Magic Nation Thing (12 page)

That year’s trip was turning out to be a little better than others in some respects. Particularly in the way Sky had stopped helping with any attack against Abby and even tried to come to her rescue in some situations. For instance the time he whispered, “It’s okay. It’s only a rubber one,” just before a huge black spider appeared on her shoulder. It was a warning that didn’t register quite soon enough to keep her from almost jumping out of her skin. And another time, when they stopped to have chains put on the tires and everyone got out in the snow to stretch. As they were getting back into the car, Sky whispered, “Keep your hood up,” another warning Abby didn’t really understand until Woody put a handful of snow down Paige’s sweater.

The hours did pass, however, the snow beside the road got deeper and whiter, and the SUV finally turned up the driveway that led to the Bordens’ cabin. Then all the good memories came flooding back, making rubber spiders and dirty jokes seem unimportant. Good memories of the unbelievable beauty of snowy hillsides, and of the thrill of discovering that she, who had never even seen snow until she was eight years old, was a “natural” who had been “born to ski.”

Abby thought the Bordens’ cabin at Squaw was fantastic, even though she could guess what Dorcas might say about it. She could imagine comments about how somebody had worked awfully hard, and spent tons of money, to make the whole thing look kind of old and handmade, with its fireplaces built out of rough stones, and ceilings supported by tree trunks still covered by bark. But none of that had anything to do with why Abby always felt so great when they finally pulled up the long driveway and she and Paige jumped out and began to move all their stuff into their private room up at the top of the house.

That night all the Bordens and Abby had dinner at Plump Jack’s in a dining room crowded with dozens of other skiers and snowboarders of all ages. Including, at the next table, a couple of teenage boys. Actually Abby was sitting with her back to the boys’ table, and she might not even have noticed them if Paige hadn’t kept poking her and, with wildly waggling eyebrows, pointing over Abby’s shoulder. Abby’s first thought was that Woody’s spider had reappeared, but she finally got the message and managed to turn around and take a quick look.

“Did you see them?” Paige’s eyes certainly had their super-focused gleam.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Abby whispered back. “Who are they?”

“You mean you don’t recognize them?” Paige was amazed. “They’re the ones I was talking about. The snowboarders, from last year. You know, the ones who—”

Just then Paige’s mother asked what all the whispering was about, and Paige made her eyes go round and blank as she said, “Whispering? We weren’t whispering. Were we, Abby?” While Abby was trying to decide whether to nod or shake her head, Paige was going on. “What do you want us to do, Mom? Shout? You want us to shout at each other?”

The people at the next table, including the two interesting snowboarders, left just before the Bordens did, and Paige poked Abby even harder to be sure she didn’t miss getting a better look at them as they went out. But even then Abby didn’t get to see them very well. Just well enough to notice that the taller one had blond hair and the other guy had so much dark hair that it curled down over his ears. Both of them were fairly tall and probably pretty old. Maybe fifteen, or even sixteen. She might have seen them better, except that just as Abby was turning to look, Paige suddenly fell out of her chair.

“Oh, sorry,” Paige said, getting to her feet. “I dropped my napkin.”

It wasn’t until later, when they were all back in the cabin and Paige and Abby were finally alone in their room, that Abby found out what really had been going on. In their bedroom at the top of the house, with its wide padded seat that ran all along one wall under windows that looked out into deepest forest, they turned off the lights, wrapped themselves in blankets, and talked for hours, just as they had so many times before.

They talked first about how all the waiters and busboys at the restaurant had said their winter vacation had come at just the right time because the snow was perfect, deep and fresh and neither too wet nor too dry. Just thinking about all that beautiful new snow caught Abby up in wonderful memories of thrilling downhill runs. She could hardly wait for it to begin. Shivering excitedly, she asked, “So where will we start tomorrow? Which lift should we take first?”

And Paige’s answer was “Well, that’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Abby was pleased. Usually Paige was the one who made decisions such as that. Abby began, “Okay. After we leave the boys off at the Children’s Center I guess we might as well start with the Belmont just to get warmed up, and then in the afternoon—”

Paige interrupted. “Yeah, you’re right about having to leave the boys off. Dad and Mom will want to get an early start so they can get to KT before it crowds up. But as soon as we get rid of the brats I know what we should do.” The way Paige’s eyebrows were behaving was beginning to give Abby an idea, or at least the beginning of an idea, of what was coming. Sure enough, what Paige said next was “I think we ought to go to whatever run those snowboard guys are going to be on. You know, the ones whose table was right near ours.”

“Well, okay.” Abby couldn’t help grinning. “But how are we going to know…” But before she could finish the sentence, she began to get a premonition about what the answer was going to be.

Sure enough, she’d hardly started her question when Paige answered it. “Here, I’ll show you how.” She jumped off the window seat and ran to the closet, dug into her jacket pocket, and came back carrying a big white piece of cloth by the tips of her fingers. “Here,” she said, pushing it into Abby’s hands. “What do you think that is?”

“Looks like a napkin,” Abby said.

“Yeah. You got it. A napkin from Plump Jack’s.” Paige looked triumphant.

Having been brought up by a mother who was so much into law and order, Abby couldn’t help feeling a little shocked. “You stole a napkin from Plump Jack’s?”

Paige shrugged. “No, I didn’t. I just borrowed it. I’ll take it back when you’re through with it.”

Now Abby was pretty sure she knew what was coming next. Not the whole thing, maybe, but at least a general idea. It was an uneasy feeling.

Paige went on to say, “One of those snowboarders used this napkin. The blond one. You remember when I said I dropped my napkin last night? Well, what actually happened was that I noticed that he dropped his napkin when he got up to leave, so I dropped mine and when I went to pick it up I kind of fell out of my seat so I could reach across and pick up his. Get it?”

“Yeah,” Abby said. “I get it. But what I don’t get is what
I’m
going to do with it.”

Paige sighed impatiently. “You don’t? Well, didn’t you say that when you do your Magic Nation thing, you usually see where”—Paige paused dramatically and then went on—“
where
the person the object belonged to is right at that moment? Like, how about, which run the person happens to be snowboarding on.”

For a long moment Abby stared at Paige, and Paige stared back, making her face say a series of things, starting with “Isn’t that a great idea?” and then after a while, “Well, what’s wrong with it?” At last she growled, “Why not?”

“Well, for one thing I don’t think it will work. Like I told you, it doesn’t always, especially if I’m, like, expecting it to.”

Paige looked suspicious. “I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t it work when you’re expecting it to?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But it’s not something I can turn on like the Weather Channel to see if it’s going to rain. It’s just something that happens sometimes when it’s…” She faltered to a stop and then went on, “I guess when it’s
important
enough.”

Paige put her hands on her hips and said sarcastically, “And, like, who gets to decide whether it’s important or not?”

“I don’t know,” Abby said. “But I know it’s not me.”

As Paige got off the window seat and headed for her bed, she turned back long enough to say, “Well, I guess we’ll find out what’s really important tomorrow. Okay?”

F
INALLY CUDDLED INTO HER
built-in bunk bed in a cozy nest of blankets and comforters, Abby had trouble going to sleep. She didn’t know why. She told herself it was probably just excitement about where she was and what would be happening the next day. But after a while she knew there was more to it than that. Part of it was made up of stuff she’d worried about before when Paige wanted her to do the Magic Nation thing. Stuff such as, what would happen if the napkin didn’t bring up anything at all?

Or what if it worked in a way that didn’t make clear just what she was seeing? After all, there were more than thirty lifts in Squaw Valley. What if she just saw Paige’s snowboard hunks going down a run somewhere? Somewhere, but where? For instance, when she’d seen Miranda at Disneyland, she wouldn’t have known where Miranda was if she hadn’t been so familiar with the place. It wasn’t as if there’d been a big finger pointing to a
DISNEYLAND
sign. And she didn’t remember seeing signs along the ski runs either. No big road signs saying
YOU ARE NOW HALFWAY DOWN SQUAW ONE EXPRESS
or
RED DOG
.

When she finally sank into a restless sleep, she had a long scary nightmare in which she was trying to catch up with a lot of people on snowboards who, just as she almost got to them, kept taking off and flying through the air like remote-controlled model planes. And then she was the one holding the remote, and people were yelling at her to keep the flying snowboards from crashing into each other. Daylight came at last and Paige was shaking her, saying, “Hey. Wake up.”

Breakfast at the cabin had always been fun, if rather hectic. It was what Paige’s dad called Every Man for Himself. That meant you had to pick something out of the freezer or refrigerator and zap or toast or boil it all by yourself. It seemed to be a favorite time of the day for all the Bordens, which was probably because it was such a novelty. At home nobody fooled around much in Ludmilla’s kitchen, not even Paige’s mom.

Watching little old Sky get a carton of orange juice out of the refrigerator and pour it very carefully into a glass reminded Abby of how she’d rescued him from being “zkinned alive,” and it must have reminded Sky too, because when he noticed Abby watching him, he went into a blushing, blinking, squirming fit. And then, staring at Abby adoringly, he went on pouring until his glass filled up and slopped over. While she was helping him mop up the large orange juice puddle, Woody started teasing.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, Sky’s got a girlfriend, and I know who,” Woody was chanting when Sky threw a sponge at him. Of course Woody threw it back, and no telling what might have happened next if Mr. Borden hadn’t walked into the room.

As soon as a certain amount of eating was accomplished, there was what Mr. Borden called an Area Beautification Project, which meant that everyone had five minutes to clean up whatever mess they’d made, before they all got into their jackets and helmets and ran out to the SUV. Halfway down the drive they had to stop and back up so that Woody could go back for his gloves, but then, at last, they were off.

As the SUV slipped and slid over the snowy road that led to the village, Abby was, as always on the first day of skiing, quivering with excitement. Except that this time some of the quivering might have been caused by a feeling that was more like nervousness. Nervousness about what was going to happen as soon as they were out of the car and on their own.

While they had been getting dressed that morning, and later in the kitchen, Paige hadn’t mentioned the words
napkin
or
Magic Nation,
and she went on not mentioning them as she and Abby were getting out of the car, telling Daphne and Sher to have a great day, and escorting Woody and Sky to the Children’s Center.

At the center, while they waited for the boys’ instructor to arrive, Paige went on chattering about her new boots and what kind of helmets she hated because they made you look like a big-headed alien. However, Abby had a distinct feeling there was something else behind all the chatter just waiting for the right moment. But the moment hadn’t arrived before the instructor showed up and turned out to be one they knew: the same Ms. David who’d started Abby out her first year at Squaw and who’d made such a fuss over what a natural she was.

So there were a lot of “How are you?”s and “What have you been doing?”s and questions about whether she and Paige would be having lessons again that year. So much talk that Abby had almost forgotten to be nervous by the time she and Paige finally were left alone to head out toward the nearest lift. But sure enough, the minute they were by themselves, Paige grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her to a stop. Shifting her skis and poles around to get her right hand free, Paige reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a big piece of heavy white cloth—the Plump Jack’s napkin. “Okay,” she demanded. “Let’s see what you can find out.”

Abby tried to argue. Her first argument was, why? “What good is it going to do? I mean, even if we find out what run those guys are going to be on today and we go there, what makes you think we’re going to… I mean, that they’re going to… The thing is, Paige, what makes you think those guys will be interested in us?”

Paige was indignant. “Why shouldn’t they be interested?”

“I don’t know, but it seems to me they might be looking for girls their own age.”

“Their own age? What do you mean? I’ll bet we’re as old as they are, or at least just about. They’ve got to be teenagers, and so are we.”

“We’re teenagers?” Abby couldn’t help smiling.

“Sure we are,” Paige said. “Almost.” Abby would be thirteen in March and Paige not until May.

“Well, teenagers or not—” Abby was beginning when Paige cut her short. Shoving the napkin back into her pocket, Paige turned her back and started to stomp off. Abby hurried after her. “All right,” she said as she caught up. “I’ll try. I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. But…” She stopped, looking around at the crowds of people scurrying past in every direction, most of them carrying skis or snowboards. “I’ll have to put my skis down somewhere so I can take off my gloves and hold it in both hands and…”