Winter: Now Chapter 1 There are places you know, and then there are places that know you. Donner Pass, the high point over Truckee, where the elevation made Donner Lake spread like deep blue ink throughout the dip in the valley--that was somewhere that knew the sound of my footsteps, the smell of my frozen hair, the rhythm of my heart. Inside the cabin, the plink plink plink of the kitchen faucet needled my ears. I tossed my keys onto the cracked tile counter and flipped off the water. It had been left on by someone to keep the relentless cold from freezing the pipes solid. Our cabin wore the signs of a year without me. Cobwebs trailed down the staircase spindles, a layer of grease caked the stove from the year before, and the once-white sink was stained with rust spots and limescale. I used to miss these walls and woods when I was suffocating between locker-lined hallways.
I''d wait for summer and winter and spring--three times a year when Kevin''s Jeep would climb up, up, up through the twisted hills. As the oxygen thinned, I could finally breathe. Here in Truckee, high above Donner Lake, the air tasted like pine, like lake water, like fresh snow. Here, I''d hear my brother''s whoops as we tore through the forest at night, feel Rand''s kisses vibrating against my throat on the hotel rooftop, relish the hollow clink of Grace''s glass against mine, her eyes going bright as she raised her drink to the night and the summer and us . Back then I didn''t know that I''d have to hold Grace''s silence too. How that absence of sound would be the loudest of all. Donner Pass didn''t just know me. It knew them too.
Now, after a year away, without me and without us--our wonderful and wretched foursome--I wished this place could forget. Spring: Year One Chapter 2 There was a story Scotch-taped to my bedroom wall back home. Frayed edges, torn from a spiral binder. The ink was gel and purple from a too-nice pen I''d borrowed from my math partner last year and forgot--kind of--to give back. Inside that shimmery, violet universe, a girl was trapped in a box. One day, the girl tunneled through the side and reached out for a perfect world. A bright, sunlit life her fingers couldn''t quite touch-- A jerk of the Jeep made my eyes snap open. Mountainside trees whirred past, giving way to the bright flash of a quick-flowing river.
Kevin and Wesley were listening to the game on the radio--A''s vs. Cardinals. I''d lost track of the score. From the back seat, I stared at the sleeve of Kevin''s Cal T-shirt as he shifted gears on the old Jeep and cornered the tight mountain turns. The college tee didn''t go with the gray at Kevin''s temples that peppered its way into his half-hearted beard. That was the real giveaway that he had decades on Wesley and me. A forty-year-old former frat boy who had inexplicably sprouted a conscience. The A''s batter struck out and Wesley bit his knuckles.
He was an A''s fan--we both were. My brother liked that they were a small team with no budget who turned it all around. Our mom raised us on the roar of the A''s stadium and hot dogs that snapped between our teeth. That was back when we had extra cash for games, before Mom got sick. The constant stream of the announcers'' voices and the occasional roar of the fans were enough to drown out the silence in the car. "Yeah!" Kevin yelled when the Cardinals hit one out of the park, which was probably the eighth word he''d said since we left Gridley two hours before. I didn''t know why he''d root for them, a team from Missouri. I didn''t know why, because I didn''t know him at all.
Wesley hugged the headrest behind him as he looked back at me. "Nora, you got your stuff out of the dryer, right?" He''d already asked me this twice, first while we watched the front window for Kevin to pull up--half an hour later than Kevin had said--and again before I went back inside to leave a fresh glass of water next to the pill bottles on Mom''s nightstand while she slept. The back of her hand had been curled up over her eyes, blocking out both the midday light seeping through her blinds and the phantom from her former life idling his Jeep in our drive. "Forgot," I said as I propped my bare feet on the center console and wiggled my toes against Wesley''s arm. "I guess I''ll be sockless and pantsless all week." "There''s a Target in Reno," Kevin said over his shoulder. "I don''t mind detouring." Wesley exhaled and faced forward.
"She''s being a smart-ass." Kevin chuckled, tightening his hand on the steering wheel and letting it go loose. "The smart-ass gene runs rampant on my side of the family, Nora." He scratched the scruff on his chin and flicked his eyes to Wesley. "Your, uh, mom says you play baseball." "Yep." Wesley shifted his long limbs around in his seat, knobby knees bumping the glove box. "Just JV, though.
They don''t put a ton of freshmen on varsity." Kevin squeezed Wesley''s shoulder, and I noticed the carburetor burn from Wesley''s after-school job had turned an angrier shade of red. "Next year," Kevin said. "You''ll make it next year." In the rearview mirror, he gave me a questioning look. "Nora, you, um, play too, yeah? Eighth grade. You gonna try out for JV next year?" The seat belt chafed my neck. I zipped my sweatshirt to my chin and sat up straighter.
"There isn''t a girls'' team next year. Not at the high school." The dizzying pull of the roadside river''s current churned through my stomach. Spring breaks were for sleeping until lunch, climbing up on the roof to see the stars, and staying over at any house that found itself parentless for the night. Our mom had just moved us into a smaller apartment that put my brother and me into a new school district. Everything I''d known for basically all my life was being carried away from me, whitecaps on a roiling river. The trees pulled away from the wide blue sky as our wheels hit the lookout point at the top of the hill. Kevin rolled down the driver''s-side window.
The air slapped against my face as the car climbed higher. It must have been twenty degrees cooler than back in the valley. "Lots of history in these hills," he said. "You can feel it." Wesley bumped his head up and down in a little nod. "Sounds cool." He was approaching this "vacation" like it was another day of work at the shop, a thing to go along with, a duty to fulfill. "You''ll feel it when you''re up there, Nora," Kevin said.
"The air, the lake, the pines--you''re going to love it." He glanced to Wesley. "Both of you." All I could feel was the humming of the radio speaker against my leg and the certainty that my brother and I should not be hurtling up a mountain with a stranger. My short story was far, far away, flapping under the ceiling fan I probably left on. I should have brought the pages with me. A year ago, I''d started it. It still needed an ending.
The announcer on the radio called the game for the Cardinals. The A''s lost. Kevin''s fist punched up in the air. Wesley cringed a little but smiled at Kevin and said, "Go, Cardinals." These two, my dad and my brother, they were both strangers to me. Just in different ways. Kevin said less and less again the closer we got to Truckee. Occasionally when he had to change lanes, he lifted up in his seat and craned his neck to see over the luggage blocking the back window.
My brother and I spilled onto the dirt driveway like puppies, blinking in the mid-afternoon sunlight, muscles tight from the long drive. I hadn''t realized I''d expected a taste of the luxe life until I was staring up at the cabin. I felt myself sink a little. It must have been built in the seventies and never updated. Every cabin we''d passed on the way up had seemed nicer, newer. But they all had to have been built around the same time. So not newer, but fresher, maybe. More lived-in.
More loved. A nice cabin wasn''t somewhere Wesley and I belonged anyway. Nice cabins were for kids who didn''t worry the electric company would turn off the lights again because that little red notice in the mail went unanswered, or that their gym shoes were too tight around the toes to climb the rope to the tip-top, or that the school would give them a different lunch than the other kids--only half a sandwich and an apple--because their lunch account was short by twenty bucks. Holding my backpack in front of me, I walked inside and stood in the middle of the carpet, watching dust float across the sun-streaked air. Kevin tossed the keys on the tiled kitchen counter and swept his hair off his sun-freckled forehead. He glanced around the musty room. "This is, uh . it.
" Do you remember him? I''d asked Wesley the week before, sitting on his bed and trying to make him talk to me. He''d just shaken his head. Wesley must have been about eighteen months old when Kevin took off. Me, just days. Our mom said he''d died. A quick answer in the drop-off line at school while Wesley and I sat in the back seat clutching backpacks as big as we were. It was the week before Father''s Day, and Wesley had wanted to know where to send the card he''d made during craft hour the day before. But our dad was very much living.
He had not one but two mailing addresses, when we could barely pay the rent on a tiny two-bedroom duplex. Wesley came through the front door behind me, my duffel hanging from his long arms. He took in the framed baseball paraphernalia hanging on the wood-paneled walls. "Let me." I reached for the handle of my bag. Wesley heaved it farther into the room. "I''ve already got the thing inside." I''d always.