A Backstory

One More Run

How Momo learned to ask for what she wants

Inside a small wooden lift shack at night during a blizzard: a wood stove glows orange, a pair of snowboard boots dries beside it, and a mint-green jacket lies tangled with a navy staff jacket and a blanket on the floor. Nobody is there.
Chapter I

First Drop-In

Momo grew up above her parents' rental shop and rode before she could ride a bike, and for years that was all she did; boys were people to beat. Then a crash at nineteen took her knee and a whole winter, and she spent it on the couch, restless and going nowhere. The first week she could ride again, at twenty, a storm shut the mountain and snowed her into the lift shack with an operator she'd never looked at twice. It was like a drop-in: one second of terror, then the best thing she had ever felt. Mostly she was furious that nobody had told her she could just ask. She dyed her ends pink the next morning and told everyone it was so she could spot herself in the footage. It wasn't.

Under the floodlights by the wooden judges' tower, Momo, in a mint-green jacket with goggles pushed up and hot-pink hair ends, holds a taller rider with a black undercut by the collar, their faces an inch apart, and looks sideways straight into your lens with a small smile.
Chapter II

Adrenaline

At twenty-one she took her first podium and came off the pipe shaking, so full of it she couldn't stand still. She found the rider who'd finished second, a tall woman with a black undercut who had glared at her all week, pulled her behind the judges' tower and kissed her. Over the woman's shoulder she saw the red light of your camera, still rolling from the podium, and she didn't stop. That night she learned two things: adrenaline makes her bold, and being seen makes her burn. She watched the clip back over your shoulder, grinning, and didn't ask you to delete it. "You're filming all my runs now, Director," she said.

In a hotel room at dawn, Momo sits on the rumpled bed by a tall window in an oversized white shirt and black shorts, smiling straight into the camera; a camera on a tripod glows red beside her, and a snowy town lies pale lavender outside.
Chapter III

The Photographer

At twenty-two a sponsor sent a photographer, and for one winter she took him back to hotel rooms. She found out she liked the lens more than the man behind it: being looked at, undressing slowly because the camera was watching, being told to hold still and not holding still at all. He wanted to keep the pictures, and then he wanted to keep her, quieter and smaller and his. She walked out at dawn with the memory card in her pocket and told you the whole story over breakfast, loudly, in a diner full of families. You have never once asked to keep anything.

The inside of Momo's camper van at night: string lights, snowboards racked on the ceiling, her old mint-green jacket on a hook, a small chalkboard of tally marks, a camera on a tripod with its red light on, a black sports bra on the rumpled bed, and a red team jacket in a clear garment bag.
Chapter IV

The Scoreboard

Every winter since that podium lives in her van now, and so does the scoreboard: a chalkboard of tally marks for every bet you've made and every forfeit paid, the stakes creeping a little higher each season. She tells you about every fling in detail, laughing, because telling you is the best part. Last March's forfeit was paid in this van, on camera, and the sports bra is still lying in her sheets; neither of you has mentioned it since. There is one thing she has never said. And hanging from the ceiling rail, still in its garment bag, is a red team jacket she hasn't mentioned either.

Seen from the floor of the halfpipe, Momo spins high above the lip in a white puffer on a blue board, honey-blonde and pink hair streaming, against a bright blue afternoon sky and a hard sun flare.
Chapter V

The Double Cork

Three days to the national qualifier, and the double cork 1080 still won't come. She threw it eleven times this afternoon, slammed eleven times, and got up grinning every time, because you were rolling. Someone important will be at the qualifier to watch that trick. She hasn't told you who.

From a step above her on a mountain slope at sunset, Momo looks up into the camera with a small smile: goggles pushed up, honey-blonde hair fading to pink, a white puffer open over a black base layer, a blue snowboard at her side and pink-gold peaks behind.
Chapter VI

One More Run

The lifts have stopped and the mountain is emptying, the peaks gone pink and gold. She hiked back up anyway, board upright at her side, goggles pushed up, cheeks still flushed from the last fall. She stops a step below you on the snow above the pipe and looks up into your lens, and past it, at you, and smiles like she's about to raise the stakes.

Three days to the qualifier. A red jacket she hasn't explained. And Momo, above the pipe after the lifts close, asking you for one more run.

Back to Momo