04 August 2018 – The United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Sabrina’s two-dig year began with the event known as the Shuffle. USAFA reassigns incoming juniors to new cadet squadrons before the beginning of their third academic year, to keep squadrons from stagnating. They reassigned Linda to Cadet Squadron Eighteen, the Nightriders, while Sabrina went to CS Thirty-three, King Ratz, across the T-zo in Sijan Hall.

She met her new roommate when the Gallardos helped her move into her new room. Her fellow two-dig, Dina Metzger, looked less than thrilled to be rooming with a mutineer – the mutineer – but said nothing about it. Dina did ask if they needed any help with Sabrina’s things but like most cadets at the academy, Sabrina had little to bring in.

“Where are you from?” Sabrina asked Dina once the Gallardos left.

“The Bronx,” the other woman answered in a disinterested tone.

Sabrina stood there with her hands on her hips for a moment, frowning. She turned to pull something from her duffle and then turned back to face her new roommate.

Dina laughed out loud upon seeing Sabrina wearing a Red Sox hat. “Well, won’t this be an interesting semester?” The mood of the room had changed in an instant.

Sabrina pulled the hat off with a smile and tossed it into her closet. “As long as you mind your place, yeah, we’ll be fine …”

“Shots fired! Shots fired!” Dina answered with renewed laughter. “When our teams meet in the playoffs – because you know they always do – I’ll do your laundry that week if the Sox manage to win. You doing my laundry that week because my Bombers won is more likely, of course.”

Sabrina blew a raspberry at her roommate.

“All right, Roomie, I have to ask … Last year …?”

“Um, sucked?” Sabrina replied as she flopped onto her bunk. “There’s no other way to describe it. I was stuck between what I felt – and what I still feel – was the right thing to do; and the ingrained culture here. Oh, there was a tiny part of me that screamed, ‘Just walk away!’ but I couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know how you did any of it, Sabrina. I know how I reacted when you introduced yourself earlier, and I’m sorry. The thought of bucking the system as hard as you did still scares me a little. You, my dear, you have chutzpah for days!”

“Well, at least you don’t consider me a meshuggeneh any longer!”

“You do root for the Red Sox, so that remains to be seen.”

Four pairs of eyes blinked owlishly back at Sabrina after her pronouncement the following weekend.

“You want to offer us what?” Helen Gallardo gasped.

“I’m not going home for Thanksgiving this year because my folks are traveling that weekend. You’re not hosting anyone or visiting family, so I thought maybe we could all go to Breckenridge. I figure if we leave the day before Thanksgiving, after my last military duty on the 21st, we can spend the following three days tearing up the slopes. I rented a house out there, too.”

“Breckenridge?” Joe croaked. “As the saying goes, we can’t even afford to drive through Breckenridge, Sabrina!”

“It’s no big deal, Joe. I’ve got some money saved up, and I want to try and make up for being gone all last year.”

“Sabrina, you don’t owe us anything …” Mia and Felicity tried not to be obvious in signaling their parents to accept the offer.

“Helen, despite whatever happened with that other cadet, you opened your home to me two years ago and made me feel welcome here. You’ve given me somewhere safe and relaxing to go when I’m out here, and you’ve helped keep the homesickness at bay.” Sabrina still saw the disbelief in her second family’s eyes.

“Look, who makes the generator you’ve got out back?”

“Neptune’s Forge, why?” Joe replied.

Power outages weren’t uncommon out here at the edge of town when the house was built. Just about every home in the subdivision had some model from the Neptune’s Forge HF line, even though power was much more reliable now.

“Because I’m a trust-fund kid, Joe. My parents own a chunk of Neptune’s Forge, a rather sizable chunk, along with a big part of Poseidon Power Systems.” The owl-like stares returned. “Look, my folks earmarked some money for college for all of us kids. I don’t need mine because I’m at the academy. They told me I’m free to use it as I see fit, and I’d like to do this for you to say thank you.”

Sabrina decided the time was right for her next purchase, and she had done lots of research. An email her father forwarded from Doctor Sacha told her she was right, too. She chose the make, model, color, options, and add-ons for later. All that remained was to go to the dealership.

She walked into the chosen dealership with Helen alongside her. Both expected the runaround. They both expected a condescending attitude from the salesman. They also expected to be asked if their husband’s names should be on the title. What they got was a pleasant surprise.

“Good morning.” A man slightly older than Helen greeted them just inside the showroom when they walked in. “How may I help you ladies this morning?”

“I’d like to see a Crusher with four-wheel drive and an extended cab in smoke gray, please,” Sabrina told the salesman, who focused his attention on her. “I would prefer one which has the Poseidon Power Systems KMV-222 generator.”

“Regenerative braking, rapid charge, larger water tank? Do any of those options interest you, or is there a specific option package you’re looking for?”

“Your off-road package comes close, but can I do à la carte to add options?”

“You can, yes, with the caveat that some choices might necessitate changes elsewhere. I should also mention that the -222 can be underpowered at times, in all honesty. I would recommend you spend a little more to get the PPS KMV-295 for the size pickup you mentioned, especially if you plan to use the four-wheel-drive at all.”

Sabrina smiled and held out her hand, impressed by the man’s honesty.

“Sabrina Knox.”

“Jack Spruance.” He glanced at Helen. “Your mother? A friend?”

“Sponsor. Helen Gallardo.”

Jack shook hands with Helen.

“Two-dig? Firstie?” he asked Sabrina.

“Two-dig. Do you get a lot of cadets through here?”

Jack shrugged. “No more or less than the other dealers in town, but my nephew’s thinking about USAFA, so I’ve tried to educate myself about the academy.”

“What do you think, Mr. Spruance? What’s the lead time on a vehicle if I ask for options that none of your vehicles here have?”

“Not too long if we can get the right vehicle from another dealer, especially a dealer not too far away. First, let’s see if you find the Crusher comfortable and like how it drives. If you ladies would follow me over here …?”

“That was incredibly painless,” Helen commented three hours later. Sabrina test-drove a pickup, signed the papers, and registered the truck with the Colorado DMV in those three hours. “We should tell Joe to come here when it’s time to replace his SUV.”

“We should go hang out at a restaurant for another three hours so we can tell Joe how much of a bear the whole process was,” Sabrina giggled. She held up her hands in surrender when she saw Helen’s look. “Okay, we’ll head back to the house and tell him the truth, Mrs. Stick-in-the-mud …”

“Come on, troublemaker. Let’s go let the rest of the family ooh and ah over your new truck.”

Sabrina pulled the glider through a tight loop, drawing a delighted squeal from the four-dig in the back seat. Sabrina smiled, remembering similar squeals during her F-15 rides over the summer. After another twenty minutes in the air, Sabrina brought the graceful craft in for a gentle landing. A beaming Cadet Fourth Class Emma Pozo unbuckled and climbed out of the aircraft once secure.

“Pretty awesome, huh?”

“It’s like aerial ballet, ma’am!”

“It is, isn’t it?” Sabrina replied with a smile. “Gliders are much different than the Cessna or Cirrus aircraft the academy uses for powered flight training. I trained on those same types of planes before I came here, but gliders are just so graceful.”

“Were you a pilot before you started here, ma’am?”

“I was. I have my private pilot’s license as well as multiengine, complex aircraft, and instrument ratings.”

“Wow,” the younger woman sighed. “I wish I could have taken lessons, especially after our flight, but my family didn’t have money to spare. I’m not planning to be a pilot in the Air Force, either.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t learn to fly later, Emma. Don’t forget many bases have flying clubs where you can learn on your own. Those clubs usually only teach powered flight, though.”

Emma nodded in understanding.

“All right, let’s go over the flight and what I noticed while you had the controls …”

Sabrina flowed through her katas in the Cadet Gym at the end of August. Dina worked out elsewhere in the cavernous facility. Sabrina’s Astronautical Engineering classes continued to challenge her. What she enjoyed the most this semester was being an instructor pilot, though. She pushed her thoughts away as she tried to lose herself in the timeless dance. Her face shone with sweat.

“Sabrina?” a quiet voice asked as she toweled off at the end of her workout.

Sabrina turned to find Monique Levesque standing behind her. Unlike Brit Englund, Monique and the rest of the hockey team had turned their backs on Sabrina last year.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” Sabrina asked as she glared at her former teammate. Monique’s face fell though she expected Sabrina’s reaction.

“Sabrina, I came to apologize for how we treated you last year.” She received only a curt nod in response. “Are you going to play this year?”

“Why should I? You got along just fine without me last spring after you ran me off,” echoing Monique’s comments to her last year. The team went two-and-ten after Sabrina walked away, so ‘just fine’ was questionable.

“It won’t be that way this year, Sabrina …”

“How do I know that, Monique?” Sabrina shot back through gritted teeth. “How do I know I can trust you? ANY of you? You all stood there when Krista crosschecked me into next week, and then you let me leave without a word!”

“And you told us to fuck off before you did!” Monique screamed back. Heads in the gym turned.

“Because I warned all of you what might happen when you decided to back me up, and then you got pissed at me when my prediction came true! So, yeah, I did tell you to fuck off!” Sabrina threw her towel toward her gym bag. She turned back to her former teammate and put her fists on her hips.

“I’m still here by the barest thread, Monique. I’ve got a sweet gig as a glider instructor pilot this semester, and I don’t want to mess that up. I enjoy being back in my Aikido club again. Plus, I’ve got Astro hanging over my head just waiting to crush me into space dust. I’m holding my own, and I don’t think I should add something else.” Sabrina blew out a breath. “So, no, Monique. No, I’m not coming back.”

Monique nodded sadly and turned to go. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Sabrina.”

Sabrina watched the firstie leave.

“Me too, Monique,” she whispered as her former teammate walked away.

“Sabrina? Can you spare a moment?” Chris Ueno asked the following week.

“Hai, Sensei?” He looked at her with a tired expression.

“You know I don’t speak Japanese, Sabrina … Anyway, this isn’t a class discussion.” He pointed to a chair along the room’s wall. “Have a seat.” She sat without making any sarcastic comments.

“Sabrina, forgive my presumption, but I like to think we’ve moved past a teacher-student relationship into something closer to mentorship. Please consider what I’m about to say through the lens of having your best interest at heart, okay?”

“Sensei?” Now she was confused.

“Sabrina, I am glad that you returned to the Aikido Club when things didn’t work out with the hockey team last year. You helped the new members of the club with footwork, positioning, or whatever they needed right away, and without me asking you to. No, don’t be alarmed, Sabrina. That assistance was, and still is, welcome. It takes me a little bit to open up to new students, to not be so stiff with them, because I’m trying to gauge where their comfort level is with certain things. Having you around to bridge that gap for me has been a big help. I think, however, you are not one hundred percent happy being here.

“To say it plainly, Sabrina, I think you miss the hockey team, and I think you should go back.”

Sabrina blinked in disbelief a few times. Sensei wasn’t wrong, she did miss playing, but the team’s reaction last year still burned. It ate at her, even though it also fueled her drive to excel, to better extend a virtual middle finger to the haters.

“I can tell you’re not sold on the idea, Sabrina. Tell me, are your workouts still hockey workouts?” She glanced away and Chris nodded. “You’re still unbalanced in your personal life, Sabrina. Your mom’s not wrong in telling you that we all need that balance. You don’t have to make a decision right here, right now, and I don’t want to see you leave by any stretch. That’s not why I brought it up. But you do need to come to terms with the team’s reaction last year, regardless.”

“Hai, Sensei,” she sighed in resignation.

Sabrina took a walk around the Cadet Area as she tried to process Sensei Chris’ advice. Did she miss playing hockey enough to return to the team? If she did, could she forgive her teammates’ reactions last year? Most of the cadets she came in contact with this year seemed to have forgotten all about her protest. More importantly, the administration seemed to have forgotten. Dina looked up from her homework when Sabrina reentered their room.

“You okay, Sabrina? You look stressed.” Sabrina flopped into her desk chair. It squeaked in protest.

“Conflicted,” she answered. “My Aikido Club sensei suggested I go back to the women’s hockey team. He says I haven’t dealt with how they treated me last year, and that I miss playing.”

“Do you?”

“I do,” she sighed. “Sensei is right. The Aikido Club isn’t a competitive one and I miss the competition.”

“And your conflict is how the team treated you last year, right?” Sabrina nodded in response. “Everybody deserves a second chance, Sabrina. Don’t forget that admin gave one to you and to everyone who supported you last year.”

Sabrina sat there, lost in thought.

“Anyway, Linda came by looking for you while you were out.” Dina and Linda developed a casual friendship through their connection with Sabrina. “Do you want to go meet her at A Hall for dinner?”

“I’ll meet you there. I need to run over to Vandy first.”

Monique Levesque and her roommate almost collided with their visitor as they left their room for dinner.

“OH! Hey, Sabrina. What’s up?”

“I know you’re probably on your way to dinner, Monique, but can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, absolutely …” She turned to her roommate. “Malika, this is Sabrina Knox. We played hockey together the last two years. Sabrina, this is my roommate, Malika Harris.” The two women greeted each other before Malika slipped out to wait in the lounge. “Come in, Sabrina.”

Sabrina did so, looking uncertain. Monique waved her to a desk chair before sitting on her bunk. She waited for the younger cadet to say something.

“Monique, I want to apologize for how I treated you last week. You offered me a sincere apology and I didn’t receive it graciously at all. Your reaction last year, as well as the team’s, was a natural reaction to feeling threatened.”

“Sabrina, I can’t imagine how you felt last year,” Monique said in reply. “I’m sure that cut off, isolated, persecuted, scapegoated, and demonized would all fit. However threatened anyone else felt, they didn’t have four thousand-plus people wanting their head on a pike.” She shook her head.

“You were my teammate, Sabrina. In fact, you still are my teammate at the academy. Maybe not on the hockey team, but you definitely are part of the Air Force team. You signed up to face the same risks that all of us in uniform will one day. You stood up for what was right even when you knew it could cost you everything. You’re braver than any of us realized, or want to admit.”

The two sat in silence for a minute.

“I’d like to rejoin the team, Monique,” Sabrina said. “I miss the competition, the camaraderie.”

“How soon can you come back?”

“Let me check with my advisor and I’ll get back to you by this time next week.” She stood and stretched. “I’ve held you up long enough. I’m sure you and Malika are getting hungry.”

“We were heading to A Hall when you showed up. Do you want to join us?”

“My roommates, this year’s and last, are waiting for me over there, too. Let’s go.”

Sabrina’s solo workouts kept her in hockey-playing shape, but her shot timing was off. It took two weeks of practice with the team before she could dial it back in. The boards and glass were at greater risk from the puck than the net until then.

Chris Ueno had been right. Dina noted how calm Sabrina appeared once she started skating with the team again. Sabrina’s teammates, even the most outspoken ones from last year, welcomed her back. Many of them said that the team appeared to be more cohesive and energetic with her around again.

As September gave way to October, excitement over Kelsey Goodacre’s upcoming concerts at Falcon Stadium started to grow. The mostly-retired singer would play four consecutive sold-out shows starting on October 7th. While each show would have two hundred seats reserved for USAFA cadets, tickets were still hard to come by.

Sabrina, Dina, and Sabrina’s former roommate Linda Stockley laughed out loud at Linda’s stupid joke as they entered the Cadet Post Office. Sabrina was glad she’d reconnected with Linda. Her present and former roommates made up the entirety of Sabrina’s ‘entourage’ this year. Monique Levesque from the hockey team was the only other person she interacted with socially.

Sabrina continued to snicker at the joke’s punchline as she opened her mailbox. Most of its contents proved to be junk mail, but one envelope bore the return address of a famous record label. When she opened the enclosed letter, four tickets almost fell to the floor before she caught them.

Sabrina blinked in disbelief at the words printed on the tickets. Four front row seats to Sunday night’s concert, plus VIP backstage passes! The letter in her hand confirmed the authenticity of both the tickets and passes since it was signed by her ‘Uncle’ George, Kelsey Goodacre’s husband and long-time guitarist.

“Whatcha got there, Sabrina?” Linda asked.

“Do you guys want to see Kelsey Goodacre on Sunday night?”

Monique Levesque could barely sit still before the concert started.

“Geez, Mon, you might want to take a Valium or something …” Sabrina said to her team captain.

“Sabrina, I’ve wanted to see Kelsey Goodacre live for years, and you’re holding passes for all of us to go backstage and meet her after the show!”

“Well, it’s a good thing tomorrow’s a holiday because I doubt you’re getting to sleep tonight with how excited you are.”

Despite her age, Kelsey Goodacre still put on an incredible show. George Adler’s guitar work was still masterful, and the rest of the band still played with evident joy. After the two-hour-long set and three encores, the house lights came up. Security escorted the four cadets backstage once the front row seats began to empty.

“Hiya, Squirt!” George Adler said as he wrapped Sabrina in a hug. Sabrina gave the older man a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Hi, Uncle George!” She hugged his more famous wife next. “Hi, Aunt Kelsey! Thank you both so much for the tickets!”

“Are you kidding, Sabrina? George and I couldn’t play at the Air Force Academy and not have you at one of the shows, especially after last year!”

“As much as I appreciated your support last year, can we not bring it up? I might start having flashbacks!”

The older couple laughed. “Why don’t you introduce your friends?” Kelsey asked.

Sabrina introduced Dina, Linda, and a still awe-struck Monique to the famous performers.

“Monique, I’m a girl, just like you are,” Kelsey told the firstie as they shook hands. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“But … but …”

“Why don’t we sit down, and you can all tell me what your plans are following graduation, okay?”

Sabrina resisted the urge to grab the controls of the glider, waiting just one more moment to see if the cadet in the front seat could figure things out.

He did. Barely.

The four-dig’s handling of the controls wasn’t smooth at all. He jerked at them and seemed very unsure of himself. Pilots kidded about ‘yanking and banking’ as they flew, but theirs was always a lighter touch than what Sabrina experienced today. She gave the four-dig a weak smile after they climbed out of the cockpit. She went over her observations and voiced her concerns.

“Not really a surprise, ma’am,” the younger cadet replied. “I thought the hand-eye coordination I have in video games would translate to actual flight controls … Video games don’t make me feel like I did while we were up there. I might be better off as an RPV pilot.”

“Maybe,” Sabrina conceded. There was little else to say. She dismissed the four-dig.

“Is it bad form to kiss the ground after a training flight?” she asked a fellow instructor who sidled up to her.

“Only if the trainees can still see you,” Katrina Tenerowicz, a fellow two-dig replied. Katrina – unlike Sabrina – had been an instructor pilot over the summer.

“What do we do with him now? He’s still got three more flights scheduled. Do we just take him up when it’s his turn and fly around for a bit?”

“That’s usually what happens. Kind of an unwritten policy. They still get their ‘training,’ but there’s no embarrassment and they don’t get to solo. We don’t usually document anything negative other than to rank them low in the class. That keeps most of them away from a pilot’s slot, but doesn’t torpedo their career otherwise.”

“Well, he seems like a decent kid – for a four-dig. He knows he’s not really pilot material unless maybe he flies RPVs.”

Sabrina rubbed at her gritty eyes. She’d been staring at her latest Intermediate Astrodynamics project for too long.

‘Orbital mechanics and rendezvous predictions don’t make for a fun evening!’ she thought as she stood and stretched.

“That stuff fry your brain yet?” Dina asked.

“Just about …”

“Hey, just think – less than three days from now you’ll be shredding the trails in Breckenridge.”

“And that’s the only thing keeping me sane right now! I’m going for a quick walk up and down the hall to clear my head before I dive back into that stuff.”

Sabrina paced the halls two or three times before ducking into the squadron lounge. Not frowned upon during ACQ unless you spent too long in there.

“Hey, Joe,” Sabrina said when her call connected.

“Isn’t it ACQ right now?” he asked, as he always did whenever she called at this time of day.

“Study break, Dad, don’t worry …” She heard Joe’s snort of laughter. “So, my last military duty is lunch formation on Wednesday. I’ll be at the house no later than 1330.”

“I’ll have all three girls ready to go. You still want to pile in with us?”

“I can’t see the sense in bringing my truck, Joe. I’ll leave it parked in your garage. The point of this little vacation is to reconnect with you guys, not to take off somewhere by myself.”

“It wasn’t this crowded yesterday,” Sabrina’s companion griped three days later. Sabrina looked down at the nine-year-old standing next to her.

“Might have something to do with the fact that yesterday was Thanksgiving, Mia.”

The girl looked up. Sabrina knew Mia’s ski goggles and fleece balaclava hid a frown on the youngster’s face.

“These people should have stayed wherever they celebrated it, then. This is our mountain.”

“Well, let’s stop chattering like monkeys and ride down it, then,” Sabrina replied with a smile Mia couldn’t see. The two strapped their boots into the bindings of their snowboards before tilting over the lip of the run.

Sabrina’s skill matched Mia’s – both only started boarding three years earlier. The pair felt comfortable enough on the boards to try some of the obstacles, though they wouldn’t challenge for Olympic medals any time soon. They had fun nonetheless. The other members of the Gallardo family were somewhere else on Breckenridge’s many slopes. Joe, Helen, and Felicity preferred skiing to snowboarding.

Another boarder caught Sabrina’s eye as their chair approached the top of the ski lift. Despite being bundled up against the cold like everyone else, that boarder looked familiar because of the way they carried themselves. When Sabrina and Mia stepped off the chair lift, Sabrina looked around for the other person but couldn’t find them in the crowd.

“Something wrong?”

Sabrina looked down at Mia and shook her head.

“I thought I saw someone I knew, but I’m probably just imagining things.” She shook her head again. “We came here to ride, right?”

“Right! Let’s go!”

Sabrina caught sight of that same ski outfit above her on the lift during her way back down the hill. She turned to get a better look, forgetting she rode a snowboard. The hill reminded her a moment later. After clearing the snow from her goggles, Sabrina looked up at the chair lift but the person was no longer in sight. Sighing, she popped back to her feet and rode down the rest of the run without incident.

“Where’d you go?” Mia asked once Sabrina slid to a stop.

“I needed to inspect the condition of the snow from a closer vantage point.”

“So you fell?”

“Right!” Sabrina laughed while looking over at the clock in the window of the Ski Patrol’s shack. “Drat! It looks like it’s time to head back.”

“‘Drat?’ You coulda just said ‘shit,’ you know? It’s not like I haven’t heard the word.”

“Um, no I couldn’t have! I’m not about to use it around you any time soon, and don’t let your folks know you know that word, either! Or the other one!”

“You mean the f-word?”

“Ack! Now I know how my father felt when he had to warn me about saying those words at the wrong time and around the wrong people!”

“Yeah, Mom would throw a fit!”

“Come on, troublemaker! Let’s head back.”

Sabrina and Mia made it back to the rented house just after the rest of the Gallardo family. They all took quick trips through the showers before heading to one of the resort’s restaurants. Sabrina caught sight of a familiar-looking ski jacket as they enjoyed some Chinese fare.

At least this time Sabrina could tell the person wearing the outfit was male. He had to be the same person as before because he carried himself in that same familiar way. She couldn’t tell anything else about the man while he walked toward the exit with someone else. Unfortunately for Sabrina she was wedged against the wall of her booth, and couldn’t get out. She wouldn’t be able to catch the man unless she wanted to climb over the table as well as Mia and Helen. Sabrina sighed and resigned herself to the fact she would never find out who the familiar-looking man was.

The family woke mid-morning the following day and were on the slopes by ten-thirty. Sabrina and Mia picked another of the snowboard areas to try that day. Sabrina was disappointed that she hadn’t caught sight of that outfit by lunchtime.

“You wanna try this terrain park?” Mia asked in the late afternoon.

Sabrina looked over the description and difficulty rating. It looked to be short and of moderate difficulty. In the interest of safety, only one person was allowed on the course at a time. Most people trying the run looked younger than Mia, but there were a few beginners about Sabrina’s age. Mia said she wanted to go first.

“Fine,” Sabrina agreed while they approached the beginning of the run, “but you meet me by that sign at the bottom, and –”

“I know, I know! ‘Don’t talk to strangers!’ I thought you were like my other big sister, not another mother! Geez!” Mia shook her head and hopped onto the course. She disappeared far too quickly for Sabrina’s liking.

Sabrina stared at the attendant. People had to wait until the course was clear, and she willed him to let her go already. Not that it worked. Finally, the attendant dropped his arm and Sabrina sprang out of the starting area.

She managed to keep her mind on her run until near the end. Sabrina saw Mia jumping up and down, yelling something, cupping her hands like a megaphone as she approached the bottom. Sabrina couldn’t hear what Mia yelled, though.

Someone in the outfit Sabrina had been looking for all day jerked to a stop behind Mia. He must have asked her something because the girl turned. The man pointed up the hill at Sabrina while talking to Mia. Sabrina slid to a stop, tore her boots loose from the board, and stomped over.

“Mia!” she barked. “What did we just talk about?”

“But, Sabrina!” the girl protested. “He’s not a stranger! He says he knows you!”

Sabrina crossed her arms and gave the man an icy glare through her goggles.

“Oh man!” he laughed, his thick balaclava muffling his voice. “Sabrina’s giving us the death stare!” Sabrina’s rigid posture relaxed because she thought she recognized his voice.

‘No, it can’t be …’

The man raised his mirrored goggles to reveal smiling eyes, and then he lowered his face mask. Sabrina’s jaw dropped.

“Hey, Badass!”

“TOMMY!” she squealed before tackling him.

“Oi!” a man standing behind Tommy Jones exclaimed. “You gonna help me find a Sheila up here now too, mate?”

“Right, Archie!” Tommy snorted while lying in the snow hugging Sabrina. “Like you need the help!”

“What are you doing here?” Sabrina asked after she released him and stood. She pulled up her goggles, moved her face mask, and gave him a big smile. Tommy gave her a look, looked down at Mia, then back at her.

“Boarding …” he said slowly.

“THOMAS ALAN JONES!” Sabrina barked, glaring at him.

“Oi, mate, you are in serious trouble now!” Archie stage-whispered in his Australian accent. Mia giggled.

“Okay, fine! I wasn’t going to have much time at home over this weekend unless I skipped classes and left Monday or Tuesday. The drive here yesterday wasn’t too bad, plus Archie certainly wasn’t going to fly to Oz and back for only a few days. The flights take one day each way alone!”

“Wait, ‘drive?’ Where did you drive from? You go to Westfield State!”

“I used to, Sabrina. I go to the University of Denver now, and Archie’s my roommate. Archie, this is Sabrina Knox who was my neighbor growing up. Sabrina, this is Archibald Murray from Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia.”

“Denver? When did that happen?”

“I started there this fall. Anyway, aren’t you going to introduce us to the young lady with you?”

Sabrina blinked a few times before gathering her wits.

“Um, Tommy, Archie, this is Mia Gallardo, my sponsor’s youngest.”

“Nice to officially meet you, Mia,” Tommy said, offering the girl his hand.

“Sponsor?”

“Her sponsor family, Archie,” Tommy answered before Sabrina could. “Sabrina is a junior at the Air Force Academy, though they call them ‘second class cadets’ instead of juniors. A sponsor family helps cadets in various ways. They help with homesickness and adjusting to the academy. They help them relax away from the academy, host them over the holidays if cadets can’t get home, give them a place to do laundry, whatever. They’re also there for events their home families can’t make. For most of the cadets, they become a life-long second family.”

“What he said,” Sabrina laughed while waving at Tommy.

“Sabrina, I’m getting tired,” Mia cut in. “Can we go back now?”

“Of course.” She turned back to her friend and his roommate. “Guys, we’ve been here all day. I need to take Mia back to the house we rented.”

“Where are you staying?” Tommy asked. Sabrina named the area. “Not too far from our hotel, then. Any chance we can get together at some point and talk, Sabrina?” Sabrina caught the hopeful look in Tommy’s eyes.

“It’ll have to be tonight, Tom. We’re leaving before noon tomorrow. I have to report back Sunday night.”

“Whenever works for you, Sabrina. Do you still have the same cellphone number?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll call or text after dinner.”

“Okay. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Tommy stepped forward. Sabrina believed he was about to hug her again, so she stepped closer, too. He shocked her by cupping her face and kissing her deeply.

Sabrina snorted before melting into the kiss. Never in all the years of knowing Tommy Jones did Sabrina know how good a kisser he was. Sabrina thought she heard Mia giggle. She knew she heard Archie ask Mia if she and Tommy would still be standing there kissing in the spring after the snow had melted. Tommy broke the kiss, stepped back, waved, and walked away.

“You gonna be okay, Sabrina?” Mia asked with another giggle. “You look like your brain’s short-circuited!”

Sabrina looked down at the young girl, and then back up. Tommy looked back and waved again before he and Archie hopped on a resort shuttle bus with their boards.

Sabrina stood there stunned and unable to think.