The Possibility of Now

by Kim Culbertson

  Isabel arrives at our table, her eyes just a little too wide as she glances between us. “Hey, Mara. Beck.”

  “Aren’t you racing?” I ask, my voice light, trying to push back against some of the intensity she brought into the café with her. Maybe she’s pumped up on race endorphins or something?

  “Trick’s fixing my binding. Lucky we’re racing at Squaw today. What are you two up to?” She shoots a dark look at Beck. “Signing her up for one of your slacker seminars?” She tries to play it off as funny, but she’s too amped and it comes out sharp-edged.

  He takes it in stride, breaking off another bite of the scone. “If I offered seminars, that would be highly hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?” He grins up at her. “How’s my favorite praise junkie?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Nice. Mara, you’ll find that for our friend Beck here, anyone who might want to do something in life, who might actually want to try, is a praise junkie. Sorry, am I interrupting the part where you tell her that we should just live life for the moment, enjoy this beautiful mountain and nothing else?”

  Beck gives me an amused look. “I might have mentioned it.”

  “Being predictable and being laid-back are not the same thing,” she tells him.

  As they continue to argue, I stop listening. This clearly isn’t their first time having this particular fight, and besides, something outside distracts me.

  Logan.

  He and some of the other Frost Boys walk past in their racing suits, laughing as one of the boys, obviously telling a story, gesticulates wildly. Logan catches my eye and gives me that relaxed wave of his, before his gaze slips back to his friends. I force my attention to Isabel, her hands on her hips, still arguing with Beck, and I flush with irrational anger. Not all of us can have laid-back adorable ski racer boyfriends, so maybe she should mind her own business. It’s not like I’m going to marry Beck. I’m not even here very long.

  I stand, interrupting them. “So Beck and I were just about to head up to High Camp. Want to come?” I start collecting my things. Beck hops up next to me, taking my new announcement in stride.

  Isabel frowns. “I’m still racing today.”

  “Oh, bummer.” Beck blinks at her, a look of mock disappointment on his face.

  As I start to move past her, she tugs my sleeve, pulling me aside. “Be careful, okay? Most girls end up needing an emotional hazmat suit with this one.” She glares over my shoulder at Beck, who blows her a kiss.

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” My voice is colder than I mean it to be.

  Stung, she takes a step back. “Your funeral.”

  Beck and I push through the door into the wet winter air, and I force myself not to look back at where Isabel still stands, watching us leave.

  As we weave through a throng of skiers, I try to study Beck without his noticing. Which probably makes it look like I’m about to sneeze. His moss-colored down jacket is almost the same color as his eyes, which I’m sure he does on purpose. It’s clear he knows how good-looking he is, but it also strikes me that he seems harmless. As far as bad boys go, he doesn’t seem very, well — bad.

  At least he’s not your generic brand of bad influence. No motorcycle, no piercings, no drugs, no loud parties trashing his parents’ beach house (at least, that I know of). He doesn’t do his homework and rambles on (and on) about society’s messed-up systems, but as slackers go, he never seems stoned or out of it. He broods, sure, and when he rants, he sounds a lot like the coffeehouse hipster crowd at Ranfield with their heavy-framed glasses and obscure music interests. But he’s not like them, either. I don’t know where he fits, and something in me, something I’m trying very hard not to listen to, wants to know what makes him come with Isabel’s warning label.

  “After you.” He motions me into the wide elevator that takes us to the tram, but he’s quiet as we transfer the few short yards across to the car itself, finding us two spots against the wall of windows since the benches on the narrow ends are already taken. The tram operator announces that we will now be lifting from 6,200 feet to 8,200 feet and it will take eight and half minutes to get to High Camp.

  My stomach lurches as we lift up out of the valley, and I see Beck watching the ski race over by the Red Dog lift, the sponsor banners bright against the white hill, the packs of racers moving about in their sleek uniforms.

  “Do you ever miss it?” I ask, following his gaze.

  He looks guilty at being caught watching it. “What? No, not ever.”

  I wonder if that’s true.

  “It’s weird,” he says, turning and leaning against the glass wall. “I can actually pinpoint the day it changed for me. It wasn’t anything gradual; at least I didn’t think so at the time.” The tram carries us up through the sky, the wide snowscape stretching all around and below us, the parking lot of the Village growing small in the distance.

  My body feels shivery and strange, suspended in too much air, and I want him to keep talking to distract me from the thought of plummeting to my death.

  Now we’re as high as a tree

  Now we’re as high as a four-story building

  “When was that?” I manage.

  He slips his hands into his jacket pockets. “I was fourteen. We were racing at Sugar Bowl and I’d just finished a particularly grueling round of gates. It wasn’t my best run, but it wasn’t my worst. I’d placed maybe third. But when I got to the bottom, I pulled off my goggles and looked around at all the people cheering, at all the sponsor banners, at all the other racers, and there was my dad in the crowd, standing with his arms crossed. And he just looked so … disappointed. Right then, a switch flipped. I took off my skis and walked away. That was it for me.”

  A shadow ghost of something passes through me. “Because of too much pressure from your dad?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, it was all of it. Never being good enough for him, sure. But also the whole scene — the busy weekends, the constant worry about times, the workouts in the gym, the practices, the other skiers and their intense attitudes, everyone competing with each other, backstabbing each other even though we were supposed to be teammates. The stress. It made me question everything, how driven we all are by these arbitrary goals. I was so sick of it.” He pulls out a pair of mirrored Maui Jim sunglasses and slips them on against the glare of the bright day. “What changed for you?” he asks. “What made you go all Captain Paper Shredder?”

  I try to chuckle at his joke, but it catches in my throat. It still makes me sick to think about that terrible day and the YouTube video. I stare down into the sweeping valley, the rooftops, and the wide snowy yawn of Squaw Valley beyond. Since sixth grade, I’ve spent all my time building my life at Ranfield, a life that would turn into a golden key to an unknown future door. It’s crazy how quickly it has evaporated like fog behind me, how far I feel now from everything that had seemed so important and crushing and desperate.

  “It was a little like what happened with you,” I say.

  We watch the valley spool away beneath us, swaying into each other with the swing of the tram as it passes the tower. We stay like that, our sides pressed against each other, pretending to listen to the tram operator talk about how Walt Disney, who was acting as the grand marshal of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games, saw these rocks beneath us and got the idea for the Thunder Mountain ride. The operator goes on to tell us that at the highest point of this trip, we will be 550 feet up, high enough to fit the entire Washington Monument underneath us, but I register his crackly voice as backdrop, my whole body fixating on the heat of Beck next to me, on how nice it feels to just float up the mountain with this boy who thought it was brave of me to rip up those tests. I even forget to worry about the car snapping loose and dropping to the valley floor below. Well, at least I mostly forget.

  Finally, the car docks, the sliding door opening so we can exit to High Camp. I follow Beck out into a hallway, trying not to give away how nice it feels to be on solid ground. We move up some stairs and out onto a sundec
k. He points out the pool, caked with snow, a few blue bits peeking through, and the circle of blue hot tub steaming. We dodge a pack of tiny ski-lesson kids, one sobbing, “There’s a bug in my jacket,” and I smile sympathetically at the young ski instructor who tries to get the little girl’s coat off over her gloves, mumbling, “Probably not a bug, honey.” It makes me miss Seth and Liam. Mental list:

  Skype with brothers

  send them Squaw stickers for their scooters

  We pass a massive glass dome that spills light into the restaurant on the level below, and head to the railing, taking in the view of Lake Tahoe and the mountains beyond. From here, everything is rock and snow and pines and that wide blue lake. “You must never get tired of this view.” I breathe deep, the wind catching my hair so I have to hold it back with one hand.

  Beck shakes his head. “Never.”

  A woman walks over and leans on the railing near us. She wears a down jacket that shines pale pink like an abalone shell and has her back to the view, her glossy dark hair spilling out from under a fuzzy white hat that looks like someone fastened a baby polar bear to her head. She snaps her gum and fiddles with her phone. “Come here,” she says to the guy with her, and they take a selfie with the view in the background. She fiddles with her phone again, probably posting the photo somewhere.

  He stares out over the vista, his hands in the pockets of his designer jeans. “See, babe, it’s totally worth it, right? Coming up here?” He tries to catch her eye, but she doesn’t look up from her phone.

  “There.” She pockets her phone. “Ugh, this is boring. Let’s hit the bar.” The man looks disappointed as they head in the direction of the restaurant.

  Beck frowns, his gaze following them, and even though I can’t see them, I can feel his eyes narrow behind his sunglasses. “I hate people like that. They come up here, but they don’t even see any of it.”

  The couple disappears back inside the tram building. I shrug. “Some people just don’t think about things like views. They’re probably not, you know, nature people.”

  “Idiots,” Beck growls, his tone surprising me. “Just watch — because of people like that, we’ll end up having to live on the moon in tiny metal boxes.”

  I turn back to the view and give him a small nudge with my body. Trying to lighten the mood, I tease, “Well, we should go push them off the tram. I have no interest in lunar condo living.”

  He gives his head the tiniest of shakes as if clearing an unwanted thought and tries to smile, but that shadow of annoyance lingers. “Sorry. But if you’re going to be such a clueless moron, don’t come to my Tahoe.”

  A burst of laughter and stomping feet fills the deck behind us. I turn just as a bride emerges from the side door of the tram building, her dress fluttering beneath a white down jacket. Already on the deck, the groom wears a black down jacket and tux pants and it takes me a minute to realize they’re both in ski boots. They’re surrounded by a pack of bridesmaids and groomsmen hauling skis and also dressed in ski-themed bridal outfits. Laughing, the group heads toward the slopes near Bailey Creek Run. “Hey, look.” I tug at Beck’s jacket sleeve. “They love your Tahoe.”

  “Awesome,” he says, though without much energy behind it. Awesome, I’m learning, is a go-to placeholder word in Tahoe. Beck’s mood seems to have diminished along with the oxygen levels.

  “Want to show me around inside? Isn’t there an Olympic museum?”

  Inside, we wander around the small museum, squinting at the black-and-white photos and watching a short video about the 1960 Games. Near a wide window, we come across a life-size cutout of a man in an Olympic racer suit. I get an idea. “Hey, take a picture, okay?” I hand Beck my phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  I lean in and plant a big kiss on the cutout face of the skier. “Take the picture,” I mumble through the smooch.

  Shaking his head, Beck takes the picture, but he’s smiling again. “What’s that all about?”

  “Now List number seven. Kiss a cute snowboarder,” I tell him, grabbing my phone and texting the picture to Josie.

  Beck tucks his hands in his pockets. “Um, that’s Jonny Moseley. He’s a skier. And, like, forty years old now.”

  I squint at the cutout. “He doesn’t look forty.”

  Clearly enjoying this, Beck says, “Old picture.”

  Shrugging, I check the photo again. “Hmmm … So I guess I just sent a super-creepy picture to my friend.”

  “Little bit, yeah.” He takes a step toward me. We’re alone in the museum, the late-morning sun lighting up streaks of dust in its beams. “But if you’re looking to kiss a snowboarder to, you know, check that off a list, I’m happy to oblige.”

  My mouth turns into a desert. “Oh.” Oh? A boy wants to kiss me and I just said, Oh?! I try to recover. “I said cute snowboarder.”

  “Aww, be nice — I’m a little bit cute.” He’s very close now — I can smell his spicy soap. He tips his head down, waiting for me. My mind makes a ten-second speed list.

  Reasons to kiss Beck:

  He’s magazine cute.

  He has a good mouth.

  He smells like pine trees and spice.

  He’s offering.

  #7!

  But in the exact same ten seconds, the opposite list tries to scribble over it:

  Hazmat suit!

  I don’t really feel like that about him — do I?

  He’s not Logan (grrrrrr, stop thinking about Logan).

  I’m not a girl who kisses random boys.

  And yet, maybe in the spirit of Tahoe Mara, I go with list 1.

  So I kiss him. I grab him by his down-jacketed shoulders and pull him into me. Apparently, it doesn’t matter how much I think I like or don’t like Beck Davis, because kissing him feels like that moment right before falling on skis — that exhilarating stomach-dropping tug — and his warm mouth erases everything on list 2.

  1. Learn to ski: green runs, blue runs, black runs??

  2. Internet cleanse (no social media, no news, Skype okay!)

  3. Meditation — at least 10 minutes a day!!

  4. Sleep until 8 on a school day when I’m not sick

  5. Essential oils to relax — lavender, chamomile, orange

  6. Simplify & downsize!!

  7. Kiss a cute snowboarder!! (Josie’s suggestion)

  8. Breathe! (obviously)

  9. Be brave (from Will)

  10. Read for fun? (see attached suggested book lists)

  11. Get to know Trick McHale

  12. Get in a little trouble

  Kissing Beck translates into an afternoon of manic energy at Trick’s cottage. I do four homework assignments and make dinner, but I can’t seem to stop picturing the moment I pulled Beck in to kiss me. Even with chem formulas swirling in my brain, I can’t stop thinking about how soft his mouth was or the weight of his hands on my back.

  I’d scratched out #7, but I’m pretty sure it was a bad, bad idea.

  I blame Josie.

  On the other hand, I think this means I can cross off #12, too.

  Trick comes through the door just as I’m spooning from-scratch minestrone soup into bowls. As he hangs up his jacket, I set out a plate of warm, sliced French bread with butter and a green salad.

  “Whoa, what’s all this?” He pulls his beanie off and tosses it onto the couch. “What’s the occasion?”

  I keep myself from shouting, I kissed Beck Davis! and slip into my chair. “In the real world, you don’t need an occasion to make dinner. You just get hungry, go to the grocery store, and, you know, survive.” I sprinkle parmesan cheese onto my soup, praying he doesn’t notice my hands shaking.

  He takes a slurp. “You made this?” I nod, and he adds, “Your mom taught you.”

  I look up at him, surprised. “She did, yeah.”

  “I remember this soup,” he says, his head bent over the bowl as he eats. His words twist in me, and for a few moments, we eat without talking. I wait for him to say more, maybe te
ll me a story about Mom making this soup for him, but he doesn’t say anything. Just eats his soup.

  I’m still trying to read Trick like a map. The obvious stuff came quickly, the similarities in our eyes and the color of our hair. Mostly, though, I’m noticing myself in his quiet ways, how he seems more content to observe than to dictate a conversation. I’ve always been quiet like that. But this hush right now makes me uneasy. At home, dinner is never quiet. Mom always takes the lead, asking questions and getting answers. If we don’t talk enough, she has a box of conversation cards that sit on our buffet to get the ball rolling. Will usually talks about work or sports during dinner (when he’s not answering What kind of domesticated pet would you be?), and the twins are loud and rowdy. Labradoodles. Both of them. Trick’s on the opposite end of the spectrum. If I don’t say something, we’ll pass the whole dinner without speaking a single word.

  “You’re one of those quiet cats who sits in the window of a bookshop,” I blurt over our slurps and chewing.

  He jerks his head up. “Huh?”

  Oh, right. It helps to actually intro the card game. “If you were a domesticated pet, you’d be a quiet shop cat.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “Sometimes, at home, Mom makes us play games to get the conversation going at dinner. Like, what color of the rainbow would you be?”

  He shrugs, reaching for some bread. “I don’t know, blue?”

  “Why blue?”

  “Red?”

  “You have to explain your answer.” He looks pained. “Forget it.” This isn’t going well; our words seem wispy and fake, like whole rivers of other words swirl in the spaces between them. No more rainbow colors or bookshop cats. “Trick?”

  “Yeah?”