Between Now and Forever

by Margaret Duarte

  Codi shot to her feet, arm half raised. “Admit it, Jason. You were showing off. You wanted Ms. Veil to know you’re special.”

  “Like you?” Jason countered.

  She slumped onto her seat with a look of practiced boredom. “WHAT-ehv-err.”

  I glanced at the door and caught Mr. Lacoste slipping out with a mobile phone pressed to his ear. “Do either one of you want to share?”

  “Not particularly.” Codi’s moment in the spotlight where emotion overcomes self-consciousness, where the need for expression overwhelms common sense, had burnt out as suddenly as it had sparked into life. I ached for her loss.

  “How about you, Jason?”

  “You sure, Ms. V?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t.”

  Jason stood, cleared his throat. “Um. Where do you want me to begin?”

  I checked the clock on the wall behind me. Almost out of time. “How about the CliffsNotes version?”

  He ran both hands through his hair—front and sides short, back long—as though prepping for a photo shoot, which elicited whistles and cheers from some of his peers— “Go, Jason,” —and frowns from others.

  “Seven members of this class are” —he paused as Mr. Lacoste stepped back into the room— “um, some people call us Indigos or Children of Now, others, well… They prefer to call us freaks and troublemakers.”

  “That’s enough, Jason.” Mr. Lacoste pulled up the waist of his pants and marched to the front of the room, kicking backpacks out of his path as though no more than roadside trash. “I’m citing you for willful disruption.”

  “But Ms. V—”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  Jason looked at me, and I felt a surge of resentment. He’d discovered my powers in less than thirty minutes—a record—and had reached out for help. But I’d let him down through my silence. As I’d let myself down over and over, bending, always bending.

  “Wait for me outside,” Mr. Lacoste said.

  My insides burned with a deep sense of failure as Jason stuffed his supplies into his backpack, his eyes vacant.

  Then I perceived it, a wave of resentment even more forceful than my own. It’s hard to explain how a class’s loyalty can suddenly turn. Kids sense fairness and the lack thereof. Though Jason had been wrong, disrupting class as he had, Mr. Lacoste’s reaction—at least in the eyes of the students—had been equally wrong.

  The bell was hardly perceptible over the calls of encouragement and back slaps Jason received from his peers, who, by the way, were making no move to clear the room.

  “Party’s over,” I called over the din. I felt like a bouncer at a hosted bar where the effect of free alcohol takes a while to wear off.

  Jason gave me a sassy salute and led the students out of the classroom like the Pied Piper.

  Chapter Three

  DR. MATT DID NOT visit my classroom. In fact, I finished my day, another four classes in all, without further mishap. With the overhead out of commission, I had to implement my point system, but that didn’t matter. The kids seemed happy to humor me by putting in some effort to follow the lesson plan.

  By the end of third period, I knew teaching was something I not only liked but felt inspired to do. A surprise, really, considering I’d spent the past nine years since earning my teaching credential happily doing company research for a large venture capital firm. Okay, maybe not happily. But life isn’t perfect. I’d had a roof over my head and cash in the bank, which made me richer than seventy-five percent of the world’s population. I was reliable, predictable, and had the right answers to just about everything.

  Until my dead mother started speaking to me.

  ***

  When I passed through the main office after school, Paula, administrative assistant to the principal, handed me a note from our boss. Please see me at your earliest convenience.

  Heat worked its way up my neck, across my face, and through my hair; the way it’s supposed to in a sauna but is unpleasant when you’re dressed up and trying to look your best. Being summoned to the principal’s office after my first day on the job struck me as a bad sign.

  “Dr. Matt,” I said, peering through his open office door. “You wanted to see me?”

  His smile was instant and appeared to be genuine. “Hello, Marjorie.” He rose from his chair and approached me with an outstretched hand.

  I tried to smile in return but only managed a grimace before shaking his hand. He closed the door and directed me to one of the upholstered armchairs facing his desk. I sat and looked around. This was my first time in a principal’s office, which said a lot about my stellar performance while in school—strict adherence to the rules, manageable.

  File cabinets and bookshelves loaded with binders and school trophies took up most of the wall to my left. Framed diplomas and school banners—Go Buffaloes!—lined the wall to my right. Nothing surprising, except for the resin paperweight—embedded with a furry taxidermy spider the size of my palm—prominently displayed on the desk in front of me.

  “I’d like to get your impression of the classes you taught today,” he said.

  Was he interested in my overall subbing experience, or was this a “he said, she said” inquiry into what did or did not happen during first period?

  I glanced at the paperweight, which served no purpose as far as I could tell—other than freak me out. It weighed nothing down, unless you considered my thoughts; which should have been on Dr. Matt instead of an arachnid with eight eyes and two sharp fangs. “Things started out a bit hairy—” Oh Jeez, did I just say that? “—but improved over time. Actually, the day went better than I’d expected.”

  “Heard you experienced a bit of excitement during first period.”

  “Yes.” Little did he know that what I had experienced during first period was nothing compared to what I’d experienced in the past ten months. What would he say if I told him I heard the voice of my dead mother, a Native American who’d died only weeks after my birth, and that I communicated with animals, particularly a scrawny cat named Gabriel, and that sometimes I saw the dead?

  Dr. Matt sat on the chair next to mine and leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees. His perfectly tailored suit had the sheen of a wool/silk blend, the kind Cliff, my former fiancé, often wore. “How about clueing me in to what happened.”

  “I found some of the students…interesting.” How could I share what I had discovered about these kids without risking them being classified as mentally ill or written off as frauds? “Two or three showed promise in unexpected ways, and I wondered why they’d been placed in a remedial class.”

  Dr. Matt pursed his lips but said nothing.

  Was he reflecting on what I’d said, or was his silence a ploy to keep me talking and over share? With the adage, “He who speaks first, loses,” in the back of my mind, I said, “One of the students exhibited a creative misuse of energy as if desperate to prove himself in some way, and I’d hoped to—”

  “What are your aspirations as a teacher?”

  His abrupt change of subject put me on edge. Too much self-disclosure without room for clarification could lead to misunderstanding. Too little could come across as evasion. “I’d like to contribute in a way that matters. Open doors for students who feel muted or suppressed, help them heal through inclusion. Schools work so hard on educating our youth and training them to improve their circumstances, they neglect to give them the keys to success.”

  “Which are?”

  “Resolution and self-reliance.”

  At Dr. Matt’s questioning look, I added, “Students need purpose in their lives and the will to accomplish that purpose. They need training in improving themselves, as well as their minds.”

  “On what do you base your teaching philosophy?”

  “Much of it comes from what I learned working alongside my sister Maya at a treatment facility for substance abuse. The facility provided support for the newly sober
, helped them feel heard, accepted, and loved.”

  Dr. Matt eyed me as if I were an exotic new animal at the zoo, or better yet, a new circus act. I pictured myself in a turban, with bejeweled fingers. Abracadabra. “You’re comparing students to addicts?”

  “We’re all addicts in some way. The trick is to learn from our addictions, about who we are and what makes us tick.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “In working with my sister, I realized that all of us, not only those addicted to drugs and alcohol, need to feel heard, accepted, and loved. Which includes our youth. Especially our youth. The rest of my teaching philosophy is based on life experience. I’ve learned that we need to take responsibility for our own choices, stand up for ourselves, try new things.”

  “Aren’t these matters best left to a life coach?”

  “Life coaching should be part of a teacher’s training.”

  “Sounds ambitious.”

  “Playing small doesn’t serve the world.”

  In the silence that followed, I wondered if I’d blown what had morphed into an impromptu job interview. I should have been prepared, but was not. Especially without knowing Dr. Matt’s motivations and what he was looking for. The type of education I envisioned—a form of classroom-based cognitive-behavioral therapy—was not part of mainstream education. Was Dr. Matt enough of a visionary to understand what I was trying to say and give me a chance?

  “How does one teach resolution, responsibility, and self-reliance?” he asked softly, as if talking to himself.

  “I’m not sure. Touching base with the students’ experiences would be a start. They would need a safe, nurturing environment to stretch their abilities, fail, dust themselves off, and try again.”

  Dr. Matt straightened in his chair and tugged at his right ear, bringing to mind a baseball coach signaling one of his players.

  I hovered over a vocational precipice like a cursor marking the key to my future. Left click, tasks ahead and a life worth living. Right click, hidden options and more of the same.

  “On your substitute application, you stated your plan to marry soon. How would that affect—”

  “My aim is to control my own narrative. Until then marriage is out.”

  Dr. Matt’s nod implied that the force of my answer had surprised him less than it surprised me. “And in the process, I assume, you plan to encourage students to control their own narratives as well.”

  Darn, he was connecting dots I hadn’t been aware of. “With ‘help’ being the operative word, I can open doors but can’t force students to step through them.”

  Dr. Matt pursed his lips and squinted at me.

  With a sinking feeling, I figured I might as well plan on subbing for a while. No way would he hire a rookie with such an unconventional approach to teaching for a position in his traditional school.

  “I’d like for you to take on a special class,” he said.

  Blood rushed in my ears. He must be desperate.

  Then came another thought not meant to be spoken out loud. “But you don’t even know me.”

  Chapter Four

  DR. MATT STOOD AND walked to the window overlooking the front parking lot, currently clogged with vehicles picking up students after school. “You come highly recommended.”

  One minute I was focused on what he was saying and the next on what my psychiatrist, Dr. Tony Mendez, had suggested ten months before. “You need to push past your perimeter of comfort and safety, follow some blind alleys, celebrate the turn in the road.” To comfort me on the day of my sister Maya’s funeral, Morgan, my fiancé, had delivered a message from Dr. Mendez about an opening for a part-time teaching position at West Coast Middle School. An opening I would consider only after giving substituting a try. The reason I was here today.

  “You mean, by Dr. Tony Mendez?”

  “Actually, yes.” Dr. Matt swung from the window and aimed his gaze at me. “Tony’s a good friend of mine, and he recommended you as an ideal candidate for the job. Which counts for a lot, because he doesn’t give out endorsements lightly. But I’m talking about someone else whose opinion I value.”

  Someone else?

  “My nephew was in your first period class today.”

  Damn.

  “And he had a different take on what happened than Charles Lacoste did.”

  That meant two cracks in my cocoon. “Is his name Jason by any chance?”

  “Oh no, people don’t usually take notice of my nephew. He can fade into the background to the point where you don’t even know he’s there. He’d make a good spy.”

  “A good spy, maybe, but I think that’s sad. We all have special talents, even if it’s just fading into the background, and we need recognition for such.”

  Dr. Max tugged at his ear again, as if telling me something I couldn’t hear.

  Okay, that also eliminated Brad and Wyatt. I searched my memory bank, trying to picture a kid so cloaked in unimportance that I hadn’t noticed him.

  “What counts here is that Shawn is impressed with you,” Dr. Max said. “He claims you have psychic abilities.”

  Double damn. What I’d meant to keep hidden had surfaced. As closet skeletons usually do. How had his nephew discovered this about me?

  “To see Shawn and kids like him happy again, to hear them ask questions and show enough interest to seek the answers, would be the culmination of my career.”

  Kids like Shawn? Was Dr. Matt’s nephew one of the seven special children Jason had talked about called Indigos or Children of Now?

  “We could attempt to improve things,” he said.

  We? I felt an ache in my belly, a painful yearning, similar to how I’d felt when I met my sister Maya for the first time, my duplicate, except for the wine-colored stain covering half her face. Maya, who died before we’d had a chance to renew the bond broken at our birth.

  “Shawn is an Indigo.”

  I heard a buzzing in my ears.

  “Indigos, if you believe they exist, have special needs, even more so than the general school population. And the needs of my nephew are not being met, not here and not at home.” Dr. Matt rubbed the palms of his hands together like a cartoon villain, except with a frown instead of a smile. “Indigos are unusually sensitive to taste, touch, sound, and smell. They also share intuitive enhancements, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew what he meant all right. Jason, for instance, had a problem with overhead projectors and florescent lighting.

  “If Shawn continues at the rate he’s going, by the time he reaches college age, he’ll either drop out of school or drop out of life. I suspect he and others like him are on the verge of experimenting with drugs and alcohol. If they haven’t started already. Anyway, I hate seeing him so unfulfilled. He needs a little dreamtime, some loose, unstructured down time, to explore himself and his world.”

  Apparently, my unconventional approach to teaching hadn’t put Dr. Matt off after all.

  He took a seat behind his formidable desk, leaned back, and folded his arms over his chest. “Shawn’s future is at stake here, Marjorie, as are the futures of at least six other students inappropriately assigned to the remedial class you taught today. I also met with Jason and Codi, who backed up everything Shawn said.”

  “What about Charles Lacoste’s version of the situation?”

  My question brought a shift in Dr. Matt’s expression, from pliant to tight and focused. I was amazed at the transformation. It was like watching molten lava solidify.

  “Charles is highly qualified in his particular discipline and is doing an admirable job of teaching our students. But to ask him to serve as a bridge to higher consciousness would be like asking him to fly to the moon.”

  Bridge to higher consciousness?

  “The usual classes are put together based on such things as IQ tests, nationality, and income level” —Dr. Matt gripped the arms of his chair and the leather buckled beneath his fingers— “but we ha
ve the opportunity to do something new here, create a class based on consciousness of body, mind, and spirit.”

  Right up my alley. Though the life I was living was far from abundant and balanced. You can’t give from an empty cup.

  Dr. Matt leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk. But his thumbs did not still. They massaged each other as if to relieve pain. “Shawn felt the energy you poured into the classroom, and when he, Jason, and Codi added their energy to yours—”

  “Oh no,” I said, thinking about the damage they could have caused.

  “Their energy is powerful, but undefined, so they must learn to control it at all times.”

  “Thank goodness they realize that,” I said, though they hadn’t done a very good job in the control department this morning.

  Dr. Matt nodded before swiveling his chair to face the window again, a window that revealed little more now than it had the last time he’d turned to face it. “Shawn thinks this energy can be used in a group situation to uplift others.”

  “I agree, since the energy fields surrounding our bodies play an important part in our physical health and influence how we interact with our environment and others. When harmonized—”

  Dr. Matt spun back to face me. “Are you an Indigo, Marjorie?”

  “I—”

  “You’re about the right age for the second wave called Generators. The positive energy they generate affects everyone they contact. They’re also called Antennas and Channelers.”

  Generator? Antenna? Channeler? Whoa. He was way ahead of me. “Sorry, I—”

  “Indigos exist all over the world, yet the world is deaf and blind to them.”

  I nodded, let him talk. This man was on a mission, and he… Well, he was scaring me. Did he plan to accomplish single handedly what the rest of the world had failed to do until now, recognize and nurture a group of kids with unique abilities and special needs?