The Shuddering

together. He looked like a rock star with those giant sunglasses glued to his face, sure to turn heads all day. She looked away from him, tired of staring at her own reflection in the black lenses of his shades.
    “I’ll just sit in the lodge.” She gazed toward a massive A-frame, outdoor tables dotting its redwood deck, multicolored umbrellas decorating the majesty of an otherwise white and green landscape.
    “All day?” Sawyer asked. “Ape, you’re going to be bored out of your mind.”
    “I don’t care,” she told him, growing more insistent by the second. “I don’t want to do this. I know I said I did…”
    “You said you did.”
    “I know .”
    Sawyer slid his glasses down his nose enough to look at her. She caught a glimpse of his chocolate-colored eyes, immediatelyknowing that look. He was trying not to be annoyed, but she was cramping his style.
    “Don’t worry about me,” she insisted. “I’m sure they have magazines or something.” She nodded, reassuring him that her decision was firm. There was no way in hell she was getting on that lift, especially with some slippery board strapped to her feet. There was no way she was going up to the top of that mountain—a mountain that, she was sure, would be the death of her. She hated sports, having no idea what had possessed her to think this was a good idea in the first place, that snowboarding would be any different. A couple of kids on skis buzzed past them. April squeezed her eyes shut, unnerved.
    “It probably isn’t safe anyway,” she said, but it wasn’t what she had told him earlier. It had been the first argument Sawyer had made. But she had lied, had told him that she had checked with her doctor, that she’d be okay. Sawyer had wanted to come up here on his own, had offered to drop her off in Colorado Springs to see her grandparents—she had complained that she hadn’t seen them in so long—and yet, for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to let him take this trip alone. And upon seeing Jane, she was glad that she’d fought him, because there was something there, something she didn’t trust. But despite her wariness, she couldn’t strap her feet onto a board in the name of espionage. “Just go,” she said. “Have a good time.”
    Sawyer sighed, pulling the glove off his right hand before unzipping his jacket pocket and fishing out his wallet. “Here.” He pulled out a couple of twenties, folded them in half, and tucked them into the palm of her hand. “We’ll come back for lunch.”
    “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
    “It’s okay,” he said softly, hiding behind his glasses. He was trying to be understanding, but she could tell he was upset. “Therental line is probably massive anyway.” April didn’t have gear of her own. She gave him a guilty smile.
    “Hey!” Ryan waved at them from yards away. “What’s the holdup?”
    She and Sawyer exchanged a glance before he smiled in return.
    “See you later,” he said, then readjusted his board against his shoulder. She took a step toward him to give him a parting kiss, but he didn’t notice, too distracted by his friends.
    April looked down at the money in her hand, chewed her bottom lip, then tucked the bills into her jacket pocket. When she looked up, Jane and Lauren were looking her way. Feeling her face grow hot, she looked away from them and turned toward the lodge.
    They fell backward as the chair swept them off the ground and into the air, three boards pointing right while one pointed left. Ryan shifted his weight, an arm wound around the pole on the far left side of the lift, the weight of his board pulling heavy on his boot.
    “I feel bad,” Jane admitted, her shoulder flush with Ryan’s as they continued to ascend.
    “Don’t,” Sawyer told her. “It’s her choice.”
    “Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Lauren countered. “After lunch or something.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” Sawyer mused.
    “It’s better,” Ryan confessed. It had been the one thing that had bothered him since Sawyer had mentioned April tagging along—the one thing beyond April tagging along at all. Someone was going to have to spend an entire day on the bunny hill with her if she did change her mind, andthat hadn’t been the point of this trip. With the beginner’s hill directly beneath them now, they bore witness to dozens of people lying in the snow like the dead, boards strapped to their feet, unmoving, probably wondering what bone they’d just broken during