Spy Ski School (12 page)

“He's fine,” Erica told her, transitioning right back into dingbat mode. “He just needs to watch his step better. This snow's really slippy.” She handed my poles back to me, gave me a meaningful stare that Jessica couldn't see, and warned, “You'd better be extra careful now.”

“I will,” I said. The rest of the group was well ahead of us by now, gathered by the tree Woodchuck had pointed out. I started toward them, wondering how to get Mike out of the picture. I couldn't believe I was even thinking of trying to ditch my best friend over winter vacation, but he'd already screwed things up plenty as it was. I was going to have to step up my game if I wanted to win back Jessica's attention. 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.

I hadn't
completely
lost Jessica's attention. Unfortunately, all that was keeping her interested in me was that I knew Mike. She came up alongside me as I trudged downhill and asked, “So, this girlfriend of Mike's . . . Is he
super
into her, or just kind of into her?”

“He's mentioned marriage,” I lied.

Jessica frowned, not liking that at all.

Suddenly, Erica shot past us. Instead of walking over to the tree Woodchuck had pointed out, she had clipped on her skis and was poling over. “See ya, slowpokes!” she taunted.

“Hey!” I shouted after her. “Woodchuck told us to walk!”

“I can handle this!” Erica shouted back, a bit of her real, über-confident self slipping through. “It's easy!” She jammed her poles into the ground again, pushing herself forward, gaining speed.

By the tree, Woodchuck noticed her coming and yelped in alarm. “Sasha! You're not ready to start skiing yet!”

“Sure I am!” Erica yelled. 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.

Beyond the tree, the incline of the slope increased quickly—and so did Erica's speed. She began cannonballing downhill.

“Sasha!” yelled Woodchuck. “Just fall down! That'll stop you!”

I'm sure Erica heard him, but falling down simply wasn't her style. It would have made her look foolish and it would have been admitting defeat, two things Erica simply didn't do. Instead, she stubbornly stayed upright, determined to solve this problem with her usual finesse. And so she only made things worse, gaining more and more speed.

The slope below her was crowded with skiers, many just learning how to ski. Erica sliced right in front of one group, forcing them to wipe out, then bowled another group over like tenpins. She began making a noise I'd never heard from her before—although one I'd made myself quite a lot at spy school—a kind of uncontrollable, panicked scream: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!” Her arms were pinwheeling wildly as she tried to figure out a way to stop.

She couldn't, though. Despite the large number of skiers on the slope, Erica seemed to be on a path to hit nearly every one of them. She cut some off, making them wreck, and caromed off others, knocking them down. One skier crashed into a tree trying to avoid her, while yet another clanged into a ski-lift pole. Several others went sprawling and ended up spinning down the slope on their bellies, taking out still more skiers on the way. A line of small children in a ski class toppled over like dominoes. And yet,
somehow, Erica stayed upright through it all, gaining even more speed.

And then she hit the jump.

It wasn't a huge jump, like in the Olympics. It was really only a medium-size lump of snow to the side of the run. But it did the trick. Erica launched into the air and flew several feet.

It turned out, in addition to not knowing how to stop, Erica also didn't know how to land.

Her skis bit into the ground and came to a sudden stop—but Erica didn't. Instead, she sailed right out of her bindings and began tumbling down the mountain. Her equipment flew off her as she went, leaving a trail of belongings strewn across the slope. (Later, I learned skiers referred to this as a “yard sale.”) One pole landed high in a tree. The other nearly impaled a passing snowboarder. One ski ended up embedded in the ground like a fence post—and yet another unsuspecting skier promptly crashed into it.

Eventually, Erica stopped tumbling and started sliding, her arms and legs stuck out around her like she was a giant starfish. She took out a few more skiers this way until she finally sailed off the run into the woods and plowed headfirst into a snowbank, hitting so hard that she wound up embedded all the way to her shoulders.

“Whoa,” Woodchuck gasped. “That was the most epic wipeout I have ever seen.”

I nodded agreement. My wreck at the ice rink the day before had been embarrassing, but it was a mere ripple compared to the tsunami of destruction Erica had caused. On the slope below me, skiers and snowboarders were strewn everywhere, groaning in pain or shouting after her in anger. Luckily, no one had been badly hurt, but there were plenty of sprains, sprawls, and busted ski equipment. It looked as though a panzer tank division had come through, rather than only a teenage girl. Far below us, Erica extricated herself from the snowbank, saw what she had done—and turned so red with embarrassment that we could see it all the way uphill.

Beside me, Jessica was laughing so hard, she could barely breathe. So were many of my fellow spies. Even Dane—who had seemed genetically incapable of even smiling—seemed to find the whole thing funny. But then, I couldn't blame any of them; I was having trouble keeping a straight face myself.

“Man, oh, man,” Jessica gasped. “That Sasha is a case of baskets.”

“You mean ‘a basket case'?” I asked.

“That's it! She's . . . uh, is ‘nuts' the right term?”

“Yeah. She's nuts, all right,” I agreed.

Jessica gave me a conspiratorial grin in response.

I found myself smiling back. Mike might have really messed things up for me, but for the moment, Jessica and I had at least one more thing in common.

Eagle's Nest Dining Area

Vail Mountain

December 27

1200 hours

Three hours later, when we
broke for lunch, Jessica was still laughing about Erica's wipeout. “Did you see her when she slammed into that snowbank?” She snickered. “She practically buried herself alive!”

Jawa, Chip, Zoe, and Warren cracked up along with her. The dining area was a large, serve-yourself cafeteria, and Erica was still off getting her food. My fellow spies-in-training were just as amused by Erica's disastrous run as Jessica was—if not more. After all, while Erica had let her guard down with me
only on rare occasions, she'd
never
done it with any of them. All they'd ever seen of her was the icy, distant, perfect Erica who was constantly making everyone else look bad, so it was a thrill for them to witness her actually failing at something for once—and failing spectacularly, at that.

To make things even better, Erica hadn't improved much at all during the next few hours of ski school, while the rest of us had. (The rest of us who weren't faking being beginners, at least.) I had actually turned out to be pretty good at skiing—“a natural,” according to Woodchuck—but everyone else was getting better as well. Even Warren had made progress. He had obviously lied when he'd boasted that he wasn't so bad at it the night before, but then, he wasn't terrible, either. Meanwhile, skiing was like Erica's Kryptonite. She couldn't seem to do anything right. When she was supposed to turn, she'd go straight. When she was supposed to go straight, she'd turn. And she'd been falling constantly: on the slopes, on the magic carpet, even while merely standing still. According to my calculations, she'd actually spent more time on her butt that morning than on her feet.

All of which made her more frustrated, which made her more determined to show us up, which made her take more chances, which made her crash even more. She didn't even have to be on skis; she'd wiped out three times so far in the cafeteria alone.

“She must have taken out fifty people on that first run.” Jessica laughed. “She was like a cow in a Chinese restaurant.”

“You mean ‘a bull in a china shop'?” I asked.

“Right! That's what I meant!” Jessica agreed.

“Can you believe she honestly thought she could ski right off the bat?” Zoe giggled. “Without even a single lesson?”

“What a nut job,” Chip said, and Warren and Jawa chimed in with agreement.

Then Erica emerged from the cafeteria line and everyone immediately stopped laughing. Erica seemed fully aware of what had been going on, though. Behind Jessica's back, she narrowed her eyes at everyone else for a split second, but then fell right back into character. She stumbled over to the table with her salad and hot tea, collapsed into a chair, and heaved a sigh of relief. “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.

Dane dutifully rose from his seat and followed her.

Jessica grew embarrassed. “I can handle this on my own,” she told Dane.

“Father's orders,” he insisted.

Jessica groaned and headed off to the bathroom with him in tow.

The moment both were out of earshot, Erica returned to her normal self. “First off,” she told the table, “I admit, I'm having a bit of trouble skiing, but it's only temporary. You're not going to be laughing so much tomorrow when I put you all to shame. Second, we need to figure out this Mike Brezinski situation
now
.”

“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.

“Now, then,” Erica went on. “Mike's presence here is a huge problem. Something that could derail this entire mission.”

“Not necessarily,” I pointed out. “I've been thinking about it. If Jessica likes Mike and I'm her connection to him, she still has to keep me in the picture, right?”

“Wrong,” Erica countered. “Jessica will only keep you around as long as it takes her to cozy up to Mike, and my bet is that won't be long at all. If you and Mike drop by for hot cocoa with her this afternoon, within thirty minutes she'll be asking him to take her on a date, just the two of them—and you'll be tossed aside like a used Kleenex. Once that happens, you won't get diddly-squat out of her, and Operation Snow Bunny will be dead.”

Everyone else nodded agreement with this.

“Leo Shang is plotting Operation Golden Fist for December thirtieth,” Erica continued. “That's only three days from now. Ben, you need to find out what it is as soon as possible. Which means we need to get Mike out of the picture.”

“You mean, like, kill him?” Warren asked.

Chip whacked him on the back of the head with an open palm. “We're not gonna kill an innocent kid,” he chided. “We only have to maim him a little.”

I gagged on my soda. “Maim him?”

“Nothing permanent,” Chip assured me. “Just enough to send him off to the hospital for a few days.”

“You can't maim Mike,” I pointed out. “He's my best friend.”

“He's
a threat to this operation,” Jawa said pointedly.

“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.”