Page 7 of Beared at Christmas
After a deep breath, I threw the next one. It landed a little closer, but still not on the board.
“You got this,” Ulrik cheered from a chair at the back of the lane.
I appreciated his encouragement, though I would have much preferred him to instruct me, coming in nice and close behind me to show me the proper way to throw.
“Here.”
I jumped, having forgotten the coach was still in our lane.
He passed me another ax to try. “This one is a little lighter. It’s just about finding the right one, and then you’ll hit the middle, no problem.”
I wish I shared his confidence. With each throw, my morale deflated. I didn’t believe I would get one on the board, let alone a bullseye. It took me ten tries to finally hit the board. Not in any of the rings to score any points but just below them on the right side.
With a sigh, I sat in one of the other chairs. “I need a break. Ulrik, you can go again.”
After Ulrik scored six points for another bullseye, the coach left us, having nothing more to teach my cabinmate and giving up on me.
The two of us took turns. We didn’t keep score. Ulrik would have won anyway. I didn’t get any closer to the bullseye than the outer ring. And that was only three occurrences in the entire hour and a half we spent there. By the time we left, my arms and shoulders ached. I worried whether I would be up to the rest of our plans for the day.
My muscles hurt simply grabbing the bar to pull myself into the truck passenger seat.
Ulrik rested his hands on the steering wheel. “Want to check out the snow sculptures we passed on our way here instead of heading right for tube sliding? We can grab lunch, too.”
I nodded, thankful for the slight change in plans. I wasn’t sure if Ulrik experienced the same soreness as me, or if he could simply see my pain. Regardless, I welcomed the change in plans. There was no way anyone from my family would have modified their schedule to accommodate my discomfort. I always had to modify my true self to appease them.
Chapter Seven
Ulrik
In all the winters I’d been alive, I had never gone tube sliding. Skiing, yes. Snowboarding, yes. And even sledding down some local hills. Tube sliding was new to me. Like most of the other attractions Brody and I had planned to visit, there was a place just down the road from our resort where we got to ride down the snowy hills in inflated tubes. The slopes were steeper than the bunny course at the mountain I learned to ski on and had a total of eight snow-packed lanes with high banks to divide them, four on each side of the walkway up the hill. Lined with old rubber tires, the path was easy enough to climb, dragging our tubes behind us. There was also a conveyer lift for those who couldn’t or didn’t want to walk the hill.
Unlike the other attractions we’d been to, the tube-sliding place was busy. We weren’t the only ones there for a change. Aside from wearing warm clothes, the only required equipment was a helmet and the tube we rode down on. We weren’t allowed on the hill without them.
I worried about Brody after ax throwing. The way he rubbed his arms, I expected him to say he was too sore to go. Taking time to see the snow sculptures and grabbing lunch beforehand seemed to be enough of a break for him. Besides, tube sliding worked the legs far more than the arms.
When we reached the top the first time, I stood to the side to let others pass. “How do you want to go down?”
He shrugged with a grin playing across his face. “Individually, I guess.”
“Okay. Let’s each pick a lane.” I let him choose first. There was a line for all of them. Still, we managed to reach the front at the same time. Lying on the tube with my butt in the center,I gripped the holds as the attendant at the top pushed me down. It was faster than I expected it to be, and wetter, with loose snow flying up off the track. I worried the people at the other end wouldn’t be out of the way in time. When I reached the bottom, they had cleared, but I kept going, making it halfway up the sloped wall. When I finally came to a stop, Brody was getting off his tube beside me.
“How did you like it?” I tried to get up and out of the way with him before the next tubers came down.
“It was fun.” He smiled, and it was nice to see the joy in his face after the frustration he’d shown earlier in the day.
“Ready to go again?” There were a lot of guests at the hill, especially kids, but it didn’t make me want to leave.
Brody nodded. “Can we go down together this time?”
I chuckled at how quiet and high-pitched his question had been as he’d wrinkled his nose. “Of course.”
Going down the hill together meant holding onto the hand grips of each other’s tubes. The attendants let people go down in groups of up to four in the same lane, so it was not a problem for us to ride down like that. Brody flopped onto his tube first and, once he had hold of my mine, I climbed on, and grabbed the closest handle on his. The attendant pushed us on our way. Instead of going straight down, like my first solo venture, the tube seemed to spin us around each other on the way down. Sometimes, we were side by side, and other times, one of us was in front of the other. It wasn’t until we reached a lip at the bottom that it became impossible to hold on to each other. We hit the bump and got some air before landing hard, our tubes smacking into each other before we scrambled off them.
We went up the walkway and down the hills several more times, trying every lane to see which one we liked best. Sometimes, we went down solo and other times, together. One time, we were even asked to join another group of two.
“Last time?” I asked Brody, my face slightly numb from the cold. We rode up the conveyer lift for a change, my legs cramping from climbing up the hill several times in three hours. My calves, thighs, and shoulders all ached, while my cheeks felt frozen in a half smile.
He nodded. “I can barely feel my face, and the lines keep getting longer.”
