Wylie cringed inside, tried not to show it. Why, once he got riled up, could he not let a thing blow over? Especially a thing as underpowered and inconsequential as Jacobie? Escalation had always been his weak spot. And when his anger turned inward, as it had turned now, he became just plain stupid.
April looked at Jacobie. “Is that true?”
“Look across the street and figure it out for yourself,” said Wylie.
“It’s utter silliness,” Jacobie said. “The reason he got violent is because I exposed him for the vicious clown that he is.”
In hardly more than a flash, Jacobie was back in the pool, Wylie on top of him and holding him under. When Wylie finally let go, Jacobie came up gasping, fear in his eyes, and the men locked into a graceless waterlogged skirmish before two Mammoth bicycle cops waded in and pulled them apart.
Wylie got a holding cell with a homeless man, asleep and reeking of alcohol. Jacobie had the adjacent cell and they could see the rough outlines of each other through the perforated steel mesh.
Sgt. Grant Bulla sat on a folding chair outside the cages, with a laptop computer on his thigh and April Holly and her mother standing on either side of him. April and Helene had already stated what they’d witnessed, and Wylie had quickly confessed. Jacobie had gone from outrage to sullenness.
“Okay,” said the sergeant, “I can write warning tickets and free both of you guys, if you both agree not to press charges. If you do press charges, it’s arrest time, two calls and all that. So which will it be?”
Wylie and Jacobie declined to press charges.
“Okay. Next time, my gloves come off. I don’t care who you think you are.” Bulla opened the holding cells and the miscreants walked free. He took Wylie by the arm and held him back as the others moved along. “Get your act together.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked toward the exit. “Those maple-bacon turnovers at Let it Bean yesterday were really something.”
“Cops know their doughnuts.”
Bulla smiled slightly. “I walked into that one. But good luck at the Mammoth Cup. The less time you spend behind bars, the more training you’ll get in. My son is Daniel, on the freeski team, by the way. Thanks for being cool to him.”
April was waiting for him outside. Wylie’s heart fell but bounced. He saw Helene at the sidewalk with Logan and Clean Cut, none of them speaking, all staring at him. Across the street, the festivities were still going on, though Wylie could see that Gargantua had given away most of their prizes by now. The big inflated gorilla logo swayed on its tethers.
“I’m sorry I had to testify against you,” April said.
“I forgive you.” Wylie felt foolish and repentant now and wished he could crawl into a hole.
“Have you always had that temper?”
“We go way back.”
“I know the history here. And it looks to me like you’ve got a log on your shoulders, Wylie Welborn. Not a chip, a log. Why? Because certain people will not forgive you for being born. Or your mom for having you.”
“What makes you a sudden expert on Welborns?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
Wylie looked at her and nodded, felt all the old currents still running their unchanged courses, pettily violent and repetitious, channeled by the past.
“Wylie,” said April. “There’s a proven way to shrink that log down to a chip.”
“How?”
“By hugging another person, or persons, at least four times per day.”
“What?”
“It works. Give me your hands.” He was too stunned not to. Hers were smooth and warm and small. She looked up at him, one corner of her mouth raised in a half smile, her eyes busily searching. He waited for her to erupt into laughter. Her voice was whispery, but it stayed on tune as she sang, “Four hugs a day, that’s the minimum. Four hugs a day, not the maximum...”
Wylie felt his mouth part. “Mom sang that to me.”
“Well, she was right. That song was written by Charlotte Diamond, who understood that hugs improve temperament. You can start by hugging me if you’d like.”
She released his hands and slid her arms around him, leaning in and turning her face primly to one side. He placed his arms around April, but he couldn’t commit because he wasn’t sure if she was mocking him, so he bent at the waist almost formally and held her for a moment. Wylie smelled her hair and wondered if it was the shampoo she advertised. Glancing past her shoulder, Wylie saw Helene staring at him and talking to Logan, who leaned, hands on knees, beside her like a lineman in a huddle, nodding. The clean-cut young man looked eagerly to Helene, as if for a signal.
April stepped back and looked at him. “And?”
“I feel better.”
“Of course you do. And are we getting negative vibrations from behind me?”
“Clearly negative.”
“How come you don’t shave?”
“I like my beard.”
Her eyes scanned his face again. “What you like is distance between yourself and the world. I’d grow a beard if I could. I’d hide behind it. Then I’d make a million dollars doing an ad for a beard-trimmer company.”
“I’d buy one. They haven’t made a good one yet.”
She smiled. “I’m going to Chile tomorrow for six weeks. Portillo. I’ll get a good look at the next year’s Europeans. Of course, we Americans invented my sport, so I’ve got an advantage.”
“You’re a beautiful slopestyler. I’ve never seen a triple cork like yours.”
“It’s all just amplitude on those triples.” Her eyes were back in scan mode. “What you just said means a lot to me. My whole goal is to board beautifully.”
“Good luck in Portillo, then.”
“It’s gorgeous there. You should think about heading down.”
He nodded.
“Look, I only met him once, but I’m very sorry about what happened to Robert. I hope and pray he can recover. I’ve read about people coming out of comas like that. You must miss him very much.” Wylie nodded, bracing himself for another hug plug regarding Robert. “Also, I don’t like what Jacobie Bradford is trying to pull on Let It Bean. He denied it all, but I believe you. So you’d better watch that temper of yours, because all it’s going to do is make things worse.”
“That’s all it ever does.”
“See you later, Wylie. Four hugs a day. Minimum. Not the maximum.”
She smiled at Wylie with all-American cover girl and Olympic gold medal wholesomeness, turned, and walked away.
Chapter Seventeen
In late August, on floor two of Mountain High, in a room behind a formidable steel door that only Bart Helixon could unlock, Sky Carson waited inside the dark, shiny belly of the Imagery Beast, Helixon’s invention. The plasma glass enclosure housed him roundly on all sides as would an igloo. The glass was backed by black acoustic baffling, so it was always twilight in here, until the Imagery Beast came to life.
Behind Sky stood cabinets, glass-faced and filled with electronics. Red and blue lights pulsed or held steady. Six feet in front of Sky, an electric leaf blower was clamped to a ladder, eye level with him, the barrel of the blower aimed at his face. Glued into a hole in the top of the barrel was a large flared funnel filled with chipped ice and slushy water.
Coach Brandon Shavers’s voice came to him from a small but powerful speaker mounted somewhere in the ceiling above him. “Ready, Sky? We don’t have all day.”
“The runs take approximately one minute, Brandon.”
“But you’ll be dripping sweat when it’s over,” said Helixon.
“I’m already dripping sweat and everything else.” Sky thought that Helixon was the worst of dilettantes when it came to racers. Though to Helixon’s credit, he’d invented the Imagery Beast to help racers train in the off-season. The Beast was really something. But of course Helixon insisted on hovering around and acting like he knew something about doing highway speeds down a mountain of snow with three other hell-bent maniacs.