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changed your mind.”
    “Yeah, right,” Robbie snorted. “He can’t do that, Tasha. Everyone would be laughing at him for being a chicken!”
    “Well, you could say you were sick or something,” Tasha suggested.
    “It would be true,” Dennis moaned. “I’ve neverfelt worse in my life — except for when I broke my bones last time I went up on Ford’s Mountain.”
    “Gee,” Robbie said, thinking hard. “I guess we’ll just have to get you ready for the big race.”
    “In one week?” Dennis asked incredulously. “No way I’ll be ready for Ford’s Mountain in one week.”
    “You looked pretty good out there today,” Tasha said. “You nearly beat me.”
    “You went easy on me, and you know it,” Dennis said.
    Tasha denied it, but he didn’t believe her. She was too good a snowboarder, and too good a friend.
    “Besides, it’s not just about skill,” Dennis added. “I had a bad fall last time I tried Ford’s Mountain. That kind of thing
     sticks with you.”
    “I guess so!” Robbie said. “You even got your picture in the paper, remember? ‘Second-grader in traction.’ They had it up
     in school for a month and a half!”
    The car horn sounded behind them. “My folks are waiting for me,” Dennis said, turning to go.
    “We’ve got to work on you this week,” Tasha said determinedly. “Starting tomorrow — at the Breakers.Ten o’clock sharp. Then every day after school for as long as the light is good.”
    “Okay okay,” Dennis said. He trudged off, still dreading the week to come. He was sure this whole thing was going to end in
     disaster. He could feel it in his bones.
    He knew he couldn’t possibly tell his parents about his plans. If they found out what he was doing, they’d flip, and probably
     confiscate his board or something. But he wasn’t accustomed to holding out on them.
    Dennis was racked with guilt. He knew what he was doing was wrong. And yet he couldn’t go back on things now without seeming
     like a coward. Seeming? No,
being
one. Dennis would have looked at himself that way, too, if he had backed down from the challenge.
    The smart move would have been never to have challenged Rick to begin with. But it was too late.
    Now he was piling stupidity on stupidity, keeping his big plans secret from his mom and dad. But Dennis couldn’t see what
     other choice he had. He’d made his bed of nails, and now he had to lie down on it.

    “Don’t worry,” Robbie told him the next day while they were practicing back at the Breakers. “Ford’s Mountain is just another
     ski slope.”
    “Just play it safe, and don’t take any foolish chances,” Tasha added. “If you lose, you lose. So what? I mean, Rick’s been
     snowboarding since last winter. Nobody’s expecting you to beat him.”
    “Wait a minute,” Dennis said. “You mean everybody knows about this already?”
    “You didn’t expect Rick to keep quiet about it, did you?” Tasha asked him.
    Dennis moaned. Great, he thought. He was going to be humiliated by Rick Hogan one way or another. Unless …
    Unless he won.
Seized with sudden determination, Dennis launched himself down the hill, carving his edges deep into the new powder with
     every turn, tackling the slope as he’d never done before. At the bottom, he turned around to face his friends and let out
     a whoop of triumph.
    “Take that, Hogan!” he muttered.
    He was definitely getting better, day by day, run by run. His skateboarding skills helped, making thelearning easier and faster. He tried to keep the thought of Ford’s Mountain out of his mind, and for the most part, he succeeded.
     That is, until his mother walked into the kitchen Tuesday evening…
    Dennis was on the phone with Robbie, talking about Saturday’s event, when he realized, to his horror, that his mother was
     standing there, looking at him. How long had she been there? What had she heard?
    "I’ll talk to you later,” he told Robbie, and quickly hung up the phone.
    “What’s this