“Gear?”
“Snowboarding gear,” Dr. Sinclair said. “Merrill Douglas runs the Pro Shop and he’s got a daughter. She’s twelve, too. I asked him if he’d set you up with some snowboarding lessons. That is, if you want to. Do you want to?”
“Sure,” Tor said, trying not to sound too eager.
“Good, okay,” his mom said. She smiled at him. “Maybe you’ll meet his daughter and some other kids from school. There’s only a few weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas break, but you’ll get a chance to meet your teachers and check out the program up here.”
“Sure,” Tor said again, much less enthusiastically.
“But first, boarding. The riders I talk to all say snowboarding is like surfing a mountain. I hope you like it.” His mom paused. “And I hope you like it here, with me.”
She walked back quickly, leaned forward, and smoothed his hair back and kissed his forehead.
“Snowboarding,” Tor whispered.
Then he was asleep.
SNOW PARK IN the daylight was quite different than Snow Park at two o’clock in the morning. The streets of the town were thronged with shoppers and skiers, some still wearing big colorful plastic boots that made them walk like Frankenstein, others in baggy pants and floppy coats and snowboarding boots. Lots of women wore their hair in braids, and everyone was wearing vividly colored winter coats, hats, and gloves.
Many of the shoppers held bags and bundles of early Christmas shopping. The shops were all decorated and they were all open, but the air was cold and the shopper’s breaths puffed out in little clouds wherever Tor looked. A few snowflakes spiraled lazily out of the gray sky.
Tor looked up at the mountains that had so amazed him when he had arrived with his mom yesterday. There was a huge flank of a mountain looming over the town. Hundreds of dots were swooping down the sides. Three enormous ski lifts swept up toward the top, and all Tor could see were the dangling skis and boards of the crazy people who were going to hop off the lifts and come screaming down the impossibly steep slopes of the mountain. In the distance were other mountains, covered with trees and lined with smooth white slopes and the thin wires and pylons of chairlifts. There was one mountain close to town that was an unbroken blanket of green trees. This mountain had no ski lifts, no broad avenues of snow, nothing. Tor wondered why this particular mountain was different.
“Excuse me,” someone said, and Tor turned his gaze back to earth to see a pile of boxes and an annoyed-looking woman standing in front of him. She was holding the boxes.
“Sorry,” he said, and stepped aside. The woman walked down the street, dressed from head to feet in a furry coat. The coat was shiny and very dark red, and it rippled as the woman moved. Tor realized it wasn’t a fake. It was an actual mink coat. The only time he had ever seen such a thing was in old movies. People actually wore fur here?
Tor was getting colder standing still. He started walking again, looking for the Pro Shop. There was a selection of snowboards and boots in the window of the next shop on the street. That could be it.
Suddenly he was knocked, hard, in the shoulder. Tor staggered on the sidewalk, nearly falling down, and turned.
“Hey!” he said. The person who’d struck him was a teenager, in a blue coat that Tor recognized instantly. The snowboarding team member walked away. Tor couldn’t see his face.
“Waster,” the boy said clearly over his shoulder. It sounded like a taunt.
Tor thought of saying something, of trying to catch the kid and ask what he meant, but he had already disappeared up the street. Tor turned back, confused and angry, rubbing his shoulder. What was a “waster”? And why was he one?
“Hey,” someone else said, and Tor turned around fast, thinking he was about to be hit again. Coach Rollins, now dressed in a police uniform, took a step back and put up his hands. He was standing with a tall man in a long camel-colored overcoat.
“Whoa now, settle down,” Coach Rollins said. He smiled at Tor. “No muggers in this town, sport.”
“Er, hi, sir,” Tor said, shaking the hand Coach Rollins held out. Rollins didn’t let go for a moment, squeezing hard, and then dropped Tor’s hand. Tor resisted the urge to rub it and waited. He was more confused than ever.
“This is Mayor Malone, Tor. Mayor, this is Tor Sinclair, Dr. Sinclair’s son.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the mayor said, putting out a hand. Tor shook it gingerly, but the mayor’s handshake was firm, not hard. He shook Tor’s hand twice, a practiced double-pump, and let it go. His hands were covered in fine tan gloves. He smiled at Tor and it was such a warm, friendly smile that Tor should have felt better immediately. He didn’t. The smile was so perfect, like the handshake, that he didn’t trust it. The mayor’s face was scrubbed and pink, and he had a big black mustache that reminded Tor of a Mr. Potato Head.
“So, what are you wandering about alone for on this fine day?” Rollins asked, smiling at Tor.
“Mom—my mom sent me to the Pro Shop, to get some snowboarding gear,” Tor said, feeling uncomfortable. There were lots of kids on the street and not all of them had parents in tow. Was there a truant law or something?
“Ah, and here it is, right behind you,” Rollins said, smiling all the while. “Enjoy your snowboarding lessons. We always enjoy making our visitors feel welcome here, don’t we, sir?”
“Sure, sure we do,” Mayor Malone said, smiling at Tor. “Nice to meet you, son.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tor said, and watched as the two men walked away. He didn’t much like the mayor, although he couldn’t exactly say why. And seeing Coach Rollins who was really Deputy Rollins was very strange.
Tor felt the oddest sensation, like the time he’d looked down through an open manhole on a busy street in San Diego. He’d seen tunnels, pipes, and thousands of wires of every color and width, and he got dizzy thinking that those things were under his feet all the time. Those pipes and lines and tunnels ran under every place he walked. This town was the same way, and that was a scary thought.
Tor blinked and realized he was still standing on the sidewalk. He opened the door of the Pro Shop, and a man came out of the back room as a bell that was attached to the door jingled cheerfully.
“Hello, how can I help you?” the man asked. He was tall and had a weathered tan. His hair was dark black but his eyes were a startling light brown, almost yellow.
“My mom sent me here,” Tor said. “She wanted me to get suited up.”
“For boarding? Or skiing?” the man asked kindly. “You’re not a local? Wait…are you Dr. Sinclair’s son?”
“That’s right, I’m Tor,” Tor said. “Torin Sinclair.”
The man stood looking at Tor with a strange expression on his face. It couldn’t be…pity? Then the expression was gone, and he smiled. “Nice to meet you, Tor,” the man said, reaching out to shake his hand. His hand was large and warm and hard with calluses. “I’m Merrill Douglas. I’m so glad your mom decided to come give Snow Park a try. We need a doc so badly here, and we can’t get one to stay.”
“How come?” Tor asked.
“Look, I’ve got some things I have to do. How about I take you back and let the kids outfit you, that way you can take your time. Get the best equipment. Follow me.”
When Tor walked through the door Mr. Douglas held open, he found himself in a small room packed with skiing and boarding equipment. There was a workbench in the middle of the room and a machine that looked like a big grinder in one corner. A smell like burning candles filled the air.
A girl was holding a snowboard and rubbing the back of it with some sort of waxy stick. She looked up and smiled at Tor, and he smiled back. She was obviously Merrill Douglas’s daughter, only instead of having light brown eyes, hers were as black as her long black braids. She was Tor’s age, or close to it.
“Raine, meet Tor Sinclair,” Mr. Douglas said. “I have to go. Suit him up, he’s the new doc’s kid. All paid for. Later.”
“Later, Dad,” Raine said.
“Raine?” Tor asked. “That’s your name?”
“Raine, with an ‘e.’” The voice wasn’t Raine’s—it came from a chair in a corner Tor hadn’t seen, and there was a boy sitting in the chair. His hair was a caramel blond color. Tor had seen several of his kind in San Diego, actors’ kids mostly, who had ended up with just the right combination of both parents’ good looks. This kid would have fit right in with the Hollywood crowd, only he was wearing a big loose pair of brown pants and a sweater that was so incredibly ugly that Tor couldn’t take his eyes off it. It looked like a blind grandma had taken every color from her basket and mixed them together and knitted something horrible. One sleeve was longer than the other, and there was a section of yarn that had pulled out into long tufts, like a patch of Bigfoot hair.
“That is the ugliest sweater I have ever seen,” Tor said.
“It’s warm,” the boy said. He didn’t smile. Tor swallowed. He’d only been trying to make a joke.
“Then I want one, too,” Tor said finally. “This suit doesn’t keep me warm at all.”
“That suit is a piece of crap,” the boy said. “Too tight for air flow, bad insulation. Cheap piece of crap.”
“Okay,” Tor said. “I don’t think my mom knows how to pick out cold weather stuff.”
“That’s why she sent you here,” Raine said. She finished waxing the snowboard and set it carefully on a stand, then wiped her hands on a cloth. Her hands were small and square. Her braids hung halfway down her back and were so glossy they had blue highlights in the light.
“You’re the doctor’s son,” the boy said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Tor said. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“A bad thing, probably,” the boy said.
“Oh, shut up, Drake,” Raine said. She reached out to shake Tor’s hand. Her grip was strong and her hands were callused, like her father’s. “We’ll get you warmed up. Your mom told my dad to set you up with the best. Snowboard pants, coat, thermal underwear, gloves, hat, and a sweater that doesn’t look like a dog threw up on it. This is Drake Wexler, by the way.”
“Tor,” Tor said.
“Tor is short for?” asked Drake.
“Torin,” Tor said. “But I prefer Tor.”
“Tor then,” Raine said. “I hear you’re from California.”
“It’s warm there,” Tor said.
“Beaches?” Drake said, half-standing so he could shake Tor’s hand, too. It seemed oddly formal, kids shaking hands like grown-ups, but Tor liked it.
“Sand, too,” Tor said. “I miss it. But I’m supposed to learn snowboarding, so maybe I won’t miss surfing so much.”
This wasn’t precisely true. Tor’s family had lived more than two hours inland from the beach, and they hadn’t been able to make the trip to the ocean once since Tor’s stepmom had gotten pregnant with the twins. Not that he was about to tell anyone that, of course. Everyone who wasn’t from California seemed to think everyone in California lived on a beach and went surfing every day.
Drake sank back into his chair, which Tor saw was an ancient overstuffed leather club chair that looked like Sherlock Holmes had just gotten out of it to go light his pipe.
“Excellent!” Raine said happily. “Pay no attention to Drake. You’re going to love snowboarding if you like surfing.” Raine flipped up a laptop that Tor hadn’t seen amid all the equipment on her desk. She typed quickly. “I’ve got Gloria free at one o’clock. She’ll take you until four.”
“Three hours?” Tor asked, disappointed. He was hoping for more. Drake and Raine looked at each other and smirked.
“You’re going to feel like you’ve been drop-kicked out of a speeding car by this time tomorrow,” Drake said.
“Three hours your first time is enough,” Raine said, still typing. She hit a final key with a flourish and shut the laptop. “She’ll arrange your schedule after your first day, so ask her about your next lessons. Now let’s get you geared up.”
“Why bother?” Drake asked.
“Because this isn’t the only place to snowboard in the universe, Mr. Know-It-All,” Raine said sharply. “Even if they don’t stay, we can try to teach him to board.”
“Why wouldn’t I stay?” asked Tor. “Hey, and by the way, what’s a ‘waster’?”
“A waste of oxygen,” Raine said. “Worse than a loser. Drake, get your butt out of the chair and help me, or I’m not helping you with your English essay.”
“Essay? Aren’t you on break?” Tor asked, suddenly feeling panicked.
“This is the last day of break,” Drake said, heaving himself out of the chair. Tor realized the table sitting next to Drake was full of textbooks, not snow equipment. “I’ve got a late essay I’m turning in on Monday. I’m just blocked on essays. I can’t get it at all. Raine here, she’s a whiz at writing. But she can’t figure out an algebra equation to save her life. So we tutor each other.”
“How’s the school?” Tor asked. “Hopeless? Okay?”
“It’s hopeless. Of course. It’s school. One word of warning,” Drake said, rummaging through a box in the corner of the shop. “This is a small town. The teachers already know everything about you.”
“The teachers know everything? How do the teachers know everything?” Tor asked.
“Because the town knows everything,” Raine said.
“Not everything,” Drake said. Raine threw up her hands and shrugged, and started to rummage in a bin full of snowboards.
“Let’s see, you’re going to grow this year but you’re a newbie, so we’ll put you in a one-forty-nine-centimeter board,” she murmured.
“Thermals,” Drake said, throwing a packet at Tor. He caught them and examined the cover. A man who looked like a ballet dancer was wearing tights and a long-sleeved shirt. He looked like a complete tool.
“That’s just the underwear,” Drake said, and grinned a bit. “Go in there and get those on, and I’ll throw you in some boarding pants.”
“This isn’t some new-kid hazing thing, is it?” Tor asked suspiciously. “Because I don’t think hazing is very funny.”
“Don’t worry, we’re both wearing thermals,” said Raine, smiling. “Look.” She peeled up a corner of her shirt and Tor could see the top of long underwear pants and a shirt of the same thin material. “Drake?”
“Oh, I suppose,” Drake said, and lifted his hideous sweater. “Now get those on so you can stop shivering. You’re practically blue.”
“Mottled purple, I’d say,” Raine said cheerfully.
Within a half hour Tor was feeling better than he had since he’d stepped out of his mom’s warm car yesterday into the cold Colorado mountains. The thermals were tight but they immediately stopped all the tiny drafts that made his skin goosebump all over, and the snowboarder’s pants were not just roomy and comfortable, they were warm as well. The knees were padded, and there seemed to be an unending supply of zippers and pockets.
“Just like the town,” Drake said, when Tor marveled at an internal pocket that had a zipper outside and two zippered pockets on the inside. “Lots of secrets.”
“Do I get a sweater?” Tor asked, ignoring Drake. He wasn’t an idiot. There was a secret he should know, but they weren’t going to tell him. Fine. He wasn’t going to beg. “Can I get one just like yours?”
“You’re not good-looking enough,” Drake said loftily.
“He means, that’s his signature—awful sweaters. He’s got a closet full of them. It’s the whole looks thing,” Raine said with an irritated sigh. If Drake was irresistible to most girls, Raine obviously wasn’t one of them.
“Oh,” Tor said. “I guess so. In San Diego you’d be one in about a hundred actors’ kids, I think. Ugly sweaters wouldn’t do, you’d sweat to death.”
Raine burst into laughter and punched Drake in the arm. He pretended to stagger, fell back into his Sherlock chair, and smiled at Tor for the first time.
“Well, that answers why you weren’t all strange around me, like all the
other guys,” Drake said.
Tor was struggling to get into a soft jersey that Raine had handed him. “Other guys are strange?” Tor asked.
“I look different,” Drake said gloomily, slouching further into his chair. “Plus, my dad is Todd Wexler. So that’s another load I have to carry.”
“Why?” Tor asked.
“He’s Todd Wexler,” Drake said, then snorted at Tor’s look of puzzlement. “Whoa, I forgot. You’re not a snowboarder.”
“He’s a world-famous snowboarder,” Raine explained, not looking the least impressed. “But he’s not exactly the greatest dad. Plus, all the women in this town—including everybody’s mom—have a thing for him.”
“Raine,” Drake said, and Raine snapped her mouth shut like a trap.
“You don’t act all funny around him,” Tor pointed out, getting an arm through the jersey sleeve.
“I’m just who I am,” Raine said. “Drake and I, we’ve been friends since kindergarten. Now it looks like there’s somebody else in town who doesn’t think much of your looks either, Drake.”
“They’re nice looks, I guess,” Tor said, finally tugging his jersey into position. “It’s just, I went to school for a while with Serena Davis’s kids. You know, the Oscar winner last year? I mean, honestly.”
“Dropped off by limo every day?” Raine asked, her black eyes alight.
“Hummers, two of them. One for the security detail,” Tor said.
“Cool!” Raine said.
“Kicking,” Drake admitted.
“They’d hang with you,” Tor said comfortingly, and Drake started laughing.
Raine’s dad, Mr. Douglas, shouldered his way into the room carrying a huge snowboard. It was still wet and dripped snow onto the floor.
“Raine, can you wax this…” He trailed off, looking at Drake. Drake stopped laughing instantly and the smile disappeared from his face. He got up from the chair and started rummaging around in some square boxes that held what looked like bear traps, as though he was embarrassed at being caught laughing like that. Tor had no idea why.
The White Gates Page 2