Page 6

oops and arrivals

. . .

lark

R obin was right. I didn’t rent a car to get to Bear Mountain.

I took a bus—with a transfer at the Barrington’s Super Center at the base of the Kwalnal’ak Mountain Range, where the small town Holly moved to in February was located.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around her being in a polycule with a Barrington, the family that had founded both Barrington’s Super Store, Canada’s answer to Walmart, and Barrington Prep, the school I worked at.

But my wonder turned to anxiety when Holly still hadn’t emailed me back by the time I stepped off the bus in front of the small town’s large—and only—hotel.

“ID and the name your reservation’s under,” the front desk clerk demanded when I finally reached the front of the long line at Bear Mountain Lodge.

The sandy-brown-haired woman, whose name tag read Sarah Baerlow , didn’t say hello or make eye contact.

But my fellow autie antenna didn’t ping, so I concluded that her curtness was due to her feeling overwhelmed by the flood of passengers the Bear Mountain coach had just dropped off for the town’s Christmas in July festival.

Which made me feel even worse about what I had to admit.

“Technically, I don’t have a reservation.”

Her face hardened.

“Well, all of our rooms are booked for the festival,” she said, already glancing over my shoulder at the group of guys behind me.

“Wait,” I blurted before she could call the next person forward.

“I was supposed to stay with my friend Holly while I was here. She’s getting married—or, I guess, it’s called a ‘Joining Ceremony’ because there’s more than one groom? I’m not sure if that’s a poly or indigenous custom….”

I stopped myself. I was dangerously close to going off on a ramble, and there was only one clerk and a long line behind me.

“Anyway, main point. I forgot that I forgot to RSVP until I was on the bus. I tried to email her, but she hasn’t answered. And Holly never gave me her new number, which wouldn’t have mattered anyway since there’s no reception up here.”

Another mini-ramble, but Sarah Baerlow’s expression softened. “You’re here for Holly Winter’s Joining Ceremony?”

“Yes, she’s my best friend. But due to my oversight, there’s been a breakdown in communication,” I admitted. “So I was hoping you could maybe do one of three things for me….”

I laid out the options I’d brainstormed during my forty-three minutes in line: “Tell me Holly’s number. Give me the lodge’s Wi-Fi password so I can try emailing her again. Or maybe just tell me where she lives so I can go there?”

The clerk hesitated. “I can give you the hotel’s Wi-Fi password,” she hedged.

“I promise I am who I say I am. I even have a passport I can show you.” Anxiety made me give in to my glasses-adjustment stim. “Also, if I don’t get in contact with her, I won’t have anywhere to stay tonight.”

“I believe you, but…” She looked over the line again.

“Even if I had Holly’s number, she’s not in town right now. She and her sister had a… personal issue to deal with in the outer limits. So, I’m not sure when she’ll be back.”

I adjusted my glasses again. This time to buy a few seconds to suppress my cry reflex.

Low frustration tolerance was already an issue on a good day. And this was turning into a terrible one.

The driver had warned us there wouldn’t be another bus until Christmas in July Eve . Today was the twenty-third.

I carefully modulated my voice, so as not to sound as desperate as I felt, having just found out that I was stuck in a crowded, receptionless town with no return transport and no place to stay.

“Is there any way—any way at all—I could rent a room for the night?”

I hated to dip into my IVF savings. But if I had to?—

“Sorry, we really are all booked up,” she said before I could finish that thought.

“Mom! Mom! Hey, Mom!” A little kid with darker hair and skin than the clerk appeared behind the counter and tugged at her sleeve. “Can you help me figure out these long division problems for school?”

I frowned. School was still in session here, even though it was late July?

“Mom’s working,” the clerk answered, smoothing a hand over the boy’s mop of black hair. “Can you go ask one of your three dads, who aren’t manning a long line by themselves right now?”

Wait, this woman’s married to three guys as well? How many...?

“They’re working, too, and they’re bad at math," the clerk's son answered before I could finish that question--with the kind of frankness I always appreciated in kids. "They always just try to do it for me,”

His eyes pooled with tears. “And Mr. Zion says he’s going to put me back in the fourth grade if I don’t pass tomorrow’s test.”

Ugh! I couldn’t stand when teachers used shame-based consequences instead of helping kids figure out where they got lost on the way to fully understanding the learning target.

“Hey, I’m a fifth and sixth grade teacher,” I told him, switching to my gentle classroom voice. “I can help you out.”

I turned to his mom. “Is that okay?”

“More than okay, thank you!” she said, already waving the next person in line forward with an upturned palm.

“Great,” I said, turning back to the little boy. “Just join me over here on the couch.”

Without a second thought, I ceded my place in line. Maybe I could try again for a room after the crowd died down. But this little boy clearly needed help now.

“Hi, I’m Lark,” I told him, parking my carry-on suitcase and taking a seat on the lodge’s couch.

The video on the bus ride up had made it clear that while there was no skiing on Bear Mountain, the lodge had been designed by a famous architect of ski chalets.

So the space had the same kind of vaulted ceilings, open-concept layout, and tiered room balconies visible from the ground floor.

“Like the bird?” he asked, settling in beside me.

“Exactly like the bird,” I said. “In fact, my last name is Bird, and I have a twin sister named Robin.”

“My name’s Wabby, which is short for my Ayaska name that outsiders and tourists can never pronounce. My uncles are identical twins, too. Nobody can ever tell them apart, not even my mom and grandparents.”

“Well, Robin and I are fraternal twins,” I let him know. “So it’s easy to tell us apart. She’s taller than me and a little lighter.”

Also much thinner, but I didn’t like to make body observations to kids at an impressionable age.

“Like womb twins!” the boy said brightly.

I wasn’t sure what he meant since all twins came from the womb.

But at Barrington Prep, we were under strict orders never to reference anything that might even brush up against sexual education.

So instead of asking for clarification, I said, “Want to show me the long division problems so we can figure them out together?”

He passed me the sheet, and I raised both eyebrows at the purple-inked worksheet.

“Your teacher’s still using a ditto machine?

” I asked, staring at the copy that had obviously been made on one of those old-school duplicating devices my mom had only told us about--when lamenting how much easier we had it as teachers.

“Printers need computers, and Mr. Zion doesn’t like computers. He says they’re in direct conflict with hard work. A-B-O-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N—abomination. That was on the last spelling test. And that’s what he calls computers.”

Okay … So I guess the Bear Mountain school wasn’t issuing laptops like Barrington Prep—and just about every public school in Vancouver.

Also, based on the examples printed at the top of the worksheet, he was also teaching long division like it was still 1989.

Three questions immediately sprang to mind:

Did the Bear Mountain school system have some kind of exemption from following British Columbia’s Ministry of Education curriculum?

And if not… how mad would Holly be if I reported them for not aligning with provincial learning outcomes? At least when it came to math.

And also: “Exactly how old is Mr. Zion?” I asked Wabby.

“At least one hundred,” the little boy said with the full authority of a ten-year-old. “He’s really mean. He keeps calling me lazy, even though I’m trying my best. I don’t know why he became a teacher if he hates kids.”

Or maybe he just needs to retire , I thought to myself. My mom happily taught for most of her life, but she always said she knew it was time to go when she started despising the kids.

Teacher burnout wasn’t something I could help Wabby with, though. So I just said, “Okay, I’m going to teach you a really simple method to knock out all these problems.”

Wabby absolutely did not need to be sent back to the fourth grade.

It took less than thirty minutes to teach him long division using the current curriculum method. And once he got it, his whole face lit up.

He was so excited, he pulled out another ditto sheet and asked, “Can you help me with fractions, too?”

Actually, I could. Contrary to Mr. Zion’s assessment, Wabby was well-focused and eager to learn, which made him way easier to tutor than most of my Barrington summer school students.

Another hour passed as we worked through fractions, and we were halfway into a lesson on ratios when his mother came over to find us.

“Papa just texted me that dinner’s almost ready,” she said to Wabby. “We should get going before the spaghetti gets cold.”

“Yay, spaghetti—my favorite!”

Wabby leapt up from the couch but turned back to throw his arms around my shoulders. “Thank you, Miss Lark! I wish you were my teacher!”

Hugs weren’t allowed at Barrington Prep, but since his mom was standing right there, I risked a light pat on the back.

“Thank you. That compliment just made a tough day much nicer.”

“Hey, kid, why don’t you run on ahead. I just need to talk to your substitute teacher for a minute.”

“Okay.” Wabby shouldered his backpack and dashed toward the door. Apparently, he was highly motivated by the promise of spaghetti.

My tummy rumbled at the thought of a nice, cozy meal. I hadn’t eaten since getting on the bus in Vancouver.

I had a couple of snacks left in my backpack, but first, I turned to Wabby’s mom to ask if they had a home computer so Wabby could access Khan Academy the next time Mr. Zion handed him a worksheet from 1992.

“Bad news,” she said before I could get the question out.

“We’re still at capacity. But why don’t you head over to the Bear Mountain Bar and Grill until check-in hours end?

I really appreciate you helping Wabby. I’ve left a note for the next shift's clerk to put you at the top of the list if there are any no-shows. Just come back at nine, okay?”

Nine p.m. Only the years of work I’d done to regulate my emotions and not go immediately into doom-casting kept me from panicking. At least outwardly.

“Here, I’ll hold your suitcase behind the desk,” she said, taking my carry-on by its handle. “Go grab something to eat at the Bar and Grill. Tell my brother I sent you—he’ll give you the family discount.”

Even with the family discount, I hadn’t planned on dipping even further into my savings after buying the expensive ticket from Vancouver to this remote mountain town and then having to shell out money for a last-minute room at who knew what price.

My instinct urged me to stubbornly stay put for the next…

I checked my watch… two and a half hours until the new clerk knew for sure there weren’t any more rooms to rent out.

But if only to maintain the appearance of someone you’d want to give a room to—even without a reservation—I fought my original instinct and shouldered my own backpack to do exactly what she suggested.

I had no idea that one small decision was about to change everything.