I nod in the direction of a little red hut, behind which a fire is burning underneath a cauldron. “What’s that?”
“Mulled wine with rum.” Gwen casts me a conspiratorial glance. “It’s strong. Wanna drink a mug? I’ll invite you.”
Thinking it over, I gnaw on my lip. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to!” Donning the look of a terrier, Gwen tugs my arm. “It’s practically your baptism. Every one of Aspen’s inhabitants has to be familiar with Dan’s punch!”
I’ve never had much of a taste for alcohol, which has on the one hand to do with my permanently plastered mom and, on the other, training. But I imagine one mug of punch with Gwen will be okay. We’re not getting smashed, just toasting to this new phase of my life.
“Well, all right,” I say. “A little something to warm us up can’t do any harm.”
Gwen claps her gloved hands, and we stomp over to the little hut. It’s interesting to see the man in the thick winter sweater—Gwen referred to him as Dan—ladle some of the red-wine-and-rum mixture into cute Christmas mugs, lay two slices of orange on top, and then place a sugar cube in a spoon on top before covering them both with rum and setting them on fire. “Don’t burn yourselves,” he says, grins, and places the mugs in front of us.
“Exotic,” I say, my eyes fixed on the dancing flames burning amicably atop both of our mugs.
Gwen runs a finger down the handle. “You’re here without your parents, right?”
I acknowledge her question with a curt nod, without looking at her.
Clearly she understands that I don’t care to talk about my past, because she changes the topic immediately. “Do you already know what’s next? Do you have a job?”
“No.” The flame above my mug has gone out, and the sugar dissolved. “Yesterday out on the slopes I applied for a position as an endurance trainer.” I glare into my punch. “I could have saved myself the trouble.”
Gwen sips from her mug, her eyes looking at me over the rim. “What do you mean?”
I shrug. “Dunno. Because that snowboarder Knox is an ass?”
Her lips open in surprise before she asks, “You met Knox?”
“Yeah.” I carefully take a sip and have to keep myself from spitting it right back out. That stuff is burning my throat out. God is that terrible. “You know him?”
“You’re asking me if I know Knox?” She gives a bitter laugh but doesn’t seem to want to add anything. She points to my mug. “Drink. The second sip’s better.”
And indeed, she’s right. The more I drink, the better the horrible stuff tastes.
“You should see about a job with the Winterbottoms,” she says after a little while. “They’re looking for a new chalet girl and they pay well. Maybe that’d be something for you.”
“A chalet girl?”
“Yeah. The Winterbottoms live in a ski resort close by. In one half of the place are the guests, in the other themselves. You’d take care of the tourists, clean up around the place, that kind of thing.”
“I can do that,” I reply with the beginnings of giddiness welling up. “Where do they live exactly?”
Gwen takes another gulp from her mug. “I can bring you over there tomorrow after training, if you want.”
“I’d be eternally grateful, really.”
She grins and points at a french-fry stand next to us. “What you shouldreallybe grateful for are the thousand-and-one ways you can eat a potato.” She starts counting on her fingers. “Mashed, baked, fried, roasted…”
I laugh out loud.
Once we’ve finished our mugs, we have Malila knot two color-coordinated bracelets around our wrists, and we meander over to the slope to see the next show. My head is smoking from the punch.
It takes a little while for us to make our way past all the people standing next to one another, eying the slope. A snowboarder jolts forward and does a bunch of tricks that make me gasp, as with every jump I’m afraid he’s going to crack his head open.
Gwen casts me an amused glance. “Don’t worry, nothing’s goingto happen to him.”
“How do you know?”
