“Just a few runs this morning.” I’d woken feeling both wound up by and exhausted from the drama of last night, so I’d let the mountain work out the knots.
He’s also wearing his casual ski stuff. “You want to grab a few more before the slopes close?”
My eyes stray to my laptop. “I have to write a Catcher in the Rye essay. I can’t put it off any longer.”
“How much more do you have?”
“Haven’t started.”
“We can write it on the mountain.” He bends over and starts packing up my stuff.
Laughing, I rescue my laptop before he can shut it down. “How exactly are we supposed to do that?”
He plucks the book from my hands, studying its plain white cover before stuffing it in my bag. “I’ve read it. What are you writing about?”
“I have to write about why Holden is an unreliable narrator.”
“Who isn’t an unreliable narrator? There, essay done.” He stashes my stuff behind the counter and makes for the door.
“Wait, what do you mean?” I ask curiously, following him out of Elevation. “Logan!” But he’s heading toward the funi.
A half hour later, we head up Big Blue, our skis dangling below us as we float through the bright, cold air. “Explain again how this is writing my essay?”
We’re the only two people on the lift and Logan leans lazily in the corner, using his poles to knock snow from his skis. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” He looks up, the blue sky reflecting in the mirror of his goggles.
I shake my head. “I want to know what you meant about everyone being an unreliable narrator.”
He leans forward on the bar, which still makes me nervous, and asks, “You want to ski Shirley or do a warm-up down Mountain?”
“Logan!”
He drops his head into his folded arms. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? Such a good student.”
He’s lucky I don’t hit him with one of my poles. “Yes, I am. And I think maybe you said you’d help me just to get me out here and you don’t really have an idea one way or another about my essay.”
He shoots me an impressed look. “Oh, right, play to my competitive side.”
“Stalling …”
He sits back again, watching a skier zip by beneath us. “No, wait — I do have an idea about this. Holden’s unreliable because he’s telling us a story, but it’s his version, and we don’t really know if what he says is true.” He raises the bar as the lift approaches the top of Big Blue. “So here’s what I think: Isn’t that everyone? Everyone only has one version, right? One way of looking at the world. Mostly, we tend to see what we want to see in it, so aren’t we all, essentially, unreliable? Bam! Essay written.” He pushes off the lift, and slightly stunned, I almost forget to follow him off.
I ski up to him. “Um, what was that?”
“Oh, I’m full of surprises,” he says. “You’ll see,” he adds before skiing down the catwalk toward Shirley Lake.
After a few runs on Shirley, we hit the Gold Coast building for some fries. At this hour, the deck is almost empty. The day is unusually warm and it makes me sleepy. After we eat, we kick back on a bench seat, dropping our helmets on nearby chairs, and take in the warm light, our eyes closed.
After a moment, I feel him watching me.
My eyes flutter open just in time to see how close his face is to mine and his kiss catches me off guard. He tastes like salt and the sweetness of the Coke he just drank. Without thinking, I lean in, the kiss unwinding me, its sweetness much more than just the soda.
Before I know it, I’m crying.
He pulls back. “Oh, wait — you’re crying?”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, trying to pull it together.
He looks embarrassed. “Okay, crying. That’s an all-time low. I had a girl laugh once. But, yeah, never crying.”
I shake my head. “It’s not what you think. That was exactly right — it was amazing and exactly right.”
He pulls back from me on the bench, reaching for his helmet. “Yeah, I can tell, what with all the sobbing.” He hurries to put his helmet on.
“Why did you have to be like this,” I blurt, wiping at my cheeks. “I came up here to take a break and get my head on straight and then you … you happened.”
He snaps the buckle closed on his chinstrap. “Sorry?”
Words start spilling out. “You had to be so … you. So wonderful and sweet. I came to Tahoe to sort things out, to Live in the Now, but I can’t do it! I keep worrying about what’s next, what it all means for the future. I’m the worst Now Liver to ever … live. F-minus for Mara!”
He tries to hide a smile behind his glove.
“Right, laugh at me. I’m a mess. I make all these lists that I end up tripping over and waste time on stupid rules when, clearly, this whole time, I should have been, I don’t know … I should have been kissing you.”
As I try to stand, he grabs my arm, lightly. “I agree.”
I shake my head. “I’m leaving next week! We have a week to hang out. That’s not enough!”
His eyes flick to the side. “Actually, I’m skiing a race in Utah this weekend, so I’m not back until late Monday night.”
My heart sinks. “Ugh, I have the worst timing. Two months I should have spent with you and they’re just wasted, completely wasted.”
His arms move around me. “Not wasted.” He unhooks his helmet, tossing it on a nearby chair, takes my face in his hands, and says, “Kiss me now, and this time, try not to cry all over me. We’ll talk about that other stuff later.”
I’m barely able to move, but I whisper, “Okay.”
His kiss sends a shock wave through me I’ve never felt before. He tightens his arms around my back, moving one hand into my hair at the nape of my neck. When he pulls away, his brown eyes meet mine for a moment before he hugs me to his chest. As I rest against him, he leans his chin on the top of my head. I hear Squaw around me — the slice of skiers and boarders moving through the snow, the wind, the creak and whirl of the lifts. It’s like the music they play for babies to get them to sleep.
“You okay?” he finally asks.
“For now.”
I pull my safety goggles off and make one last notation in my lab notebook. “Done,” I say to Isabel, who has been hanging out on a stool nearby for the last five minutes waiting for me to finish. “Or at least as done as it’s going to be.”
“Well, it’s hard to do chemistry through the googly eyes you and Logan were shooting at each other the whole time.” She laughs, pulling her backpack on. We wave good-bye to Malika and head out the door. She nudges me. “He told me, by the way.”
“About my crying. Yeah, that was awesome.”
She grins. “He thought so.”
A man passes us in the hall, a lanky history teacher named Micah, and he gives me a familiar wave. “When are you just going to enroll?” he teases as he walks past us.
“Tomorrow,” I joke back, which is what I’ve been saying each time he asks.
This time, though, Isabel, stopping to tie her shoes, says, “You should.”
“What?”
“Enroll.”
I roll my eyes. “Right.”
Standing, she adjusts the straps of her backpack. “Why not? You like it here, we like you, Logan really likes you.” She grins at my flush. “You should just stay. This shouldn’t be your last week.”
I follow her into the student lounge. “I can’t just stay.”
Isabel flops down on the couch next to Amanda, who is French-braiding her own hair. “What’s up?” she asks, wrapping an elastic band around the end of a braid. The other half of her hair hangs waiting, and she starts gathering it in her fingers.
Isabel fills her in. “I think she should stay and go to school here for the rest of the year.”
Amanda nods as enthusiastically as she can without wrecking her hair. “Oh, totally.”
Bodie wanders in, carrying his guitar. “What?”
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“Mara should stay and go to school with us,” Amanda tells him.
He looks confused. “How would that be different from now?”
“She was just here for a break,” Isabel reminds him. At his blank look, she adds, “You’re coming to her going-away party at Logan’s this Friday night. She’s going back to San Diego, remember?”
“Lucky,” he says, strumming his guitar. “San Diego has sweet surfing.”
“I don’t surf,” I explain, even though this is not the point at all. “It doesn’t matter anyway. My mom would never let me stay.”
As I say it, though, I shiver with the start of an idea. Would she let me stay?
I wake up off and on all night, my mind spinning with lists. Staying lists. Leaving lists. I can’t seem to stop the cycle. The fire crackles — awake! Asleep again. The cottage creaks — awake! With each jolt, I lie in bed, staring into the dark, thinking, Can I stay? Or do I leave on Saturday as planned?
I think about all the goals I made to live in the now while I was in Tahoe — meditate, sleep in, kiss a boy, stay off social media, slap on lavender oil.
Check, check, check, check, check.
Have I completely missed the point?
Wednesday morning, I open my backup binder and look at the original Now List.
6. Simplify & downsize!!
Done.
I crossed it off that first night in Tahoe because of living with Trick, because I brought only four pairs of socks and three sweatshirts. But I never truly simplified my life. If anything, I made things more complicated. In trying to maintain all of my Ranfield work and goals and plans, plus adding my two different versions of the Now List, I just made everything harder.
Maybe I can fix that.
Dressed in jeans and my parka, I grab the first tram up to High Camp. Stretching out around me, the snowcapped mountains give me courage and my idea churns through my mind. A couple from Wisconsin distracts the cable car attendant through our glide up the mountain, so he doesn’t try to talk to me. I bask in the solitude, the ride its own brand of meditation. Check.
When we dock at the top, I make my way off the car, head inside, and find a spot in the restaurant by the window. Almost dizzy from the sweeping views (more likely it’s the email I’m about to write), I sit down to make a third version of my Now List, the one I dreamed about last night. The one that jolted me awake for the final time in the thin light of dawn.
Only it’s not really a list.
It’s an explanation to Mom. Turns out, I’ve been going about this whole Now thing all wrong. I thought Now was a single place in time, an isolated moment when people do crazy-brave stunts like skydiving or learning to ski or kissing a random boy without worrying about the consequences.
But Now isn’t any of those things.
I open my laptop and begin an email to my mom.
Subject: The Now List III
Guess what. I figured out what Living in the Now means to me. Now isn’t isolated moments on a checklist. It’s not meditating or drinking a kale smoothie. Now is the time when you look hard at everything, weigh it, and then take the next step. Now is everything that happened before, leading to everything that might someday be possible. Which makes Now this crazy-powerful thing, right? It’s the ultimate hybrid. And it’s different for everyone because it’s my specific past balanced with my own potential. To live in the now, I have to respect everything from before while at the exact same time opening my heart to everything I might change so I can create the future I want. Now is the ultimate tightrope walker, the sweet spot in tennis, the snowplow (pizza slice, French fries, pizza slice).
Now is the choice right before Next.
I want to stay in Tahoe, Mom. I feel balanced here. I’m pretty sure it’s my sweet spot. The great thing is that the reason I know this is because of everything that came before, because Ranfield (all the competition and busyness and stress) built me and wrecked me and then put me here. For a reason. So I want to stay. This is what my Now taught me.
Thank you for letting me come here and figure this out. Please say yes.
Love,
Mara
P.S. I included a link to Crest Charter’s schedule and college acceptance list (UCLA, U of Oregon, Pomona, Dartmouth! to name a few) and a list of classes.
Note: Advanced Naps and How to Party Like It’s 1999 aren’t on there!!
I read it over a few times, making small changes, taking breaks to let my eyes rest on peaks out the wide windows of the restaurant. I should probably call her, but I want her to be able to read this all the way through before she starts arguing with me, before she starts giving me reasons why I’m wrong.
I press SEND.
The next morning, I’m curled up in bed reading a book Isabel gave me about a teenage ghost detective (a book on no suggested reading list anywhere). I’m trying to ignore the fact that Mom hasn’t responded to my email yet. Or to the six texts I sent since the email. Mom never waits this long to respond to anything, so my mind spins possible reasons:
She dropped her phone in the ocean.
She has driven off a cliff.
She is being held hostage.
I shared all of these options with Logan at dinner last night. He suggested that maybe she just hasn’t decided yet, but I kept checking my phone anyway until he finally took it away so we could have an actual conversation.
Now I notice Trick hovering in the doorway. He wears neon-blue ski pants and a black parka. “I’m taking you skiing.”
I sit up, my heart catching. “Really?”
“Get dressed.”
I motion at his pants. “What are you wearing?”
“What — these?” He models the ski pants, turning around so I can fully appreciate the hot-pink accents on the back pockets. “These are rockin’.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is relic.”
“Don’t question the pants.” Laughing, he heads back into the other room, calling out, “Get dressed. We’ll miss all the good snow.”
I can’t stop smiling as I hurry to yank on my ski gear.
A half hour later, we’re heading up the funi. Like Oli, Trick doesn’t talk much when he’s skiing. We take a few runs down Big Blue, head over to Gold Coast for a run, and hit a couple of different shoots on Shirley. Trick’s leg makes him slow, which is fine with me because I tend to prefer the wide turns and breaks, but his form comes through. He has a steady ease on the mountain that I’m not sure I’ll ever have. At one point, we ski near a small terrain park where boarders and skiers do flips and jumps and other tricks on the half-pipe. Trick slows to a stop a dozen yards away, watching them, his eyes unreadable behind his mirrored goggles.
One boy skis backward on his skis, picking up pace until he’s speeding up the side of the half-pipe, twisting his body into a knot, and then landing face-forward. “Wow, that was cool.” I glance at Trick.
He pinches his lips together. “Not bad. Come on,” he says, pushing off on his poles and continuing down the hill.
After another run, we stop at Gold Coast for some lunch. While I stack our helmets and gloves on a nearby chair, Trick opens the small backpack he’s been carrying and pulls out a metal water bottle, salami, crackers, cheese, chocolate-covered almonds, and some baby carrots. “Set this stuff up,” he tells me before heading inside to get us some hot chocolates.
As we eat, we watch the skiers and boarders sail past us. The sun warms my shoulders, and a slight breeze moves the hair from my face. I almost stop thinking about Mom not getting back to me yet. Finally, my phone buzzes just as we’re packing up.
The food lumps in my stomach. She writes:
Has Trick talked to you yet?
Wait, what is he going to say to me? That I can stay? That Mom and Will said yes? Before I can help myself, I start speed-listing images of my life in Tahoe:
walking the hallways at Crest
skiing with Logan and Isabel
bonfires
more eighti
es dress-up days
Logan making me pizza while I sit by his fireplace
Stop it. She hasn’t said yes yet.
Fireplace, fireplace, fireplace.
I text back: not yet.
No response.
“Let’s go.” I hop up, gathering up the remains of our lunch.
We pause at the top of Big Blue. Trick motions to a spot farther down the catwalk. “You want to do a different shoot on Shirley this time?”
“Trick? Can I ask you something?”
He literally braces himself, putting weight on his poles, as if he knows what I’m about to ask. “Sure.”
My mouth dries out, but I manage, “I’d like to stay in Tahoe, live here, and go to school here.” I’m not sure I’ve ever lived more in the now than right now. This moment.
“Yeah, I talked to your mom last night.” He swallows and fishes his water bottle out of his pack. Maybe dry mouth is a genetic condition. “It’s why I took you out today. So we could talk.” We have been doing no talking whatsoever.
“Oh?” I can’t bring myself to say anything else. People whoosh past us, some stopping to take in the view and others just transitioning right into the run on their boards or skis.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Trick says, tucking the water bottle away.
The world tumbles around me — all the wind and sky and pine and snow and slice of blue Lake Tahoe spinning away. “No, it’s a great idea, see — I could live here. And finish high school here. With you.”
Sighing, he shakes his head. “Listen, I know it seems like a good idea right now. It seems easy and beautiful and fun.”
I nod. “Right, yes — all those things.”
“Those are my genes,” he says sheepishly. “Path of least resistance. All those years ago when your mom said you would be better off without me in your life, I just accepted that. It was easier that way. No struggle. But I was wrong about that, Mara. Absence, avoidance — they’re sometimes necessary but shouldn’t become a lifestyle choice.”
I shake my head. “But that’s not what I’m doing. I’m choosing what’s better for me. The slower pace, the mountains. I love it here. I belong here.”
The Possibility of Now Page 22
