Ski School Quotes

Just clip the red one," Cyrus told her. "They're all red," Erica informed him. "They are?" Cyrus asked. "Curse those Soviets! Everything always has to be red with them.

my dormitory had been waiting to have its septic system replaced since before the Berlin Wall fell.

I’m

I Won’t Fly Today Too much to do, despite the snow, which made all local schools close their doors. What a winter! Usually, I love watching the white stuff fall. But after a month with only short respites, I keep hoping for a critical blue sky. Instead, amazing waves of silvery clouds sweep over the crest of the Sierra, open their obese bellies, and release foot upon foot of crisp new powder. The ski resorts would be happy, except the roads are so hard to travel that people are staying home. So it kind of boggles the mind that three guys are laying carpet in the living room. Just goes to show the power of money. In less than an hour, the stain Conner left on the hardwood will be a ghost.

My stomach was well past doing backflips. Now it did a triple axel roundoff with a twist.

Acknowledgements! My thanks to Hollywood When you showed me John Rambo Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic And giving them “a war they won’t believe” I knew then my calling, the job for me Thanks also to the recruitment adverts For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis And for sending sergeants to our school To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay The camaraderie I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage One year basking in the Garden of Eden (I haven’t quite left yet) Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad Fuck it, Thanks to every parent Flushing with pride for their brave young lads Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks Waiting at the airport Waving their flags

How could it be winter without snow?I appreciated every season, but winter was my favorite.I loved when it was time to pull out my thick sweaters.I loved the smell of a wood fire.I loved skiing and snow boarding and sledding, when i could find the time-although time was in a short supply when school was in session.I even enjoyed the cold, wintry weather, it was great for snuggling.

There was little room left on the bank alongside the stream, occasionally forcing us onto rocks that poked through the water. My heels were starting to blister in my ski boots. And to make matters worse, Warren insisted on singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

NORAD,

So he’s gonna want to get out of Dodge as fast as he can.” Sure enough, the caravan was racing down the

blown

The principal wasn’t using his normal office because I’d blown it up by firing a mortar round into it. (It was an accident.)

me. I need your help.

and were now coming down a wide intermediate run called

Half her luggage was ammunition. Who brings grenades on a ski vacation?

principal’s office. A piece of paper was taped to it. It said PIRNCIPAL.

not drag my left ski. Mike’s advice was spot-on. I moved much more naturally.

gaining

Statistically, ninety-eight-point-five percent of CIA missions resolve without any action at all.

That kid couldn’t find a bomb if it was taped to his butt.

had to think about this a while before answering. “Fiji,

managed to bonk three more innocent bystanders in the head while starting out.

Ohio,

align your chakras,

Warren, stop playing with my underwear, you pervert.

I found myself imagining that laugh turning into a scream as Warren suddenly fell off the chair and plummeted to the ground far below us.

You’re just going to leave me here?” I shout after her. “I’m not leaving you here, Emma. You’re keeping yourself here.” She leaves me with those crazy words, and then she’s gone. I am paralyzed on the beach in my school clothes. I can’t help but feel that I’m in huge trouble. But why should I? She was babysitting me, not the other way around, right? It’s not like I can chase her down and follow her. Her fins have already gone a distance I can’t cover with my puny human legs. Besides, these are my favorite jeans; the salt water would be unforgiving. Except…There is that shiny new jet ski sitting there. I could close the distance between us, put my foot in the water, and find her. She would sense me, come back to see why I was in the water. Wouldn’t she? Of course she would. Then I could talk her into staying here, not leaving me alone to drive myself crazy. I could manipulate her into feeling sorry for me. Unless she’s the complete sociopath I think she is.

To my surprise, the toilet began to play music. It was probably supposed to be comforting, some sort of melody to soothe you while you pooped, but the whole idea of a musical toilet just weirded me out.

It was only in the mid-1970s, after Ted Bundy started abducting and killing middle-class white college girls at schools, shopping malls, ski chalets, national parks and public beaches, that the media suddenly began paying close attention.

The U.S. government has dozens of extremely critical facilities there: the headquarters for North American Aerospace Defense, Strategic Missile Command, the Air Force Academy. . . .” “The Central Food and Seed Reserve,” Alexander suggested helpfully.

I wince. From the Bank of Floorboards I withdraw my assets and redeposit the wedge of banknotes in my passport bag. This I secure inside my ski jacket, contemplating that, while the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent clever kids from working-class post codes ousting them from the Enclave of Privilege.

was working!” Erica exclaimed. “I could hear Leo Shang and his men talking inside the room! They were discussing their plans! I might have learned everything we need to know if you hadn’t interfered!” “You would have been caught if I hadn’t interfered!” Cyrus yelled.

Well, I know all about women,” Warren said, grinning at Zoe slyly. “If you want to win a girl over, the first thing you do is slip up behind her and give her a nice, soothing massage.” He tried this on Zoe, digging his fingers into her shoulders. “Ouch!” Zoe screamed. “Stop that, you moron!

A keen memory is the best weapon an agent can have,” Alexander had explained. “Well, besides a gun. Or a knife. And maybe a hand grenade. Okay, technically, there’s a lot of weapons that are better than your memory, but memory’s still awfully important. Because… Oh, nuts. I forgot what I was going to say.

As a kid, snow served the useful purpose of closing schools. As an adult—it shuts down any activity a decent, suntanned person over the age of thirty-five enjoys. I don’t do snow forts, snowballs, snow angels, snowmen, snowmobiles, or snowshoes. I don’t like to walk in it, drive in it, ski on it, or sled on it. Other than that, snow is just ducky.

I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate write-ups—how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another: Susan likes to eat at Wendy’s; Donald was on the basketball team; Norman is vain about his varsity sweater; Gillian broke her arm on Spring Retreat; Brian is a car nut; Sue wants to live in Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia. At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities—to clarify just who it is we really are?

No one is born pompous. To attain that state requires a certain amount of planning and effort. Presumably you could achieve it by a variety of means, but one sure way is to attend an old prep school that’s a little past its prime; while there, exhibit some facility in a field sport that you will never have cause to play again; room with a fellow whose name is over the library door; and along the way, gain familiarity with a pastime that requires travel and specialized apparel—such as duck hunting or downhill skiing. Follow these simple steps and you are sure to gain the necessary self-assurance to expound authoritatively on wine, politics, and the lives of the less fortunate—and to generally go on and on about anything else.

I took a step inside to get a better look and realized the man was actually Christ, the way he appeared in Sunday-school classrooms: milky complexion, starched blue dressing gown, a beard trimmed as painstakingly as a bonsai tree. He was doing what he was always doing: cupping blinding light in his hands like he was trying to warm up after a long day of downhill skiing.

Yes. They’re quite flavorful, although they don’t taste much like other oysters….” “That’s because they’re bull testicles,” Erica told him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Alexander chided. “They wouldn’t make something like that at a restaurant like this!” Erica handed him the menu and pointed to the small print he’d overlooked that indicated exactly what Rocky Mountain oysters were.

Run. Eat. Drink. Eat more. Don't throw up. Instead, take a piss. Then take a crap. Wipe your butt. Make a phone call. Open a door. Rid your bik. Ride in a car. Ride in a subway. Talk. Talk to people. Read. Read maps. Make maps. Make art. Talk about your art. Sell your art. Take a test. Get into a school. Celebrate. HAve a party. Write a thank-you note to someone. Hug your mom. Kiss your dad. Kiss your little sister. Make out with Noelle. Make out with her more. Touch her. HOld her hand. Take her out somewhere. Meet her friends. Run down a street with her. Take her on a picnic. Eat with her. See a movie with her. See a move with Aaron. Heck, see a movie with Nia, once you're cool with her. Get cool with more people.. Drink coffee in little coffee-drinking places. Tell people your story. Volunteer. Go back to Six North. Walk in as a volunteer and say hi to everyone who waited on you as a patient. Help people. Help people like Bobby. Get people books and music that they want when they're in there. Help people like Muqtada. Show them how to draw. Draw more. Try drawing a landscape. Try drawing a person. Try drawing a naked person. Try drawing Noelle naked. Travel. Fly. Swim. Meet. Love. Dance. Win. Smile. Laugh. Hold. Walk. Skip. Okay, it's gay, whatever, skip. Ski. Sled. Play basketball. Jog. Run. Run. Run. Run home. Run home and enjoy. Enjoy. Take these verbs and enjoy them. They're yours, Craig. You deserved them because you chose them. You could have left the all behind but you chose to stay here. So now live for real, Craig. Live. Live. Live. Live. Live.

Because she did like me before. But then she liked Mike. Only Mike liked you instead of her. Which is why she doesn’t like you. So now, if she thinks you like me, she’ll want to make me like her again to get even with you for making Mike like you instead of her.” Erica shook her head, dumbstruck. “The mind of a teenage girl is the most complicated thing I’ve ever encountered. And I know how to defuse a nuclear bomb.

John says to Peter, “Remember that one time I had you, and I was hiding behind your dad’s car before school, but it was your dad that came out, not you? And I scared him, and he and I both screamed?” “Then we had to quit altogether when Trevor came to my mom’s store in his ski mask,” Peter guffaws. Everyone laughs, except for me. I’m still smarting from Genevieve’s “killer instinct” dig. Trevor’s laughing so hard he can barely speak. “She almost called the cops!” he manages to sputter.

Each February/March the entire country takes a "ski week". The schools shut down, parents take off work, dogs go to the in-laws, and Finland's middle and upper classes go on holiday. But not all at once. They can't have the entire country gandala-ing up to Lapland at one time (AVALANCHES!). So the country takes turns. The best region goes first: Southern Finland. Then the second best: Central Finland. Then the reindeer herders and forest people take a week off from unemployment and go last: Northern Finland.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

the streets. So now everyone is afraid of it. Petr GINZ Today it’s clear to everyone who is a Jew and who’s an Aryan, because you’ll know Jews near and far by their black and yellow star. And Jews who are so demarcated must live according to the rules dictated: Always, after eight o’clock, be at home and click the lock; work only labouring with pick or hoe, and do not listen to the radio. You’re not allowed to own a mutt; barbers can’t give your hair a cut; a female Jew who once was rich can’t have a dog, even a bitch, she cannot send her kids to school must shop from three to five since that’s the rule. She can’t have bracelets, garlic, wine, or go to the theatre, out to dine; she can’t have cars or a gramophone, fur coats or skis or a telephone; she can’t eat onions, pork, or cheese, have instruments, or matrices; she cannot own a clarinet or keep a canary for a pet, rent bicycles or barometers, have woollen socks or warm sweaters. And especially the outcast Jew must give up all habits he knew: he can’t buy clothes, can’t buy a shoe, since dressing well is not his due; he can’t have poultry, shaving soap, or jam or anything to smoke; can’t get a license, buy some gin, read magazines, a news bulletin, buy sweets or a machine to sew; to fields or shops he cannot go even to buy a single pair of winter woollen underwear, or a sardine or a ripe pear. And if this list is not complete there’s more, so you should be discreet; don’t buy a thing; accept defeat. Walk everywhere you want to go in rain or sleet or hail or snow. Don’t leave your house, don’t push a pram, don’t take a bus or train or tram; you’re not allowed on a fast train; don’t hail a taxi, or complain; no matter how thirsty you are you must not enter any bar; the riverbank is not for you, or a museum or park or zoo or swimming pool or stadium or post office or department store, or church, casino, or cathedral or any public urinal. And you be careful not to use main streets, and keep off avenues! And if you want to breathe some air go to God’s garden and walk there among the graves in the cemetery because no park to you is free. And if you are a clever Jew you’ll close off bank accounts and you will give up other habits too like meeting Aryans you knew. He used to be allowed a swag, suitcase, rucksack, or carpetbag. Now he has lost even those rights but every Jew lowers his sights and follows all the rules he’s got and doesn’t care one little jot.

You know everybody hooks up on the ski trip, right? It’s like a school-sanctioned booty call.” “What?” “That’s where I lost my V freshman year.” “I thought you lost it in the woods near your house.” “Oh yeah. Whatever, the point is, I had sex on the ski trip.” “There are chaperones,” I say worriedly. “How can people just have sex with chaperones around?” “Chaperones go to sleep early because they’re old,” Chris says. “People just sneak out. Plus there’s a hot tub. Did you know that there’s a hot tub?” “No…Peter never mentioned that.” Well, that’s that, I just won’t pack a bathing suit. It’s not like they can make you go in a hot tub if you don’t want to. “The year I went, people were skinny-dipping.” My eyes bug out. Skinny-dipping! “People were nude?” “Well, the girls took their tops off. Just be prepared.” Chris chews on her fingernail. “Last year I heard Mr. Dunham got in the hot tub with students and it was weird.” “This sounds like the Wild West,” I mutter. “More like Girls Gone Wild.

How did the name misfit even come about?" Sam asked. "It's so... dumb." Willo laughed. "Well, it's really not," she said. "We used to call them all sorts of slang terms: kooks, greasers, killjoys, chumps, and we had to keep changing the name as times changed. We used nerds for a long time, and then we started calling them dweebs." Willo hesitated. "And then a group of kids wasn't so nice to your mom." "I had braces," Deana said. "I had pimples. I had a perm. You do the math." She smiled briefly, but Sam could tell the pain was still there. Deana continued: "And I worked here most of the time so I really didn't get a chance to do a lot with friends after school. It was hard." This time, Willo reached out to rub her daughter's leg. "Your mom was pretty down one Christmas," she said. "All of the kids were going on a ski trip to a resort in Boyne City, but she had to stay here and work during the holiday rush. She was moping around one night, lying on the couch and watching TV..." "... stuffing holiday cookies in my mouth," Deana added. "... and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came on. She was about to change the channel, but I made her sit back down and watch it with me. Remember the part about the Island of Misfit Toys?" Sam nodded. Willo continued. "All of those toys that were tossed away and didn't have a home because they were different: the Charlie-in-the-Box, the spotted elephant, the train with square wheels, the cowboy who rides an ostrich..." "... the swimming bird," Sam added with a laugh. "And I told your mom that all of those toys were magical and perfect because they were different," Willo said. "What made them different is what made them unique." Sam looked at her mom, who gave her a timid smile. "I walked in early the next morning to open the pie pantry, and your mom was already in there making donuts," Willo said. "She had a big plate of donuts that didn't turn out perfectly and she looked up at me and said, very quietly, 'I want to start calling them misfits.' When I asked her why, she said, 'They're as good as all the others, even if they look a bit different.' We haven't changed the name since.

Throughout high school, Ben strove to be as colorless as his room. He chose to blend in with the crowd, a popular white-bread crewneck group, with parents who summered in Nantucket and owned ski houses near mountains in Vermont. One Saturday night after returning from a movie with the happy-go-lucky girl he’d been seeing on and off, he told Harvey and me, in the family room reading newspapers, that he was going to come out in college. Neither of us was astonished, or even surprised. It was a relief to both of us. We had wondered for a long time. When we took Ben to college in Middletown, we watched the gay and lesbian groups chalk messages on the sidewalks at the top of the hill: Say hi to a bi. Give us a year and you’ll be queer. Have you told a parent you’re gay today? Ben was smiling. Ben and Harvey moved the station wagon out of a load zone, and I waited on a creaking swing in front of a building with the school flag, the American flag, and the state flag waving on top. Peace washed over me as though I had taken a pill for it. I wanted chalk. I had something important to say on the sidewalk: Have you told your son you’re happy for him today?

As she’s scrolling through her feed, a picture from the ski trip pops up. Haven’s in the Charlottesville Youth Orchestra, so she knows people from a lot of different schools, including mine. I can’t help but sigh a little when I see it--a picture of a bunch of us on the bus the last morning. Peter has his arm around me, he’s whispering something in my ear. I wish I remembered what. All surprised, Haven looks up and says, “Oh, hey, that’s you, Lara Jean. What’s this from?” “The school ski trip.” “Is that your boyfriend?” Haven asks me, and I can tell she’s impressed and trying not to show it. I wish I could say yes. But-- Kitty scampers over to us and looks over our shoulders. “Yes, and he’s the hottest guy you’ve ever seen in your life, Haven.” She says it like a challenge. Margot, who was scrolling on her phone, looks up and giggles. “Well, that’s not exactly true,” I hedge. I mean, he’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life, but I don’t know what kind of people Haven goes to school with. “No, Kitty’s right, he’s hot,” Haven admits. “Like, how did you get him? No offense. I just thought you were the non-dating type.” I frown. The non-dating type? What kind of type is that? A little mushroom who sits at home in a semidark room growing moss?

The first movie star I met was Norma Shearer. I was eight years old at the time and going to school with Irving Thalberg Jr. His father, the longtime production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, devoted a large part of his creative life to making Norma a star, and he succeeded splendidly. Unfortunately, Thalberg had died suddenly in 1936, and his wife's career had begun to slowly deflate. Just like kids everywhere else, Hollywood kids had playdates at each other's houses, and one day I went to the Thalberg house in Santa Monica, where Irving Sr. had died eighteen months before. Norma was in bed, where, I was given to understand, she spent quite a bit of time so that on those occasions when she worked or went out in public she would look as rested as possible. She was making Marie Antoinette at the time, and to see her in the flesh was overwhelming. She very kindly autographed a picture for me, which I still have: "To Cadet Wagner, with my very best wishes. Norma Shearer." Years later I would be with her and Martin Arrouge, her second husband, at Sun Valley. No matter who the nominal hostess was, Norma was always the queen, and no matter what time the party was to begin, Norma was always late, because she would sit for hours—hours!—to do her makeup, then make the grand entrance. She was always and forever the star. She had to be that way, really, because she became a star by force of will—hers and Thalberg's. Better-looking on the screen than in life, Norma Shearer was certainly not a beauty on the level of Paulette Goddard, who didn't need makeup, didn't need anything. Paulette could simply toss her hair and walk out the front door, and strong men grew weak in the knees. Norma found the perfect husband in Martin. He was a lovely man, a really fine athlete—Martin was a superb skier—and totally devoted to her. In the circles they moved in, there were always backbiting comments when a woman married a younger man—" the stud ski instructor," that sort of thing. But Martin, who was twelve years younger than Norma and was indeed a ski instructor, never acknowledged any of that and was a thorough gentleman all his life. He had a superficial facial resemblance to Irving Thalberg, but Thalberg had a rheumatic heart and was a thin, nonathletic kind of man—intellectually vital, but physically weak. Martin was just the opposite—strong and virile, with a high energy level. Coming after years of being married to Thalberg and having to worry about his health, Martin must have been a delicious change for Norma.

Ah, New England. An amalgam of picket fences and crumbling bricks; Ivy League schools and dropped Rs; social tolerance and the Salem witch trials, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen King, P-town rainbows and mill-town rust; Norman Rockwell and Aerosmith; lobster and Moxie; plus the simmering aromas of a million melting pot cuisines originally brought here by immigrants from everywhere else searching for new ways to live. It’s a place where rapidly-growing progressive cities full of the ‘wicked smaaht’ coexist alongside blight-inflicted Industrial Revolution landscapes full of the ‘wicked poor’. A place of forested mountains, roaring rivers, crystalline lakes, urban sprawl, and a trillion dollar stores. A place of seasonal tourism beach towns where the wild, rank scent of squishy seaweed casts its cryptic spell along the vast and spindrift-misted seacoast, while the polished yachts of the elite glisten like rare jewels on the horizon, just out of reach. Where there are fiery autumn hues and leaves that need raking. Powder snow ski slopes and icy windshields that need scraping. Crisp daffodil mornings and mud season. Beach cottage bliss and endless miles of soul-sucking summer traffic . Perceived together, the dissonant nuances of New England stir the imagination in compelling and chromatic whorls.

It’s not like I wasn’t busy. I was an officer in good standing of my kids’ PTA. I owned a car that put my comfort ahead of the health and future of the planet. I had an IRA and a 401(k) and I went on vacations and swam with dolphins and taught my kids to ski. I contributed to the school’s annual fund. I flossed twice a day; I saw a dentist twice a year. I got Pap smears and had my moles checked. I read books about oppressed minorities with my book club. I did physical therapy for an old knee injury, forgoing the other things I’d like to do to ensure I didn’t end up with a repeat injury. I made breakfast. I went on endless moms’ nights out, where I put on tight jeans and trendy blouses and high heels like it mattered and went to the restaurant that was right next to the restaurant we went to with our families. (There were no dads’ nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.) I took polls on whether the Y or the JCC had better swimming lessons. I signed up for soccer leagues in time for the season cutoff, which was months before you’d even think of enrolling a child in soccer, and then organized their attendant carpools. I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

We had used the radios on missions before; I could hear anything Erica said to me, while no one else could—and mine could pick up anything I said and transmit it back to her. At the moment, though, we were close enough not to need them. “You’re going to be my lookout,” Erica told me. “If you see any sign of trouble, let me know.” “Trouble?” I repeated, slipping on my second skate. “What are you planning to do?” “Find out what Shang’s up to.” “Now? How?” “I’m going to infiltrate his hotel room.” “What?” I gasped. “You can’t do that!” “Sure I can. I’m good at this stuff.” “I meant, you’re not supposed to do it. The mission is for me to befriend Jessica and use that connection to get close to her father.” “The mission is for us to find out what Operation Golden Fist is, period.” Erica was back to her normal, cool self; only somehow, she seemed even cooler than usual. Her attitude was icier than the skating rink. “The other plan is too complicated, the other students aren’t ready for activation yet, and like I said, you’re too emotionally involved where Jessica is concerned.” “Emotionally involved? I saw her for five seconds!” “It was enough. Your ability is compromised. I’m going with Plan B. Which should have been Plan A all along. If you just do your part, this will all be over within ten minutes.” Erica stood again and started toward the ice cream parlor. I followed her. Only, since I now had ice skates on, I couldn’t follow very quickly. “Wait!” I called. Erica stopped by the entrance to the ice rink. We were now close enough to the guy with the newspaper that she had to resume her teenage girl act again. “What is it, pumpkin?” I lowered my voice. “The hotel is crawling with guards. You’ll never be able to get into Shang’s room.” Erica smiled at me in a way I knew was pretend but that still melted my heart. “Oh, sweetie.” She sighed. “You’re so cute when you worry about me. But I’ll be fine. They won’t see me because of the diversion.” “What diversion?” I asked, suddenly feeling very worried. “This one,” Erica said, and shoved me onto the ice. I had ice-skated a few times before, so I might have been all right if Erica hadn’t caught me so off guard. Or shoved me so hard. Or sent me onto the rink backward.

Tim Tigner began his career in Soviet Counterintelligence with the US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. That was back in the Cold War days when, “We learned Russian so you didn't have to,” something he did at the Presidio of Monterey alongside Recon Marines and Navy SEALs. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tim switched from espionage to arbitrage. Armed with a Wharton MBA rather than a Colt M16, he moved to Moscow in the midst of Perestroika. There, he led prominent multinational medical companies, worked with cosmonauts on the MIR Space Station (from Earth, alas), chaired the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and helped write Russia’s first law on healthcare. Moving to Brussels during the formation of the EU, Tim ran Europe, Middle East, and Africa for a Johnson & Johnson company and traveled like a character in a Robert Ludlum novel. He eventually landed in Silicon Valley, where he launched new medical technologies as a startup CEO. In his free time, Tim has climbed the peaks of Mount Olympus, hang glided from the cliffs of Rio de Janeiro, and ballooned over Belgium. He earned scuba certification in Turkey, learned to ski in Slovenia, and ran the Serengeti with a Maasai warrior. He acted on stage in Portugal, taught negotiations in Germany, and chaired a healthcare conference in Holland. Tim studied psychology in France, radiology in England, and philosophy in Greece. He has enjoyed ballet at the Bolshoi, the opera on Lake Como, and the symphony in Vienna. He’s been a marathoner, paratrooper, triathlete, and yogi.  Intent on combining his creativity with his experience, Tim began writing thrillers in 1996 from an apartment overlooking Moscow’s Gorky Park. Decades later, his passion for creative writing continues to grow every day. His home office now overlooks a vineyard in Northern California, where he lives with his wife Elena and their two daughters. Tim grew up in the Midwest, and graduated from Hanover College with a BA in Philosophy and Mathematics. After military service and work as a financial analyst and foreign-exchange trader, he earned an MBA in Finance and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton and Lauder Schools.  Thank you for taking the time to read about the author. Tim is most grateful for his loyal fans, and loves to correspond with readers like you. You are welcome to reach him directly at tim@timtigner.com.

School trip, Mother. Skiing in Austria.

Mountains. The U.S. government has dozens of extremely critical facilities there: the headquarters for North American Aerospace Defense, Strategic Missile Command, the Air Force Academy. . . .” “The Central Food and Seed Reserve,” Alexander suggested helpfully. Cyrus frowned disdainfully at this, but he didn’t discount it, either. “Shang could be targeting any one of them. Or something else entirely. It is imperative that we find out what—and that we do it quickly. Which is why you need to get close to Jessica Shang, Benjamin.” “How am I supposed to do that?” I asked, unable to hide how daunted I felt. “I won’t even be able to get into her hotel.” “You’ll be attending ski school with her,” Alexander explained. “Leo Shang originally enrolled her in private lessons—but those were recently changed to group lessons. We’re not sure why, but we assume that was Jessica’s doing.

Whew! Made it! These ski boots sure are hard to walk in!” “And even harder to ski in,” Jessica whispered to me. Even though we were on the opposite side of the table from Erica in a very loud room, Erica turned our way anyhow, like she’d heard this. Jessica instantly grew uncomfortable. “I, uh . . . need to visit the ladies’ room,” she said, then stood and headed that way.

Now?” I repeated, glancing back toward the bathroom warily. “Jessica might not be gone that long.” “Yes, she will,” Zoe informed me. “She’s wearing a one-piece ski suit and she has at least three layers on under it. It’s going to take her five minutes just to get her pants down, let alone go to the bathroom.” “Plus, I spiked her drink with a laxative,” Erica added. “So tack a few extra minutes on to that estimate.” I swung back to Erica, stunned. “You drugged her?” “Only a little,” Erica replied. “What was I supposed to do, wait for her to have to go to the bathroom?” I started to argue that this wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, but then realized no one else seemed to have a problem with it, so I kept silent.

We don’t need to maim Mike at all,” Erica said. “There’s a much simpler way to get rid of him.” “Poison him?” Warren asked. This time Zoe whacked him on the back of the head. Erica sighed, disappointed the rest of us hadn’t figured out the answer. “We make sure Mike isn’t interested in Jessica anymore.” “How?” I asked. “By giving him someone even more interesting to fall for,” Erica replied. It took another few moments for us all to realize who she was talking about. “You mean you?” I asked. “Of course.” Erica took a sip of tea. “I tag along for hot cocoa with you guys today. Mike falls for me instead of Jessica. Then we take off, leaving the two of you alone. . . .” “Just like that?” Jawa asked skeptically. “Just like that,” Erica said.

Last they knew, he was working for an international arms dealer named Paul Lee.” “Polly who?” asked Zoe.

This isn’t a game,” Erica warned all of us. “Our lives are at stake here. And maybe a lot of other people’s as well.” She slipped back into her fake persona just as Jessica came within earshot, acting like she was in the middle of the story. “. . . and then Maya laughed so hard, the soda came right out of her nose. It was dis-gust-ing!” Everyone made an appropriate “ewwwww” in response. Except Jessica, who looked around at all of us, seeming upset she’d missed something good. “What are you guys talking about?” “Sasha’s trying to make us all lose our lunch,” Zoe said. “Yuck,” Jessica declared, now seeming happy she’d missed the whole story. She looked a bit pale after her trip to the bathroom, like maybe she’d lost her lunch herself

(For Chip and Jawa, this wasn’t an issue; since they already knew how to ski, they only had to pretend to get better.) Zoe, Jessica, and I mastered skiing down a beginner run slowly without falling, as well as getting on and off the ski lift without gravely injuring ourselves. Erica, to her chagrin, didn’t improve quite as much, but she managed to stay upright most of the time. Meanwhile, Warren had somehow managed to actually get worse during the day. He’d started with at least an idea of how to ski, but by the end of the class, he was spending most of his time splayed out on the snow.

Then Erica walked up in full Sasha mode and asked, “What are you two doing now?” Jessica gave me a subtle signal not to tell Erica, but I pretended not to notice. “Getting a hot chocolate,” I said, nice and friendly. “Oooh! That sounds dee-lish-ous!” Erica crooned. “Count me in!” Then she followed us to the Arabelle, blindly ignoring Jessica’s many hints that she didn’t want Erica around.

he’s quiet as a louse.” Mike looked at me, confused by this. “I think you mean ‘quiet as a mouse,’ ” I told Jessica. “That’s the expression?” Jessica asked. “Really? Because lice are really quiet. They don’t even have vocal cords. While mice are all squeaky.

Perry’s Manual to Seducing Women in the Field

Ben says you’re a really good skier.” “I’m okay,” Mike said, in the exact same fake-humble way he had in the gondola that morning.

And then, to my astonishment, she kissed me.

We’ll look less suspicious if we’re eating,” Erica explained. “Like two kids who just went out for pizza, rather than two spies on a recon mission. Plus, I’m starving.

I wondered if Erica was right. At the moment, the nearby slopes were full of evidence that skiing could be difficult. For every skier who came down the mountain well, there were many others coming down badly. I could see a dozen people who’d wiped out at the base of the mountain. As I watched, one poor soul shot off the run entirely and fell into Vail Creek. And things didn’t get much better once everyone had taken their skis off. Ski boots seemed to have been designed to make walking as difficult as possible. Everywhere I looked, people were wobbling about in them like toddlers taking their first steps. One person crashed to the ground right in front of us, his skis and poles flying every which way.

Jessica Shang got out of the second. Leo Shang also got out of it, but I didn’t see him. In the first place, he had exited on the far side of it, closer to the hotel doors, so the car-tank was blocking my view of him. And after that, he was instantly surrounded by a scrum of bodyguards. But the real reason I didn’t see him was that I couldn’t take my eyes off Jessica. The single picture I’d seen of her before hadn’t done her justice. Either it had been too grainy, or she’d blossomed since it was taken. Probably a bit of both.

This process is true for the eight-year-old, and it’s also true for a fifteen-year-old who may struggle in school but is passionate about skiing, or drawing, or playing an instrument. The best way to motivate him for the things you think he should focus on is to let him spend time on the things he wants to focus on.

We reached a section where the canyon walls closed in until it was almost claustrophobic. There was little room left on the bank alongside the stream, occasionally forcing us onto rocks that poked through the water. My heels were starting to blister in my ski boots. And to make matters worse, Warren insisted on singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

Robbie helps me out since he’s assistant to Coach Faulkner. After a skiing accident in our junior year of high school, Robbie didn’t regain movement in his legs and now uses a wheelchair. He transferred his skill of shouting shit at me on the ice to shouting shit at me from the edge of the ice.

At OBSS   An unexpected occurrence did come of this escapade, even though I didn’t care for the program. Andy, you may or may not be aware that Outward Bound teaches interpersonal and leadership skills, not to mention wilderness survival. The first two skillsets were not unlike our education at the Enlightened Royal Oracle Society (E.R.O.S.) or the Dale Carnegie course in which I had participated before leaving Malaya for school in England. It was the wilderness survival program I abhorred. Since I wasn’t rugged by nature (and remain that way to this day), this arduous experience was made worse by your absence. In 1970, OBSS was under the management of Singapore Ministry of Defence, and used primarily as a facility to prepare young men for compulsory ’National Service,’ commonly known as NS. All young and able 18+ Singaporean male citizens and second-generation permanent residents had to register for National Service compulsorily. They would serve either a two-year or twenty-two-month period as Full Time National Servicemen after completing the Outward Bound course. Pending on their individual physical and medical fitness, these young men would enter the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Singapore Police Force (SPF), or the Singapore Civil Defense Force (SCDF). Father, through his extensive contacts, enrolled me into the twenty-one-day Outward Bound summer course. There were twenty boys in my class. We were divided into small units under the guidance of an instructor. During the first few days at the base camp, we trained for outdoor recreation activities such as adventure racing, backpacking, cycling, camping, canoeing, canyoning, fishing, hiking, kayaking, mountaineering, horseback riding, photography, rock climbing, running, sailing, skiing, swimming, and a variety of sporting activities.

Yet, if I were to adhere to my mom's advice, I would have had to drop out of school years ago (since a lot of folks in our inequitable education system refuse to love us), quit engaging public health offices (because I walked in as a human in need of medical services and walked out as a patient whose subjective world was mad invisible by research lingo: "MSM," otherwise known as "men who have sex with men'), sleep in my bed all damn day (knowing it is more likely that I would be stopped by police when walking to the store in Camden or Bed-Stuy while rocking a fitted cap and carrying books than my white male neighbors would be while walking around in ski masks in the middle of summer and dropping a dime bag on the ground in front of a walking police and his dog)...

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So,

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So, I went out into the bright spring sunlight and taped a few minutes of the wren laying furious claim to his territory with song. Then I let him hear his own voice. That little bird, one- third the size of a sparrow, began to dive- bomb me and my cassette recorder, swooping back and forth, inches from the speaker. We saw a lot of that sort of behaviour, even in the absence of the tape recorder. If a larger bird ever dared to sit and rest in any of the trees near our birdhouse there was a good chance he would get knocked off his perch by a kamikaze wren.

Eldorado has created rock structures for resorts and ski areas, colleges/universities, recreation centers, fitness centers, K-12 schools playgrounds and parks, gyms, private homes and corporate facilities. Eldorado is also responsible for creating the world’s largest man-made outdoor and indoor climbing structures.

Berry and three other old Etonians, James Bolton, Alex Lyle and Christian De Lotbiniere, were the brains behind “Ski Bob” travel. This was a company, named after their Eton housemaster Bob Baird, which had been formed when they discovered that they were too young legally to book holidays themselves. So these young entrepreneurs started their own company and within the twenty-strong group, which mainly compromised old Etonians, the greatest accolade was to be called “Bob.” Diana was soon Bob, Bob, Bobbing along. “You’re skating on thin ice,” she yelled in her Miss Piggy voice as she skied dangerously close behind members of the group. She joined in the pillow fights, charades, and satirical singsongs. Diana was teased mercilessly about a framed photograph of Prince Charles, taken at his Investiture in 1969, which hung in her school dormitory. Not guilty, she said. It was a gift to the school. When she stayed in the Berry chalet she slept on the living-room sofa. Not that she got much sleep. Medical student, James Colthurst, liked to regale the slumbering throng with unwelcome early morning renditions of Martin Luther King’s famous “I had a dream” speech or his equally unamusing Mussolini impersonation.

eggs and curried chicken salad and double fudge brownies. That was all she was good at: eating. In the summer the Castles, the Alistairs, and the Randolphs all went to the beach together. When they were younger, they would play flashlight tag, light a bonfire, and sing Beatles songs, with Mr. Randolph playing the guitar and Penny’s voice floating above everyone else’s. But at some point Demeter had stopped feeling comfortable in a bathing suit. She wore shorts and oversized T-shirts to the beach, and she wouldn’t go in the water, wouldn’t walk with Penny to look for shells, wouldn’t throw the Frisbee with Hobby and Jake. The other three kids always tried to include Demeter, which was more humiliating, somehow, than if they’d just ignored her. They were earnest in their pursuit of her attention, but Demeter suspected this was their parents’ doing. Mr. Randolph might have offered Jake a twenty-dollar bribe to be nice to Demeter because Al Castle was an old friend. Hobby and Penny were nice to her because they felt sorry for her. Or maybe Hobby and Penny and Jake all had a bet going about who would be the one to break through Demeter’s Teflon shield. She was a game to them. In the fall there were football parties at the Alistairs’ house, during which the adults and Hobby and Jake watched the Patriots, Penny listened to music on her headphones, and Demeter dug into Zoe Alistair’s white chicken chili and topped it with a double spoonful of sour cream. In the winter there were weekends at Stowe. Al and Lynne Castle owned a condo near the mountain, and Demeter had learned to ski as a child. According to her parents, she used to careen down the black-diamond trails without a moment’s hesitation. But by the time they went to Vermont with the Alistairs and the Randolphs, Demeter refused to get on skis at all. She sat in the lodge and drank hot chocolate until the rest of the gang came clomping in after their runs, rosy-cheeked and winded. And then the ski weekends, at least, had stopped happening, because Hobby had basketball and Penny and Jake were in the school musical, which meant rehearsals night and day. Demeter thought back to all those springs, summers, falls, and winters with Hobby and Penny and Jake, and she wondered how her parents could have put her through such exquisite torture. Hobby and Penny and Jake were all exceptional children, while Demeter was seventy pounds overweight, which sank her self-esteem, which led to her getting mediocre grades when she was smart enough for A’s and killed her chances of landing the part of Rizzo in Grease, even though she was a gifted actress. Hobby was in a coma. Her mother was on the phone. She kept

For the name Barclay, you could use bar clay or bark lay; for Smolenski, a small lens (camera) skiing; for Caruthers, a car with udders; for Krakowitz, cracker wits; for Frankesni, frank (hot dog) has knee; for Esposito, expose a toe; for Dalrymple, doll rumple; for Kolodny, colored knee; for Androfkavitz, Ann drop car witch; for Giordano, jawed on O; for Virostek, virile stick; and so on.

by searching for an outstanding feature, you’re accomplishing the second important step—you’re forcing yourself to look at, be interested in, concentrate on, that face! What you select could be anything: hair or hairline; forehead (narrow, wide, or high); eyebrows (straight, arched, bushy); eyes (narrow, wide-spaced, close-set); nose (large, small, pug, ski); nostrils (flaring, pinched); high cheekbones; cheeks (full or sunken); lips (straight, arched, full, thin); chin (cleft, receding, jutting); lines, pimples, warts, dimples—anything.

by searching for an outstanding feature, you’re accomplishing the second important step—you’re forcing yourself to look at, be interested in, concentrate on, that face! What you select could be anything: hair or hairline; forehead (narrow, wide, or high); eyebrows (straight, arched, bushy); eyes (narrow, wide-spaced, close-set); nose (large, small, pug, ski); nostrils (flaring, pinched); high cheekbones; cheeks (full or sunken); lips (straight, arched, full, thin); chin (cleft, receding, jutting); lines, pimples, warts, dimples—anything. First impressions are usually lasting impressions, and what is outstanding on someone’s face now will, most likely, seem outstanding when you see that face again. That’s important; but more important is the fact that you’ve really looked at that face. You’re etching that face into your memory by just trying to apply the system.

The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities. Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off. One day, Julie realized that if she didn’t do it now, she would never do it. The rationalizations, legitimate or not, would just continue to add up and make it harder to convince herself that escape was possible. One year of preparation and one 30-day trial run with her husband later, they set sail on the trip of a lifetime. Julie realized almost as soon as the anchor lifted that, far from being a reason not to travel and seek adventure, children are perhaps the best reason of all to do both. Pre-trip, her three little boys had fought like banshees at the drop of a hat. In the process of learning to coexist in a floating bedroom, they learned patience, as much for themselves as for the sanity of their parents. Pre-trip, books were about as appealing as eating sand. Given the alternative of staring at a wall on the open sea, all three learned to love books. Pulling them out of school for one academic year and exposing them to new environments had proven to be the best investment in their education to date. Now sitting in the plane, Julie looked out at the clouds as the wing cut past them, already thinking of their next plans: to find a place in the mountains and ski all year long, using income from a sail-rigging workshop to fund the slopes and more travel. Now that she had done it once, she had the itch.

Erica acted as though she didn’t even see him, rambling on about hucking off ledges and pulling kangaroo flips in the terrain park, until we were well past him and at the ice rink again. Then she turned to me, fluttered her eyelashes, and announced, “Let’s go ice-skating!” I stared at her, thrown. There weren’t any bodyguards around for her to be acting in front of, and yet “Let’s go ice-skating!” was one of the last things I would have ever expected to hear Erica Hale say, along the lines of “I love scrapbooking,” or “Unicorns are awesome.

Erica didn’t say anything in response. She just gave Cyrus a stare so cold it seemed to lower the temperature around us. Right at this moment, Alexander Hale returned. He barged through the door, whistling happily, and completely failed to pick up on the tension in the room. “Great news!” he cried, holding up a grocery bag. “I got everything we need to make s’mores!” Cyrus squinted at him crankily. “Now, where the heck do you expect to do that?” “The fireplace in the lobby,” Alexander suggested. “The fire in the lobby’s a fake,” Cyrus informed him. “Boy, your observation skills stink on ice.” “That’s right,” Erica told Cyrus tartly. “Everyone in this family’s a lousy spy except you. And no matter how hard we try, we’ll apparently never be good enough.” With that, she stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her. A cheap framed ski poster fell off the wall and busted on the floor. Cyrus rolled his eyes and muttered, “Teenagers.” Alexander glared at him, still smarting from his insult. “See if I ever buy you campfire treats again,” he said, and then stormed out himself. Somehow, with them gone, there was even more tension in the room. Cyrus was prickly on his best days, but now he seemed ready to blow. I edged toward the door, desperate to get out of there, hoping he might simply ignore me and let me go. He didn’t. His angry gaze now fell on me. “I should probably be going too,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow with the mission and all, so I want to turn in early and get a good night’s sleep. . . .” “Do you have the hots for Jessica Shang?” Cyrus asked accusingly. “No!” I lied, selling it as hard as I could. “I don’t even think she’s that attractive. In fact, to be totally honest, she’s kind of ugly. I actually feel sorry for her. . . .” Cyrus didn’t buy this for a moment.

How do those boots feel?” he asked me. “Way too tight,” I replied. “Like they’re two sizes too small.” “Perfect,” the guy said. “That’s exactly how you want them to feel.” “Really?” I asked skeptically. “They’re pretty painful.” “It takes a little getting used to,” the guy told me. “You want them nice and snug, though.” Before I could protest any more, there was a clatter as Warren knocked over a dozen sets of rental skis across the room. “Nuts,” said the rental guy, and ran off. “Snug?” I muttered, trying to wiggle my toes inside my boots. “When I fail to get Jessica Shang to give me the info, maybe we can just use some ski boots and torture it out of her.

She totally liked you. Like, liked you liked you. She invited you to go to Disney World with her, for Pete’s sake! You don’t invite someone to go to Disney World with you unless you’re really into them.” “Not necessarily,” I said. “I’d go to Disney World with you. But that doesn’t mean I’m into you.” Zoe stopped smiling, like I’d said something wrong. “C’mon,” she said coldly. “Let’s go get our skis.” Then she clomped away in her ski boots.

Running in ski boots was even more difficult than I expected. In addition to being exceptionally tight, the boots were also heavy and oddly balanced. I got exactly one step, then pitched forward and landed on top of two small children, knocking them flat. Just my luck, it turned out to be the same family I’d wiped out on the ice rink the day before. “You again!” the father snarled, while his kids started crying. Several other adults glared at me accusingly. Behind them all, I caught a glimpse of Chip and Jawa, laughing hysterically. “No hablo inglés,” I said to the father. Then I hurried off before he could pound me, doing my best not to crush any other preschoolers. I found Zoe at the ski counter, trying to act like she didn’t know me in front of everyone else. I wasn’t sure if this was because she was angry at me—or embarrassed to be seen with me after I’d just made a scene. “That was smooth,” she said under her breath.

Sure you can,” Chip said dismissively. I was about to tell Chip to back off—I’d seen Erica in character before, and she was staggeringly good at it—but before I could, Warren walked out of the rental shop. Or at least, he tried to walk out of it. The problem was, he was carrying his skis sideways across the front of his body, the way one might carry firewood, which didn’t work very well when trying to go through a doorway. The tips of his skis caught on both sides of the doorframe, stopping Warren so abruptly that he clotheslined himself and collapsed to the ground.

I’d been allowed to stick with my own first name so that I wouldn’t forget it. And I’d been given the name “Coolman” because, well, it had the word “cool” in it, which a million dollars’ worth of CIA research said made me sound cooler.

I started to say “It’s nice to meet you,” but I barely got through the first syllable before Blond Mullet stepped between Jessica and me and pointed a finger the size of a kielbasa at my face. “I told you to go,” he warned. “If you don’t, I will rip your arms off.” I might have backed off right then and abandoned the mission—after all, I liked having my arms attached to my body—

Oh, great,” Erica muttered. “One look at the target and you already have a crush on her.” “No, I don’t,” I said, way too defensively. Erica heaved a disdainful sigh. “The moment you saw her, you stopped breathing.” “It wasn’t because of her. It was because of the lack of oxygen up here.” “Well, you’re definitely not getting enough oxygen to your brain. You can’t develop feelings for the target. She’s the enemy. If you bring emotion into this, you’ll screw everything up.” “I’m not going to get emotional,” I said heatedly. “You’re getting emotional right now,” Erica pointed out.

And I’m excited to get out there and finally ski,” Jessica went on. “This is going to be more fun than a bucket of weasels!” “Bucket of weasels?” I repeated. Jessica frowned. “Oh, shoot. I got that wrong, didn’t I? I always have trouble with your idioms. They’re so strange.” Understanding came to me. “You meant ‘more fun than a barrel of monkeys.’ ” “Yes! That’s it!” Jessica agreed brightly. “See what I mean? Honestly, would a barrel of monkeys be that much fun?” “More fun than a bucket of weasels,” I pointed out. “No way. Have you ever been around monkeys? They smell and they throw poo at you.” “Are you two talking about monkeys?” Erica asked, slipping in between us. “I loooove monkeys! They’re so cute! Especially lemur-monkeys!

Selfie time!” she announced. Jessica and I obediently looked at the camera. “No photos,” growled Dane. Erica turned to Jessica, a perplexed look on her face. “Who’s this guy? Your dad?

Erica pretended not to sense this. “What kind of business is he in?” “He’s in the ‘none of your’ business,” Jessica said curtly. Erica screwed up her face in confusion, then faked a flash of understanding and burst into laughter. “None of your business! You’re funny, Jessica! Really funny!

Mike seemed to notice Dane for the first time, despite the fact that the man was taking up half the gondola. “Who are you?” he asked, nice and friendly. “Jessica’s brother?” Mike certainly knew this wasn’t true. For starters, Dane was such a freak of nature, he and Jessica barely looked like they were the same species.

Only, keeping girls interested in me wasn’t exactly my strong suit. After all, I’d been trying to get closer to Erica for nearly a year and she’d just tripped me on purpose.

Even though the slope was gentle, she was picking up speed, quickly closing the gap on the rest of the gang. It was at this point when Erica discovered that, while she knew how to start skiing, she didn’t actually know how to stop. And now she was heading right for everyone else. They all leapt out of the way as Erica barreled toward them. Except Warren, whose reflexes weren’t quite up to snuff. Erica clipped him as she shot past, knocking him into a snowdrift.

Sasha!” yelled Woodchuck. “Just fall down! That’ll stop you!” I’m sure Erica heard him, but falling down simply wasn’t her style.