Chapter 22 Sad Birds Still Sing #2
Her glance takes my breath away. She is beautiful in a way that only unassuming girls can be: at first you don’t notice them because they are hiding behind their hair or their books or whatever nerdy thing they’re up to, but as soon as you get the chance to really look at them, it’s almost impossible to stop.
A wide grin creeps across my face—and disappears as soon as we reach the table.
In the blink of an eye, I stop staring at our chalet girl like a psycho.
An ice-cold shudder flows through my veins and puts me into a state of shock.
Right in front of me, in the middle of the table next to a man with black, gel-spiked hair, is Amanda, the girl from the ice rink.
She gives a little cough, and the light breaks across something gold on her left ring finger. She’s married!
Her look doesn’t even begin to reflect my surprise. Of course not. She knew who I was. Everyone knows who I am. And she knew that just a few hours later she’d be sitting in this house.
I’m here with my father, I remember her saying. Her father…that must the guy I don’t know. Dad had told me that a new potential sponsor would be coming. A big fish, he’d said, from Red Bull, and was excited about it for weeks.
What a load of shit.
Her dark eyes drive into me, and I think my bewilderment gives her satisfaction.
This woman is a monster. A real monster.
Okay, I was an ass to her. A true ass. That wasn’t cool.
But who’s going to beat someone up for not getting it up?
How ill is that? As if it wasn’t clear enough how humiliating that is for a guy.
“Nice to see you, Knox.” My father exaggeratedly pulls out a chair and makes it abundantly clear that I am supposed to sit down and play the perfect son a.k.a. star snowboarder a.k.a. sponsor’s darling. “Training, I take it?”
“Umm.” I blink at him and can hear the words rattling in his head and know he would prefer to yell in my face that I just need to nod my head and play along.
But this is all too overwhelming. How fucked can my karma be that Amanda of all people is sitting at our dining room table and staring at me as if I was the annoying mouse that finally got caught in the trap?
My eyes dart to Paisley, who is standing at the head of the table and nods at me discreetly.
So I do the same. “Yeah. That’s right. Training was, umm, hardcore.
Cameron wanted to try out this new jump, and, yeah.
That’s the deal.” I sound like a fifth grader who snuck off during recess and is now giving their teacher some lame-ass excuse.
My slight slur isn’t all that helpful either. “Sorry.”
Right as I’m about to sit down, a spiky-haired man offers me his hand. His long fingers are as thick as the rest of him. “Joe Dubois. I am so happy to be able to meet you, Knox. I mean, can I call you Knox? Or would you prefer Mr. Winterbottom?”
“Umm.” My vocabulary seems to have stopped at this particular word from the moment I walked into the living room. “Knox is great, absolutely.” My eyes flit to Amanda as I shake his hand. She is playing around with her spoon in the cream of her dessert, pretending not to notice anything.
“Wonderful.” He sits back down and rubs his hands.
It pains me to see him beaming at his daughter, hoping to share his joy with her.
If he knew what she was up for just a few hours ago, he wouldn’t be grinning so dumbly.
His long fingers take a raspberry from his parfait, and he points his spoon at me.
“You were world-class at the show. A true spectacle.”
“Thanks.”
My father seems to notice that my conversational skills don’t appear to be surpassing the one-word mark; he clears his throat and puts on a smile. It’s his artificial business smile, the one looking down from every single real-estate billboard.
“Knox, he’s traveled all the way from New York to meet you.”
I am trying hard to focus on Amanda’s father and to block her out in the process, but she is sitting right next to him, so I don’t manage. Above all, because I’m still kind of shitfaced and my head is trying to fuse his suit with her face. “It’s really great to meet you, John.”
“Joe,” my father corrects me. I shoot him a glance and notice that red blotches are creeping up his neck.
“Oh. Sorry. Joe, I mean.”
The corners of Paisley’s mouth twitch suspiciously, but she hides it skillfully by putting a flute of champagne down in front of Big Po.
“Well, Knox, your track record is really impressive,” Joe says. His head is weird. Rectangular somehow. And his chin wobbles with every movement he makes. “When did you switch to snowboarding?”
“Seven years ago,” I reply and take the tall parfait glass that Paisley has just brought me from the kitchen. I guess she doesn’t think I’m in any danger of giving anyone a shower from my mouth, now that I can somewhat hold a conversation.
Joe Dubois shoves a big spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth. I am waiting for him to get brain freeze and to make a face, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he just keeps on munching away. “A considerable achievement. Your goal is the Olympics, I assume?”
I almost laughed. My goal? No, that would probably be sitting on a folding chair in a lecture hall at Colorado Mountain College, listening to an ancient professor talking about differential psychology.
“Exactly,” my father jumps in when he notices me taking too long. He seems relaxed and for the most part at ease, but I know—I know—that inside he’s boiling. “And I think that the Olympic Games in two years are a realistic goal for Knox.”
“Yep.” The bitter undertone in my voice is impossible to hide.
The Olympic Games…a realistic goal for Knox…
I could say that that’s all a load of crap, but what my real opinion is isn’t worth shit at this table.
All that counts is my snowboarding. Okay, that’s not totally right.
That I’m good at snowboarding. Nothing else.
“The Olympics.” I press my lips together.
I am starting to get furious, and every time I get furious, I start to sweat.
A nice side effect of the anabolic steroids I’m shooting every day.
Suddenly I feel the desire to stick my finger into the parfait, my drunk brain telling me it’ll cool me down.
So I do—even two fingers—and lick them off.
Then a second time. After the third, I grow cocky and begin to scoop a lot onto my fingers when Paisley’s hand appears in front of me and snaps the glass up and away from me.
Subtly, with a neutral smile on her face, as if she was just cleaning up some silverware.
Her poker face doesn’t accomplish much though, because everyone at the table is staring at me as if I wasn’t totally right in the head.
Even Mr. Spiky Hair. My biggest fan. Oops.
The sponsor next to Big Po clears his throat. I don’t know him well, but he was one of the first my dad could win over for me. He works for DOPE. I always forget his name. Thomas…Jensen? Jerkins? No idea, but he looks like Yoda, and I celebrate that. “You feeling okay, Knox?”
“Awesome.” I reach across the table and take a strawberry from a bowl. “In high spirits.”
“Oh, I doubt that highly.” Amanda flashes a sugary sweet smile that couldn’t be more diabolical. Oh, God, I hate her. I have never actually hated anyone, not even Jason Hawk, but I hate this girl. Her eyes dart to Paisley. She snaps her fingers and points to her empty champagne glass. “Fill me up.”
“Don’t speak to her that way,” I say.
Next to me, my father grinds his teeth and makes it clear that I should keep my mouth shut, but, please, I’m Knox Winterbottom. I never keep my mouth shut.
Amanda blinks preciously. “How am I not to speak to her?”
“As if you were better than her. You’re not.”
Joe Dubois’s spoon skewers his parfait and comes to a rest next to his glass a little too powerfully for it to be by mistake. I look over at him and he flares his nostrils. “With all respect, Knox. The girl is your chalet girl. It’s her job to serve us.”
“She’s not here to…”
“Knox,” Paisley says, while taking Amanda’s glass. “Settle down. It’s okay.”
What I’d really like to do is jump up and yell why, no, it isn’t okay, not at all, because she is everything, simply everything, whereas Amanda is arrogant and underhanded and—as it suddenly becomes clear—just like everyone else I’ve gotten with over the last number of years.
The idea of just going on like that now that I know Paisley is…
impossible. The thought alone makes my stomach growl.
Okay, it might be the booze, too, but I don’t think so.
“Yeah, Knox,” Big Po hisses in my ear so that only I can hear him.
His bald patch has grown considerably bigger since the last time I saw him—exponentially in relation to his belly.
All the same, just one more spoonful of parfait, and I’d bet the middle button of his shirt will throw in the towel.
“What’s wrong with you, man? I love you, buddy, but you’re screwing this up right here. And big time.”
He only loves me because we’re related. Not really, but kind of. Big Po is the cousin of the brother of my uncle by marriage on my mom’s side. Or something like that. He works for Rockstar Energy.
“I could give a shit,” I mumble and start to tilt back in my chair. “It’s all the same to me.”
For a second, my father looks like he’s about to explode. His poker face slides as he reaches out and pulls the wooden chair back onto the ground with a thud. “Pull. Yourself. Together,” he sputters between gritted teeth.
I just can’t anymore. The evening is annoying. Amanda is annoying. I am considering simply getting up and going to bed when the clacking of heels announce Paisley’s return and I decide to stay.