The Possibility of Now

by Kim Culbertson

  I drop my eyes. “Twice.”

  “Oh.” He takes the slightest step back. “Coffee’s ready.” He disappears toward the kitchen.

  I officially hate snow days.

  The days following the crushed look on Logan’s face morph into a list, informally titled: How to Tell the Boy You Like Way Too Much Is Avoiding You Because You Made the Wrong Assumption and Messed It Up. It’s a working title. A little long, I know.

  Every time you see him at Neverland, he suddenly has to “sort through an order” in the back. And disappears. Every time. No store has this many socks to stock.

  When you see him at the café, he pounds his latte and leaves in under thirty seconds. Seriously, it hurts to drink a hot latte that fast.

  He pretends not to see you on a ski lift. Three times.

  He doesn’t reply to texts. Eight of them.

  The bag of cookies you leave him sits unopened on the shop counter. For three days. You’re pretty sure Piper finally ate them.

  You run into him (actually run into him) leaving Neverland and he turns and walks the other way, as if he hadn’t just been heading into the store you were leaving, as if he hadn’t just run right into you.

  I can’t really blame him, though. I’ve been doing the same thing to Beck all week. Not answering texts. Pretending not to see him. The latte strategy. Ouch. Seriously, I don’t recommend it. The whole thing makes me think about how much time humans spend using avoidance as a general lifestyle strategy.

  Just ask Trick. He’s been perfecting it most of my life.

  Late Saturday afternoon, Isabel texts to see if I want to meet for dinner at Ethan’s Grill after her race. She and I find a table by the window and order some burgers. I start to ask, “How was your …” but trail off, my voice catching as Logan and Bodie push through the front door. Isabel sees them and waves them over. I don’t miss Logan’s hesitation before he follows Bodie over to our table. Isabel shoves over on her bench to make room for Bodie, and Logan, actively avoiding my eyes, slips into the chair next to me. When his leg brushes mine, my cheeks burn.

  “Hey.” Bodie nods at me, his mop of blue hair flopping over his forehead. He asks Isabel, “Did you order for us?”

  “Why would we do that when we didn’t know you were coming?” Isabel glares at him pointedly. Wait, did Isabel invite them?

  Bodie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, right! We totally didn’t know you were going to be here.”

  She looks quickly between me and Logan, her face hopeful. Yup, she invited him.

  Logan pretends not to notice the mound of awkward between us. He motions to our waiter, who is en route with burgers for Isabel and me.

  “Hey, Logan,” he says, handing me my burger. “Get you something?”

  “Two more of those? Thanks, Dex.” He turns to Isabel. “Hey, congrats on the race today. You killed it out there.”

  Frowning, she makes room so Dex can set down her burger. “Still can’t quite get the time where I need it to be.” When she notices Bodie’s eyes following the burger longingly, she pushes it to him. “Oh, you’re so pathetic. Here.”

  “Seriously? Sweet. Thanks.” He takes a huge bite.

  Logan takes a drink from his Coke, then looks sideways at me. “Hey, Mara.”

  Figures he chooses to acknowledge me for the first time in days when I’ve just taken the World’s Largest Burger Bite. “Mmmm, hi,” I manage to get out through the mouthful. Swallowing, I add, “Did you get my texts?” I try to suppress an emerging ripple of anger with a mouthful of fries.

  He drags one of Bodie’s fries through some ketchup. “Yeah. I’ve been busy with skiing and school.”

  Too busy to answer a text? Weak.

  Dex returns with two more burgers.

  “Speaking of school.” I put my burger down. “You guys don’t happen to know if your school has a wet lab for chem, do you?”

  Bodie chuckles, helping himself to some of Isabel’s fries. “Wet lab. That sounds dirty.”

  Isabel elbows him. “Grow up.” To me, she says, “Logan and I are in AP chem this year. We meet on Tuesdays to do all our labs. All the racers do. Well, not all the racers.” She nods at Bodie, who shrugs good-naturedly.

  I perk up. “Do you think they would mind if I came to it? It’s just that if I don’t find one, I might lose my AP credit for Ranfield.”

  “The horror, the horror,” Bodie says in a whisper-ragged voice, bugging out his eyes.

  Isabel ignores him. “Come Tuesday. Our teacher’s really cool — you’ll like her. I’m sure Logan’s mom could give you a ride back to the valley after, if you can find a way to get to Truckee?” When he doesn’t say anything, Isabel asks again, “Logan? Could she catch a ride back to the valley after chem lab?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, sure — no problem.” Only he says it like he might, in fact, have a problem with it.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Sunday morning, I wake up still annoyed with Logan, my body tense. Why is he being so distant and weird?

  My phone buzzes. It’s Will. Sending a whole sentence for my Shells of Wisdom photo this week:

  Stop and smell the alpenglow.

  I laugh so hard it brings Trick into my room, his eyebrows a question mark. I hold up my phone. “Will just told me to stop and smell the alpenglow.”

  Trick nods. “Good advice.” He disappears back into the other room and I can hear the clink of his spoon against his cereal bowl.

  Outside, small flecks of snow fall through the dark trees.

  I take a deep breath and add his line to the Now List II.

  Tuesday, I borrow Trick’s truck and drive to Truckee on my own for the first time. I turn left at Monster Taco and wind up a street until a brown building resembling a loaf of overbaked bread (Isabel’s description) appears at the end of the narrow road, its roof sagging under mounds of snow. The parking lot has been cleared, and I pull Trick’s truck into an open spot and shut off the engine, which rattles and coughs at the end, like it always does.

  The building doesn’t look like a school. With the exception of a small wooden sign reading CREST CHARTER SCHOOL, at best it looks like a dentist’s office. I push open the heavy door of the truck and head toward the building entrance. Isabel is waiting on the other side of the glass and waves when she sees me, scurrying to push open the door. “I give good directions, right?”

  “Excellent directions.” Inside, warm air greets me, and Isabel gives me a ten-second tour. “Okay, student lounge, classrooms over there, chem lab this way,” she says as she heads down the dimly lit hall, clad in jeans, Uggs, and a teal sweatshirt. The walls are covered with pictures of students, all of whom seem to be doing something athletic — snowboarding, skiing, hiking, rafting. In one picture, a girl poses in black martial arts robes and glares fiercely at the camera. “Are all the kids who go here athletes?” I ask, squinting at a small, faded picture of a snowboard team.

  “Not all of them. We’ve got artists, musicians, math geeks, and, you know, your occasional stoner.” She turns and winks at me in a cryptic way. I’ve never seen Isabel so much as sip a beer, so I don’t really know what all that winking is about.

  “But you only come a few days a week?” I try to keep the judgment out of my voice, though I’m not very successful.

  “Classes are two to three days a week depending on the class, but you’re assigned an advisor and build the rest of your schedule with them; you can pick and choose from different options so you create the program that works best for your schedule.”

  Scratch camp, this school sounds like a salad bar. Um, would you like croutons with your French class? But I’d never really thought about anything other than the schedule we have at Ranfield. School has always just looked like, well, school.

  She glances curiously at me as we turn down a hallway. “You probably get some flexibility in your school — I mean, all those rich kids. Seems like they would want a little
more say.”

  I’m not sure how much say we get. We’re basically told what we should be doing so that we have the best possible transcripts. “It’s rigorous,” I tell her. “But we have one free period a day.” Which most of us spend taking an extra elective.

  She gives me a look like I’d just confessed they force us into dark basements once a day and feed us worms. “I would hate that, too rigid. But, you know, everybody’s got to do what they got to do.” I’ve heard Trick use that expression before. It seems like the kind of thing you can say and not have to mean anything by it. I try to ignore it, but something about this school makes me bristle. It’s not like I haven’t been working hard while on Home Hospital. I get that this schedule is more like college, but still, it seems like a vacation compared to going to school every day and then doing all the work. It doesn’t actually seem fair that other people can make this the whole high school package.

  I follow Isabel into a small room that smells sharp and citrusy. She waves to Logan, who is standing with another girl and a boy who is so tall and thin, he seems like a human pencil. They all wear lab aprons and safety glasses. A young woman comes through the door. She wears a Patagonia vest and jeans tucked into glossy black boots and can’t be more than twenty-five. “Okay, all — let’s get this party started.” She pauses when she sees me. “Oh, you must be Mara. I’m Malika, the AP chem teacher.”

  We call her by her first name? I shake her hand. “Thanks so much for letting me come.”

  She waves as if to say, It’s nothing, and grabs an apron off a hook, handing it to me with a pair of safety glasses. “No problem. Someone actually asking to come to lab? It’s fabulous.”

  “Should I, um, join a group?” Isabel seems to have joined Pencil Boy at one station, while Logan stands with the blond girl at another.

  “You can jump in with Logan and Amanda.” She motions toward them.

  Great.

  “Hi, I’m Mara,” I say, walking over and standing across the counter from them.

  “Amanda.”

  Holding up a graduated cylinder, Logan explains, sounding overly formal, “We’re determining the molar volume of hydrogen gas at STP.”

  Amanda waggles her eyebrows. “Thrilling stuff.” She seems sweet.

  “Are you a ski racer, too?” I ask her.

  “Nah, I snowboardcross.” She twists at her ponytail, her eyes large and green behind her safety glasses. She has that tan glow of snow athletes who spend so much time on the mountain.

  I vaguely remember that event from watching the last Winter Olympics with Will. “Is that the one where they knock each other off course?”

  Amanda nods enthusiastically. “Not on purpose — okay, sometimes on purpose — but, yeah, it’s rad.” She goes back to her lab notebook, which is decorated with snowboard stickers and photos.

  For the next hour and a half, we work through the lab, the atmosphere relaxed and peppered with jokes, but I’m hyperaware of Logan avoiding my eyes.

  I try to concentrate on the lab and finally lose myself in collecting data. Malika watches and guides us. I like the way she explains things; she’s clear and obviously loves her subject. Her enthusiasm infuses the whole process and I find myself caring a lot more about molar volume than I imagined I could. A ribbon of energy moves through me and I realize that I’ve missed this, working on a project with other students. The classroom. And this is extra nice because everyone seems to want to be here. In AP chem at Ranfield, my lab partner, Branson Tucker, never stopped reminding me that he was only taking the class because he was applying to Princeton and you couldn’t get into Princeton without it. But even though Branson Tucker said Princeton about ten times a day, all he seemed to do during our lab time was try to light his hoodie strings on fire with the Bunsen burner.

  As we finish cleaning up, Malika signs the form Ms. Raff emailed me this morning, verifying my time in the lab. “Good job today,” she tells me, handing it back to me. “See you next week?”

  I’m already looking forward to it.

  “You guys want to get coffee?” Isabel suggests, hanging up her lab coat. Amanda declines. She has an essay to finish for English and wants to get it done so she can get enough time on the mountain tomorrow. She gives a little wave as she leaves, pulling a beanie over her ponytail and grabbing a huge red down jacket from a hook. Logan has his back to us, sorting through his backpack. He doesn’t say anything.

  Clearing my throat, I tell Isabel, “I actually brought Trick’s truck, so I’m up for it.”

  He turns. “So you don’t need a ride?” His voice has that same odd clipped tone he used to talk about molar volume. I shake my head. “Cool — later, then.” He disappears out the door.

  I catch Isabel’s eye. “He’s been like that since the snow day.”

  She searches for something in her bag. “Maybe he’s just busy. The store is crazy this time of year.”

  We both know it has nothing to do with the store. “Yeah, maybe. Hey, is there a drinking fountain?” I return my glasses to their white plastic bin and hang up my lab coat.

  “By the student lounge,” Isabel says. “We can do coffee another time if you’re not feeling up to it.”

  “Maybe that’s better. I have a ton of schoolwork to do and I should send in this lab form before my mom freaks.”

  We say good-bye and I find the fountain against the wall in the hallway running the length of the student lounge. Next to it, a glass window looks in on the lounge. A dozen or so kids sprawl on the four worn couches and a few others sit at round tables, textbooks open in front of them.

  I almost miss him because he’s sitting in profile. Beck. He’s kicked back on the sofa that comes out perpendicularly from the wall, reading from a book to a small group of girls sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him. I can’t make out the title, but it’s a paperback and has a picture of a man on the front, a philosopher-bust type of picture. His listeners stare at him, rapt, and behind the couch, a girl with short pink hair massages his shoulders in a steady rhythm, nodding at whatever he’s reading aloud. She tips her head back, laughing, and leans to kiss him quickly on the cheek. I duck away before he can see me and hurry from the building as quickly as possible, welcoming the cold blast of outside air.

  It shouldn’t bother me, seeing him like that. I’m the one who has been avoiding him.

  But it does.

  Mom calls the next afternoon and the first words she says are, “Did you connect with Dr. Elliot about your next appointment?”

  “Not yet.” I pick at some fuzz on the edge of Trick’s couch. “Actually, I’m thinking I don’t really need to have any more meetings with him.”

  Silence.

  “Mom?”

  “Meeting with Dr. Elliot was part of the deal, Mara. You agreed.”

  I take a breath. “I don’t really want to go.”

  Sounding tired, she says, “This isn’t about what you want. It’s about doing your job. Life’s not fair.” Two of Mom’s Core Principles: Do your job. Life’s not fair.

  It’s that last one I catch on. I know she means sometimes things don’t work out the way we want, but lately I’ve been thinking about how my life seems more than fair. I’ve been born into a privileged world. Expensive school, parents with important jobs, beautiful San Diego. It’s amazing, actually — my luck. Yet so much of what I hear from everyone at Ranfield is I’m so busy, I’m so stressed, my life is harder than yours. Kids brag about getting no sleep, that the homework took six hours, that they barely made it out alive from that French test. Is it just human nature to be constantly competing for the suffering award? How much of it is just manufactured to seem like legitimate struggle?

  I think of Oli with his simple life, his choice to leave the pressured world behind. Not that I want to live in an Airstream, but how much of my stress is environmental? I’ve come to Tahoe, but I’m still trying to win at the Ranfield game. All I did was change the view.

  The realization hits me. For
all my listing and living in the now, I’m still trying to impress the place I left behind, the place that wrecked me.

  “Mara?”

  I spaced on Mom. Clearly not doing my job right now. “Sorry.”

  “I’m meeting a client. Reschedule today.” She hangs up.

  Walking through the Village late Thursday afternoon, I see Logan come out of the frozen yogurt shop with a heaping sundae. He notices me and freezes. “Oh, hey. You caught me. Fro-yo addiction.” He holds up a tub topped with what looks like a pound of candy. “Want one?” He motions back over his shoulder with his spoon.

  “No, thanks, but I’ll take a Sour Patch Kid. A red one.” I help myself to one of the many sugar-drenched clumps on top of his yogurt, taking an overly long time to chew because the air feels strange between us. “I’m still not used to the blue Sour Patch Kids,” I announce, just to have something to say. “Not sure I’m a fan. I think they’re supposed to be berry flavored, but they taste like acid.”

  “Because you know what acid tastes like?” His chocolate eyes seem guarded.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I think it’s fun to try out new flavors. But I’m more a fan of the orange ones. And I like that they get more chewy when they’re cold.” This could be the most detailed discussion of Sour Patch Kids in the history of conversations about sour candy.

  “Logan?”

  “Yeah?” He fiddles with his yogurt but doesn’t eat any. His expression seems halfway between panic and interest. I’m hoping for interest.

  “Um, so about what happened with Beck.” I stuff my hands into my parka pockets and look anywhere but at Logan. “I thought you were with Isabel and, well, I —”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he interrupts. “You’re free to kiss whoever you want. Not up to me.” He takes a big bite of sundae and makes an overexaggerated face, as if to imply Nothing matters when you’ve got fro-yo!

  “Okay.” Maybe he wishes we were still talking about Sour Patch Kids. Or Skittles, maybe? Junior Mints? Even with my stomach churning, I know I shouldn’t let him off the hook like that. “It’s just … well, you seem sort of mad.”