The snow stopped sometime during the night, but there is enough of it that we need to dig ourselves out this morning. Mom will be here tonight and Trick wants to make sure she can get in the driveway and up the path to the house. I notice he’s doing an especially detailed job. I bundle up and join him. He hands me a battered wide-mouth shovel that has clearly seen years of use and shows me where to begin on the path. Then he heads back to the driveway.
Trick was asleep last night when I crept back into the house, his heavy breathing even and measured — not worried at all if I’d frozen to death outside on my walk. The covers pulled to my chin, I’d missed my mom terribly as I fell asleep, even with all her spreadsheets and Google calendars and seashell sighs through the phone. She would have waited up for me to come home.
Now I shovel snow off the path, heaping it into a berm on the side of the driveway, the shovel scraping against the stone pathway. My cheeks flush and my breath quickens as I hurl shovelfuls of it to the side. I think about all the things I don’t know about my life when I lived here, how as a three-year-old I was just whisked away and life here went on without me. People skied and Logan and Isabel went to picnics by the lake and Trick worked at Neverland and buried my naked mole rat book beneath a pile of fleece pullovers. And I went to Ranfield and melted down in front of a classroom of teenagers, one mean enough to film it so more than six hundred thousand people could watch it.
But it could have all been different.
I could have been living here, picnicking by lakes and skiing down mountains and tucking carnelian stones into the pocket of my jeans. It was a kind of theft, what was taken from me. This could be my life right now if two people had decided it was worth it to figure it out. I wouldn’t just be taking a break.
It would be my whole life.
“Hey, Mara — not so high on that —” Trick starts to say, but I whirl on him, sending snow flying, and he ducks, shocked at what must be the rage on my face.
“What happened with you and Mom? What could possibly have been so bad that you couldn’t work it out? Your stupid skiing career? That was more important than knowing your own daughter?”
“Whoa, wait — what?” He holds his hands up in defense, as if I might hurl more snow in his direction. Or throw the shovel at him.
“And then — what? You just gave up? You just said, oh, well, the kid’s gone now … and what? Shoveled the driveway? Got a beer? Thirteen years and I saw you once! What is wrong with you?” I toss the shovel into the snow and storm back to the house.
“Hang on — Mara!” Trick tries to follow me but slips on the icy unsanded drive.
I track snow into the room and grab my phone from the coffee table. Isabel and Logan are gone — in Mammoth. I might be in Mammoth right now if my parents weren’t so selfish. My eyes land on Beck’s number. With shaking fingers, I text him.
you have to come get me at trick’s! i’m freaking out!
He immediately writes back.
be right there.
I stomp into my room, slamming the door, but Trick doesn’t come inside. Fifteen minutes later, an old Jeep Wagoneer in mint condition pulls into what’s cleared of the driveway. I hurry outside to it, wading through snow to my knees in places. Trick sits on the pile of snow I’d made earlier, his face in his hands. Seeing him, I have a stab of guilt, so I try not to look at him as I move around to the passenger side of the Jeep and climb in. I’m not even supposed to be driving with Beck. California law. But I don’t care right now.
Beck studies Trick sitting there. “Where to?”
I snap my seat belt into place. “Anywhere.”
“Gotcha.” Beck backs out of the driveway. We drive in silence down the hill, turning left onto Squaw Valley Road. Finally, as we turn right on Highway 89 toward Tahoe City, he asks, “You okay?”
We sail past the turnoff to Alpine Meadows and the River Ranch. I study the heaps of snow clogging the Truckee River as it snakes alongside us on the right, a silent, wintry yawn. “Not really.” Occasionally, I see a house on the other side of the river, footbridges arching across a stretch of winter water. I wonder who lives in those houses or if they’re empty like so many of the others.
“I’m glad you called,” Beck says, driving through an intersection that leads us into the main stretch of Tahoe City, passing the Tahoe City Neverland store on the left. “You can always call me.” He puts a warm hand on my knee. Or maybe the warmth is from the guilt washing through me. I wouldn’t have called him if Isabel or Logan had been in town.
Beck finds a parking spot on the street in front of Syd’s Bagelry. I get out of the car, momentarily struck with the wide expanse of Lake Tahoe suddenly in view. “Wow,” I breathe, my eyes drinking in the inky whitecapped water, massive against the distant snow-covered mountains. The water is empty of boats; only white buoys here and there dot the surface near the shoreline. Beck joins me, his hair whipped by the wind, and tugs me toward the door of the café.
We head inside and I find a table while he orders coffees. Beck checks his phone, cursing at something he reads there, then crosses to our table, sliding into the seat next to me. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. I’ve had the worst week ever.”
“Oh — I’m sorry.” I stumble at his sudden shift of mood.
The waitress brings out steaming coffees for us, both black. I head to the counter and pour a generous amount of milk into mine. As I sit back down, he launches into a story about his parents, how they fight all the time, how even though they got divorced last year, they still can’t stop constantly screaming at each other. Mostly about him. About what a huge disappointment he is to both of them. He leaves twice to refill his coffee. Sitting back down, he blurts, “And I just found out if I don’t pass math, I can’t graduate a year early like I planned. Some stupid requirement.” He stares glumly into his already half-empty mug.
What happened to School is just a system of tyranny? “I thought you didn’t care about society imposing standards on you or whatever? Wouldn’t that include a high school diploma?”
He looks at me sharply but tries to hide it behind a shrug. “I don’t. It’s a stupid system that only rewards rule followers. It’s the opposite of an education.” I’ve heard this argument before. “But my dad says I have to graduate or he’s cutting me off.”
But this detail is new. “What math are you in?”
“Geometry.”
I sip my coffee. “I can help you with that.”
He sits up. “Seriously? That’d be great. Just enough to pass. I mean, a diploma is a totally arbitrary piece of paper, but it’s part of the deal I made with Dad the Despot.” He finishes his coffee in a long gulp. “Four more months and then I’m out from under it all. On my own.” He leaps out of his seat and I see him hurry to his car, open a back door, and pull out a backpack.
I can’t help but think that he will not actually be on his own if his dad continues to bankroll his life, but I’m pretty sure he won’t be interested in that particular observation right now. He returns, dumping a geometry book on the table.
“Wait, now?”
He flips open the book. “Sure, why not?”
“Oh, I just, well, I —” I almost tell him about Trick, about our fight, but he doesn’t really seem to be listening. Instead, I opt for “My mom’s coming to town this afternoon, so I’m not sure I have time.”
The barista walks by, carrying a sandwich to a table, where she chats with two guys in beanies and ski pants. Beck eyes their plates. “Whoa, that looks great. Want one?”
He jumps up again. He’s jittery and weird, not his usual calm swagger. No more coffee, Mr. Davis. I deposit his mug in a nearby busing tray while he’s at the counter.
We sit in the café as the late morning turns into afternoon and it starts to grow dark outside, storm clouds clogging the sky again, the air holding just a few glints of snowflakes. Our empty sandwich plates pushed away and two chapters of geometry later, I sit back and study the paintings on the wall by a
local artist, mostly abstracts.
One is called Sorrow.
I tell Beck about a site I used to follow. “It’s called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Have you seen it?” He shakes his head, rubbing his math-bleary eyes. “It’s all these made-up words for emotions that don’t have names. One I really liked was nodustollens: the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense anymore.”
He looks up from the problem he’s working on. “Does the plot of your life not make sense?”
“Not really.”
“Bummer.” He returns to his scribbles on the page.
Bummer?
Outside, the snow is floating in thick flakes past the window. The tangle in my stomach begins to shift. “It’s starting to snow pretty hard. I think we should head back.”
He looks over his shoulder at the snow. “It’s not bad. But if you want to leave, we can.”
“I should go. My mom’s coming soon and she’s already furious with me. One more thing and she might pack me on a plane back to San Diego tomorrow.” And I really don’t want to sit here with you anymore because you only care about yourself, you big jerk, I don’t add. Standing, I carry our plates to the busing tray.
We head out into the storm and climb into the Jeep. Beck makes a U-turn and heads back toward Squaw Valley. The snow picks up, swirling into the windshield. We pass only one or two other cars. Beck leans the Jeep into the oncoming snowfall, moving us faster and faster along the silent highway.
He’s going too fast and I feel the Jeep slipping on the fresh snow beneath the tires. “Maybe you should slow down?”
He looks surprised. “You don’t need to worry — this isn’t fast.”
“It’s just the weather seems bad.” I hold the seat beneath me with both hands.
“I’ve been driving in snow since I was twelve. This is nothing.” He pushes harder on the accelerator, his eyes intent on the road ahead. We fly down the highway, the car slipping and skidding through the storm. My heart hammers and my stomach drops.
It’s too fast.
“Beck, slow down.”
“It’s fine.” But it’s not fine. He overcorrects around a turn and the Jeep skids to the side. He catches it, but we both know that, for a scary moment, he’d lost control.
He slows down and we make the rest of the trip to the Squaw intersection in silence. As we wait for the light to turn green, he looks at me, his expression sheepish. “I really wasn’t going that fast.” Clenching my jaw, I ignore him. When I don’t say anything for a minute he adds, “Seriously, you need to relax. You’ll end up being afraid of everything with that attitude.”
Not turning to him, I say quietly, “I’m not sure I need a lesson in bravery from you.”
He doesn’t respond, winding the Jeep through the valley as outside the world grows heavy with snow. Finally, as we near Trick’s place, he mumbles, “It wasn’t that fast.” He tries to pat my leg, but I angle my body away from him, a new made-up word flashing through my mind.
Cherk: a charming jerk. Beck Davis is a cherk.
I stare out at the snowy world and don’t reply. As he pulls into Trick’s driveway, my stomach drops for the second time. Mom is already here, getting out of her rented SUV. Her eyes go wide when she sees me pull in with Beck, her mouth falling open. She takes the distance between our cars in huge strides, and before I can unbuckle, she whips the door open. “Out of the car.”
“Mom, I got it.”
“No, Mara. You clearly don’t got it. Out of the car.” She keeps her voice low, but her anger vibrates more intensely than if she’d been yelling.
I get out of the car.
Later, I sit across from Mom at a back table at Ethan’s (where I had not, she noted, made a reservation). After she seats us, Maggie looks worriedly in my direction and brings us a free fried zucchini appetizer. Mom’s still mad; it radiates off her like those heat shimmers that rise up from hot pavement in the desert.
Finally, she says, “I’m trying to understand, Mara, I am. I’m trying to find a reason why you thought it was okay to get into that car today with Beck Davis. Not only did you break the law, worse — you put your life in danger driving with him in this kind of weather.” She shakes her head. “It’s not like you to cause this kind of trouble.” Get in a little trouble. Check. Only, the funny part is I’m no good at it. I try to focus on what Mom’s saying across the table. “You’re not going to your counseling sessions, you’re pulling stunts like today. This is obviously not working.”
“It is working,” I mumble, more to the plate of zucchini than to her.
She rubs the skin beneath her eyes with the pads of her fingers, something she always does at the end of a long, exhausting day. “Okay, then, why don’t you explain why I should let you stay in Tahoe when all you make are bad choices?”
As if I’ve been making heaping piles of them. “What other bad choices have I been making?”
She taps her fork on the napkin. “I’m concerned about your schoolwork.”
“Ms. Raff told me my last AP history DBQ was the best so far.” My mouth feels like sand. Where is Maggie with my Diet Coke? “And I found that lab all on my own. My schoolwork is fine. Better than fine, because I’m getting it all done but I’m not so stressed out. I’m getting enough sleep. And best of all — no one has posted a humiliating YouTube video while I’ve been here.” Maggie sets down a glass of white wine for Mom, who is overly showy about thanking her, taking a long sip of it to delay responding to me. “You know what’s funny, Mom?” I ask when we’ve exhausted the avoid-talking-by-drinking option.
She raises her eyebrows. “I would love to know what’s funny right now.”
“I can’t even really get into trouble. That was on my list, you know. From Josie. Get in a little trouble. Number twelve.”
“Great.” She swirls her wine in the glass. “Great advice.”
“It doesn’t matter because I can’t do it. You know what happened today with Beck? What terrible awful things happened?” She holds up a hand as if to ward off a shot to the face, so I lean in dramatically. “I ended up tutoring him in math and telling him not to drive so fast. I really let it all hang out there.” I drop my head onto the table.
She sets down her glass and runs her slightly shaking hand over my hair. “Oh, honey.”
I peer up at her. “Still, you don’t even trust me. And you should. Because I don’t get in trouble, don’t you see? Even when I try. But don’t worry, if I did, I’d feel sick about it for days, so you win.”
“This doesn’t feel like winning,” she says, removing her hand, dropping it into her lap. “Mara, I just … I don’t want you involved with the Davis family.”
I sit up. So this is about Beck. Not my schoolwork. Not even my appointments with Dr. Elliot. If I’d climbed out of that car with Isabel or Logan, would she have reacted the same way? Still, she’s not giving me credit for seeing through him on my own. Which I have. “Mom, you don’t need to worry about Beck Davis.”
She frowns. “I’m not sure how much you know about Beck yet or if Trick’s told you anything.” I shake my head at that. She hesitates, then says, “Let’s just say it’s much easier to be a rebel when you have nothing to lose, when you have his father’s bank account as a safety net. You’re on scholarship, Mara. And Will and I do fine, but we’re nowhere near the Davises’ league. You don’t have the luxury of making Beck’s brand of bad choices.” Her brow furrows as she picks the breading from a zucchini stick before dropping it, uneaten, onto the plate. “But it’s more than that. It’s that family.” She stares into her wine. “The Davises don’t care about anyone. I’m not sure if narcissism can apply to a whole family, but if it could, they’d be the poster family for it.”
Hadn’t I felt that exact thing earlier today when Beck launched into his geometry drama? “Trust me, I don’t care about Beck. He has nothing to do with what I’m feeling about being in Tahoe.”
She looks skeptical. “Really? And how ar
e you feeling?”
I’m not sure I can even articulate it, but I try. “You know what I love most about Tahoe? I’m not made up almost entirely of knots. Which is how I feel in San Diego at Ranfield. All the time.” She winces, but I need to tell her this, to try to make her understand, even if it’s hard to hear. “The best part of my time here is I actually have just that — time. And I’m figuring out that I don’t want all the same things you and Will do, that I don’t want to be stressed and busy and competitive all the time —”
“You wanted to go to Ranfield,” she interrupts. “We’ve been supporting what you wanted.” But even as she says it, she can’t meet my eyes.
“You want me there, too.” I try to keep my voice low. “You love having a daughter who’s at a school like Ranfield. I hear you talk with your friends. With your clients. And now you’re upset because I might not want the life you designed for me. But that’s just it. I’m not some renovation project — put the stone wall here, put the atrium there. I’m not a project at all, I’m a person!” Now she just looks confused again. I let my point get away from me and I’m just rambling in weird house-remodeling metaphors. “It’s hard to explain,” I end lamely.
To my surprise, though, she dissolves into tears. Big tears. Mom is not a crier, especially not in public. She drops her face into her hands, her hair falling forward in a blond fringe. I have never spoken to her like I just did and my stomach lurches as I watch her cry. “Mom?” I reach tentatively toward her.
“Um, can I, um, set this down?” Maggie, eyes wide, holds our pizza aloft. She glances from Mom to me, apologetic.
The Possibility of Now Page 18
