“Maybe you do. But Tahoe’s not going anywhere. And you have some unfinished business at that fancy school of yours. I was a coward all those years ago and I have to live with that. I have to find peace with that and it’s not easy, trust me. But you — you have a chance to make it right. Now. To walk in there and show those kids it didn’t beat you, that it didn’t break you.”
Quietly, staring down at the snow on my skis, I say, “But it did.”
He puts a gloved hand on my arm. “No, it didn’t. It changed you. And the most important things in our lives change us in some way. When we let them. Go back to Ranfield, make peace with what happened there. Like I said, Tahoe isn’t going anywhere. You can always come back. You know it’s here when you need it.”
My lip quivers dangerously. “Great, just great, you choose now to start acting like a dad. Just my luck.”
“You’re very lucky. I think you know that.”
I can’t believe this. From Trick McHale of all people. “What about how stressful San Diego is? You told Isabel I needed to have some fun.”
He sighs. “Fun’s great. It’s essential. But I don’t think you’ll be happy without both. The fun and the hard stuff. Not in the long run. Am I right?”
Whatever. I adjust my pole straps. “You know what? I don’t really feel like skiing with you anymore.” Without waiting for his response, I take off down the mountain.
I call Mom from a quiet bench tucked away in one of the side alleys of the Village. She picks up instantly. “Oh, sweetie. Trick told you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Tears. The embarrassing kind with the ragged breathing and the snot.
“I’m sorry, Mara.”
“I … I … have to come home,” I manage, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my jacket.
“I know. He told me. But it’s really for the best, honey.” She keeps her voice kind, but I detect a smudge of victory underneath. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I agree with Trick on this one. It’s best to come home on Saturday like we planned. I’ve let Ranfield know you’ll be back on Monday.”
I watch the people move past with their skis, with their snowboards, with their white-lidded cups of coffee. “I just thought I found the right place, you know? I’m ready to be here now.” Now. That word keeps changing shape on me.
“Life doesn’t always work out the way we want at every turn. You have to grow up.”
All the people who tell you to grow up always seem to have the luxury of having already done it, so maybe they should stop being so pushy. “Mom, you say that like growing up’s a light switch. On. Off. And it’s not.”
She pauses. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I have to go.” I click off my phone, my hand shaking. I pull my legs into my chest and look up. Minutes ago, the sky had been blue, but now the Squaw Valley sun is more a sheen on the sheet-metal clouds than a single source of light.
It starts to snow. Single, quick flecks. Tiny bits of cut crystal. As if to say, I am quicksilver and cold and always changing, and I will surprise and surprise and surprise you.
Friday evening, I sit with my bags on the couch beside me, watching the flames dwindle through the glass of the woodstove. Today, I packed my life into three neat duffel bags. Only three. And I threw out all of my Now Lists and binders.
My phone says 7:14. I’m supposed to be at my going-away party right now at Logan’s house, but I can’t seem to get off this couch. In twelve hours, Trick will take me to the Reno airport, load me on a plane, and send me back to San Diego.
Someone knocks at the door, and Logan pokes his head inside. His hair curls out from under a beanie the color of hot chocolate. “Thought you might need a ride.”
A few minutes later, Logan pulls his car into the plowed driveway of his house. He looks sideways at me, cutting the headlights so the tiny red chili pepper lights glowing over the front door stand out in the dark. He sees me notice them. “I couldn’t find the box with the Christmas lights. Just the box marked BBQ. But I thought they’d look nice. Festive.”
“I’m a chili pepper fan,” I joke, but my voice catches.
“Listen,” he says, leaning toward me, his arm resting on the center console, where he keeps a stainless steel coffee mug and a pair of battered white sunglasses. “I know this isn’t how you wanted it to work out. I know you wanted to stay. Believe me, I did, too. But let’s not get too sad, okay? I made you your pizza. Olives and mushrooms. Isabel brought Skittles. Bodie has his guitar and he does a few passable Nirvana covers. Let’s not think of this as some huge good-bye. You’re not moving to a remote outpost in the Gobi Desert. It’s not like we’ll lose all contact.”
Like an idiot, I start to cry. “I know.”
He takes my hand, his touch that strange combination of electricity and comfort. “Because the thing is — this isn’t an ending.” He clears his throat, and even in the dark, a red flush crawls across his cheeks. “I was hoping to think of this more as the start of something. We can keep getting to know each other. I can call you. You can call me.”
“I’m not sure I can handle the whole long-distance thing.”
“Then let’s not call it that, okay? Let’s figure it out as we go. Without lists and rules.” He clears his throat again, looking nervous. “I like you, Mara. A lot. And at some point in our future, I’d like to kiss you without it starting with tears.” He wipes at some of the ones currently taking up residence on my face.
“It’s good to have goals,” I sniff.
“Come on.” He opens the door and scrambles out.
Inside, Isabel is yelling at Bodie. He stands on a swivel chair, wearing a T-shirt that reads SAVE IT FOR FACEBOOK, and clutches one end of a half-drooping sign in his hand. Isabel holds the other end. “You have to attach it to something, genius — this won’t reach!” She spots Logan and me. “Oh, hey, sorry — we would have the sign up, but Frank Lloyd Wright over there thinks he can get a better angle.”
Bodie frowns, the sign dipping again. “The Phantom of the Opera guy? What does he have to do with anything?”
Amanda giggles on the couch, paging through a snowboarding magazine and eating straight from a bag of barbecue potato chips. “That’s Andrew Lloyd Webber. Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect.”
Logan crosses to the kitchen. “Did you at least put the pizza in?”
They all look at one another. “Oops.” Bodie shrugs. “Sorry, bro.” He tapes the sign quickly to the kitchen island. In wobbly Sharpie letters, the sign reads SEE YA, MARA!
“Bodie made the sign,” Isabel says apologetically, pushing bowls of chips and salsa in my direction.
“Yeah, I did.” He nods, proudly studying his work.
“It’s a great sign, Bodie.” I grab a chip from the bowl and jam it into my mouth, a chip shield to hold back any tears threatening to resurface.
My body grows heavier as I watch them. Logan puts the pizza into the oven. Isabel moves the poster back to where she must have wanted it in the first place. Bodie takes a running leap, hurtling over the back of the couch and landing next to Amanda, and crunches her bag of chips. “Nice,” she says, her curtain of hair hiding the obvious eye roll I hear in her voice. Bodie unearths the bag and tips the remaining crush of chips into his mouth.
They will go on like this here. I will leave tomorrow and they will make pizza and race one another down mountains and see the alpenglow wash the evening mountains with rose-colored light. And I will be gone.
The front door opens.
Beck.
Logan pauses at the counter where he was about to roll out another pizza, and his eyes dart to Isabel, who shakes her head as if to say, I didn’t tell him. Beck slips off his beanie and stuffs it into the pocket of his green parka. This is his secret, I realize, watching him — he makes disinterest and messiness so appealing.
“Didn’t want to miss the grand good-bye,” he says in that way of his. Some people can say the simplest things and still make them sound like they’re predic
ting misfortune. “You doing okay, heading back into that police state you call a school? Back to being a drone.”
“Stop it, Beck,” Isabel says from behind the counter, unwrapping a package of mozzarella.
Beck’s eyes glint with a dark amusement. “I was just asking.”
“Well, just stop asking.” Isabel violently grates the cheese.
The room grows warm with the smell of pizza. The fire crackles and casts a flickering light into the room. They just want to say good-bye to me — pizza, some board games, Bodie’s guitar — nothing major.
But Beck has to bring in an ice storm.
“Why is this what you do?” I ask him as he moves past me toward the counter to grab a handful of chips.
He pops a chip in his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Did you not notice that when you walked in the door, the temperature dropped about forty degrees?”
“If you say so.” He turns his back to me, picking through the open can of olives.
The other thing about leaving? It makes you brave. “But since you asked, I’d like to answer your question, even if it was just you being predictably rhetorical and obnoxious.” This last bit gets a snort of laughter from Amanda and Isabel. “The answer is no, I’m not excited about heading back into that police state I call a school. But I’m not a drone. You’ve got that wrong. Just because I get good grades and work hard and —”
“Jump through hoops like a trained monkey,” Beck interrupts, barely turning to me.
Logan leans into the counter, wiping his hands on a towel. “Hey —”
I stop him. “No, it’s okay. I got this.” And surprisingly, it’s not anger I feel. Quite the opposite. I start laughing. “Yes, Beck. That’s what I am. A trained monkey. Because I want to do well in school and go to college and find a job I actually like. Yep, I’m a huge conformist idiot.”
He turns to give me an odd look. “Your words, not mine.”
“You know what, Beck? At least I care. You think you’re so anti-system but you’re not. Because we all choose a system, whether we like it or not. Yours seems to be of the Dad’s a jerk so I’m a victim and the whole world sucks variety. Congratulations. But you’re not as deep as you think you are. It’s not deep to trash things all the time. It’s not deep to make other people feel small because they want something different from you. That’s not deep. It’s sad.
“You know what I’ve realized here in Tahoe? That I would love to have this life. I just can’t right now. Maybe someday. But I’m not going to sulk back to San Diego. I’m going to go back and work hard because that’s how I want to show up in the world. I can’t fix everything that’s wrong, like hurricanes and homeless people and war, but I can work hard and be a decent person. That’s a choice. So are the excuses we make. You’re not the only one in this room who has a dad who let you down. It’s not fair, I get it. But hiding behind your pseudophilosophies and being such a jerk all the time? That’s on you.”
The air in the room has thickened into an uncomfortable hush. Beck looks like he might respond. It would be his right to say something like Really, all this from the girl hiding out in Neverland? But he doesn’t. He just lowers his eyes, moves across the room, and leaves.
Isabel goes to the door, staring out into the dark. Bodie and Amanda check their phones so they don’t have to make eye contact with me.
But Logan does, and the way he looks at me feels like warm towels from the dryer. I unclench my hands, feeling the little moon-shaped nail cuts left on my palms throb. My whole body shakes like I’ve just run a race. “I guess that was kind of harsh.”
Logan holds a piece of pizza on a paper plate. “You just said what we were all thinking. Much more articulately, though.” He holds out the plate. “Mushrooms and olives?”
“Thanks.” I take a bite. It’s delicious, and as I eat, some of the adrenaline begins to drain away.
Logan watches me eat. “It’s good, right? I make a pretty awesome pizza. Not as awesome as your speeches, but close.”
My phone buzzes on the counter and Logan frowns at it. “It’s Beck,” he says, handing it to me. Wiping my fingers on the cuffs of my sweatshirt, I check it. It says simply, have a safe trip, san diego.
Isabel comes and peers over my shoulder at it, shaking her head.
“He must know how sick we get of him being such a downer all the time, right?” Amanda asks.
I wonder if Beck knows, if any of us truly knows. Do we deep-down know who we are in the world? How we affect other people? We must have an inkling, right? Based on the way other people move to surround or avoid us? Maybe some of us don’t care. Or maybe we can only know if we choose to be honest with ourselves and stop pointing fingers in opposite directions. The world is a mirror that reflects us, but having the courage to look must be one of the hardest things we do as humans. Because it’s not always pretty what’s staring back. Sometimes it’s a scared, exhausted mess who would rather hide in the mountains than deal with the aftermath of her own perfectionism.
Still, we have to look if we want things to change, right?
Logan pulls into Trick’s driveway a little after eleven and cuts the engine. He looks sideways at me, his hand still resting on the keys in the ignition. “What time’s your flight tomorrow? You all packed?”
“All packed. We’re leaving at seven.”
He hands me a package wrapped in grocery-bag brown paper and tied with what looks like the lace of a snowboard boot. “Um, I got you this.”
“Nice wrapping job.” I try to be light, but his gift sends an ache coursing through me. I open it, and inside rests a black Frost Boys sweatshirt and a CD titled Songs to Bring You Home. “I love it.” I pull a pack of dark-chocolate coconut cookies from my bag. “For the record, your gift’s better than mine.”
He holds my gaze. “Not a competition.”
I study his shadowy face, the curve of his jaw. “You are the sweetest guy, you know that?”
He looks away, running his hands over the top of the steering wheel. “I know, I know, I think I need to be more of a jerk. The jerks get all the girls.”
“Not all of them.” I put my hands on either side of his sweet Logan face and pull him in to kiss me. “Look, no crying.”
He wraps his arms around me and I melt into the warmth of his kiss, at the way it takes a delicious eraser to my world. Because right now, there’s nothing else. No wash of winter stars, no plane leaving tomorrow, no mountains to race down or futures to plan. Of everything in Tahoe, I will miss Logan the most. He’s the fire in the woodstove you take totally for granted but, when it goes out, leaves everything cold.
1. Get Trick to talk more!!
2. Let my phone run out of power
3. Focus, Mara!
4. Be brave (thanks, Will) * *
5. Ski blue runs with confidence. Black runs? (Next season?)
6. Stop and smell the alpenglow
7. HAVE MORE FUN
8. Be more spontaneous!
9. No boys!
As we drive out of Squaw Valley, the rising sun turns the stretch of sky amethyst. We’re silent until Trick pulls into the passenger unloading zone at the Reno airport. “Here we are.” He gets out and lifts my bags from behind the truck seats.
We stare at each other.
“You got everything?” he finally asks.
“I think so.” I clear my throat, swinging my carry-on over my shoulder.
“Mara?”
“Yeah?”
Without saying anything more, without meeting my eyes, he pulls me into a hug that smells like wood smoke and snow. Figures with Trick, my first hug from him would be when I’m leaving and absent of words. But it’s okay. We have started something here, something we can cultivate. Somehow in so much silence, we’ve managed to grow a few roots.
Inside, I check in at the counter with the tired-looking Southwest desk clerk as he hefts my bags onto the conveyor belt. I move through security, thinking about the carnelian stone and Fros
t Boys sweatshirt tucked safely into the carry-on bag I place in the beige airport tub. Once through, I find a café and hand a woman five dollars for a latte in a white paper cup with a black plastic lid. The guy behind me shuffles, annoyed, mumbling comments about how long the line is, how long it’s taking. When he finally gets to the counter, the barista says, “Thanks for your patience,” and for some reason it makes me think of Natalie and Elevation, and I walk away smiling.
On the plane, I study the other people coming up the aisle, looking for a nook for their own bags. It strikes me that each of these people has a single life, with dreams and defeats and joy and sorrow, and each has to go through the daily steps to get where they want to go.
Oli said most people are just looking for their car keys. Which means they aren’t looking at me at all. It’s up to me to put what I want to be in the world and deal with the consequences. How people respond is out of my control. That video hurt — the comments, the whispering, the thousands upon thousands of views — and I’m still ashamed of what happened. But I can’t change it. It partly happened because I spent so much time trying to be perfect, I forgot to be, well, just Mara. Not Tahoe Mara. Or Miss Perfect Mara. Just Mara.
Now I have a choice. I can either let the world turn me sour and hateful and afraid. Or I can be the Mara I want to be and face it with as much grace and humor as possible. Wherever I land, I’m the common denominator in my own life. It’s not about geography. I can work hard for something out there in the future, but I need to take breaks to appreciate the things I already have. For those of us lucky enough to be born into my type of life, it’s often about our point of view, to believe we’re already winning just by getting out of bed.
When I land, Mom meets me outside, her Lexus idling. I have my stuff mounded onto one of those pushcarts and she looks relieved, as if she’s thinking, At least I’ve raised a daughter who knows how to pile her things on a pushcart and make her way home. As we leave the airport, Mom turns the Lexus onto Harbor Drive. The view both familiar and strange, I stare out the car window. On the right, sailboats dot the glittering water of the bay. I see the single cruise liner, the Star of India, docked, and the USS Midway museum aircraft carrier with the Coronado Bridge beyond. On the left, we pass the pink art deco administration building and then there is the high-rise cityscape of San Diego. Palm trees and bleached stucco and vast blue water.
The Possibility of Now Page 23
