27

After our doctor appointments, Dad and I bypassed Crystal Mountain’s ten-o’clock rush-hour crowd by using the employee line to get to the gondola. Then we would hop on a snowmobile—Dad had gotten his cast off, so he could drive, and I was free of my sling, though I was supposed to keep wearing the brace.

In the gondola car, we kept waving around our freed limbs, testing them out. Having my arm in my parka’s sleeve felt so good, even if it was tight over the brace.

As we crested a row of cliffs, a group of snowboarders stood at the edge, trying to muster the guts to jump.

“Job security for you,” I said.

Dad grunted.

We sped into the lifthouse, and Dad and I moved around the knot of skiers and boarders to one of two snowmobiles adjacent the ski-patrol station. We climbed on, and he drove cautiously up the edge of Sunset Ridge. It felt good to have him driving again. Like our life could maybe settle into something resembling normal. He pulled up in front of the cabin, and I climbed off.

“Take it easy!” he said over the loud engine.

“I will if you will!”

I entered the cabin, grinning and shaking my head. Take it easy. Neither Dad nor I knew how to do that.

I slid my hand into my jeans’ back pocket and found Shelley’s phone number. The jeans had been washed, and the scrap of paper was limp with frayed edges. I plopped onto the couch and unfolded it. Her phone number, written in blue ink, was blurred but still readable. I want to help, Shelley had said. I tried to remember the details of our split in sixth grade. Kenowitz had called me a true genius—maybe I’d intimidated her?

But worrying about Shelley was the last thing I needed in my life. Gage too. I needed them all to just leave me alone. This was my twelfth day of being good, and I was determined to stay in double digits. I wadded Shelley’s number and tossed it on the coffee table.

I went into the bedroom and tugged on long underwear—a top and bottoms—and my snowboard pants. Three weeks without boarding had been a test of my sanity. I paused at the table and tried a butterscotch cookie from a plate Crispy had sent. It was only lightly burned, so I wolfed down four, thinking how he’d be psyched. Food = love for Crispy. I heard Gage say “love” and cringed; love was the last thing I’d sought from him. I blew out my breath. I buckled on my helmet, tugged on my gloves, and grabbed my board from beside the door.

Love.

You could change the world.

“I need some space!” I muttered as I strode off the deck.

Just beyond the sheltering pines that curled around the cabin, a run called Always ribboned into Gold Bowl. Inconvenient from the lifts, it stayed untracked on a powder day. I buckled in, ahh-ing at my board’s sensation beneath my feet. I’d weave in and out of the fluff along the run’s edge and blot out the voices in my head. I kicked my right foot into the fall line and rocked forward and back, easing my board into gravity.

As I picked up speed, I skimmed to the snow’s surface. I pressured my toes, leaned in, and turned left. I weighted my heels, leaned back, and turned right. Relief spread through me. I carved a few more turns in the open before heading toward a glade. I wove around three aspens and out. Wove in again and passed an Upward Dog spruce with yellow spots.

I stopped so fast I fell uphill, arms disappearing in powder. I swam my way to kneeling.

Like with the spruce on Shangri-La, a well with no snow surrounded this trunk, and from it a thin trail led away toward City Center. I peered up and spied a brown-gray lump in its high branches.

I rolled over and looked down Gold Bowl, gulping air. I pictured Dad and closed my eyes to clarify his image. I rose and started gliding away, forcing myself not to look back. I longed to straightline and reach for speed, but I forced myself to make precise turns.

I popped out onto the road leading to Gold Bowl’s base, joining people who’d funneled down from other runs. At the road’s end, we clogged into the lift’s full maze, a twenty-minute wait. Powder days on Saturdays were the kiss of death because every idiot from Denver + every gung-ho local + regular tourists = gridlock. I maneuvered through bodies to the singles line. Normally, I’d grumble the whole time I waited in lines. This time, I hardly noticed.

My head spun with speculation about that spruce. That must have been why Súmáí was at the cabin so much. How many Upward Dog spruces were there? Was there a grid connecting the whole mountain? How about all of Crystal Village? How about Colorado? Or the planet, maybe, if other species of trees could work? Maybe they just needed to be Upward Dog–shaped with tear stains. What happened where forests were clear-cut, like the Amazon? I couldn’t get my head around the scope of it all. I glanced at the few hundred bodies surrounding me. If they suspected what I was thinking, I’d be committed to an asylum.

Before I knew it, I’d merged with three skiers and headed into the trough to load the chair. We sat down and took off. The dorks I sat with brought down the safety bar without warning, banging the back of my helmet.

“Sorry,” a guy said.

It jolted me from my trance, and I glanced back and saw the lift’s line bulging out of the maze. No coming back here today.

“So where are you from?” A woman sat beside me. Her feet rested primly on the safety bar’s footrest, her white mittens in prayer position on the bar.

Chatters. Great. “Here,” I said.

“That must be wonderful,” she said.

I shrugged. A cigarette would help sort my thoughts.

“What do you do?” she said.

“Do?”

“Do you work?” she said,

“I’m in school.” Were all humans programmed to ask the same dumb questions?

“High school?” said a guy beside the woman. I could see only his rental skis. According to their sticker, his name was Ken.

“Uh-huh.” The way I said it was a conversation stopper, and the woman turned away from me to address the guys. I scanned the bowl for more Upward Dog spruce. If one was close to Emerald West, then Súmáí wouldn’t have had far to drag the food he’d taken from there. What was he up to anyway?

Ahead and to our chairlift’s right, two ski patrol knelt on either side of a guy below an X made from skis stuck in the snow. Like SOS, it was the universal skiing sign for help.

The injured skier sat, one leg out straight and shaking his head. He’d probably torn his knee ligaments, the most common injury on powder days. The chair neared, and the ski patrolmen became Crispy and Wash. Wash saw me out of the corner of his eye, gave a thumbs-up, and said, “See you at dinner.”

The hurt guy looked at him.

Wash chin-pointed toward me. “Our kid.”

Crispy waved.

The woman, Ken, and the guy at the chair’s end eyed me.

I faced the view until they looked away. I squinted, trying to make out tiny waves, little M-theory strings, something revealing in the air that stretched across the bowl. The word “Nobel” grabbed my attention. The woman’s white mitten waved like she was embarrassed.

“Honestly, Karen.” Ken pronounced her name funny, like he was from the South, but he didn’t have an accent. “A particle physicist working with human cells? This is groundbreaking work. Don’t give up on it.”

“The possibilities created by entanglement are mind-boggling,” the guy on the end said.

Karen clapped her mittens together twice gently. “Yes, well, some would say I’m a crackpot, applying spooky action to humans.”

Before I knew it, I said, “You’re working with spooky action?”

Their helmeted heads turned to me, Ken leaning forward to see me around Karen. She pressed back to view me fully. “Yes. You’re familiar with quantum theory?”

I wanted to shout, Hell yes! Instead, I said, “Do you think entanglement could stretch across the multiverse?”

Through Karen’s yellow-lensed goggles, I saw her assess me. “My research has been with people within our own universe.”

I tried to sound nonchalant. “And?”

“And I don’t have conclusive proof yet.”

“But something makes you keep researching?”

Karen exchanged glances with the two guys. “Yes.”

I blew out my breath and sat back.

“You have experience with this?” Ken said, a taunt in his words.

I wanted to slug him, but I said to Karen, “Have you proven whatever you’re doing mathematically?”

“We’re close.”

“Where do you work?” I said.

“MIT.”

My body’s temperature shot up fifty degrees as I remembered that vision of Mom and me on the recreation path. That me had been headed to MIT. “Is any of your research online? Are any of your papers published?”

“There was one in Science Daily.”

“When?”

“About a year ago.”

“Is it recorded?”

“Recorded?”

“Like, I could listen to it?”

“No.” Karen tilted her head. “How about you give me your email and I’ll send you the link?”

I turned to her. She was tiny, and her eyes crinkled at the outside corners like rays. “You’d do that?” I said.

“Sure.”

I spelled out my email, careful to get the letters right.

“Sovern? That’s your name?”

I nodded.

“That’s a great name. Mine’s Cairn.” She spelled it out. “Like the rock markers on a hiking trail.” We neared the lift’s summit.

“My mom named me,” I said.

“My dad,” Cairn said.

The lift grew loud as we entered the lifthouse. I’m not sure what made me do it, but I leaned in. “Will you send me your equation?”

As I rose and slid away, Cairn’s mouth hung open. She concentrated on navigating from the chair and stopped by using her poles, gangly as a fawn learning to walk. Ken and the other guy had moved about ten feet away, and they stood there impatient to get moving. Cairn gathered her composure and eyed me. “It’s very advanced math.”

“I’ll keep it secret. I just want to see it.”

“You’re asking to see my life’s work.”

I let out a huge sigh. “My mom—” I looked away. “What are the chances of me ending up on that chairlift with you, now of all times?” When I looked back, Cairn was scrutinizing me through those goggles.

“Now is important?” she asked.

“Math is … ” How could I express that I needed for math to rule the world? That if math ruled the world, maybe fate didn’t? “Math is … well … it won’t leave me alone. I don’t know all the fancy terms advanced people in colleges use, but I … I just understand it. For me, math has no words. It just makes the world make sense. And I have experience with entanglement.”

“Experience?”

“Personal experience.”

“You’ve—”

“I’m not crazy!”

She pursed her lips and studied me for what felt like forever. “Okay,” she said. “We’re stuck, and I guess it couldn’t hurt.” She glanced over her shoulder, but Ken and the other guy were long gone. “Nice to meet you, Sovern.”

Cairn poled away, the backs of her skis fanning into a beginner’s wedge as she headed down Sunset Ridge. She’d come up from the bottom of Gold Bowl, all expert terrain, and since she’d survived that, Cairn = one tough lady + willing to take risks. And no doubt I was a risk.