Now the real runs began. Sally fell right near the top, but this was not fatal on the half-pipe. Since each run consisted of several airs, it was possible to regain enough speed and momentum to score a few points farther down.
Perkins fell, too. Twice. After his run, he sat on the bench near the half-pipe, head in his hands. Matt tried to catch his eye to give him a thumbs-up. Before he could, Riley sat down next to the bigger boy, threw an arm around his hunched shoulders, and started whispering in his ear. Perkins listened for a minute, then sat bolt upright and stared at Riley with what looked like disbelief. Riley shrugged, got up, and left, a nasty smile playing about his lips.
Moments later, Perkins undid his bindings and waved his arms, indicating that he was through. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Riley had said something that had convinced Perkins to bow out.
Matt felt sad for him. Winning wasn’t everything, he knew. Just finishing the competition was worth something, too. It showed you cared, and that you tried, and that you didn’t give up. It took courage. And Perkins had been dis-couraged.
Matt started his first run. Ollie here, mute there, stale, method, stale, and a final 180 — and he was done. A clean first run. Enough to put more pressure on Riley. From his spot among the crowd at the bottom, he watched as Riley started down the half-pipe.
From the start, Riley was brilliant. His tricks were more distinctive, his airs higher and longer, and his speed greater than Matt’s. But Matt had felt the slipperiness of the slope, and he knew Riley was playing a dangerous game. Sure enough, near the bottom, Riley wiped out, slipping out from under on a landing. He slid to the bottom and pounded on the hard snow with his fists in frustration.
Matt could sense final victory almost within his grasp. If he made a clean run on his second attempt, there was no way Riley could catch him.
Riley was approaching him now. The two of them were a little apart from the crowd and just out of earshot. “I guess you think you’re the big cheese,” Riley said in a low growl.
“Not really,” Matt said.
“You’ve been lucky so far,” Riley said. “But it can’t last. You’re not that good, Harper.”
“We’ll see,” Matt said, willing himself to stay calm in the hopes that Riley would give up.
But Riley didn’t. “Where’s your mother?” Riley taunted. “She couldn’t come to see you today? They wouldn’t let her out on a weekend pass?”
“You don’t know anything about my mother!” Matt snapped.
“Oh, yeah? She dumped you here, didn’t she? Doesn’t that say enough about her? About you?”
“Take that back,” Matt said between clenched teeth.
“Make me,” Riley said, taking a step closer.
Matt raised his fist, then slowly lowered it. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “Say what you want now. We’ll see what you say later.”
He was angry now, and no matter how much he tried not to think of Riley as he prepared his run, he couldn’t help it.
Riley went first this time, and Matt had to admit it was a beautiful run. Perfect. In fact, it was so good that it might put him at the top if Matt didn’t do his very best.
Now he had to wait while Sally did her second run. Time to stew over Riley’s comments. Time to get more and more upset.
Wait a minute! he told himself. Stop it! Cut it out, now!
He tried to make his heart stop beating so fast.
Me and the mountain . . . me and the mountain . . . It wasn’t working.
And then he spotted Sally. She was at the bottom of the slope, and she had her hands together, as if in prayer.
He had to do it, for her. For her and Spengler and Perkins and all the other kids Riley Hammett had made miserable all this time. Not for him — for them. He would do it for them, because he was . . . Snow-board Champ!
Snowboard Champ takes off down the half-pipe. He swerves into his first air, twirling a swift 180. Down into the pipe, then up for a full 360! Down and up, down and up — he anticipates the slip on the landings, always ready. There! One more, and one last 360, and . . . out!
The cheers were deafening. Matt knew as soon as he pulled to a stop that he’d won the contest. Uncle Clayton came plowing through the snow and gave him a bear hug. There was Spengler, raising his cast to slap him five with it. And here was Melissa, waiting to congratulate him.
Where was Sally, he wondered? Well, he would find her later and give her a gigantic high-five. Heck, maybe he’d even buy her an ice cream soda to celebrate. This was a victory for them both — and, if Matt had his way, it would soon be a victory for all the other kids Riley and his cronies had made fun of over the years.
Epilogue
Matt had lots of friends after that. Everyone wanted to be around him. In fact, it got to be a problem sometimes, like when he wanted to get some schoolwork done. He and Sally went snowboarding all the rest of that winter, and when his cast came off, Spengler joined them. It turned out that he was as good as either of them, although you wouldn’t have known it to look at him.
Uncle Clayton got a big promotion at the firm. Then one day, he announced to Matt that he’d quit in order to start his own firm. “I’ve gotta be my own boss,” Clay said. “It’s just the way I’m built.”
Matt’s mom wrote him lots of letters, and he enjoyed bragging to the other kids about her work overseas. He hoped that when she came back, she’d come here and the three of them — she, Matt, and Uncle Clayton — could live together in Dragon Valley.
Melissa and Matt became friends again, but things were never quite right between them after what had happened. And as for Riley Hammett — well, four weeks after the contest, someone (Matt was sure it was Courtney) came forward to accuse him of setting off the fire alarm that day in January. Soon after, Matt heard that Riley’s parents had found a half-used can of spray paint stuffed in the back of their son’s closet. Three weeks later, they pulled him out of school and sent him to a boarding school in Utah.
Spring came, and with it the end of snowboarding season. But Matt would never forget that winter — the time when he went from being a scared kid with no real home to being a real hero, the one and only SNOWBOARD CHAMP.
MATT CHRISTOPHER
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