Bail | LRH

Chapter 1: the lifts

The lifts open at eight-thirty in the morning, and it was only eight right now so that left me about fifteen minutes to eat and get ready before heading out to the lift which was a ten minute drive from my house. Since I wanted to be one of the first people to ride down the mountain on a gloriously beautiful day like today, I wanted to be there just a couple minutes early in order to beat the line of people.

I quickly shoved the rest of my breakfast into my mouth and got up to wash my dishes before heading upstairs to get ready.

"Thanks mom!" I yelled while still trying to swallow the huge chunk of pancake that was lodged in my throat.

"You need to take smaller bites, and slow down next time A" my mom said while pulling me back and giving me a kiss on top of my head before letting me go.

I made it back up to my room and threw off my pajama pants before slipping on my snow pants that were more like overalls. I decided that it was sunny enough and a good temperature outside that I didn't need my heavy duty snow jacket, and a thick hoodie would suffice. I quickly put my hair into two braids before heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth and then down to the garage where my board and boots were.

"Oof- Almost forgot!" I said stopping in my tracks as I was about to walk past my room again. "Can't forget the gum" I chuckled as I grabbed the pack of watermelon gum that was on top of my dresser next to pictures I had of me and my family and friends.

I'm a very superstitious person, and I have my own routines and traditions and rituals I need to go through or special socks I have to wear for all my competitions. Gum, for me, is on the list of those things. When I won my first X Games medal when I was fourteen, I was chewing watermelon gum and from that moment on I just took it as a good luck charm like things would always go right if I was competing with this watermelon gum in my mouth. And so far, I have been right.

My dad was already in the garage getting his stuff together when I walked in and grabbed my boots and board from the rack, throwing them into the trunk of the car before sliding into the passenger seat and buckling up.

"C'mon dad, we're burning daylight!" I said sarcastically pointing to the nonexistent watch on my wrist. When in reality we had the entire day, and most of the night to be out on the mountain riding.

The drive to the lifts was as our usual drive went. We rocked out to AC/DC the whole drive over, it was our thing and it was how we hyped ourselves up before hitting the slopes. We luckily found parking in no time as some days are more crowded than others, but today being a wednesday morning there wouldn't be many people here this early.

The only ones that would really be here are the people that live right on the mountain, or tourists. Since most of us competition boarders or skiers are homeschooled in order to make more time for training, we were out here all the time. I hadn't gone to real school since fifth grade, because once I hit middle school and began to really take snowboarding a lot more seriously, and saw that I could potentially have a real future in the sport, academics seemed to sort of move to the back burner as bad as that sounds. Regardless, I liked being homeschooled, it was much nicer in my opinion.

I hopped out of the car and opened the trunk to sit in while I put my boots on and grabbed my board, waiting for my dad to do the same. Once that was done we carried our boards to the lift and to my surprise there were actually a couple people in line already waiting for them to start it up. I frowned at this sight because I was really hoping that I would be the first to touch down on the fresh powder but it is what it is, I wasn't going to bitch and complain about it, after all I was going down the mountain either way.

"Oh my God, Scott!" an older man's voice sounded from behind the two of us in line. I turned around to be met with one of my dad's friends who from this initial interaction, haven't seen each other in quite some time.

"Henry? My God, it's been a long time, how have you been man? '' My dad said, walking over to Henry, I guess his name was before bringing him into a hug.

"I'm good, I'm good! And this must be your daughter, the snowboarding superstar" he said, directing his attention to me. I greeted him and shook his hand before my dad told me I could take the lift up and he would meet me at the top so we could take our first ride down together.

I took the lift up by myself, I didn't mind it though, I've been on here a million times alone, it was peaceful and I liked to take in the view and get in the zone before getting off. On competition days, the lift was the last moment of relaxation before everything became business.

Reaching the top of the mountain I hopped off the seat and made my way to a bench to await my father who probably spent the entire ride up here chatting with Henry and catching up on whatever they had missed in each other's lives.

I was minding my own business staring off into space just thinking about random things to pass the time before I was brought back to reality when I was hit with a wave of snow from a snowboarder passing by.

"Aw, is Adrian too scared to go down the mountain? Does the little baby need her daddy to hold his hand?" Luke Hemmings said to me sticking his bottom lip out pouting at the end of his sentence before turning to his friends Calum, Michael, and Ashton and laughing about covering me in snow. This boy would literally take any chance he got to talk some shit to me, but he keeps forgetting that when it comes to who's the better snowboarder, I'm winning right now.

Our bickering was never really that bad, we throw a couple of F-bombs in each others directions, a couple of "I hope you bail" or "I hope you wipe-out" but we never actually get violent or harm the other. We talk our shit, which infuriates me sometimes, but we let everything settle on the slopes and the course.

"Fuck you Hemmings"

"Hey no, don't fuck him, fuck me" Michael jokingly said while moving forward, interrupting me.

Calum smacked him on the back of the head with a disappointed look on his face as he whispered "What the fuck are you doing, man?" I rolled my eyes at Luke and his little posse. Him and his three goons went basically everywhere together, and God they were an annoying bunch sometimes. I didn't have beef with the other three like I did with Luke, though I'm not really sure why. I would actually admit that Calum and I were decent friends, despite him essentially being Luke's right hand man.

I brushed off Michael's comment and continued to shoot daggers at Luke. "Looks like someone's still salty about not making the podium last weekend, huh?" I said in the same mocking tone Luke had used on me earlier.

That wiped the smile right off of his face, and I smirked as I continued to throw comments at him. "Aw did that bruise your precious little ego? Do you want me to kiss it better?" I said still using the mocking tone and throwing out a pout just like he did.

"Do you want me to kiss it Luke?" Ashton asked, laughing and puckering his lips moving closer to Luke's face.

"Shut up, Ash. Let's go" he said, pushing Ashton's face away with his hand, and motioning for the rest of the boys to follow his lead down the mountain.

Okay wait, I'm actually sort of in love with this story already, and I'm having a lot of fun writing it so far, and i have A LOT in store for this story like shit's gonna hit the fan you just gotta wait. But if you've made it this far thank you for reading, I hope you like it.

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