“Simon!” Dez calls out. “Be careful!”
“Why are you still here?” the director snarls at Dez.
For a moment, she thinks Moriah means why is Dez at the school, in general, which isn’t a terrible question. But when Dez looks around and notices that she’s the only first-year who hasn’t yet tried to ski, she realizes what Moriah means.
“This slope is too hard for beginners,” she says.
“‘The fear of the Lord tendeth to life,’” Dr. Moriah hisses, the white cobra around her neck drawing very close to Dez. “Go.”
“We’re going to kill ourselves—” Dez protests.
But before she can finish her sentence, Moriah shoves Dez in the middle of her back, sending her face-first into the snow below. What looked soft and puffy from above, Dez now realizes is actually hard and icy. She can’t imagine ever being able to stand in skis on this, much less control her movements, much less navigate dense fog.
Two white skis come to a stop beside Dez’s ice-covered cheek. She looks up and sees Moriah glaring down at her.
“Get up,” she says.
“I can’t,” Dez says.
The woman stabs Dez sharply with a ski pole. “I said, get up!”
Dez tries to gather herself. With great effort, she makes it to her knees.
“For God’s sake,” Moriah says, and jerks Dez roughly to her feet. Then she turns her back to Dez and says, “Hold on to me.”
Having no other choice, Dez puts her hands on Dr. Moriah’s shoulders, her fingers up against the cobra’s scaly skin. Then, without warning, the director pushes off.
She moves like Patrick Swayze reincarnated as a bullet train—all muscle, all power, hips quick from side to side, her skis kicking snow up into the air all around them—until together they enter into the dense cloud, and suddenly Moriah ducks out from under Dez’s grip, swerves to the side, and is gone …
And Dez is hurtling down alone, through fog so thick she can barely see her skis. Fear grips her. Her breath vanishes. Her velocity increases, and then somehow, instinctively, she’s narrowing the tips of her skis to form a V. Now she edges them out so they’re parallel again, her knees bent a little, ski poles tucked under her arms.
What the hell? Dez is skiing.
The world inside the cloud is soft and calm. The wind whips through her hair. She hurtles down and finally comes out on the other side of the cloud into a star-strung, clear black sky. She fills her lungs with air.
She’s amazed by her dexterity, amazed by the mountain and the night sky. And even more amazed when, below her, she sees them:
Every first-year—Simon included—is now carving elegant eights into the snow, paired off with a corresponding last-year. They’re skiing as couples, swaying together under a constellation of LED stars. The torches have been extinguished and stowed away, replaced by an indescribable energy between mentor and protégé.
V-ing her skis to slow down and watch, Dez thinks it’s like some kind of school dance for adults. She sees Alice Quinn from the barand Yael drifting together very slowly down the hill. She sees Simon coupled with Jet, holding gloved hands as they fly in tandem from a ramp, flip once in the air, and land effortlessly.
But where is …
There. Leaning against a pine tree, alone behind a newly coupled pair.
It’s Rafe.
Of course.
He’s the only one still holding his torch, and he’s looking straight at her.
He smiles, beckoning her with one finger. But she’s already skiing his way, naturally, as if it had been her plan all along to wind up right in front of him.
Was it random? Was it instinct? Were they just the last two filmmakers left? Dez doesn’t know what lies ahead of her with Rafe, but for the moment, she’s willing to be amazed by that, too.
“Congrats on scoring the hottest mentor,” he says. “Now the real fun begins.”
DEZ’S BOOTS CRUNCH IN THEsnow as she walks with Rafe back from the bottom of the ski lift after the coupling ritual. The twinkling stars all around them, the artificial moon floating on a river of fake clouds—it is beautiful, and strange knowing that a team of filmmaking techs created it, building the reality the rest of them actually live with, day after darkened day.
