It’s quite possible my jeans have now frozen to my legs. Apparently, I will be wearing the long underwear Mom bought me all the time and not just for skiing.
After walking the length of the Village, we find ourselves standing in front of a ski shop. A sign out front reads NEVERLAND in large white letters made to look like they’d been written in snow. The store seems to sell clothing and gear but also advertises ski and snowboard rentals. One of the bumper stickers featured in the window declares TAHOE LOCAL: MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOUR VACATION. Mom notices it, rolls her eyes, and pushes through the main door, sending an unseen jingle bell shivering.
It’s warm inside and melting patches of snow puddle on the worn carpets where people have tracked it in on their boots. The store is packed with racks of ski pants, jackets, helmets, goggles, socks, and boots, but it’s empty of people. I scan the warm wooden walls behind the register. In the center of pictures of skiers and snowboarders, a glossy sign reads NEVERLAND again, and beneath it, a quote from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan:
WHICH OF THESE ADVENTURES SHALL WE CHOOSE?
Before I can point it out to Mom, a man pushes through a swinging door that reads SHOP in the back of the store. He wears faded jeans, a beat-up Santa Cruz sweatshirt that might have once been black, and a trucker hat with an orange bill.
Trick McHale.
I can’t stop my mind from adding, your biological father.
My body buzzes with nerves. He hasn’t seen us yet, and it gives me a moment to openly study him in his natural habitat. He holds something in his hand, something that looks like it should be attached to a ski. A binding, maybe? He chews at his lip, his eyes locked to the binding. I do that. When I work on a particularly difficult chemistry equation.
“Hello, Trick.” Mom speaks first, her voice the tone she uses with clients.
His head jerks up, startled. “Oh, Lauren — whoa, didn’t see you there.” His voice holds the deep rumble of the laugh I remember from our zoo day, all surfer-dude soft edges. He takes me in, his green eyes surprised. “Awww, Mara, no way. Look at you.”
I don’t know what to do with my body. Should I give him a hug? Would that be the normal thing to do? Nothing about this feels normal. The acceptable time window for a hug passes, and I just stand here, eyes straying back to the Peter Pan quote. “Hi, um, Trick.”
He nods, his eyes slipping from my face, maybe noticing I said Trick, not Dad. He clears his throat. Then clears it again. Should I have called him Dad? No, that would be too weird. I’ve talked to our mailman more times than I’ve talked to Trick McHale.
The silence around us condenses.
Finally, Trick says to Mom, “You look good, Lauren.” His voice falters.
Mom pulls off her beanie and shakes out her highlighted hair. “Oh, well, thanks.” She doesn’t return the compliment. Instead, she opens her purse and digs around for something. She does this sometimes, to look productive, even when there is nothing really to find. She’s doing it now. I can tell. To avoid talking, to put some action into the middle of all the thick silence.
Trick watches her, his expression growing slightly amused. Does he know she creates distractions to look busy when she’s uncomfortable? He must, because he asks, “You looking for something in there?”
Mom flushes. “Oh, wait — found it!” She hurriedly applies the victorious tube of lipstick as if to say, See — this, I was looking for this, thank you very much. I gape at her. Mom never acts like a spaz; she’s always cool, organized. What’s going on?
Trick grins. “Good thing. We almost had a lipstick crisis on our hands.”
Mom’s expression shifts, her eyes narrowing. Uh-oh. The look. When she gives us that look, my brothers and I are usually inspired to suddenly go clean our rooms. “Well, some of us care about how we appear to other people.” She tries to keep her voice light but doesn’t really pull it off. The look muscles must be connected to the voice muscles.
Trick’s smile dies. We could medal in the Awkward Olympics right now and it might be a three-way tie for gold.
Luckily, the front door jingles and a pack of boys bursts into the store. There is something territorial about the way they bang through the door, laughing, their voices raised. At first they seem to move as a single unit, but eventually, I make out individual boys. Five of them. All but one wear odd, tight suits, like a quartet of teenage superheroes without their capes. They must be ski suits, because their boots look like they should be attached to skis. The tallest, his slim, athletic body clad in midnight blue with spiderwebs all over the chest, heads straight toward the counter. He moves behind it, checking shelves.
Trick joins Midnight Spider-Man behind the counter. “Here, Logan,” he says, pulling a pair of skis from a rack. “They’re all set.”
“Thanks, Trick.” Logan grabs the skis and throws them over his shoulder, and the boys clomp back toward the door. The non-superhero boy hangs back. He wears a shiny black parka and jeans, slips of auburn hair curling out from under a red beanie. He crumples his empty bag of chips and leaves it on the counter. He’s good-looking in an overly confident way, which usually annoys me, but when he winks at me as he follows the others out the door, I feel my face flame. Trick’s gaze follows the boy’s exit before he tosses the chip bag into an unseen trash can beneath the counter.
My mom has been watching them, too, her mouth slightly open. “Was that Logan Never?” she asks when the door has closed, leaving us alone again.
Trick nods. Something passes between them, a version of the look Mom had in the car when we pulled up, that memory ghost.
“Who’s Logan Never?” I ask.
“The tall boy with the skis,” Mom mumbles, staring at the empty door for a moment. “His parents own this store. Matt and Jessica.”
“That other kid was Beck Davis,” Trick tells her, and I know he means the one who left his chip bag on the counter.
Mom’s face noticeably alters, like she’s eaten something sour.
“Who?” I ask. The shared history that floods the room makes me feel like I missed a memo or something.
“Boys I used to know,” she says.
“Yep,” Trick says from behind the counter. “We’re all still here.”
“I’m seeing a shrink?” I blink at Mom as we drive the darkening highway back into Truckee, the mountain town we’d seen signs for on our way to meet Trick in Squaw Valley. This announcement is perhaps the most shocking part of our trip so far. Never in a million years would I have thought Mom would sign me up for therapy. Not that Mom has anything against therapy. Therapy’s fine. For other people. That guy who talks to himself in front of Trader Joe’s, for example, or people who decide to shave their heads and start painting their skin neon green.
“He comes highly recommended,” she insists, chattering at me about Dr. Elliot’s credentials. Blah-blah-blah UCLA. Blah-blah-blah specializes in teens. I can’t get a word in over the staccato of her Manic Mom Talk. Will always jokes that Mom’s brain is like one of those news tickers scrolling across the bottom of CNN. She continually makes lists, finalizes plans, and sets goals while simultaneously checking off each completed task as more multiply and take their place. That slim blue leather notebook in her purse is embossed with a gold clock for a reason. It’s the hard copy of her Productivity System. It’s full of the things she accomplishes, crossed through with a single inked line when she finishes them, and she simultaneously cross-checks it with the Google calendar on her smartphone and laptop.
“I don’t need a therapist,” I say when she finally breaks to take in some air.
“I gave you an option to come home. If you want to stay in Squaw Valley, you will meet with Dr. Elliot,” Mom tells me. There is no room for argument.
Several minutes later, we pull into a parking spot in downtown Truckee, its warmly lit lamps a stark contrast to the shock of cold when we open the car doors. I clutch my binder to my chest as if it could add some warmth.
We walk the icy cobblestone si
dewalk past several brick storefronts until finding the small sign for Dr. Jonathan Elliot, where we push through the door and climb a flight of steps. Mom explained to me in the car that tonight won’t be a full session, just a chance for us to meet each other and talk about how these sessions will work.
I hesitate on the last step, feeling a wash of nausea. I’m not really the kind of girl who talks about her feelings. I’ve always tried a more head-down-eyes-on-the-prize approach to life, burying my head in a pile of textbooks until I graduate from college. I saw a psychiatrist at the hospital immediately following my bad day and it didn’t go so well. After ten awkward minutes, he basically told me I’d had a panic attack. Meanwhile, I lost five pounds in sweat weight from his mile-long list of questions.
A door at the end of the hall opens and a man appears in the hallway. Sweet-faced and slim, he wears a pair of thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and his brown hair recedes just slightly. He’s dressed in khakis and a wool vest with a long-sleeved tech-fabric shirt under it. So far, everyone in Tahoe looks like they just got back from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
“Mara and Lauren?”
“Dr. Elliot.” Mom moves in front of me, offering her hand. “We spoke on the phone. Thanks for meeting us so late in the evening.”
“My pleasure. How was the drive up?” As Mom answers him, he moves to hold open the door to his office so we can go inside. The room, long and narrow, faces the street, a wide window running the length of it boasting a rooftop view of the building across the main street and out to the distant pines beyond. I take in the cream walls of the office, settling on a trickling fountain of smooth rocks in the corner, the Truckee River in miniature. Everything about this office whispers, You’re in Tahoe, relax.
I immediately feel defensive.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Elliot says, sitting down in a velvety armchair speckled with grays, whites, and blacks as if the chair had been carved from spongy granite. There is no desk. No clipboard. The San Diego guy had a clipboard. Mom and I settle into matching burgundy armchairs across a glass coffee table.
“Help yourself to water or tea,” Dr. Elliot offers, motioning with his hand toward a small kitchenette where the counter holds a hot water pot, a basket of assorted teas, a pitcher of water with lemon slices, and some cookies on a white plate. “Whenever you want it.”
I glance at Mom. Therapy has cookies? This might be okay. She nods, so I stand and help myself to a snickerdoodle and a cup of chamomile tea. Chamomile’s on the Now List — good for relaxation. “Thanks.”
Dr. Elliot rubs his hands together. “Mara, I talked to your mom and she told me you’ve been pretty stressed out lately, that you had a rough calculus exam.” I nod, the cookie turning to paste in my mouth. A rough calculus exam. Like describing a cyclone as a bit breezy. Is understatement part of therapy? “Can you talk about what happened that day?” His voice murmurs just above the sound of the fountain.
I tell him about my bad day — the hum in the room, the way I felt the test shift in front of me, how sweaty my hands got, how I mostly can’t remember ripping up other people’s tests. He listens, nodding slightly, and waits until I’m completely finished before he says, “Sounds like you had a panic attack.”
Maybe Dr. Clipboard and this guy went to school together at the University of Stating the Obvious.
Mom leans forward in her chair. “She saw a doctor in San Diego who said the same thing.”
“But I’m fine now,” I tell him, smoothing my hand over my binder.
“She’s only left the house twice since it happened and one time was to get in the car to drive up here,” Mom says, her voice catching. “That doesn’t seem fine.” She fiddles with the strap of her purse. “At back-to-school night, they said junior year is challenging, the hardest one.”
I look down. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
She glances at Dr. Elliot, doing that grown-up telepathy look they think we can’t see, the one that says, See what I’ve been dealing with? But I’m not sure Mom could understand if she wanted to. Probably because she has never seemed overwhelmed. All her lists and forms and rules keep overwhelmed on its right side of the fence, too scared to even peek over. In Lauren James’s world, there is a right way (hers) and a wrong way (anyone else’s). Doubt is scared to death of my mother.
“Maybe she should drop an AP class? Or a club, maybe? She’s in a lot of clubs.”
Dr. Elliot doesn’t respond, which seems weird. Isn’t he supposed to referee the conversation or something? “I’m not sure dropping a class will help, Mom — it’s not just one thing.” Was it one thing? I scroll through the morning of the test and the days leading up to it. Normal studying. Normal five hours of sleep at night. That morning, Ranfield had posted the class rankings in our online portal. Still number one then. Not anymore.
“Do you think it would help to drop a class, Mara?” Dr. Elliot asks.
Um, isn’t he supposed to be able to tell me that? “It’s not about dropping a class. It’s more than that.” I make a sweeping motion in the air with my arms, as if overwhelmed might be best portrayed as a puppet show. “It’s the bigger stuff. The world is so terrible right now. War, poverty, global warming … the Internet … all of it.” My chest tightens. “It’s too much. And then I was sitting there and … school seemed so small and —” I mime ripping up tests. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
My mom throws another pained look at Dr. Elliot. “She takes too much on. She needs to block it out.”
“Me blocking things out isn’t going to make them go away, Mom. It’s not like I drop Eco Club and — bam! — the world is suddenly rainbows and puppies.”
“But would it help right now?” she asks, clicking her manicure against the wooden arms of the chair. “Right now you have to worry about your future, and then you can worry about the rest of the world.” We’ve had this discussion before, too.
Dr. Elliot finally decides to join the conversation. “I looked at your school’s web page. Very prestigious and highly competitive. Could that culture be contributing to feeling overwhelmed?”
I bite my lip, but Mom is quick to say, “That’s not the problem.”
“Maybe it is,” I interrupt. But it’s been a gradual build, like rainwater after weeks of drizzle. “Sometimes, Ranfield feels too extreme. All the rankings and intense scrutiny. It just feels indulgent when the rest of the world is, I don’t know, barely hanging on to clean water? When you stop and think about it, like really think about it, the values are screwed up.” I take a breath, trying to organize the thoughts in my head. “At Ranfield, they’re always telling us to be global leaders, global contributors, but I feel like the real goal is to be constantly better than everyone else. All the time. With everything. Even if you’re not the best, you should be trying to be.” I imitate a PA voice, holding a fake microphone to my mouth. “Good morning, Ravens. The rest of the world is falling apart around you, but make sure you’re wearing the right jeans! Collecting the right awards! Getting the right test scores! There may or may not be a world left once you graduate because everything is going to go up in flames and earthquakes and hurricanes, but make sure you get Student of the Month!”
A smile catches the edges of Mom’s mouth. “Flames and earthquakes and hurricanes? All at once?” She shrugs apologetically at Dr. Elliot. “That’s a bit dramatic.”
I drop my fake microphone bit. “It’s not,” I insist. “Also tornadoes. And homeless people.”
Mom can’t help herself — she laughs. “Tornadoes of homeless people?!”
“It’s not funny!” Okay, it’s a little funny. My brothers and Will would totally go see a movie with all of that. Well, not the homeless-people part. That’s too awful. But the tornado-hurricane-earthquake part. Sold.
Mom tucks her hair behind her ears and gives me a look usually reserved for a person poised on the edge of a bridge. “Sweetie, you can’t fix what’s wrong with the whole world.”
I d
rop my eyes. “I know.” Right now, I can’t even fix my own life. World, you might be on your own.
Dr. Elliot clears his throat. “You mentioned the Internet. I know there was a YouTube posting that got quite a few views. Do you want to talk about that?”
My gaze slips to the pines outside the window, dark against a deep purple sky. “I don’t care about that.”
“Did it contribute to your not wanting to go back to school?”
I tap my binder. “I have a better plan.”
“Tell me about it,” he prompts.
I study the sunset cover. “Well, obviously, in the big picture of all that is wrong in the world, my problems are pretty stupid.” Mom wants to say something — I feel it radiate off her — but she restrains herself.
Dr. Elliot pushes at the bridge of his glasses. “You alluded to that before. Why do you think your problems are stupid?”
I shrug. “You know, I keep reading about ‘first-world problems,’ like being upset about a cell phone contract or being mad that your latte wasn’t hot enough, and, well, being stressed out about school feels like that.”
His eyes flit to Mom, then back to me. “You feel like caring about your schoolwork is the same as needing your latte to be a certain temperature?”
I hurry to explain. “That’s not exactly what I mean. It’s just that everywhere, people are dying in wars and kids are starving to death and I sat there staring at that test and I was so tired and it felt so small of me, to worry about tests, to worry about grades so much. I’ve always cared so much about each grade, award, test score, because I’ve set this huge goal for my future. To be valedictorian, to get into the best college I can. Everything I do is for the future and I don’t even know what that is, what I want. Not really. It’s just sitting out there. This huge unknown. And suddenly, all of the work, all the stress, seemed so … I just need a break. People are always saying live in the now and I’ve never done that.” I hold up the binder. “So I made some notes.”
The Possibility of Now Page 2
