Chapter 3: Show the Glide
The morning air in the athletes’ village had a different texture, a nervous energy that vibrated in the concrete and filtered through the blinds. Amber was lacing her boots, the ritual calm of pre-practice, when the door burst open.
“Nope,” Alysa announced, already dressed in a puffy USA jacket and jeans. “Change of plans.”
“My practice is in forty minutes,” Amber said, not looking up, pulling the lace tight with a precise, practiced tug.
“And the slopestyle finals are in twenty,” Isabeau said, leaning in the doorway. “We’re going. Entire U.S. contingent is supposed to show face. Coach’s orders.”
“My coach,” Amber said evenly, “did not order me to watch snowboarders.”
“The team coach,” Alysa corrected. “It’s support. It’s morale. It’s getting your head out of your own… blades.” She grabbed Amber’s skate bag and hoisted it. “I’ll tell him you’ve got a female thing. He’ll blush and not ask questions for a week.”
Amber sighed, the sound a white flag. The memory of the cold, silent rink from the night before felt less like a sanctuary and more like a sentence. The echoing controlled chaos whispered at the back of her mind. “One hour,” she said, for the second time in two days.
The mountain was a spectacle. It wasn’t the hushed, reverent atmosphere of the ice arena. This was raw, loud, a carnival on snow. The air smelled of diesel from the snowcats, fried food from vendor tents, and the clean, sharp scent of crushed ice. Music thumped from speakers, a bassline you felt in your teeth. The crowd was a sea of oversized flags, neon beanies, and faces painted in garish colors.
They found a spot near the finish corral, jostled by enthusiastic fans. Amber stood rigid, her hands buried in the pockets of her team jacket, feeling profoundly out of place. The competitors dropped in, one after another, launching off massive jumps with names like “The Guillotine” and “The Coffin.” They spun, flipped, grabbed their boards in ways that seemed to defy both physics and common sense. Each landing was a crash of snow and a collective gasp from the crowd.
“They’re just… throwing themselves,” Amber murmured, watching a rider over-rotate and slam into the snow, sliding to a stop in a cloud of powder before popping up with a laugh and a wave.
“Yeah,” Isabeau yelled over the noise, grinning. “It’s awesome! Look at the height!”
The American hope, a guy named Dave with a bright red beard, had a solid first run. The second U.S. rider, a young kid from Vermont, washed out on the third jump, his board skittering away. A groan went through the American section.
“Okay, pressure’s on,” Alysa said, her playful tone gone. “Need a big score from Skells now.”
The name hit Amber like a gust of wind. She looked up toward the starting gate, a tiny platform at the crest of the steep, carved-up slope. A figure stood there alone, stretching, a dark silhouette against the glaring white. Even from this distance, the posture was unmistakably loose, a study in nonchalant readiness.
The announcer’s voice boomed. “And dropping in next… the current leader in qualifying… representing the United States of America… Y/n SKEEEELLS!”
The crowd roared. Y/n didn’t pump her fists or play to the stands. She simply adjusted her goggles, gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod to the official, and dropped.
The difference was immediate. Where other riders attacked the course, Y/n flowed with it. Her takeoffs were less violent explosions and more deep, coiling springs. She wasn’t fighting the mountain; she was conversing with it. On the first jump, a massive kicker, she launched into a backside 720, her board a blur, her body a clean, rotating line. She landed with a thump that sent a spray of snow, not a loss of balance but an accent mark.
Amber felt her breath catch. This wasn’t chaos. It was something else entirely.
Y/n accelerated into the rail section, sliding the metal bar with a grinding shriek that echoed down the slope. She popped off, effortless, and lined up for the second jump. This one was bigger. The crowd’s hum rose in pitch. She went higher, a frozen statue against the bright sky, completing two full flips with a twist before snapping her board straight and landing with a force that looked brutal but absorbed into her knees with a fluid, deep bend. She was already carving for the final hit.
“Come on, Y/n,” Alysa whispered, gripping Isabeau’s arm.
The last jump was the monster, “The Coffin.” Y/n hit the lip with terrifying speed. For a moment, she was all alone in the air, time stretching. She tucked, rotated, one hand grabbing the board’s edge near her back foot. One spin, two, a third. She unwound late, a sudden, explosive opening of her body.
Amber’s professional eye registered the technique: the perfect axis, the spotless grab, the controlled layout. But her mind was flooded with something else—the sheer, audacious joy of it. Y/n wasn’t just executing tricks; she was exulting in them.
The landing was heavy, one hand touching down to the snow for a brief second before she recovered, carving a wide, celebratory arc toward the finish, spraying a curtain of white over the cheering fans at the barrier.
The score flashed: 89.75. A massive number. The U.S. section exploded.
Y/n slid to a stop in the corral, yanking off her goggles. Her face was flushed, her breath coming in plumes. She wasn’t smiling; she was beaming, a raw, unrestrained expression of triumph that transformed her features. She high-fived coaches, was mobbed by teammates. She threw her head back and laughed, a sound swallowed by the crowd but visible in the line of her throat.
Amber realized she was standing perfectly still, her own hands now out of her pockets, clenched at her sides. The precision in her own soul, the one that demanded quiet and order, felt suddenly small. What she had just witnessed wasn’t an absence of discipline. It was discipline’s wild, hotter-burning cousin. It was power, made playful.
“Unreal!” Isabeau was screaming. “Did you see that last rotation?”
Alysa turned to Amber, eyes wide. “See? Morale!”
Amber just nodded. She couldn’t look away from the corral. Y/n had extracted herself from the crowd and was scanning the spectator areas, snowboard now propped on her shoulder. Her green eyes, even from a distance, seemed to be searching. They swept past, then snapped back. They landed directly on Amber.
Y/n didn’t wave. She just looked. Held the gaze for three long seconds in the midst of the chaos, the noise, the celebrating throng. The corner of her mouth quirked up, not the full beam from before, but something quieter, more specific. A acknowledgment.
Then she was pulled away by a teammate, disappearing into the media scrum.
The noise of the mountain rushed back in, louder, more vivid. The smell of the snow, the chill on her cheeks, the thump of the music—it all felt amplified, electrically charged.
“We should get back,” Isabeau said, checking her watch. “Your coach will actually kill me.”
“Yeah,” Amber said, her voice strange to her own ears. She turned to follow them, casting one last look over her shoulder at the empty spot where Y/n had been.
The walk back to the skating hall was silent. The world had shifted its axis slightly. The upcoming practice, the silent ice, the triple axel waiting for her—they were still there. But they were no longer the only things there. A new, disruptive data point had been logged: the image of effortless flight, and the piercing green eyes that had found hers in a crowd of thousands, as if they’d known exactly where to look.