by Steven Gould
“I can. Sometimes just like he did.”
“Well, I’m going to try for some more speed this time, when I take the jump,” said Jade.
I nodded vigorously. “Sure. If you clear the lip of the hill, you’ll actually have an easier landing than if you land on the flat.”
She looked doubtful. “Right. Why don’t you go first?”
I headed down the hill, doing wide carving turns to build up speed and line up on the ramp. I did a layout backflip, a nice slow turn, leaning back, head tilted, to spot the landing. I hit the downslope like before, smooth and friendly. Tara whooped as I cut wide across the flat. I reached her at the road just as Brett kicked across the last few yards to where the line formed.
I was intensely aware of Brett, but I turned back to watch Jade, pumping her fist in encouragement. She ollied off the end of the ramp and flew, just reaching the top of the downslope, which really lessened the impact. Though she wobbled there for a moment on landing, she brought it together without falling, and made it most of the way to the road on momentum. Tara and I whooped.
One of Brett’s friends said something I couldn’t hear and Brett said, “Oh, like you could even reach the edge of the hill last year.”
I smiled, but not where they could see me.
When the truck came there was room for all of us. I ended up sitting next to Brett, but I talked to Jade. “You nailed it, girl. Nice distance on that jump.”
Jade shrugged, trying to look cool, but her mouth kept breaking into a grin.
“You ever board?” I asked Tara.
Tara shook her head. “Nah. Tubing is more my style.”
Jade’s smile dropped and she went from exhilarated to worried in nothing flat.
“Tubing’s fun,” I said.
Tara glanced at Jade and smiled. “Tubing’s cheap. We can’t all afford to spend weekends in Telluride.”
Jade looked away, frowning.
“Telluride is awesome,” said one of Brett’s friends.
Brett shrugged. “So is Durango, though, and easier to get to.” He jerked his chin sideways at the hill. “Even this is nothing to sneeze at. I learned to board on this hill. And no lifts, not even trucks. I walked back up the hill.”
I found myself nodding. “There’s a hill by our house in Canada, too. That’s where I learned. There wasn’t a lift but at least the stairs were covered.”
He turned to me and smiled. “Do you still own that house? Are you a Canadian citizen?”
“It hasn’t sold yet,” I said, not exactly lying. “I’ve got dual citizenship. I was born in Canada but my parents are both U.S. citizens.” Really, I had no citizenship, since neither country knew of my birth. Millicent Ross was a manufactured entity. Fake name with fake papers. I was a fake.
I liked his smile, though. I liked how I felt when he smiled at me.
Next jump, Brett did the 720 again, this time nailing it without falling.
I meant to do an upright 360 myself, but gave it just a little too much twist. Fortunately I was able to bring it around and landed fakie with a 540, riding like that all the way to the road.
Jade let her speed increase even more this time, definitely clearing the top of the hill. But her landing wasn’t as clean and her board toed in, and she went head over heels. My hand went to my mouth, but when she finally stopped tumbling and slid to a stop, I could hear her laughing.
Tara started to run back across the flat, but Jade was already climbing to her feet so Tara stopped short and waited.
The truck was loading and Brett called. “You coming?”
I smiled at him and said. “No.”
He frowned and shrugged and the truck went on up the hill.
Jade asked me about it when they finished walking across the flat. “Why’d you wait?”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have ridden up the hill with Brett.”
“Yes, I could have. You all right?”
“Sure. What did I do wrong?”
“You brought your toe down ahead of your tail. Bend and unbend your knees together. Meet the slope even or tail first.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Jade’s fall had put a lot of snow down the neck of her jacket. While we waited for the next truck, she took her jacket off and Tara brushed off the snow she couldn’t reach.
“So why didn’t you ride up with Brett?” Tara asked it this time.
“Who asked me to go sledding?”
She laughed. “It’s not like you’re my date.” She glanced at Jade.
“Of course not,” I said. “But he certainly isn’t. Even if he does have a cute butt.”
Back up top Jade said, “I’d better do this again, right now.”
Tara shook her head. “You don’t have to.”
Jade said, “But if I don’t…”
I nodded. “You want to get back on the horse.”
“Well, yeah.”
“This isn’t macho bullshit, is it?” Tara said.
“No,” said Jade. “I just want to get it one more time without falling.”
I went first, keeping my speed down, ollied off the ramp, and grabbed the edge of my board Indy, between the bindings toeside. I hit the downslope smoothly, then cut over sharp to the left, to stop out of the way of the run, but near enough to render aid if Jade fell again.
She didn’t fall, landing even farther than before, both legs coming down together, and I grinned.
I slid off to follow her and I heard the scrape of a board on snow. Someone yelled, “Oh, CRAP!” I sensed movement and jumped—not far, just a few yards ahead.
Brett passed through the space I’d just been. His board hit the snow tail first and he cartwheeled head over ass for several rotations before actually landing on his board and carving into a drunken turn.
He fell over when he’d killed most of his speed and I slid down and skidded to a halt next to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have crossed the hill there.”
He was shaking his head. “I don’t see how I missed you!”
“I ducked,” I said. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“You’re holding up fingers?”
I popped his bindings and turned to wave for some help, but Jade and Tara were already running over through the snow.
When Brett stood on his own I decided it was probably okay to help him walk over to the truck. Jade and I each took an arm and Tara brought the board.
He seemed to know who the president was and what the day and year were and even what the Advanced Biology homework for Monday was. His right shoulder was stiff, though, and he decided to call it a day when we helped him out of the truck, at the top of the hill.
“Do you have a ride?” I asked.
“I drove,” he said. He pointed to a beat-up Honda parked on the opposite shoulder of Thunderbird.
One of his friends climbed up the hill, hauling his own board. “I was halfway down. I didn’t see the fall but I saw you tumble out below. Wow.”
I glanced down the hill. From here you could barely see the downslope. From further down, the crest would’ve blocked the view. I hoped nobody saw my jump. Nobody else had mentioned seeing anything weird as we drove up. The direction I’d jumped was almost directly toward Jade and Tara so they wouldn’t have seen much of a shift even if they were looking.
Brett’s friend was a gawky, skinny kid with oversized hands and a nose like a beak. Tara had pointed him out in the cafeteria at one point but I forgot why. He took Brett’s keys when Brett started fumbling with the lock. “Easy there, Jocko,” he said. “Let me drive, okay? It’s just up the hill after all.”
“I thought you only had your permit,” Brett said.
“Nope. Got the provisional last week. I’m good to go.”
Brett frowned. “Uh, but—oh, fuck it. Sure.”
They put the boards in the back seat, angled to fit, and drove slowly off.
“What’s his friend’s name?” I ask
ed.
“That’s Joe,” said Tara. “He’s that skateboarder I told you about, the one who’s also a jock, since he’s captain of the snowboarding team.”
“And he’s the reason Brett is on the team, too,” said Jade.
“Really? Brett looked okay on a board, I thought.”
“Oh, he’s okay on the snow. But if Joe didn’t help him with his schoolwork, Brett wouldn’t qualify academically.”
My face dropped.
Tara glanced sideways at me. “He’s still got that cute butt.”
I remembered helping him over to the truck, tucked into his side, his arm over my shoulder. I wasn’t thinking about his academics then. “I guess.”
Clouds were moving in and it was getting colder.
“Who wants to come to my house and shoot pool?”
* * *
“I thought it was luck the first three times, but that’s the fifth bank shot you’ve made.” I said.
“Really?” said Tara, deadpan.
We were playing cutthroat and Tara was kicking our butts. She had been kicking our butts for the past five games.
Jade was better than me but she was also losing.
“There should be the table’s-owner-automatically-gets-to-win rule,” I suggested.
“Good luck with that,” said Tara, knocking in another ball. “By the way, you’re out.”
“Aaaagh!” I shook my fists at the ceiling and made faces for the amusement of all. “Who wants more drinks?”
“I’m good,” said Jade, swirling her half-full Diet Coke.
“Me, too,” said Tara. “Gonna have to go after this game, anyway.”
I watched her hit the ball cleanly, watched it go from stationary to a white streak across the table as if it had accelerated instantly. I knew that wasn’t the case, but it reminded me of the way I could go from falling off the deck of our cabin to a dead stop under my bed without a single newton-second of imparted momentum.
* * *
At supper I asked Dad, “When I jump, can I increase my relative velocity?”
“You do, all the time,” he said. “Remember when we talked about jumping from the cabin to the desert?”
“Well, that’s matching the local frame, not coming out with a velocity different from the local frame. What happens if I jump to exactly where I already am, but with a change in velocity?”
His jaw started jutting forward. “Remember what we said about smashing through walls? Or having your limbs ripped off?”
“Yes, but…”
“But nothing! Don’t even think about it, young lady.”
Mom took a deep breath and I held up my hand. “I was just wondering, Daddy.” Okay, I was ‘thinking about it.’
It wasn’t worth getting Dad strung out, though. And I’d also avoided promising I wouldn’t try any experiments.
He opened his mouth, as if to add something, but now Mom was giving him the eye and he closed his mouth again.
Mom said, “Don’t you have something to tell Cent?”
“I was going to wait until later, but okay.”
He turned and reached behind him, to the sideboard next to the dining room table, and grabbed a small cardboard box that he handed to me.
“Here. Reach out and touch someone.”
I squealed, then sat back, my mouth open. “Did I just squeal? Tell me I didn’t just squeal.” I still felt like squealing.
Mom was no help. “I’m gonna have to come down on the side of ‘you just squealed like a teenage girl’.”
Dad nodded. “Yep … squeal.”
I breathed out heavily and closed my eyes. “Okay. Let’s just pretend that never happened, all right?” The box was already opened. It was a small but thick smartphone with a touch screen. There was a volume rocker and a power switch but everything else was on the touch screen. It was already on and fully charged. “What’s the drill?”
“It’s like your mom suggested. I found someone to program these so the cellular radio won’t come on unless the phone is within a set radius of a GPS-determined position. I’ve got it set for downtown and a radius that pretty much takes in the entire county. If it loses connection with a cellular tower for any reason, it shuts down the radio until it’s verified the position again. You jump out of the area and obviously it will lose the tower. There’s a lot of metal roofs around here so if you’ve lost the tower for more prosaic reasons, you may have to go outside before the GPS receiver can verify the location.”
“And I can text?”
“Prepaid. I’ll keep it topped off. It just won’t work out of county. If you go out of town on a school trip, we can modify your location settings appropriately.”
I got up and hugged him. “So I can call you here at the house?”
Mom nodded. “Yes, but Dad got us phones, too. Same deal. If we’re not in county, calls will go to voice mail, texts won’t be delivered until we come back. Ditto for yours.”
Dad showed me how to turn the phone on, where the contacts were stored. He’d already added ones labeled Mom, Dad, and Home. I scrambled downstairs and got phone numbers for Tara, Jade, and Grant’s big sister, Naomi, from precalculus.
Dad hovered while I entered the numbers, but I glared at him and Mom patted the couch beside her and said, “Give her some room, Davy. She can ask for help if she needs it.”
“Right.” He pulled the manual out of the box and laid it on the table, and sat down by Mom.
I sent him a text almost immediately and he jerked, like he’d been poked. Mom and I both laughed and he fished the phone out of his pocket. “It’s set on ‘vibrate’.” He read the text aloud. “Thx4tehfone.” He spelled it out. “Uh. Thanks for the phone? You misspelled ‘the’. Also ‘thanks’ and ‘phone’ and ‘for.’ I did say we had unlimited texting, right? You don’t have to abbreviate everything. Won’t cost a penny more.”
I rolled my eyes. My phone buzzed in my hand and I jerked, nearly dropping it.
Dad laughed. “It’s set on ‘vibrate’.”
The text was from him. UrWlcm.
ELEVEN
Millie: FERPA
Millie dropped by the school office.
“I understand getting calls on my home number, but why am I getting calls from the PTO on my cell phone?”
The secretary blinked. “You didn’t give it to them when you signed the PTO membership during registration?”
“I signed up for the PTA. What is this PTO?”
The secretary said, “We have both. Our Parent Teacher Organization isn’t part of a national group so it isn’t as limited in what it can fund. I believe they share the phone list with the PTA, though.”
“I didn’t give it to either of them.” Millie leaned forward. “It’s a brand new phone. I didn’t have it at registration. I’ve given the number to my daughter, my husband, and, who else? Oh, yes, you, two days ago, as an emergency contact number.”
The secretary looked down the connecting hallway to the vice-principle’s office, then leaned forward and whispered. “I’m so sorry. Once it’s in the system, even as an emergency contact, any of the administration and teaching staff can see it. Some of them are deeply involved with the PTO.” She glanced down the connecting hallway again. “Some of them.”
Message received.
“Didn’t I receive a FERPA information brochure at registration?”
The secretary turned pale. “And read it, too, I see.”
“Yes.” Millie held up her hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll take this up with the PTO.”
* * *
“Darice Mendez? This is Millicent Ross.”
“Oh! Excellent, I can mark you off my list! Will you be attending the mixer?”
The “mixer” was a cocktail party/funding drive to supplement the high school’s budget.
“I will.”
“Oh, excellent! You have the location?”
“I do. The back room at the Resplendent, yes?”
“That’s right. We had our Christmas pa
rty there. It was very nice. So I’ll put you down for two?”
Millie had already brought it up with Davy with predictable results. He’d said, “No, and make damn sure they don’t get hold of my cell phone number, too!”
“Just myself,” Millie said into the phone.
“Oh. Is Mr. Ross out of town?”
Millie resisted the urge to snap, Want the man of the house there for a real donation?
“Let’s just say this is not his kind of event.”
“Oh. Very good, thanks for call—”
“One more thing,” Millie said, before the woman could hang up.
“Yes?”
“Some of your messages came to my cell phone.”
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid that some helpful person from the school must’ve passed that number along, but it was for emergency contacts only.”
“Oh, that’s all right! We don’t share our list with anyone.”
Millie said, “That’s not the point. Whoever gave it to you was in violation of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.”
“Yes?” The woman didn’t sound overly concerned.
“That means they’re endangering the school’s federal funding. I believe that would include the Bureau of Indian Affairs funding that makes up half the school’s budget.”
That got her attention. “Really?”
“Really. I want that number removed from your records and I strongly recommend that you let Ms. McClaren know about this issue before she provides any more emergency contact numbers.”
“Yes ma’am, I’ll tell her!” She inhaled sharply. “I mean, so she can find out who might be doing it.”
Right.
“And the phone number?” Millie asked.
“I’ve crossed it off my list and I’ll tell the PTO’s secretary!”
“Thank you. Will I see you at the mixer?”
“Indeed.”
“I look forward to it.”
* * *
Davy almost relented when he saw Millie dressed up for the reception.
“¡Que linda eres! Maybe I should go along to fight off your admirers.”
She kissed him, then pushed his hands away as they strayed toward her bodice. “If you want. If it’s like any PTA meeting I’ve ever seen, they will be talking about school budgets and pushing for donations and volunteers to run fund-raisers. You want to run a bake sale?”