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Show 113. there already. Stephanie could see Chic and the others adding fuel to a barrel of fire. Once out of the car, they could hear the laughing and talking, though no one had taken to the hill yet. JD handed Stephanie the sack of weiners and buns, then hung the gallon thermos over her other arm. He got blankets out of the trunk and a box of wood and they started hiking through the deep snow of the lower pasture. "Who comes?" Chic called as they approached the group. "Yo!" JD hollered back. "Stephanie!" Carol Sue ran toward them, relieving Stephanie of the thermos. "What's in this thing?" "Hot cider. Pure 100% cider. Nothing added," Stephanie said smartly. She'd always heard the seniors were big beer guzzlers. It had taken JD some time to convince her the cider wasn't merely a concession to her and Carol Sue. "Did you find enough tubes, Chic?" JD asked, piling the wood nearby, then rubbing his hands together over the fire. "I've got four - two regulars and two biggees. Tomlin's bringing a snowmobile later." Chic motioned up in the gully where three guys were having a snowball fight. "They've got some stuff in the jeep, they said." A few minutes later, Chic yelled for everyone to come on over to the fire. "I want you all to know," Chic announced, "we're having EVENTS. Races and stuff. Do you want to get started? Why don't we pack the hill before everybody gets here?" "When do the UFO's show up?" It was Elaine Caldwell, the girl on the paper staff who'd interviewed Stephanie weeks before. Laney, as JD called her, had hooked her arm in Chic's and was giving him the business. "According to my calculations," Chic appeared to be consulting his brain, "about midnight!" Then Chic grabbed Laney with one hand and Stephanie with the other and pulled them along behind. "C'mon, Lovies, let's go get the inner tubes." In no time at all they'd hiked up the easiest part of the gulley and stood at the top of the tubing hill. It looks so neat in the moonlight, Stephanie thought, feeling like she was standing above some distant untouched moonscape. Quickly, Stephanie and Carol Sue glommed onto the giant tube, hustling to be the first in the virgin snow. |