed it!”
    Adrienne snorted. “I so didn’t kill it, Jenessa. It almost killed me .”
    I shrugged. “You’ll ride it better this time. You’ve already done it. Your brain’s mapped it now.”
    Adrienne sighed. “I don’t know.” She squinted at the sun, low on the peaks. “Don’t they say that ski accidents increase by something like two hundred percent in the late afternoon? When people are tired?”
    I bent down to fiddle with my binding, pissed that she was holding out on me. “You go on in then,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you in a few.” I knew I was laying on the guilt.
    â€œYou can’t go up there alone, Ness,” she said. “What if you get hurt?”
    I stood up and leveled my gaze at her. “You forget, my friend,” I said. “ I don’t get hurt. Lesser boarders get hurt.” I tucked an escaped strand of hair back under my helmet. “I’m no lightweight,” I added. I couldn’t help myself.
    So she came.
    How could she not? I’d thrown down the gauntlet, daring her not to join me. I’d done it so many times before with Adrienne. And she always pulled it out for me. Taking that one step outside her comfort zone. To keep the peace.
    We caught the lift up, our chair bobbing on the wire, high over the quickly emptying hill. The patrols were getting ready to do their sweep runs. Ade was jittery. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I got your