Tor sat up in his bed, gasping, his hands beating in the air in front of him like he was caught in spiderwebs. He looked around wildly, but there were no vampires in his room. His heart hammered and his mouth tasted hot and dry and horrible.
He looked at the clock. Three-ten. His mom had left only minutes ago. He could catch her, save her, if he was quick. He threw off his warm blankets and pulled his snowboarding pants over his pajamas.
He was pulling his hat on his head as he shoved his feet into his boots. Then he was out the door, shrugging into his coat, his mittens clutched in his hands. The door slammed behind him, and he was plunged into cold darkness as though he’d just jumped into icy water.
The town lay before him, muffled in snow so that every edge was softened and every line was blurred. The hanging stoplight on the main intersection was covered with snow. It was lit up like a glass globe with a blinking amber light inside.
The heavy clouds that meant more snow pressed down on the tops of the buildings, near enough that Tor felt like he could leap into the air and grab the cloud, rip it open, and send snow cascading out.
His mother was nowhere to be seen. Her footprints left neat stitches in the snow. Tor ran down the street following the trail, dreading to find their end, careless of the whistling and panicked breath he was making. He pulled his mittens on as he ran, and then he skidded to a stop.
The footprints disappeared into the Snow Park Clinic, and he saw his mother behind the glass. For a moment all Tor could do was stand and watch her, her hair like a curly halo around her head, her face so serious and so kind.
Dr. Sinclair was bending over a little girl and sticking what looked like a white tube in the girl’s mouth. Two adults were standing inside the clinic, clutching each other, staring at Dr. Sinclair and the little girl. The girl heaved a big breath, her shoulders rising and falling, and the couple broke into a silent pantomime of grateful tears.
An asthma attack. That was what Tor was watching. He was watching his mother save a little girl from an asthma attack. There was no white-faced vampire waiting to kill her.
The nightmare tore into tatters around him. Tor felt, in its place, an overwhelming wave of embarrassment. He couldn’t let his mother know he’d followed her. He thought she was being attacked by a vampire? It would be too humiliating if she found out. He took two careful steps back, keeping his eye on the clinic, afraid that they would see him standing in the snow.
A few flakes of new snow spiraled by Tor’s head and then a few more. Then the air was full of snow, perfect little crystals that caught in his hair and eyelashes and started covering his arms and shoulders. The clouds had finally broken open and the snow was going to come in earnest now.
Tor stopped and stood still, surrounded by a dreamlike swirl of falling snowflakes. There was something he was missing, he realized, something his dream was trying to tell him. Why would he have a nightmare about vampires?
Then he had it, as suddenly as that. The two snowboarders that he’d overheard in the hallway at school, they’d talked about a “he” that was making them do something. Something was going on with the snowboarding team, and Brian Slader had been part of the team. Brian had suddenly gotten sick, and then he had died.
Everyone had blamed his mother for Brian Slader’s death because of the curse. The snowboarders who were tormenting him, the townspeople, they all believed in the curse.
But what if the curse wasn’t the reason Brian had died? What if there was somebody else, like his dream vampire, who was responsible for Brian’s death? If that was true, it was all too easy to put the blame on the old town curse. Dr. Sinclair would get the blame and the killer would get away.
Tor took step after careful step away from the clinic and finally turned and ran for home. His mind was full of thoughts that stayed with him all the way back into the house and into his bed. It was still warm.
Tor finally had an answer that made sense. Someone was covering up something. His mother hadn’t killed Brian Slader by accident. Someone had murdered him.
“No way,” Drake hissed. They were leaning over their lunches, hunched like conspirators. Tor was starving, so he tried to explain his theory between enormous bites of Tater-Tot casserole.
“Why would someone murder Brian?” Raine asked, her forehead puckered in distress. “There’d be no reason.”
“Maybe it was an accident,” Tor said. He held up his hand at Raine’s increased look of distress. “Or maybe he was murdered. It doesn’t matter, because now this person is using the curse, to try and make people think it’s all my mom’s fault. My mom calls it perception, and it can be more important than the truth.”
“There’s only one thing,” Drake said, sucking the last of his milk through a straw. “You still haven’t answered why.”
“I don’t know why,” Tor said, and forked up the last of his vegetables from his tray. They weren’t very appetizing, but he was still hungry. “That’s what I have to find out. Why would Brian lose so much blood? Is there some drug that does that?”
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “The coach, Coach Rollins, he’s tough. He’s the deputy sheriff, too, you know. He’s a great rider, not as good as my dad, but he’s really good. And he’s tough. He wouldn’t let them do, you know, drugs.”
“I know,” Tor said, thinking of the deputy’s hard handshake and equally hard grin.
“The kids on the team are randomly tested for drugs,” Drake said. “That’s standard. So they couldn’t have been doing drugs. They’re clean.”
“Then there must be something else,” Tor said, looking at his completely empty tray.
“There’s always the curse,” Drake said unhelpfully.
“First things first,” Tor said. “First I figure out who’s trying to set up my mom to take the fall for Brian Slader. Then we solve the curse. The real curse.”
“Oh, so no problem, then,” Drake said.
“I do like your attitude, Tor,” Raine said.
“Not so much in the brains department, but plenty of attitude,” Drake said with a cynical pointed smile.
“You’ll have to provide the brains, then, Drake,” Tor said. He hunched forward over his empty plate. “We can do this, you know. Figure it all out. Fix it. I know we can.”
Raine opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. Finally she shrugged. “It’s worth a try,” she said. “At least I won’t be moping around thinking that something horrible is going to happen to your mom and it’s all my family’s fault.”
“We’re going to make sure nothing else happens,” Tor said. He knew he was doing some more of the attitude thing, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m in,” Drake said. “Why not?”
“I’ll be the historian. Keeper of the Curse,” Raine said. “Maybe I can find something from my grandma about Leaping Water. I was too embarrassed to really ask before.”
“That would really help,” Tor said.
“Come by the shop after lessons,” Raine said as they got up and gathered their lunch trays. “We’ll plan.”
“We’ll plot. I like the sound of that,” Drake smirked. “Plot.”
“I’ll be there,” Tor said, and tried not to show how relieved he was. He couldn’t figure out much of anything on his own, but with Drake and Raine? Together, the three of them just might have a chance.
He had friends, Tor thought as they stacked their lunch trays and headed for class. He finally had some real friends.
But unless he figured out who was trying to get his mom fired, and unless he somehow broke the ancient Ute curse, he was going to end up in some other cafeteria next year. Alone.
GLORIA WAS WAITING for him after school, her yellow daisy board crusted with powder, her apple cheeks shining. “I’ve been riding powder all day,” she said cheerfully. “You’re going to love this!”
“There’s so many people,” Tor said, as he strapped in and got ready to slide toward the chairlift line.
�
�There’s a race in about an hour,” Gloria said. “Boardercross. I love that event. You should stay and watch, too.”
“What’s boardercross?” Tor asked as he and Gloria inched their way up to the front of the chairlift line.
“A snowboard competition, where four to six riders navigate through jumps and banked turns and race to the finish line. It’s a lot like motorcycle motocross. There’s other events, too, like the giant slalom and the half-pipe.” Gloria hopped on the chairlift as it swept up to them. “Boardercross is wicked fun to watch.”
“Do you compete?” Tor asked curiously.
“No way,” Gloria said with a snort. “I don’t like that whole competition thing. Too easy to forget what riding is all about.”
“So who’s riding in the race today?” Tor asked, but he already knew the answer.
“High school riders,” Gloria said. “The Snow Park team has two in the finals. Look for them, they’re wearing—”
“Blue coats, I know,” Tor said with resignation.
“Boardercross is fun but I like half-pipe more,” Gloria said. “More art, less jabbing with the elbows. Let’s get a couple of runs in and then you can watch the race. Sound good?”
Tor glanced back down the mountain as the chairlift moved them toward the top of the slope. The green trees were totally white and the sky pressed down, gray as yesterday with the promise of more snow. A steady stream of people were coming through the lodge and heading toward a part of the mountain that he hadn’t explored yet. Suddenly rock music started to thump, and he caught a glimpse of speakers and snapping flags and bright spotlights as the chairlift crested the hill.
When he got off the chairlift, Tor slid and fell into an ungainly tumble of arms and snowboard. He did a sort of crushed-bug crawl to a safe spot, and turned to strap in his free leg.
“You’ll get it,” Gloria said, standing effortlessly in her board and adjusting the chin strap of her helmet. “It just takes time. You’ve got the heart, that’s for sure.”
Tor got up and the board came alive under his feet. He let it take him for a moment, allowing a feeling he couldn’t name rise up in him like a fountain. He pushed out his left heel and the board came sliding to a stop, throwing up a small curve of sparkling powder.
“Sweet,” Gloria said. “One time down falling-leaf style, and then we practice the toe-side. Let’s go!”
They went, and everything Tor was and everything he thought fell away and was gone. The only thing that remained was speed, the wind whipping at his cheeks, the cold of the snow, and the feel of his board in fresh powder.
When they finished the run and got back into the chairlift line, Tor could feel his cheeks stinging with the cold. He grinned at Gloria, and she grinned back and gave a little whoop and a hop, scattering snow from her board in a puff of white.
“Now it’s toe-side time. That means you have to turn your back to the abyss.”
“A-whatsis?” Tor said, and Gloria laughed merrily.
“The downhill slope. There’s nothing harder than turning your back to the downhill slope. You’ll do fine. You’ve got plenty of courage and that’s what it takes.”
Tor could feel his face flushing. Did Glorious Gloria just tell him he had courage? She must have caught his look because she reached out and jabbed him in the ribs.
“Yeah, I said courage. You keep getting up, like somebody forgot to put an off switch on you. Now don’t fall off the chairlift this time.”
This time, astonishingly, Tor didn’t fall. He slid to a stop, upright, with such an expression of awe in his face that Gloria started laughing, lost her balance, and fell down. She hooked her free leg into her board, still laughing, rose to her feet, and gestured for him to follow.
Tor understood what Gloria meant about the abyss when she showed him toe-side riding. He had to turn his board into the mountain on his toes and turn his back to the empty air and the long fall down. He didn’t think, he just did it.
Gloria raced next to him, her red coat nearly covered with white. Tor realized it had started snowing hard.
“You did it, first time!” Gloria said. “Now we connect the two—watch me.”
Later, covered with snow, legs trembling, still panting but with a glow of happiness like a warm ball inside him, Tor edged his way into the crowd surrounding the boardercross slope. Gloria hadn’t needed to show him the way. He’d just followed the people. The whole town was there, and all the tourists, too, it seemed. He’d left his snowboard behind at the lodge, but he was still wearing his gear. His nose and cheeks were a little cold, but the rest of him was warm as toast.
Tor edged by a round man in a canary-yellow coat and realized it was Justin Ewald, the math teacher. Mr. Ewald saw him but didn’t say anything; he turned away as though he hadn’t seen Tor. Tor’s cheeks started heating up as others saw him and turned away—kids from school, other teachers, people he didn’t know but who seemed to recognize him. Tor stepped around a tall pole covered with flags and came face to face with a man in a sheriff’s uniform. This wasn’t Deputy Rollins, but an older, bigger man with a face as sad and droopy as a basset hound. This had to be Sheriff Hartman.
“Er, hello,” Tor said, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the pounding music and the roar of the crowd.
The sheriff nodded, said something that Tor couldn’t hear, and walked on. At least he didn’t look angry with Tor, or disgusted. He just looked sad.
There was a gasp and a cheer from the crowd up ahead of him but he couldn’t see why. Then he heard a burst of applause. The race must have started. Tor elbowed his way through gaps and scrambled up a slope of snow where there were fewer people, finally coming to a section of orange plastic fencing that marked off the race area. Tor sat in the snow next to the fence and hunched forward, hoping no one noticed him.
Suddenly four riders shot by him, going so fast he felt like they’d sucked the breath right out of him. He turned to see them flying over a big bump in the racecourse. In midair one rider lost his balance and Tor could see he wasn’t going to land properly. The rider came down in a tumble and slid into another section of plastic fencing. The other riders kept going, their elbows held tightly to their bodies and their legs bent almost double. Each time they went over a bump, everything seemed to slow down as they floated in the air, their bodies small and tight against their boards.
Tor could see the finish line, and the three riders that were left streaked across it. A cheer went up from the crowd.
The rider that had fallen regained his feet and finished the race, carefully holding his arm across his chest. Tor wondered if it was broken.
There was the sound of a distant buzzer up the mountain. Tor turned, but he couldn’t see anything. The steep slope of the racecourse blocked his view. He could hear cheers and applause coming down toward him, so he knew the riders were going to appear soon.
This set of riders had a blue coat among them. The hometown crowd roared as they cheered on their favorite. The Snow Park snowboarder was breathtaking as he swept around a curve and came up to the jump that had injured the previous rider. The other four snowboarders weren’t as low to the board and they weren’t as controlled. Tor knew what kind of power it took to keep that low crouch over the board, when your legs felt like they were gasping for breath instead of your lungs.
The Snow Park rider came in second by the tip of his snowboard, and all the riders came to a stop and leaned over their boards, panting hard. Tor saw Coach Rollins step forward and lean over to speak to his rider. The coach had a pleasant enough look on his face, but Tor could see his fingers digging into the rider’s blue coat, and the boy bowed his head. Tor felt bad for him, and then realized with a shock that the boy was Jeff Malone.
Jeff skated away from the finish line and ducked under the ropes that held back the onlookers. Tor saw Mayor Malone step forward to talk to his son, but Jeff turned away from his father and disappeared into the crowd.
Everyone was already looking up the moun
tain, waiting for the next team to come across the finish line. When these riders swept across the finish line with a Snow Park boarder in first place, the crowd cheered and shouted as though this meant a gold medal in the Olympics. Tor saw Coach Rollins step forward, a smile on his hard face, and he turned away.
Tor couldn’t help loving the power and grace of the race. He wanted to be able to ride that way, to fly off the edge of a bump and float in the air like gravity had been suspended for a few seconds. Maybe Coach Rollins was a winning coach because he was so tough on his team. Maybe they won lots of trophies.
But if winning turned riders into mean kids who enjoyed shoving younger kids into lockers, it wasn’t worth it. If winning meant that everyone who didn’t win was treated like a loser, it wasn’t worth it.
Tor scrambled downslope and through the crowd as the last boardercross group raced down the mountain. He didn’t feel like listening to the cheers for the Snow Park snowboarding team anymore.
“First powder day?” Mr. Douglas said with a grin as Tor let the door of the Pro Shop shut behind him.
“Yeah,” Tor said. Mr. Douglas was writing up a ticket and he waved a hand at Tor to go on to the back of the shop.
Drake and Raine were in their usual spots. This time Raine was working on a small forest of yellow, blue, red, and purple skis that were stacked in the corner, taking one at a time and running them along the waxing machine. The machine roared and the smell of wax filled the air. Drake was writing down algebra problems with one leg flung over the arm of his Sherlock Holmes chair. He pointed without looking up, and Tor saw a towel over the chair he was beginning to think of as his. By the time he’d brushed the last of the snow from his pants, hung up his jacket, pulled on the ancient jersey that also waited for him, and was collecting a cup of tea, Raine was finished with the waxing machine. She turned it off and everyone sighed as one.
The White Gates Page 7