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yearling, I’d say.”
    â€œYep,” Seth says. “It ran away when it caught sight of us. We must’ve scared it off.”
    I can’t resist his setup. “Scared you pretty good, little brother,” I tease. “You should’ve seen your face.” I turn to the others. “Seth was completely freaked. Nearly pissed his pants.”
    â€œOh, whatever,” Seth scoffs. “I did not.”
    â€œYeah,” says Rico. “I noticed you were acting a bit weird after you came back from your ride yesterday. Thought you might have seen something while you were off in the trees.”
    Mitch looks at us. “You guys should be careful about going into parts of the forest you’re not familiar with,” he says. His smile is gone, and his face is deadly serious. “You never know what you might run into.”
    Seth stares at Mitch. I nod, dry-mouthed, unable to find any words to reply.
    â€œThat’s true,” says Chase. “You should always make as much noise as you can while you’re in the trees. If a bear knows you’re coming, she’ll get out of your way. They don’t like running into us any more than we like running into them.”
    Mitch stretches like a lazy cat. “Well,” he says. “You guys up for another afternoon of humping and bumping?”
    â€œHell yeah,” says Rico.
    â€œBring it!” shouts Nolan.
    Seth and I exchange a nervous glance before packing up the remains of our lunch and following the others back into the bike park. That was a little too close for comfort.
    After lunch, we work hard on our bikes. Up, down, up, down. Nobody breaks anything, but there are a fair number of cuts and bruises. Mitch takes a few jumps where he turns his whole bike around in a 360 underneath him. Maybe even two. I can’t tell because it goes so fast. He shows us a few flips too. They’re crazy great, but I can’t even imagine how he found the courage to ever try his first one. He watches all of us as we ride, giving us tips and telling us when things are really working.
    I’m still nervous about what went on between us at lunch, but Mitch is acting like nothing happened. Gradually, I relax back into a fun day of biking.
    Mitch talks a lot about safety, and how important it is to stay in control. “I know you guys hate to hear it,” he says, when we’ve taken a break to patch our broken, oozing skin, “but you’ve got to stay in control. Go slow, especially if you’re on a trail you don’t know or if you’re trying a trick for the first time. Don’t be stupid like me,” he says.
    Nolan raises his eyebrows. “ Mitch Woodgrove and stupid don’t seem to go together in the same sentence,” he says.
    Mitch shrugs. “See these teeth?” he asks, giving us a wide grin.
    We look. His teeth seem perfect. Straight, even and white.
    â€œNot yours?” asks Rico.
    Mitch shakes his head.
    â€œWhat happened?” Nolan wants to know. He’s fishing around in his bag of trail mix, chasing a blue M&M. He pops it into his mouth and squints through smudgy glasses at Mitch’s teeth.
    â€œEntered a dip too fast on a trail I didn’t know,” Mitch replies. “I bombed into it, hard. My front shocks squished out. No bounce left in them. I flew over the handlebars and took a digger, right into the other side.” He smacks the top of his helmet to show us the way he hit the wall. “Hammered it, square on,” he continues. He opens his mouth and points to his front teeth. “Cracked all four of my teeth on the top,” he says.
    I grimace. “Ouch.”
    Seth shudders. “Gross.” His hand goes to his mouth.
    â€œYeah, gross and ouch,” Mitch agrees. “Lucky I didn’t have my tongue between my teeth right then. I’d have bitten it in two.”
    It’s quiet for a moment as we consider this.
    â€œNice,”