Golden Girl

Informationen zum Autor Mari Mancusi grew up in New England where she spent her winters snowboarding in the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Today she resides in Austin, Texas, with her husband and young daughter, writing snowy stories to stay cool. A graduate of Boston University and a former Emmy Award–winning TV news producer, Mari has written numerous books for children, teens, and adults. When not writing, she enjoys traveling, cosplay, watching horror movies, and her favorite guilty pleasure—video games. Klappentext "Lexi Miller, a.k.a. Golden Girl, is the snowboard cross queen. As the most promising student at her elite Vermont ski and snowboard school, Mountain Academy, Lexi is a shoo-in for the Olympic-level trial team. That is, until a freak fall during a snowboard-cross competition crushes her dreams and puts her future at stake. A year later, Lexi's back at school, physically healed, but still mentally scarred. Every time she straps on her snowboard, severe panic attacks set in. To make matters worse, her best friend has turned her back on her, her archenemy on and off the slopes is determined to make her life miserable, and everyone is treating her like an outcast. The only person who seems to understand is Logan Conrad, a staff rat whose mother works on the mountain. Lexi finds herself drawn into his world just off the mountain, and discovers she has a knack for singing, something her new friends encourage. But Lexi's dad who also happens to be her coach and lead instructor at school has different ideas about his daughter's new friends and talent. Will Lexi ever be able to figure out what exactly happened on the mountain a year ago while trying to balance her own dreams with the dreams her father has for her?"--Provided by publisher.Golden Girl CHAPTER ONE One Year Later Hi there! I’m here to drop off Alexis Miller?” I hugged my jacket closer to my chest as Mom slid down the rental-car window and addressed the man sitting in the guard shack outside Mountain Academy’s wrought-iron front gate. It was only November, but the temperature had dropped, and the wind swirled through the car, stinging my still-sunburned nose. I breathed in, smelling hints of snow on the horizon. Most people didn’t believe you could smell snow, but you could. There was this sweetness to the air just before the first flakes started to fall. The forecasters had predicted at least twelve to fifteen inches tonight, and Mom had decided to cut her trip short in order to get back to eighty-degree temperatures and sunshine. After having been married to my dad for twelve frostbitten years, she’d say, she’d had enough of the white stuff to last a lifetime. The gates creaked open and the guard waved Mom through, allowing us access to the long, windy road flanked by large oak trees that led to the main campus. We’d missed foliage season by a couple weeks, and the trees’ once-colorful leaves had faded and fallen—now blanketing the road in corpses of beige. As the bright morning sun filtered through bare branches, peering curiously into the car, I slouched in my seat and slid on my sunglasses, missing the vibrant palm trees in Mom’s backyard already. Mountain Academy for Skiers and Snowboarders used to be a traditional New England boarding school—offering elite educations to children whose parents summered at Cape Cod and wintered in Saint Barts. And for a time it seemed that it would stay that way forever, mass-producing future lawyers and doctors and politicians from here to eternity and beyond. But then, in 1969, the stuffy founder of this stuffy institution was found dead—facedown in a plate of stuffing. It was Thanksgiving. (I couldn’t make this stuff up.) And the school ended up being passed down to his hippie-dippie fool of a grandson, Irving “Call me Moonbeam” Vandermarkson, who had ...

Product details

• Authors: Mari Mancusi
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 9 to 13
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2015
• EAN: 9781481437622
• ISBN: 978-1-4814-3762-2
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: mix; Mix
• Subject: Children's and young people's books > Non-fiction books / Non-fiction picture books > Mankind