The White Gates

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “Funny joke,” he muttered as Mr. Douglas set the board on Raine’s waxing platform. “I’m getting you some bindings, Tor.”

  “Must have been a good joke,” Mr. Douglas said, looking from Drake to Tor and then to Raine. “Got a lesson set up for him, Raine?”

  “Got it, Dad,” Raine said. “Gloria at one o’clock. Wax job?”

  “And tighten the bindings.” Mr. Douglas left the room with a sad expression on his face.

  “What is it about me?” Tor asked nobody in particular.

  “He feels guilty,” Drake said quietly, and handed a stick of something to Raine. She lit a small device and the smell of wax filled the air.

  “Why?” Tor asked in frustration, even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t. “Why would he feel guilty about me?”

  Raine turned on the wheel that spread hot wax over the snowboard, and the shrill sound of the motor filled the room. Drake held up some of the bear trap–looking things—the bindings—and gestured at the snowboard Raine had leaned against the wall.

  No one could talk as Raine carefully moved the big snowboard back and forth across the wheel. A loud grinding noise and a smell like burnt candles filled the room, but suddenly Tor didn’t notice. Tor had forgotten everything except what now leaned against the wall.

  The snowboard was glossy smooth, and the design on the front was a beach sunset with nothing but the yellow ball of the sun dipping below orange waves. A single pointed black triangle of a shark’s fin cut the water.

  The board was the most beautiful thing Tor had ever seen. He looked back at Raine, and she glanced up and winked at him, then returned to her noisy waxing task. Yes, her wink said. This is your board. Tor ran a smooth hand down the board and felt something he couldn’t quite name rise up inside him.

  He was going to stay here. He was going to learn how to make that snowboard surf the mountain. And no one was going to drive him away.

  He turned to see Drake looking at him with sad eyes. Drake said something that Tor couldn’t catch over the whine of the waxing motor. Tor took the board and pointed at the bindings Drake held in his hands. He pointed at his new board, eyebrows raised.

  Drake shrugged, and gave Tor a nod. So be it, his nod seemed to say. Your funeral.

  GLORIA MIGHT HAVE had a last name, but she didn’t need one if she did. Tor stood with his new board, in his new boots, with his helmet under his arm, staring at his snowboard instructor.

  “You must be Tor,” Gloria said, and her perfect mouth parted in a smile of dazzling white. “I’m Gloria.” She was apple-cheeked and blue-eyed and wore her long hair in two blond braids. Her red jacket had a Snow Park crest on the front pocket, and one gloved hand rested on a tall snowboard that was propped in the snow next to her. The snowboard was as yellow as her hair and had big white daisies printed on it. She was at least six feet tall, maybe more. Tall, anyway.

  “I’m Tor,” he said, and remembered to close his mouth. He was at the entrance to the Snow Park Lodge, a big wooden building at the base of Snow Mountain. The sky was overcast and a few snowflakes fell. There were lots of people in outfits of every color swooping down the slopes, some on skis and some on boards. There were lines of people getting on the chairlifts, all of them puffing cheerful clouds of breath around their heads. Some were coated with powdery snow. One group of children in a single-file line glided toward the chairlifts, led like a mother duck by a tall boy dressed in a red jacket just like Gloria’s.

  “That’s the boarding class,” Gloria said, following Tor’s gaze. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a little kid to learn to ride. You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

  “Okay,” Tor said, gripping his board with his mittens. “Where do I start?”

  “With your lift pass,” Gloria said, and nodded at the building behind them. “You get a free lift pass because your mom’s the doc, so let’s go get your tag and we’ll get started.”

  Tor followed her into the depths of the lodge. Cries of “Gloria!” and “Yo, Gloria!” followed them as they worked their way back to the season-pass office. Tor realized for once no one was looking at him: everyone was looking at Gloria. Tor rather liked it. He was already tired of the sidelong glances, the looks, and the remarks that he didn’t understand.

  He looked into the digital camera that a lodge employee held up—the man chatting with Gloria all the while so that Tor wondered if the picture would even have his head in it—and then he was presented with a warm plastic badge on a lanyard. His head was right in the center of the picture, more by luck than anything else, he thought.

  “Now the fun part,” Gloria said, rubbing her hands together. “We’re going to go to the bunny slope first, and I’ll show you how to put on your gear. Are you regular or goofy?”

  Tor was ready for this one. “Regular” meant you had your left foot forward on the board. “Goofy” meant your right foot was forward.

  “I’m goofy,” he said, and bit back a very childish laugh. His dad was the only person on the planet who knew that Tor’s favorite cartoon character was Goofy. Tor thought Goofy was the greatest. Tor’s runner-up favorite was Wile E. Coyote, which made his father suggest mournfully that Tor look for a future in test engineering. This memory gave Tor such a wave of homesickness that he had to grip his hands tight in his big snowboarder mittens for a minute and try to think of something else.

  The test to determine that he was goofy was simple and kind of funny. Sort of Wile E. Coyote, actually. Before Drake had put on Tor’s snowboard bindings in the warm room at the back of the Pro Shop, Drake stood up from his chair. Without warning, Drake shoved Tor in the chest. Tor took a quick step back with his left foot, and both Drake and Raine had shouted, “You’re goofy!” They explained that when a person is suddenly unbalanced, they step back with one foot. That foot is the dominant, or back foot, on the board. Simple.

  “Great!” Gloria said. “I’m goofy, too. That’ll make things easier. Let’s trudge on over to the beginner’s slope and we’ll get started.”

  Boarders and skiers whizzed by as they walked over to Powder Hill. Tor realized this was where the Flight for Life helicopter had landed the night before. It looked almost completely flat in the bright daylight, and he was disappointed. He looked upslope and saw a snowboarder cruising down, the end of his board flicking casually back and forth like the tail of a big cat, his body loose and relaxed.

  “That’s what you’re going to be like,” Gloria said, following Tor’s gaze. “See how he’s standing on the board? He’s not crouched, he’s not completely upright, he’s just in-between.”

  They reached a spot that looked like every other spot on the broad white slope. Gloria flipped her board over and set it, bindings down, into the snow.

  “Rule one,” she said, turning to him. “Always set your board down with the bindings face down in the snow unless you’re in them, or you’ll be chasing your board down the hill. Rule two: wear a leash at all times. That’s the strap that holds your board to your boot. If you’re not wearing a leash and your board comes off while you’re on the chairlift, your board will fall and could kill someone. Wear a leash. And rule three: wear a helmet. Your mom can tell you all about head injuries. I help out with the Ski Patrol sometimes, so I know, too. Wear your helmet.”

  “Okay,” Tor said.

  “Let’s gear you up,” Gloria said, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve got a sweet little setup there. Nice board, the best bindings, good helmet. Sweet!”

  Gloria made Tor get in and out of his bindings twice, and she adjusted the bindings with a sturdy screwdriver from her pocket before she was satisfied. As she was working on his board, a couple of boys skied by, staring at her, and the taller one ran right into the shorter one. They both fell in a tangle of legs and arms and skis. They picked themselves up sheepishly and poled away. Tor bit his lip to keep from laughing.

  Finally Gloria nodded, and showed Tor how to sit in the snow, the classic snowboarder’s stance. Bottom in the snow
, board crosswise to the mountain, knees up.

  “Now watch me,” Gloria said, and strapped in. She stood up and relaxed into the same catlike stance as the rider they’d watched come down the mountain. She snapped the chin strap on her helmet and settled her goggles over her eyes. Tor waited to see her plunge away in some amazing trick, but instead she pointed her hand in front of her, slid very gently about ten feet, and slid to a stop by moving the back of the board out to the side.

  “That’s it?” Tor said.

  “That’s it,” Gloria said, from ten feet away. “It won’t feel right at first. Just point, slide, and see what happens.”

  Tor stood up, and the board immediately started sliding away with him. He tried to relax, tried to point, and forgot completely about anything but trying to keep on his feet. The board was suddenly in the air and Tor’s head slammed into the snow.

  “Hey, that was great!” Gloria said, her face appearing in the sky above Tor’s head. “You actually got on your feet the first time. Nice.”

  “That was nice?” Tor said, his head ringing.

  “It takes a lot of practice,” Gloria said. “You’ll get it. On your feet, soldier!”

  By four o’clock Tor felt, as Drake had predicted, like he’d been drop-kicked out of a speeding car. Every part of his body was sore. None of the old rules applied when he felt his body start to fall. He couldn’t move his feet because they were strapped into a board. His arms would flail around wildly, his head would swing like a bob at the end of a pendulum, and his face or his backside would slam into the snow.

  “You really rang the bell today, eh?” Gloria asked, helping him unstrap from his bindings. He’d managed a glide of about ten feet before falling, and Gloria applauded like he’d won the Olympics. Then he fell, and she called it a day.

  “I fell a lot, yeah,” Tor said.

  “No worries. You’re going to be an awesome rider,” Gloria said. “Really, you are.”

  “Yeah?” Tor said, and couldn’t help grinning at her. She really was nice under all that pretty.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’ve got great balance, you’ve got great reflexes, all you need to do is keep working at it. You coming back tomorrow, then?”

  “Uh, I think I have school,” Tor said, forgetting his aches and wondering if he could somehow get out of classes tomorrow. The day after that, too. Forever, if possible.

  “How about three-thirty, right after school. See you then?”

  “Yes,” Tor said firmly. Gloria gave him a mock salute and then she slid away.

  He trudged slowly back to the lodge, his heavy snowboard under his arm, suddenly realizing he was more hungry than he’d ever been in his life. His entire middle felt hollowed out. He didn’t have any pocket money, or he would have bought a burger at the lodge cafeteria. As it was, the smell of the burgers and the French fries nearly drove him mad. He clumped through the lodge and walked up the main street of Snow Park, the board getting heavier and heavier in his arms. When he reached his mom’s clinic, he saw in the reflection of the glass in the window that he was still wearing his helmet, so he took it off.

  “Mom?” he called, walking inside. He stopped. A lady dressed in white sat at the desk where the snowboarding team had crowded around Brian Slader the night before.

  “You must be Tor, right?” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Colm, her assistant. I’m afraid Dr. Sinclair is with a patient right now. I don’t want to disturb her.” Mrs. Colm was elderly and thin, with straight gray hair that was tucked behind her ears and curved smoothly around her head. She smiled at Tor, but it wasn’t a very friendly smile. She looked a lot like the seagulls that snatched food at the beach. She had the same bright eye and sharp look.

  “I just thought I could—” Tor started. He was going to say “rummage through her purse and get money out,” but he stopped. He would do that to his dad’s wallet, and as long as he let his dad know he’d taken money from the “petty cash account,” as his dad said, the arrangement worked out well.

  But Tor had no idea if that was the way his mom worked. The receptionist looked at him with unreadable clear gray eyes, eyes that looked like all the other people in Snow Park who whispered and pointed. Tor had completely forgotten about that while he was taking a lesson in snowboarding. Now he felt all that weight come back on his shoulders, and he turned without another word and clumped out of the clinic.

  At home, after three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and two big glasses of milk, Tor started to feel better. He put the plate and glass in the dishwasher and searched in the kitchen until he found a soft cloth. He wiped down his snowboard the way Raine had taught him, keeping it dry and clean so the metal edges wouldn’t rust.

  Tor’s mom walked in while he was still rubbing his board dry. He looked up. Dr. Sinclair was dressed in a green parka with fur around the collar, but she looked cold and tired. Her nose was red.

  “Tor,” she said. “Hi. How were lessons?”

  “Great,” he said. “I came by—didn’t Mrs. Colm tell you?”

  His mother froze and her lips tightened. “She didn’t tell me!”

  “She said you were with a patient,” Tor said calmly, checking the back of his board for scrapes. He ran his hands up and down the glossy board, checking for moisture, avoiding his mother’s gaze.

  “I would have come out for a minute, at least,” Dr. Sinclair said. “It was only a sprained wrist. I’ll have to speak to her.”

  Suddenly Dr. Sinclair sat down at the table, still in her parka. She put a hand to her forehead like she had a headache.

  “Mom?” he asked. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Mrs. Colm is married to one of the clinic directors. That’s all. I have to tread carefully here. I can’t go shouting at her, even if I want to.”

  “But you’re a doctor,” Tor said in surprise.

  “Doctors aren’t like little gods,” Dr. Sinclair said with a rueful smile at Tor. “We can get hired and fired just like everybody else. This town hired me, and I have to be careful to keep the boat from rocking.”

  Tor said something to his board, and his mother frowned. “What?” she said.

  “I thought all that ended after you got out of school,” Tor said grimly, and his mother surprised him by giving a great shout of laughter.

  “Oh, how I wish it did,” she said. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Colm and tell her you’re always allowed to wait in my office. And I’ll give you my beeper number so you can page me. That way, she won’t be offended and you won’t have to go hungry.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Tor said. “I ate already.”

  “Oh, you did?” Dr. Sinclair said, disappointed. “What did you have?”

  “PB&J,” Tor said.

  “Well, make me a couple of them, would you?” Dr. Sinclair said. She stood up and shrugged out of her coat. “I’m going to change out of these scrubs and into some warmer clothes, and then maybe we can go over your schedule for school.”

  “Milk?” Tor asked. He was oddly pleased to be making his mom dinner, even if it was just peanut butter and jelly.

  “Big glass,” his mom yelled from down the hall, and Tor grinned to himself as he opened the fridge.

  Tor tried to hold on to that cozy feeling the next day, his first day of school. The other thing he held on to was the thought of his board, sitting in his room at home and waiting for him.

  Everyone knew each other—that was the first hard part. He wasn’t a new kid in a sea of new kids, like it had been every year of school in Los Angeles and then San Diego. Here he was entering school in the middle of the school year. He was the only new kid, the doctor’s kid, and something about being the doctor’s kid held a secret that no one wanted to explain.

  Snow Park Middle/High School was a combined school because the district was so small that kids from sixth through twelfth grades attended. The school was older than his past couple of schools in California, where the buildings were all big glass cubes. Tor liked this graceful
old brick building. The school had tall, narrow windows and heavy double doors that looked like they were made of brass. It looked like a castle, with tall towers on each end of the building and stone arches along the roofline. He looked for gargoyles. There should be gargoyles somewhere. He didn’t spot any.

  Tor’s first class was English, and he found the room without a problem. Drake and Raine were there, and he felt a burst of relief when he saw them. Here were two people he knew.

  The classroom was old but well cared for. The oak around the windows gleamed with warm yellow. Actual radiators lined the wall near the window, and a black chalkboard ran the width of the room where a teacher stood, papers in hand, staring at him as though she had been turned to stone.

  “Ms. Petrus?” Tor asked.

  “You must be Torin Sinclair,” Ms. Petrus said with a start, coming alive. “Welcome to our class.” She didn’t sound very welcoming, though.

  Ms. Petrus was tall and had black hair pulled back in a clasp. She had eyes as dark as her hair and the hugest nose Tor had ever seen. She wasn’t ugly, though. She looked almost queenly, like carvings Tor had seen in pictures of Egyptian tombs, right down to the imperious lift of her chin. If she’d been wearing a Cleopatra costume, she’d have been a dead ringer.

  “Thanks,” Tor said, trying on a polite smile, and started to head toward Drake and Raine.

  “We have assigned seating in our classes,” Ms. Petrus said coldly. “You’ll be sitting here.”

  “Here” meant at the front corner of the room, right in front of Ms. Petrus. Tor sighed and took a seat. The teacher set down a stack of papers and another stack of books.

  “Here are your books and this week’s schoolwork,” Ms. Petrus said. “I don’t know about your previous school district, so we’ll just have to assess how things are going after the first week. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tor said.

  That was the way it went all day. Yes, ma’am and yes, sir, and more and more schoolbooks until Tor’s backpack was so heavy he could barely lift it. When he was heading for the lunchroom, Tor was elbowed into the wall so hard he felt his teeth clack together and the door next to him rattled as the old smoked glass vibrated in the frame.