The White Gates

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “You’ve met all my teachers?” Tor asked cautiously.

  “Snow Park is tiny,” his mom said, and the gloom that had lifted from her seemed to drop around her like a cloak. She looked down at his papers again, but Tor was sure she wasn’t seeing them. “I’ve only been here a month but I think I’ve met everybody. I met Beryl Petrus at the supermarket. Kaia Adams was in the library with her husband when I went there for a book. And Justin Ewald is on the community clinic board.”

  Suddenly the light dawned on Tor. “You might lose your job because Brian Slader died? But it wasn’t your fault. He was in Denver. You weren’t even taking care of him when he died.”

  “I know,” Dr. Sinclair said. “But the truth isn’t always important. Sometimes perception is more important.”

  Tor took a deep breath.

  “Do you know about the curse? That there’s some sort of curse here?” he asked. “Does it have something to do with us? Is that why this is happening?”

  There was a long silence at the kitchen table, and Tor held his breath.

  “I’ve heard rumors,” his mom admitted finally. She stood up from the table and went to the kettle on the stove. “I’m going to make tea.”

  “Do you believe in curses?” asked Tor.

  “What did I tell you about truth?” his mom asked him, looking back at him.

  “Truth isn’t always important,” Tor said. He looked down at his math homework. Math was clean, he thought suddenly. Nobody could make two plus two equal anything but four. Ever. Truth and perception were the same in math.

  “Perception can kill,” Dr. Sinclair said. “I used to work with a nurse from Haiti. She was a houngon. That’s a good voodoo queen.”

  Tor sat with his math book open and forgotten in front of him.

  “Er?” he said finally.

  “Voodoo is all about perception. The blood, the gris-gris, the chanting, and the music. A few drugs to help the process. People who’ve been cursed with voodoo often die just because they believe they’re going to die. Does that make sense?”

  “She was a voodoo queen?” Tor asked.

  “Yes, she was, and a damned fine nurse, too,” Dr. Sinclair said with a slanted sort of smile. “Don’t worry, she was a good voodoo queen, and she gave most of it up. She taught me two things. The first thing she taught me was how to make real shrimp etouffee.”

  “That’s, er, food, right?” Tor asked.

  “Right,” Dr. Sinclair said. “And very delicious, too.”

  “And the second?”

  “That truth is not always as important as perception, Tor. That’s why we have to worry about a curse. Not that it’s real, or that curses are real. But because some people believe it’s real,” Dr. Sinclair said seriously. The teakettle started to make a whistling sound. “We’ll get through this, and we won’t have to leave Snow Park.”

  “Where would we go?” Tor asked. “If we had to go?”

  “I’d have to go back to inner-city Detroit, probably,” she said, her hand holding a teabag in midair. “I’d have to go back to double shifts, give me some time so I could find a job somewhere else.”

  “Detroit?” Tor asked, feeling the word in his mouth. Detroit might not be so bad. Maybe there were places to go snowboarding in Michigan. It snowed a lot there, right?

  “Me, honey, not you,” Dr. Sinclair said gently, and plopped the teabag into the hot water in her cup. Tor watched her shoulders droop as the teabag sank in the hot water. “You’d have to go back to your dad in San Diego. I couldn’t take you to that area of Detroit. I’d be working all the time, too. I’d have to sleep at the hospital most nights. I couldn’t leave you alone.”

  There was a silence in the kitchen, and the teapot hissed in a lower and lower tone, as though it were a baby dragon going back to sleep.

  “I’d rather stay here,” Tor said finally, after thinking of and then discarding a hundred things to say.

  “Me too,” Dr. Sinclair said.

  Tor got up to wipe down his board for the second time and let his hands linger on the smooth glossy surface. Snowboarding was like flying, like having invisible wings. No screaming baby twins woke him up at night anymore, and he didn’t have to listen to his dad and his stepmom fight all the time over money. The air smelled good here, like the ocean that he was supposed to live by since he was from California but that he rarely got to see. He liked it here with his mom, who seemed to really like having him around. He had some real friends. He wasn’t going to give this up. He just wasn’t.

  When Tor woke up to the alarm, he groaned. Every muscle hurt, and the back of his head felt like he’d smacked it repeatedly against something very hard. Oh, that’s right, he had. Worst of all, it was another school day.

  Then he remembered the night before and what his mom had told him. He got out of bed and headed for the bathroom and a hot shower. He was going to figure out what the curse was. Then he was going to fix it or destroy it. He wasn’t sure how, but he was going to do it.

  He walked through the halls from class to class without really seeing anything. The whispers and pointing may have been worse than yesterday, but he didn’t see them so he didn’t care. After math class he felt rather than saw a tall form coming right at him in the hallway. Tor had just spent the past two days learning how to balance his body on a snowboard. He found himself twisting sideways, leaning backward, and stepping to one side with a speed he didn’t know he possessed.

  There was a crash. A tall high schooler thudded into the bank of lockers, setting up a musical rattle of locks as they bounced against metal. He turned to Tor with a furious look on his face. Tor recognized him: he was one of the boys who’d burst into the clinic that night when Brian Slader had gotten sick.

  “Hey,” Tor said, keeping himself balanced and easy on his feet. He had no idea what was going to happen next, but it certainly couldn’t be good.

  “You waster,” snarled the boy.

  “Why am I a waster?” Tor asked conversationally, hearing the chatter and bustle die down as students came to a halt around them. “People keep calling me that, but no one bothers to explain why.”

  “You’re…you’re a waster,” the boy said again. His fists clenched tightly, but he didn’t throw a punch at Tor. Tor felt his heart hammering in his chest, but he kept his face relaxed and inquiring.

  “We’ve covered that part,” Tor said. “You do speak English, right? Habla inglés?”

  A muffled snort of laughter came from the crowd that had suddenly, magically, surrounded them. There were elementary kids and high schoolers in the crowd, a mix of heights and ages that made Tor’s head spin. Didn’t the teachers patrol the halls, with such a range of grades and ages mixing it up in here? The snowboarder had at least a foot and two grades on Tor.

  “You killed Brian,” the snowboarder said. “Your mom, the doctor, she killed him.”

  Tor tightened his own fists at that. He couldn’t help it. “The autopsy isn’t back yet,” he said, trying to sound as dry and clinical as his mother. “Until the drug toxicology comes back and the complete report is out, nobody knows what really happened.”

  The boy’s jaw dropped open in what oddly looked like dismay. Suddenly another boy elbowed his way through the crowd.

  “Jeff, take it easy,” he said, taking the snowboarder by the elbow. “No fighting in school or you’re off the team. You know that.”

  Tor felt his fists unclench a bit. He really didn’t want to have a fistfight with an older student. He was going to get creamed if they fought. But he wasn’t going to back down, either.

  “It’s the curse,” somebody said in the crowd surrounding them. The whisper ran through the students in the hallway, echoing like a murmur of surf on the beach—the curse, the curse, the curse.

  Time suddenly started up again as a teacher shouldered through the crowd. It was Mr. Ewald, Humpty Dumpty himself, with an angry look on his smooth, round face. His entire bald head was flushed, he was so upset, and the student
s melted away quickly.

  “What’s going on here? Jeff? Max?” he asked.

  “Nothing, sir,” Jeff said. “We were just talking.”

  “You, what happened here?” Mr. Ewald asked Tor.

  “Nothing, sir,” Tor echoed. It was the code of any school—the teachers were Authority, and you didn’t snitch. Mr. Ewald’s face flushed even pinker, and he flapped his small arms at them.

  “Get to class. I expect better of you, Max. You too, Jeff. And—what is your name again?”

  “Tor Sinclair,” Tor said.

  There was a pause as Mr. Ewald took a breath, held it, and let it out. His moon-shaped face showed his thoughts clearly: here was Dr. Sinclair’s son, Dr. Sinclair may have caused the death of Brian Slader, therefore…

  “Get back to class, all of you,” he said in a different tone. He ignored Tor completely. He went to Max and Jeff and, putting his tiny arms around their shoulders, walked with them down the hall, speaking to them in hushed and gentle tones.

  Tor turned and walked the other way, feeling a mixture of outrage and loneliness so strong his stomach churned.

  At lunch Tor steeled himself and entered the cafeteria, trying to ignore the whispers and stares that followed him now more than ever. He glanced over at Raine and Drake and felt disgusted with himself for being so grateful for their nod. He didn’t need them. But he was still glad they were there.

  “Bad day today, eh?” Drake said, dunking a chicken nugget into his ketchup.

  “Yep,” Tor said. He should have been too upset to eat, but his body overrode his mind. He’d been snowboarding hard for two days and he was going again today. He was hungry. He dug in.

  “Sorry about your mom,” Raine said, and Tor could have sworn she looked guilty for a moment.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Tor said. “It’ll all come out.”

  “Probably not,” Drake said.

  “You going to tell me about this curse, or what?” Tor said, opening his chocolate milk with hands that shook slightly. He stuck the straw in and pulled at the straw so hard his cheeks sucked in.

  Drake and Raine had an entire conversation with eyebrows and frowns while Tor emptied his milk carton.

  “No, I really want to,” Raine finally said out loud, and that ended it.

  Drake turned to Tor and his voice was so low in the noise and clamor of the cafeteria that Tor had to lean in to hear.

  “Raine has to tell you,” Drake said. “Not me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was my ancestor. My great-great-great-grandmother cursed the town,” Raine said.

  TOR COMPLETELY FORGOT that he was supposed to meet Raine and Drake at the Pro Shop that afternoon. He forgot about school, he forgot about the curse, he forgot about everything. He had finally found his balance on his snowboard.

  He’d promised Gloria he’d practice his falling-leaf move. This time the feeling was there, the same feeling he’d started to have the day before; the balance, the sense of knowing where his body was, and the stance on his board that made him feel like he and the board were one.

  He slid fast down the slope, the air whipping by his helmet, then turned and glided across the snow. He almost came to a stop, then pointed his board downslope and immediately felt the snowboard come alive under his feet. It wanted to go downhill, it wanted to go fast, and he wanted to go fast, too.

  Then another turn and glide. Tor felt a burst of pure joy. He pointed his board downslope again and rode all the way to the bottom without falling.

  The third time he hopped off the chairlift he felt his muscles trembling with the effort. He was wearing out and he knew it, but he was having too much fun to stop. As he took off, something came by him so fast and so close that he lost his balance and fell. He landed hard on his backside and skidded downhill.

  “Waster!” called a voice as the snowboarder curved by, throwing a long wave of snow into the air. The rider was wearing a helmet and goggles and a blue jacket. Of course. Tor panted in the snow, his elbows stinging from the impact, and then he levered himself to his feet. He started going downslope. This meant nothing. The board, the alive feel of it, the perfect balance—

  Another boarding team member shot by, and this one ran right over the front of Tor’s board. He heard a grinding sound and suddenly he was out of control. He realized in a panic that he was heading right for the trees. Trees were killers, he remembered frantically. Gloria had warned him to stay out of the trees, and he couldn’t stop.

  There was only one thing to do. Tor tried to fall down, caught an edge of his board, rotated forward, and slammed onto his face. The impact took the breath right out of him. He knew he was still falling, but he couldn’t see because his face was in the snow. He tumbled, his board catching and twisting so hard his legs felt like they were going to break. He finally slowed down and came to a stop. Tor rolled over, gasping, to see bristly green tree branches not more than a foot away from him. He could smell the pine needles.

  Laughter echoed on the hill. Two more snowboarders in blue coats shot by.

  “Get out of Snow Park, waster!” one of them shouted, and they disappeared down the hill.

  If anyone heard their laughter, thought Tor miserably, they’d think some kids were just having fun. He wiped his face slowly with his mitten and tried to get the snow out from between his goggles and helmet. There was a burning patch of cold on his belly. His coat had rucked up in the fall and his stomach was packed with icy snow. His legs were sore and aching, but nothing seemed to be broken. He spit some snow out of his mouth and it was very red. He looked at the blood on the snow with a detached sort of interest. He must have split his lip when he fell, but his face was numb and there wasn’t any pain. Yet. Tor spit again and looked at the blood that spattered the snow. There was blood coming from his nose, too.

  He couldn’t sit here long. If he did, the snowboarding team would be back. He wondered if Jeff and Max were in that group. They couldn’t come back uphill to him, but they could race to the bottom, get on the chairlift, and then come down the mountain after him. They might not stop at this; the possibility existed that they might kill him. It would be put down as an accident, of course, but that wouldn’t keep Tor from being dead. They thought that Brian Slader had died because of the curse, and they hated Tor because he was a part of the curse, and he didn’t even know what it was yet.

  Tor got up. It wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it was definitely up there in the hot top five. His board tried to slip out from under his feet, his balance was gone, and he was shaky. He went down the rest of the hill like a baby taking his first steps—board forward, then heel side and stop. Board forward, then back to a stop again. Tor forgot about the snow in his goggles and helmet and the snow inside his coat. He actually started to sweat with the effort of staying upright, of making it to the bottom of the hill before his tormenters returned, of not sitting down in the snow and bursting into tears like a little kid.

  Finally he reached the chairlifts. He unsnapped his boots from his snowboard. Without a backward look, his back as straight as he could make it, he walked firmly to the lodge and then through the building and down Main Street to the Pro Shop.

  “Hello, Tor,” Mr. Douglas said as Tor entered. “Raine said you’d be here. She’s going to help with an assignment, that right?”

  “That’s right,” Tor said. A large clump of snow slid out from under his coat and hit the floor with a plop. He propped his board against the wall. Water started dripping off his head, and he took his helmet off. More snow packed the interior. Mr. Douglas’s lips twitched in concern when he glanced at Tor’s face, but he didn’t say a word.

  “You can head on back if you’d like,” Mr. Douglas said kindly.

  “Could I ask a favor?”

  “Sure, what do you need?”

  Tor explained, and Mr. Douglas gave him a look.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tor said, and then he picked up his board and we
nt to the back room.

  “I see you got the Snow Park Swirlie,” Drake observed as Tor stood in the doorway.

  “Oh, look at your board,” Raine said. Her mouth thinned into an angry line as she took it from his arms and examined the glossy surface.

  Tor hadn’t wanted to look at it. He’d heard the grinding sound, and he was afraid to see what the snowboarder had done to his beautiful board.

  “You would look at the board first, wouldn’t you, Raine? Look at his face. This was more than the usual swirlie of the new guy. They wanted to really hurt you,” Drake said. He was lounging in his Sherlock Holmes chair, his books spread on his lap. Today he was wearing a sweater in contrasting and uneven stripes of muddy brown, green, and orange. The sweater was so horrible it made Tor feel better. He wasn’t really sure why.

  “Nicked on the edge and the surface was scraped, but I can repair that. It didn’t go deep enough to touch the inner core,” Raine was muttering. She got out a screwdriver and took Tor’s bindings off his board while Tor stripped down to his boarding pants and his thermal underwear top.

  “Here, wear this,” Drake said, and threw an ancient-looking blue jersey at him. “You’re freezing again.”

  “Just got a little wet,” Tor said, shrugging into the jersey. The jersey was three sizes too big and the cuffs were frayed, but he was grateful for the warmth. The damp patch on his thermals was burning him, it was so cold. He sat down to dig snow out of his socks. In a few minutes there was a puddle of melting snow at his feet.

  Raine took out a wax pencil. She sat down with his board and started working on it. She glanced up at Tor to see him looking steadily at her.

  “You’d better start,” Drake said, settling even more deeply into his chair. “He might get struck by lightning any minute.”

  Raine jumped, glared at Drake, and then laughed. But it wasn’t a happy laugh.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I wish this story weren’t true, but it is.”

  “I’m ready,” Tor said.