“My, oh my,” Little Ray said suddenly. There was a shiver in her voice, as if she were cold or had seen a ghost. “Sweetie,” my mom whispered, “Mr. Barlow doesn’t look as young as you do, does he?” She knew by the pause; I was reluctant to tell her. I could hear her teeth chattering. Her voice had given me the shivers.

“Mr. Barlow is small for a thirteen-year-old,” I said, speaking strictly as a thirteen-year-old, “but his hands are bigger than mine.”

“But how young does he look, sweetie?” my mother managed to say. She must have been visibly shaking. There was no more murmuring among the girl jocks, and not a single laugh.

“His handsomeness is the most grown-up thing about him,” I told her. “Mr. Barlow is unusually young-looking, if you know what I mean,” I added. That was all I could further contribute to our conversation, which had turned stone-cold.

“I know what you mean, all right,” my mom said bitterly. “Have you seen any ghosts, Adam?” she suddenly asked me.

“No,” I said. “Have you?”

“I have to go now, sweetie,” my mother whispered. “We’ll deal with the ghosts when the time is right—okay, kiddo?”

13. THE SNOWSHOER KISS

We meet people who change our lives—in my case, only a few. The little snowshoer was the first person I met who changed my life. The snowshoeing was an acceptable substitute for my learning to ski. My mom accepted snowshoeing, but she had her opinions: snowshoers should stay out of the way of skiers; snowshoers weren’t always welcome on ski mountains. From the start, my mother and the snowshoer could talk to each other on this subject—for hours.

It was stupefying to listen to them, but they were animated about where and when—on which ski mountains, at what hours—snowshoeing was allowed. Some ski areas let you snowshoe only when the lifts weren’t running, when no skiers were on the mountain.

As for the adversarial relationship trail groomers sometimes have with snowshoers, Molly wasn’t the only snowcat driver who almost ran over one. Mr. Barlow and my mom were in agreement: no snowshoeing when the snowcats are on the mountain. “Especially not when the night groomers are working,” the snowshoer said. In the ski towns he’d grown up in, he had learned to be politic. He’d talked to the trail groomers, the ski patrollers, and the lift operators; he’d occasionally bought lift tickets. “Some ski places make you take the lift up and down. You snowshoe above the tree line, where you’re more visible,” the little English teacher said.