“I’m still in trouble, though, right?” I ask hopefully.
“For each of us, the road to becoming whole takes different turns,” Nimbus informs me. “But there is no trouble here.”
The only hole I want anything to do with is really deep and the other end comes out in California.
At least Matt reacts like a normal person. The minute we’re back in our cottage, he blows his stack at me. It’s almost a relief to get yelled at.
“What’s the matter with you, Jett? Bad enough you broke every rule in the book. But you could have wound up drowning or cracking your head open on that rock! And not just you—you had to drag a poor innocent kid into danger with you! A kid whose only crime was to try to make friends!”
“I deserve to be punished,” I agree. “Maybe you should take away something that’s important to me. My phone; my tablet; my laptop. Oh, wait—someone already did. How about my freedom? No, that’s gone too. I guess you’ll just have to send me to bed without any dinner. Please,” I add, “I saw the dining hall menu. It’s beet casserole night.”
“Poor you,” Matt says sarcastically. “It must be really hard to be so much smarter than everybody else, but you still have to put up with the rest of us.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t come up with a way out of here yet, so I’m not that smart, am I?”
He sighs. “You know what your problem is, Jett? It’s always all about you. When it rains, does it even cross your mind that everybody else gets wet too? All these ‘terrible’ things that are happening to you—the food, the no technology, the wellness stuff—do you even notice that I’m here right next to you? I couldn’t call up your old man even if I wanted to. I’ve got no phone either. I’m stranded here, the same as you.”
Matt has a point. That was probably Vlad’s plan all along. My dad may be an epic jerk, but no one can say he isn’t a genius. If he sent me to some rich-kid Club Med sleepaway camp, he’d have to listen to me complain all summer. I’ll bet he thought he died and went to heaven when that Google guy told him about this place. Not only am I physically out of his hair, I’m out of his hair virtually too. Here, the only way to communicate with the outside world is by snail mail, and Vlad is famous for his policy of never reading anything written on “dead trees.”
Well, congrats, Dad. You’ve got me on the ropes, but the fight isn’t over yet. I have a few tricks of my own up my sleeve.
Matt snores.
I can hear it through the thin walls in our two-bedroom cottage. Evangeline, the nutrition pathfinder, says that a diet rich in tofu and soy makes you a better sleeper. I don’t know if it’s the tofu, but you couldn’t wake Matt up with a brass band. The first three nights I complained about it. I’m not complaining anymore.
Matt’s sawing logs, deep in dreamland, as I ease open the front door and slip out into the night. I’m half expecting a wailing alarm as I’m caught in the blaze of a searchlight. But no—the Oasis is deserted. Maybe tofu really does make you sleep. There was enough of it in the beet casserole to knock out an army.
I steal across the compound of cottages, past the dining hall and the meditation building. It’s after two a.m., but it’s still hot and the humidity is at least a million percent. The mosquitoes are the size of dive-bombers, which at least makes it easy to swat them away. There’s a faint smell of sulfur on the nonexistent breeze, and I can make out the bubbling of the Bath. I haven’t been in there since that first morning when I cannonballed in and scalded myself half to death.
Even in the sweltering darkness, I can see the steam cloud hovering over the hot spring. I sidle up to the rocks, squat down, and dip my pinkie into the churning water. God bless America; it’s like sticking my finger in a boiling kettle. How do the old people survive it, much less love it?
I keep walking. The welcome center is dead ahead, at the foot of the road we came in on. I hear a purring sound and duck behind a bush. Sure enough, there’s an electric golf cart moving away from the building and starting on the path that circles the property. I recognize the driver—another buddy—the word, not the name. That’s the official title of everybody who works here who’s not a full pathfinder. Buddies and pathfinders. And suckers—meaning us, the guests.
I watch the buddy behind the wheel of the cart. He’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a guard in this place. I was starting to think that security was considered anti-wellness or un-whole or whatever.
I stay hidden until the vehicle putt-putts along the path and disappears into the trees. Then I scamper across the road and up onto the wooden porch of the welcome center. From there, it’s easy to lift a window and ease myself inside.
I vault the counter and head straight for the storage closet where Ivory stashed my electronics when we first checked in. I try the knob. Locked.
Figures. The pathfinders talk a good game about being honest and trusting and whole, but what’s the first thing you run into? A locked door.
It’s no problem for me, though. I grew up in a place with a lot more security than this dump because, believe me, Vlad is not the trusting type when it comes to anybody else getting their grubby hands on his hard-earned stuff. Our place in California is full of locked storerooms, safes, secret compartments, and trapdoors, guarded by every high-tech gizmo money can buy or Vlad can invent. What do you think my hobby has been these past twelve years? I can get into any one of them in sixty seconds. My own mother doesn’t know that there’s a false back in her walk-in closet and the hermetically sealed space behind it holds a canvas bag of solid gold South African Krugerrands and an actual Rembrandt her husband hasn’t gotten around to hanging up yet.
It’s not like TV, where the hero knows how to pick a lock with a paper clip. But give me two paper clips and I could bust into Fort Knox.
I’m inside in a heartbeat, and what I see nearly stops my heart. Do you know how much technology eighty-five Oasis guests have to surrender for the privilege of boiling their butts and subsisting on a plant-based diet? The San Francisco Fuego Store would die of jealousy if they saw all this stock. The urge to throw it on the floor and roll around in it is almost overwhelming.
No, Jett. Down, boy!
I find my own phone, lock the closet again, and climb back out the window. It’s tough to leave my laptop, tablet, and watch in tech jail, but I have to stick to the plan. The less I take, the smaller the chance that anybody’s going to notice something’s missing.
The golf cart is just emerging from the woods, so I flatten myself to the ground until the coast is clear. Turns out there are even more bugs in the grass than there are in the air, and most of them think the inside of my pant leg is a happening place to hang out. Eventually, after some high-energy dancing, I’m as bug-free as I’m ever going to be, and I slink back into the guest compound.
I don’t go back to the cottage—not yet. I don’t want anybody in any other cottage to hear me. I steal all the way over to the lake and sit down at a picnic table. It’s two thirty in the morning, but that’s only half past midnight in California.
I’ve got about a millionth of a bar of cell service, but my F-phone’s special chip ties into the satellite network, so I’m good to go. No point in calling Mom—she’s totally wrapped up in her charity work for Orthodontists Without Borders, fixing overbites in the Third World. It’s the big cheese or nobody.
I punch in my father’s private number. He answers on the sixth ring in a sleepy voice.
“Jett? You okay?”
“Hi, Dad. Sorry to wake you.” Despite my fearless exterior, I don’t have the guts to call my father Vlad. Nobody does. “How’s everything at home?”
My father is so smart that I can almost hear him making the connections two thousand miles away: me calling in the middle of the night, from No-Phone-Land, where he exiled me for a six-week sentence . . .
“Forget it, Jett. You’re not coming home.”
“If you could see this place, you wouldn’t say that,” I wheedle. “At least you wouldn’t mean it.”<
br />
“I mean everything I say.” He’s fully awake now, and that’s not so good for me. Vlad has this confidence that’s really frustrating. He knows he’s right. Even when he’s wrong he’s right. And you know where that leaves me: always wrong.
“How are you calling me?” he demands. “You’re not supposed to have a phone.”
Just as I suspected. Not only did he banish me here; he knew exactly how bad it was going to be. That was probably the number one selling point.
I try the taking-responsibility approach. “I get that I screwed up and I have to go someplace. Just not this place! I don’t care so much for myself, but it’s not fair to Matt. He’ll starve! Plus he could be making a breakthrough right now if he was at work. Think of the company!”
“I’m the company.”
It’s classic Vlad. He speaks in declarative sentences, short and to the point. The next one is: “You’re staying put.” Then: “This conversation is over.”
“But, Dad—”
“Don’t even think of bothering your mother with this. She’s in Honduras. I’ll see you in a month and a half.”
Click.
By the time I take the phone from my ear and set it down on the picnic table, I’ll bet he’s fast asleep again, with a completely clear conscience.
I sit there for a full ten minutes, waiting for the roaring in my ears to go down. I know I’m no angel, and there are times I feel bad for my folks. It can’t be easy to parent me. Then there are moments like this, when it’s pretty obvious that Vlad is getting exactly what he deserves in the son department.
Anyway, tonight hasn’t been a total loss. I had no phone before, and now I have one. After all, a phone is more than just a toy. Now I’m connected. Maybe Vlad won’t let me rejoin the world, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of options. I can bring the world here, thanks to the best thing any kid could possibly have—a credit card with the name Baranov on it.
Fertilizer, meet fan.
5
Grace Atwater
“When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . . when-I-breathe-out-I-breathe-out . . .”
Ivory’s voice is melted butter as she guides our meditation. That’s what beginners have to do—concentrate on deep breathing. Otherwise, our minds go all over the place. The breathing part isn’t that important. The main goal is to empty the mind, and that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Have you ever tried to go even a minute without thinking about anything? It’s almost impossible. So Ivory gets us to concentrate on breathing to lock everything else out of our brains.
“When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . .”
I’m a little more advanced, since Mom and I come here every summer. I don’t need to recite the words in my head anymore. I just focus on my breathing, and pretty soon the outside world melts away. I can hear my heart beating and feel the blood pumping through my veins and arteries. I’m in perfect touch with not just my body, but my entire being. I’m whole.
Meditation is one of the three pillars of Magnus’s philosophy at the Oasis, along with good nutrition and physical exercise. I love it. But—oops, I’m not supposed to be thinking about anything right now.
“. . . when-I-breathe-out-I-breathe-out . . .”
The only time I’m more relaxed than during meditation is when I’m on the back of my dad’s motorcycle. He has this 3000cc Harley and he sometimes takes me riding, since Mom refuses to go anywhere near it. It’s the main compromise in our family. Dad has his bike, Mom and I have the Oasis, and Benito has the heating vent in the downstairs bathroom, where he’s allowed to nap in winter, even though it blocks the heat to the point where the toilet seat feels like a ring of solid ice.
The back of a motorcycle may not seem like a very calm place, with the roar of the engine and the wind whipping at you, but I love it. Dad says I’m a “speed freak.” There’s something about pure acceleration—like you’ve sprouted booster rockets that send you hurtling forward. You feel alive, but also relaxed, because your mind just shuts down.
It’s definitely a guilty pleasure, because—let’s face it—Dad’s Harley isn’t exactly environment-friendly. I’d be more comfortable on something electric, or at least a hybrid, which would be more fuel-efficient—
Uh-oh. I’m doing it again. “When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . .”
Today might be the best meditation class ever, since Jett didn’t show up. He’s so bad at meditation that he ruins it for the rest of us. And he isn’t just bad at it like poor Tyrell, who’s too itchy to sit still, and sniffles from the electric vaporizer that pumps incense-scented mist into the air. (We don’t burn real incense, since that produces carbon, and Magnus is against that.)
But Jett is too much of a jerk to give meditation a fair try. He yawns and fake snores. And just when you get to a really deep place in your own meditation, he starts hollering for someone to call an ambulance because he pulled a muscle from sitting in the lotus position. For sure Ivory doesn’t like him very much, and Brandon hates his guts after the pedal-boat incident. I suppose there are a few kids like Tyrell who are still fascinated by the fact that his dad’s rich and famous. In the end, though, it’s hard to be too psyched about a guy who keeps spoiling everything for everybody.
See? Jett isn’t even here, and I’m ruining my meditation by thinking about him!
“And a deep breath as we return to this place and this moment.” Ivory ends the session. “How was everybody’s experience?”
“I was a little bit scattered today,” I confess. There’s something about meditation that makes me want to be 100 percent honest.
“Thank you for your openness,” the meditation pathfinder approves in her rich voice. “There can be no inner peace without truth.”
I don’t always understand the things Ivory says, but they just sound so good. She’s the most impressive woman I’ve ever met. My secret dream is to grow up just like Ivory, although the height part might not be realistic. Not a lot of girls get to be six foot four. And I’m definitely not pretty enough to carry the buzz cut. But I can still work on being like her inside. No one else at the Oasis is so whole, except maybe Magnus.
I can’t wait till I’m old enough to do the special meditation the adults do. Mom won’t say much about it, except how transformational it is, and that it might be a little too much for a twelve-year-old. The word she always uses is vivid. I can’t help but be intrigued. The more Mom describes the one-on-one sessions, the more convinced I am that I’m ready. Maybe if I’m really successful in this class, Ivory will bump me up to the next level. Before that happens, though, I’m going to have to learn to clear my mind of Jett Baranov.
Tyrell and I are on the main path back toward the cottages when we see them. Strangers stand out at the Oasis, but the two men in FedEx uniforms also happen to be lugging an enormous bulky package, wheeling it along on a hand truck.
“What’s that?” Tyrell wonders aloud.
I stare. The thing is covered in brown paper, but the wrapping is torn at the top, and I can see what the giant mystery item is. It’s a full-size Dance Dance Revolution machine, the kind they have in video arcades.
Tyrell’s eyes pop. “We’re getting a Dance Dance Revolution?”
“It must be a mistake,” I conclude. “Magnus would never bring an arcade game into the Oasis.”
“He might,” Tyrell argues. “It’s great exercise. That’s one of the three pillars, you know.”
“No way,” I scoff. “It breaks the no-screens rule. It’s flashy and loud—the opposite of everything the Oasis stands for. Nobody could be whole with that kind of racket going on.”
He shrugs. “Only one way to find out. Let’s see where they deliver it.”
We follow the FedEx guys past the dining hall toward the clusters of cottages. We exchange a bewildered glance. All the main buildings are behind us. Where could this thing possibly be going?
The FedEx men stop at cottage number 29 and unload their burden—I gawk—right next to two other packages that are al
most as big! One is a Jet Ski. The other is a four-wheeled ATV with giant balloon tires.
“Who lives here?” I demand in amazement.
Tyrell sniffs the air. “If I didn’t know better, I swear I smell meat!”
We approach the open window and peer inside. Laid out on the dining room table is a mountainous barbecue platter accompanied by several long loaves of bread. Seated there, mouth wide as a cavern, about to take an enormous bite, is Jett.
“Drop that sandwich!” I bellow.
Jett looks up, spots us in the window, and smiles. “Come on in, you guys. There’s plenty for everybody.”
“You’re disgusting!” I snarl.
But Tyrell is already halfway through the door of the cottage. I grab him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I thought maybe I’d have just a couple of bites—”
“Help yourself,” Jett invites him, his mouth full. “We’ve got pulled pork, brisket, roast turkey, burnt ends—”
“You’ve got barbecue sauce on your chin,” Tyrell says wistfully.
“That’s not allowed here!” I rage.
“Untrue,” Jett tells me, his face smug. “The dining hall doesn’t serve meat, but show me where it says you can’t bring in your own. Turns out there’s this awesome barbecue place in Hedge Apple, just a few miles up the river. And guess what—they deliver!”
I’m looking at him through a red haze. “Do they also deliver Jet Skis and Dance Dance Revolution machines?”
“Well, not the barbecue joint. I got that stuff through Fuego Prime—all except the fireworks. They came from LightUpTheNightdot-com. Don’t worry,” he adds, spying my stricken face. “You can use all my stuff. Everybody can. Well, maybe not the Bucholz kid. He’s not the friendly type.”
Unplugged Page 4