Chapter 14
As we ride up the gondola, Chloe is taking selfies and acting nonchalant, as if we’re not about to launch ourselves down a mountain at breakneck speed.
One wrong move could literally mean life or death.
People seem to forget, but riders die every year.
It’s a very real possibility…one I can’t get out of my head.
Chloe has always possessed a knack for staying calm under pressure. Nothing ever gets under her skin. Even our fight. She faithfully listened to me berate her and still checked in on me the next day. It’s infuriating.
I recognize a few of the girls up here from last season. But there’s plenty of new faces too. I’ve been trying to study the roster before each competition to ease my anxiety some—familiar faces put people at ease, supposedly.
Blair drops in first for the practice run. She and I are lumped in with two other girls. I choose to go last and hesitate before locking in and flowing down the mountain. As soon as my front tire grips the dirt, my blinders are on and nothing but me and my bike matters.
The trail is easy, perfectly suited to my strengths, full of technical sections and big open shoots. Suddenly, I’m regretting not going first. Now that I’m cruising, I want to fly down this trail.
We trickle in towards the finish line, and I scan the crowd looking for Reid and Riley.
I don’t see either of them, but a camera man starts following me and I find myself smiling right at the lens.
Not a forced smile either, a real, genuine smile.
I crushed that, and now I know I can do it again—at least technically speaking.
I have to keep my focus on the bike and the ground beneath me. Nothing else matters for the next hour, just me and the trail.
Blair is first to ride. She looks assured, and I know she’s going to be the one to beat today, like she usually is. They don’t have a monitor up here, so I have no clue how her ride went. That’s probably a good thing, I don’t need anything else shaking my confidence right now.
Over and over, I lower my dropper post and then bring it back up again.
I can hear the cheering crowd from down below.
It’s muffled, but if I can hear the chants at all from way up here, Blair must have done pretty well.
Typically only riders and their close family attend qualifiers.
The crowds and the cameras will be much more intense for the main event later today.
Alex claps me on the back—she’s a newer rider. Her girlfriend, Meg, is riding second position today. She should be about done by now. My mouth fills with a subtle metallic flavor as I bite down on the inside of my cheek. A soft whistle blows near my ear bringing me back to reality.
It’s my turn.
My name rings through my ears. Robbie, the announcer who’s up here beside me at the drop in point, is smiling as he says “Baddie Addie is about to drop in, folks!”
I hate that nickname, but it’s better than Blondie. When I first started racing and doing downhill, Reid would call me Blondie around the track, and I worried that it would stick.
The loose dirt flies off of my shoes as I knock them against the sides of my bike. My fingers wiggle into my gloves until they’re perfectly snug, and I complete my pre-drop ritual.
Robbie counts me down, I barely even hear him as he says “3, 2… 1!” But my body reacts to the ‘1’ like a Pavlovian trained dog.
I shoot down the trail. The sun is warming up, but the air is cool against the little bits of my skin that are exposed.
It’s peaceful out here, and I barely have a second to look up and appreciate a blue bird flying overhead before I approach the first corner.
My bike takes the turn perfectly, knowing exactly when and how far to lean from the practice run earlier.
As I come off of that turn, I take the next descent hard. I’m barreling down this trail. This is the first time I’ve been so sure of myself while riding in a long time.
The first set of rollers is coming up. I didn’t try to jump anything or throw in any wheelies on the practice run, but I’m ready this time. Style is always where I struggle, and I know I need to push myself if I want to make an impression.
I glide over the first hill fast and flowy, but as I hit the lip of the second, I lean back and pop a wheelie. My first trail wheelie maybe ever? At least my first televised one. But I land perfectly over the edge of the third hill.
A scream works it’s way out of me, and I catch the sound of the drone camera whizzing overhead. This is the first time I’ve ever looked at the camera. Of course, I always know it’s there, but all the style riders smile and pose for the cameras while they ride. So I do too—at least I try to.
As I drop into the last technical section, I let go of the handlebars and give the drone two thumbs up.
I know I have time to grab the bars again, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it, but my breath still hitches in my throat.
I look down quickly, probably giving away my anxiety, but I make up for it by choosing the hardest line and absolutely crushing it.
I zoom through the finish line, and Reid is rushing over to me screaming before I can even stop the bike. Some security guard is yelling at him before he realizes who he is and then quickly retreats.
Reid has both of his arms wide open and tackles me into a crushing hug as my bike falls to the ground behind me. For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me.
Instead, he yanks one of my arms into the air and screams at the camera, “Baddie Addie, everyone!”
I can’t help the massive smile that’s on my face. Gently, he takes off my helmet and whispers in my ear, “This is your moment. Soak it in.”
Everyone is cheering, and I can’t quite figure out why.
I know I was fast and I made that technical trail look easy, but at the end of the day it was just a qualifier, and I was only the second rider.
There’s fifteen more girls to go, and one of them is bound to show me up.
I haven’t even seen how Blair did yet, and I’m almost certain she was faster than me.
She’s congratulating me as I make my way towards her. “Addie! Great job.”
I can’t tell if she’s being genuine or not. I’m too overstimulated to figure it out, so I offer her a small smile. Hesitantly, I make my way over to the score board, and I see that my time was far faster than Blair. I stumble backwards. Blair is one of the fastest female riders out there.
And I beat her.
Maybe that’s why she was congratulating me—to make sure she doesn’t come off as a sore loser. She can’t risk losing her appeal with the crowd.
Reid is standing behind me practically bouncing up and down. It feels good to impress him. Shockingly, it feels even better to impress myself.
This is the quietest my mind has been in a long time. A guy with a clipboard comes over to ask me if I want to keep my first run score or if I want to go again.
“I’ll keep this score,” I say, my voice firm.
He’s still smiling. “Hell yeah, you’ll keep that score! You fucking crushed it.”