The Possibility of Now

by Kim Culbertson

  I stare up at the dark ceiling, her words knocking around my mind, triggering a secret place there I’d never noticed before. I ask, “Why don’t you ever talk about what happened with you and Trick and Tahoe?”

  Her body stills. I hear the front door open and close and then Trick stacking wood in the other room. Mom exhales next to me. I can feel her hesitating, but then she shifts onto her side, facing me under the blankets, and squeezes my hand. “Sometimes people can grow miles apart, Mara. Even in the smallest of houses.”

  Mom kisses me good-bye in the blue light of dawn. “I’m going to get on the road,” she whispers, and I see the outline of her through sleepy eyes. “Don’t get up.” I roll over as she tiptoes out of the room and pulls the front door shut behind her. Distantly, already dozing, I hear her car start and drive away. When I wake again, sun streams through the window. I sit up, the room cold against my face. I can actually see the breath leaving my body in small clouds. Shivering, I yank on some long underwear, jeans, and black Uggs and pull on a Patagonia fleece. Still freezing, I add my parka.

  I find Trick sitting at the card table, eating a bowl of off-brand fruity loops. “My room … is freezing,” I chatter, migrating toward the glowing woodstove and holding out my hands.

  Trick’s spoon hovers over his bowl. “Yeah, you’re going to want to leave your door open at night. Or else keep stocking your stove.” At my confused look, he laughs. “Here, let me show you.”

  We head back into my room where, crouching down, he shows me how to get the fire going again, how to angle the wood and stuff paper in between. “Here, now you try it.” I settle on my heels next to him and it’s strange to be so close to him, our shoulders touching. When the fire catches, he wipes his ashy hands on the rag sticking out of the woodbin. “Make sense?”

  I feel dizzy. “Yeah, thanks.” I need food. I get light-headed when I don’t eat enough.

  “No sweat.” He stands. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About eight-thirty.”

  Now List #4. Done. That was easy.

  He moves into the other room, asking, “You want a lift to the Village?”

  “Great.” I’m sure there’s a café where I can get some food and start my schoolwork. Grabbing my bag, I follow him into the cold morning. It snowed a bit in the night, just a dusting that disappears beneath our boots, but it still stops me. I turn a slow circle, taking in the quiet, the sugar-sifted trees, the enormous house, dormant and angular from across the wide stretch of yard. Trick watches me take it all in, this snow-globe world, from where he sits behind the wheel. Scrambling in next to him, I say, “Sorry. You’re used to it, I know, but it’s just so beautiful.”

  He starts the truck. “You never get used to how beautiful it is.”

  I follow Trick into Neverland mostly because I don’t really know what else to do. He didn’t say anything the whole ride into the Village and hasn’t offered any suggestions for where I should do my schoolwork. By now, Mom would have given me three different detailed options with a clear front-runner. Probably color-coded on index cards. She’s always talking to me about being independent while inadvertently tipping my decisions toward her preference with a frown or a just-visible narrowing of her eyes.

  Where are those stupid index cards when you need them?

  Instead, I stand marooned in a ski shop in Squaw Valley, holding on to the straps of my backpack for dear life. A man stands behind the counter. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wears a pair of reading glasses as he sorts through a stack of papers. He glances up when he hears us come in, but before he can say anything, a golden retriever appears from nowhere, all fur and slobber and energy, and jams her muzzle into my crotch.

  “Oh! Hi there, nosy,” I gasp, trying to push her away, which she mistakes for petting.

  “Piper!” the man behind the counter shouts, and the dog makes a U-turn back to him, her tail wagging. “Sorry about that,” he says, coming out from behind the counter. “She’s a little overzealous. You must be Mara.” He offers his hand.

  “Uh, yeah. Hi,” I say, shaking his hand even though mine is covered in slobber.

  “Matt Never.”

  Trick elaborates. “He and his wife, Jessica, own Neverland.” The parents of Midnight Spider-Man.

  Mr. Never pushes his reading glasses to the top of his head. “Wow, I haven’t seen you since you were tiny.” His voice is low and kind. “You sure have grown up.” Then he grins. “Of course.”

  “Nice to see you. Again,” I add, feeling strange to have no memory of someone who seems to know me.

  The door behind us jingles and Midnight Spider-Man comes into the store. Piper leaps to her feet, tail wagging, and rushes to greet him. Now dressed in street clothes, his dark hair messy, he has a cup of coffee in a stainless steel travel mug in one hand with a laptop tucked under his arm. He bends to pet Piper. “Morning, Pipe, good girl.”

  “Oh, Logan!” Mr. Never motions for him to come closer. “Mara, this is my son, Logan. You two probably don’t remember, but you were in diapers together.”

  Logan looks a lot like his dad and gives me his version of their crooked smile. “Hi. Sorry, don’t much recall the diaper years.”

  “Me either, but nice to see you’ve grown out of them.” We both quickly look away, probably because I just said the weird thing about growing out of diapers. That was slick. Almost made valedictorian, but put a cute boy in front of me and I’m a complete idiot.

  Trick lets his amused gaze slip from Logan to me. “Logan’s a junior in high school, like you.”

  “Why aren’t you in school right now?” I blurt, because, apparently, I’m also training to become a truancy officer.

  Logan just grins. “My school has a flexible schedule. We meet two or three times a week for classes and labs and stuff, but otherwise I get all the work done on my own. So I have time to race.” He sounds like he’s clearly had to explain this before.

  “Race?”

  “Ski,” Logan clarifies.

  Before I can stop myself, I morph into my mother. “So you don’t go to a real school?”

  Instead of getting defensive, though, Logan laughs. “Real enough. I take all the same classes as regular school.” I notice he says regular with the same inflection someone might use for prison or bacteria. “It’s great, actually.”

  I want to sound breezy but end up spitting out something that sounds like “Ofcourseitsoundssupercoolandamazing,” yet not sounding at all like I think it’s super cool or amazing. Logan and Trick exchange glances, their eyes widening at my spew.

  “It works for me,” Logan says, then adds, “I know that other type of school works for a lot of people. It’s just, for me, sitting in a seat all day every day would give me hives. I’d freak out.” As soon as he says this, though, he colors and drops his gaze, and I realize he knows exactly why I’m here in Tahoe. Logan hurries on, trying to extract his foot from his mouth. “Whoa, sorry — I didn’t mean anything by that …”

  Mortified, I stare at Trick, who won’t meet my eyes. Is he telling people? The whole reason I’m here is so people aren’t talking about me. Aren’t whispering about the super-stressed-out girl who went mental on her math class.

  “Right, okay,” I stammer. “Speaking of school, mine’s the opposite of flexible and I have work I need to turn in. Is there a place, I could, you know” — I hold up my laptop — “plug in?” So I can get out of here, I manage not to add.

  Looking relieved, Logan nods. “You could hang next door at Elevation. Their coffee’s sick and you totally have to try the cheese bagel.”

  “Sick coffee, cheese bagel, got it. Thanks.” Without looking again at Trick, I hurry out of the store, welcoming the wash of cold against my burning cheeks.

  Next door, I find a table near an outlet and dump my bag and laptop, my stomach churning at the whole exchange with Logan, or, as I now plan on calling the list in my head, How to Repel a Cute Boy in Under Two Minutes.<
br />
  say something weird about diapers

  insult his school

  talk really fast

  flee the premises

  I inhale the coffee-scented air and remind myself to breathe (#8!). Elevation is glass and chrome and glossy black tables. A few people sit in armchairs near a fire, chatting or talking on their phones or writing in journals. Everyone either wears a down jacket like mine or has one over a chair, just in different colors. Tahoe is like attending a down-jacket convention. It’s clearly the staple of the uniform. As evidence, I hang my own jacket on the back of a chair and power up my laptop so it can load while I order.

  At the counter, I choose a vanilla latte and, after a moment’s hesitation, a cheese bagel. “Do you want that toasted?” The barista wears a silver beanie that matches her Elevation apron, the front silk-screened with a shot of a skier jumping across the outline of a moon. Her glossy black hair falls in two perfect braids. Her name tag says NATALIE. And underneath that, SINGAPORE.

  “Um, sure.” I pull a ten-dollar bill from my wallet and hand it to her. “You’re from Singapore?”

  She hands me my change. “Yeah, but I’ve lived in Squaw for six years.” Rolling her eyes, she adds, “The company who owns us wants our ‘home country’ on our name tags. You know, international resort and all that.” She points at the guy with white-blond hair behind the espresso machine. “That’s Finn. Netherlands.” Finn gives me a quick wave. Natalie from Singapore pops a bagel in the toaster. “Butter or cream cheese?”

  “Butter, please.”

  “I’ll bring them out to you.” She nods toward the table where I left my stuff.

  Settling into a chair, I log on to my school portal. As it loads, I pull out my English binder, the slim volume of poetry I’m reading for my project, three sharp pencils, and the tight loop of my earbuds. I plug them into my laptop and click on my study playlist, mainly classical with some new “relaxation” music Josie found for me that mostly consists of some form of water noise — rain, stream, ocean. If I listen to it too long, it makes me need to pee.

  Natalie sets down my drink and bagel, the smell of butter soaking into me. There’s a snowflake in the foam on the top of my latte. “Wow, cool design,” I tell her, admiring the intricate pattern.

  “Thanks. It’s my signature. Whoa, you’ve got yourself quite a setup here.” She nods to the various school supplies I’ve placed on the table.

  I flush as she notices the Now List binder, and I quickly set my poetry book on top of it. “I promise I’m not moving in.”

  “We have plenty of room.” Her eyes stray over my head. “Beck, get your nasty boots off my table.”

  I turn to see the Chip Bag Boy from yesterday tipped back in his chair, his legs resting on the next table, his auburn hair rumpled with an alarming case of bed head. His smile widening, he swings them off, his heavy boots thumping to the ground. “Sorry, Nats. Won’t happen again.”

  “Right.” She disappears through a door to the back of the café.

  I get to work, but after twenty minutes of rain music, I need to pee. I yank the earbuds out and find a bathroom. Returning, I pass Beck’s table, where he has been joined by two girls my age. A petite girl in a white beanie has her back to me, but as I pass by their table, the other girl briefly catches my eye over her soup bowl–size mug of tea, then shakes her mane of dark red hair at something Beck has been saying, her large brown eyes slipping back to him. “You’re one hundred percent full of crap,” she tells him. It piques my interest, and sliding back into my chair, I can’t help but listen in.

  Beck laughs. “I’m not, Isabel. This is the way I see it. We sit around all the time just rehashing other people’s opinions. Other people’s ideas. That’s all school is — one massive recycling program.” He puts on a stuffy-sounding voice. “Here, students, let’s stuff your head with everything the whole world already knows so you can go out in the world and keep up the status quo.” He shifts out of his pseudo-teacher voice. “It’s a total waste of time. If I want to be a true independent thinker, I have to be done with school. Out of the system.”

  Ugh. Listen to this guy. I shake my head and try to concentrate on the assignment on my screen. I can hear the girl who must be Isabel say wryly, “It sounds like a convenient rationalization for not doing your homework.” Exactly, I want to say, but of course I don’t because I’m not supposed to be eavesdropping. I’m supposed to be doing my English essay on Emily Dickinson. I open the book of poetry and try to skim a few lines.

  But my ears steal back to the conversation behind me. Beck elaborates on his theory. “Think about it. It’s all about fear — people are so scared to step off the treadmill; they don’t take any chances with their own minds. They just blindly follow everything that’s been done before. I mean, seriously, nothing worth learning can be taught.”

  They must hear the low snorting sound that comes out of me because their table goes silent. Then, I hear Beck say, “You got something to add to that, San Diego?”

  My neck prickles. Did Trick make Have you seen this girl handouts? Send out an email blast? Turning to face them, I clear my throat. “Sorry?”

  Tipping in his chair again, Beck eyes me with a mix of confidence and amusement he has clearly cultivated. “It seems like you have something you wanted to add.”

  I feign innocence, shrugging. “Nope.” I start to turn back to my computer, catching sight of my Now binder, and Will’s contribution flashes to the front of my mind.

  9. Be brave

  I turn to Beck’s table. “Actually, okay, yeah. It’s just something you said struck me as … funny.”

  His eyebrows shoot up and he drops the chair back onto its four legs. “Oh, yeah? Which part?”

  “You said something about school just being one … how did you put it? One massive recycling program for ideas?”

  “Sounds like something I’d say.” He grins.

  I steady my hands against the back of the chair. “But then you essentially rehashed Oscar Wilde. ‘Nothing worth knowing can be taught.’ That’s Oscar Wilde.”

  The girl he called Isabel cracks up into her tea. “Oh, wow, Beck — you’re so busted. You see that on a meme somewhere?” The other girl giggles and takes a last sip of her espresso before she starts putting on her coat.

  I’m surprised when Beck’s grin just gets wider, his eyes brightening. “Well, I happen to think Oscar Wilde was a pretty cool guy.”

  “Clearly enough to plagiarize him,” I say, trying to tease him, but something about him makes me nervous and I hope he can’t hear the wobble in my voice. There are kids like Beck at Ranfield, always up for an argument. They populate the debate team and student government, and use up most of the air in the AP history discussions. Only that’s not why Beck makes me nervous. More likely, it’s because he looks like he belongs on the cover of a magazine called Gorgeous Skier Boys. The Disarming Smile issue. I don’t generally talk to boys who look like Beck. Or, more honestly, they don’t usually talk to me.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Mom’s Google calendar, reminding me I should be wrapping up English and moving on to AP history. Great. I’ve barely started my Emily Dickinson assignment. First morning here and I’m already behind.

  Isabel and her friend push back their chairs, stand, and pull on beanies. As Isabel slips into her down jacket, I’m struck by how tall she is. The word that comes to mind is Amazonian. She grabs her mug. “Well, kids, while this I’ll-show-you-my-brain-if-you-show-me-yours is a hoot for all of us, Joy and I have practice.” To me, she says, “By the way, I’m Isabel Hughes and this is Joy Chang.” I notice she doesn’t introduce Beck.

  “Hi.” I smile at Joy, who gives a wave before winding a scarf around her neck.

  To Beck, Isabel says, “Behave yourself, Oscar.” The girls say good-bye to Natalie and Finn before leaving the café.

  When they’re gone, Beck slides into the other chair at my table. “It’s Mara, right?”

  “Beck, stop harassing ra
ndom customers,” Natalie calls from behind the counter. She tries to sound tough, but her voice is fringed with affection.

  “She’s not random. She’s Trick McHale’s kid.” He leans his forearms on the table, tipping it enough that I have to catch my three pencils from rolling off the side of it. “I know about her.”

  To hide the tremor his words send through me, I log back into my portal, the session having expired during my eavesdropping. “What do you think you know about me?”

  He runs his hands through his hair, only adding to the bed head. “I know you’re named after Tamara McKinney.” At my blank look, he clarifies, “First female skier to win the overall Alpine Cup in 1983. Grew up in Squaw Valley. Only American skier to hold that title until Lindsey Vonn in 2008. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

  I shake my head, thinking of the poster in Trick’s bedroom. Tamara McKinney. Mom never told me I was named after a skier. Even though my legal name is Tamara, she’s only ever called me Mara.

  Why does this boy know things about me I don’t?

  Annoyed, I try for a polite smile, avoiding his hazel eyes, and stare intently at my screen. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m busy. I have a paper due tomorrow.” I nod in the direction of the book of poems on the table. “I happen to care very much about my massive recycling program.”

  He takes it in stride by not moving an inch. “What’s your paper on?”

  “Emily Dickinson.”

  He pushes back from the table. “Righto. Then I’ll leave you to dwell in Possibility. Capital P. Oh, that’s Miss Dickinson, by the way. Don’t want to be accused of plagiarism twice in one day.”

  “Why do you look so purple?” I squint into my laptop screen at Josie.

  “It’s my new side-table light. It changes colors!” She squints back at me, flipping her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder. “See?” She switches it from purple to red to blue, each light changing the hue of the white stripes on her black-and-white sweater tights. Josie is always in shades of black, gray, and blue. In tennis, we call her the Human Bruise. For many reasons. Seeing her sitting on her familiar bed in her familiar room makes me feel farther than six hundred miles away. Aside from the posters of tennis stars John Isner and Rafael Nadal plastered everywhere, her room feels like a beach, all sun-bleached colors and posters of waves. One wall is just a map of Earth’s oceans and their currents. Josie wants to be an oceanographer someday like her older brother, Reuben.