Between Now and Forever

by Margaret Duarte

“Dear God, no.”

  Granny Max dropped mounds of dough onto the cookie sheet. “Don’t look so glum. Most of our students will grow up to become well-adjusted and content citizens despite what we do, or do not, teach them, to which I say, ‘Thank the Lord,’ or I wouldn’t be able to stand the guilt.”

  My back and shoulders slumped, and I couldn’t manage to straighten them.

  After she’d put the sheet of cookies into the oven, Granny Max pulled out two mugs, dropped in tea bags, and put water to boil. “Once we’ve had our fill, you can give the rest of the cookies to the kids, you know, to stimulate their reward centers.” She frowned. “Hang in there, hon.”

  I rested my chin on my hands and sighed.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black, thanks.”

  She puckered her lips as if tasting something nasty. “Never could figure out how some women get all the brains, good looks, and self-control, doesn’t seem fair, somehow.” A pause. “Sorry for pointing this out, my dear, but women like you” —she glanced at the acoustic ceiling tiles as though deliberating a connect-the-dots puzzle for her response to be revealed— “how to put it, let me see now… I don’t think people with special gifts know what they’ve got, if you know what I mean. Since it’s just been handed to them, they, well…they take it for granted.”

  If her aim had been to snap me out of my funk, she’d succeeded. Plus, the aroma of warm butter and vanilla created such a mind-numbing turbulence in my taste buds and stomach that her words turned into white noise.

  She brought two mugs of steaming tea to the table and winked before adding three heaping teaspoons of sugar and at least an eighth cup of milk to hers. Then she headed back to the oven, pulled out the sheet of cookies, put in another, and returned with a platter of mouthwatering delights. “Are you catching on?”

  My mind was as mushy as the warm cookies.

  “It’s all about distraction.” She edged the oatmeal raisin treats my way. “Part of your job as a teacher is to distract the students from the mundane and open their eyes to possibilities.”

  The sugary, buttery concoction tasted heavenly as it melted in my mouth. “Dr. Matt should’ve picked you to take on this class.”

  “Dear God no, you’re better qualified by far; your youth alone a definite asset. Those kids can wear a person out, if you know what I mean, and I’ve heard you’ve got other talents, as well.”

  “More like curses.”

  Granny Max’s face showed neither surprise nor disapproval. “My guess is that extrasensory abilities are like any other aptitude or skill. If not feared or abused, they can lead to great things. It would be sinful not to use them, think of the good you can do.”

  How had she heard about my psychic abilities? If she knew, so did others, which could lead to trouble—if past experience was anything to go by. “Hope you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right, and I’m not even psychic.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

  In what seemed like no time, she shoved back her chair and made for the oven, just as the alarm beeped.

  “See what I mean?” I said as she took out the cookies and put in the last batch.

  “Only a matter of much practice.” She reset the timer and winked— “Just in case…” —before returning to her seat at the table.

  I rolled my eyes, Codi style.

  “Don’t get too cheeky, hon, you’ve got dish duty when we’re done.”

  “My forte, cleaning up.”

  Granny Max stared at the single cookie left on the platter as though it were imparting its own particular wisdom. “What do you want, Marjorie? I mean, here at West Coast. What do you hope to accomplish?”

  When I didn’t answer, she said, “If you don’t believe in the outcome, it won’t come to pass.”

  She was giving me a dose of my own medicine, making me realize what a hypocrite I was. “I’m trying to think big.”

  “What do you want,” Granny Max repeated.

  Words didn’t come. At least not right away. But Granny Max’s kind expression suggested there was no rush, that sometimes talking just got in the way. Enjoy the company, she seemed to say, relax into the topic. Moments of insight need time to sink in.

  “For the kids and me…” I started, then regrouped and started again. “For the kids and me to step into our own life stories.” It came as a surprise that I’d included myself, though I’d suggested something similar during my interview with Dr. Matt. The need to control my own narrative. “And for me that isn’t easy, because… To tell you the truth, I’m a follower, a wuss, can’t even stand on my own two feet.”

  Granny Max stood, headed for the stove, and right on cue, the alarm went off. She grabbed the oven mitt and pulled out the cookies, then closed her eyes, as though, she, too, needed a measure of silence for insight to sink in. “You have a special light, Marjorie, and it pulls things out of the darkness towards itself. Believe me. I don’t bake cookies for just anyone.”

  “Did I pull you out of the darkness?” I asked, chuckling at the very idea.

  “You’re helping me express and utilize my energies in altruistic love and service.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do the dishes?”

  She threw the oven mitt at me, actually threw it. “I wouldn’t think of depriving you of the chance to utilize your energies in altruistic love and service.”

  I caught the mitt, tempted to throw it back, but didn’t. Which seemed wrong somehow, as though I weren’t playing my part in the game. Then it struck me; commitment meant involvement, which meant going solo wasn’t an option. I wasn’t playing solitaire but bridge, drawn into the game by seven thirteen-year-old slight-of-hand artists. Jason was right. It was time to forgo the affirmations and crafts. These kids were beyond that.

  What card was I in the new game we were playing? Two of Spades: Tendency to willfulness with consequent self-undoing. Wants home roots, but often obliged to work away from home. Looker after lost souls.

  “Your Indigos need training to face the unknown and give voice to their inexplicable experiences,” Granny Max said. “They need to learn to live in the world in a spiritual way, integrate and open their hearts for the deepest kind of freedom.”

  Give voice to their inexplicable experiences? Isn’t that what they’d done today? As far as opening their hearts, how did one teach that?

  Granny Max took the oven mitt and put it back in the kitchen drawer, giving me time to formulate a response to her comment.

  Reorder cards by suit and rank. Set terms of the hand.

  “That’s what I meant, I think, when I said I wanted my students to step into their own life stories.” I’d been concentrating so hard on providing them with a safe, nurturing environment that I’d neglected to allow them to fail, dust themselves off, and try again. Starting tomorrow, I would urge them to hone the psychic skills in the part of their brains that had been allowed, if not encouraged, to atrophy; the part of their brains that was dying.

  “Now that you’ve put your intentions into words, put them into action,” Granny Max said on her return to the table. “Sounds like you’re being put to the test, so you need to prepare.”

  “I think I’m getting the picture.”

  “I’m sure there’s a fancier way of saying this, but I’m tired, so I’ll give it to you straight. Follow your gut and use your damn powers.”

  Was this what Jason and my class of Indigos had been trying to tell me? “You’re as bad as the kids,” I threw back at her.

  “Yeah, and proud of it. Maybe you should take a lesson from me and step out of that ivory tower you’ve erected for yourself. Ivory towers are built from the brittle bones of the past.” She pointed to the kitchen counter. “You have work to do, because, to be quite honest, it’s late and, even though I like you and all, I don’t plan on spending the night here.”

  I nodded and stood. Ivory towers are built from the brittle bones of
the past. Had I, in an attempt to feel safe, stable, and secure, erected an ivory tower from the bones of my dead sister? Had I been using her death as an excuse for avoiding what it was in me to do?

  “Don’t take yourself too seriously, Marjorie, or you won’t last another month, let alone four. The kids need you. Their behavior can be outrageous, but seen from a different perspective, well, there’s almost something sacred about it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Energy coursed through me as if I were about to run a marathon. Step out of the ivory tower? What a relief that would be.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  IT WAS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY sixth, and my seven charges sat in their usual positions around the tables: Shawn and Ethan to my left, Angelina, Tessa, and Codi to my right, and Luke and Jason straight ahead at the base of the U. Only Tessa, however, looked my way. Jason was digging through his backpack with the enthusiasm of an archaeologist on the verge of a great find. Codi’s find appeared to be locked in her compact, Shawn’s on the other side of the window, Angelina’s and Luke’s in the books they were reading, and Ethan’s in the design he was drawing on the back of his hand with a black marker. Votives flickered on the tables. The background music was Rascal Flatts this time, singing about a candle in a hurricane.

  I handed out Granny Max’s oatmeal raisin cookies, thinking back to her words. “Sounds like you’re being put to the test, my dear, so you need to prepare.” How could I help these kids give voice to their inexplicable experiences and, as Granny Max put it, express and utilize their energies in altruistic love and service? Maybe in the process of stepping out of my ivory tower, I needed to take some risks. With or without Dr. Matt’s consent. No doubt, the answer to my questions would come. But if the past was anything to go by, they would sidestep any attempt at control and ignore any demands that the students and lessons proceed my way.

  So, where should I go from here? My charges were running out of patience. And out of time.

  I leaned against my desk and waited.

  Jason dropped his backpack to the floor, hands empty. Codi exchanged her compact for a cookie. Angelina ear-tagged her book and set it aside. Luke, Shawn, and Ethan carried on with what they’d been doing, and Tessa, sweet Tessa, continued looking at me with a faint smile.

  “We need shifters,” I said.

  Jason scrunched his face. Otherwise no response.

  More waiting, which caught Codi’s attention. She wasn’t used to me being quiet. “What’d you say?”

  “We need shifters.”

  “Uh?”

  “Aides. Helpers.”

  Ethan scowled, eyeing the tattoo-like drawing he’d sketched on his left hand. “You mean totems?”

  I strolled to the back of his table and paused behind him. He’d drawn an owl. “Sort of.”

  I moved on, peering over each student’s shoulders until Luke put his book down and I had Shawn’s attention. “What, for instance, can we use besides cookies to turn things around when we’re in the dumps?”

  Codi passed her cookie over a candle until it smoked, then blew on it and put it down. She wore blue lipstick today, and her brows were black and heavily arched. This, along with her ghostly pallor, made for a look of dark drama—Vampire Goth. It was hard to look away.

  “Music works for me,” Jason said, while Rascal Flatts crooned in the background about tasting what you’re made of.

  “Music is definitely mood altering,” I said, “though some types can make you melancholy.”

  Jason feigned a gag. “Like Country.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you to bring in your own music,” I said, “on condition that you point out its mood and theme.”

  Codi picked up her charred cookie and sniffed it. “You can bet it won’t be Country.”

  “Mom always tells me to go watch the grass grow when I’m bored or cranky,” Luke said. “She says sometimes it’s good to do nothing.”

  “I like to read,” Angelina said. Her skin appeared rosy today, her eyes clear and bright. Maybe Jason had been wrong about her critical condition.

  Codi reached for a second cookie, having gouged the first like a sacrifice. “I talk to my friends. They don’t mind my whining.”

  Jason coughed into his hand to hide a grin. “What’s the point, Ms. V?” He wore a tweed jacket, black T-shirt, khakis, and brown loafers, dressy for a day at school. Heck, he dressed better than many of the teachers.

  I returned to my usual position at the foot of my desk. “I’m talking about replacements for the bad stuff.”

  “She means instead of drugs and alcohol,” Shawn said, his eyes flat as they peered from beneath rounded upper lids.

  “Yes, alternatives less harmful than nicotine, alcohol, and—”

  “Like peanut butter and love,” Jason said.

  “Ha.” Wise guy.

  “I heard that squeezable honey works,” Luke said. “It processes similar to—”

  “Get real, Luke.” Codi’s hand fisted as if of its own accord and chunks of the cookie dropped onto the table.

  “Talk about getting real…” I eyed the smushed cookie Codi was wiping from her hand and wondered if it had prompted unanticipated therapeutic benefits. “I wasn’t planning on sharing this yet, but…what the heck. I invited my sister to talk to you about alcohol, tobacco, and drug prevention tips.”

  “Your sis-ter?” Jason’s voice rose on “sis” and dropping on “ter” with such a tone of disbelief, you’d think I’d just announced the sky was falling. “No offense, but if she’s anything like you, um—”

  “She’s waiting to hear if she’s been accepted into the DEA basic agent training program in Quantico, Virginia.”

  Jason’s brows shot up; his eyes widened.

  “A lecture from a narc,” Codi said. “What the hell for?”

  Good question. The answer to which I couldn’t share. At least not yet. Straight out honesty would, in this case, do more harm than good. They wouldn’t take kindly to hearing that Dr. Matt suspected one or more of them of experimenting with drugs. “It’s never too early to talk about prevention. Like wearing a seat belt to avoid injury and death.”

  “That’s a stretch.” Codi’s attention lingered on the remains of the ravaged cookie in her hand, which, to my relief, meant she wasn’t probing my mind.

  “It’ll also give you a chance to meet my sister. Her name is Veronica, and she provides barf bags with her presentation.”

  Tessa’s face contorted as though she’d just bitten into a slug instead of an oatmeal cookie. “Barf bags! Ugh.”

  Jason scratched his jaw, which appeared rough, like fine-grade sandpaper.

  “I understand her presentation can be quite upsetting,” I said.

  Codi looked suddenly cheerful. “I can take it.”

  “Do you and Veronica look alike, too?” Tessa asked, her expression wistful.

  “Exactly, except her hair is black.”

  “That makes you, Maya, and Veronica triplets.” She clapped her hands and bounced in her seat like a game show contestant. “When’s she coming?”

  At the mention of Maya, my throat closed up, making it hard to swallow, let alone speak. “Not until mid-March. I still have to okay it with Dr. Matt.”

  Tessa slumped in her chair. “That’s a long time.”

  “By then it’ll…” Codi coughed, then clammed up.

  “What’s your shifter when you feel bad?” Ethan asked.

  I looked at Jason. He looked away. “Well, yesterday my shifter was an oatmeal cookie.”

  “What’s your shifter on other days?” Ethan asked.

  I pulled the stone mouse from the leather pouch I wore around my waist as often as fashion allowed. “On most days, this does the trick.” I set the totem on the table in front of him. “It has seen many places and has had many owners besides me.”

  Luke shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and leaning forward with laser focus. “Whe
re’d you get it?”

  “Initially, my soon-to-be-adoptive son gave it to me. His name is Joshua.”

  “Tell us about him,” Tessa said.

  With these kids, you never knew where a subject might lead, from shifters to drugs, barf bags to Joshua. I hesitated, knowing I should share but unwilling to do so. “Maybe someday.”

  “Why not today?” Tessa was persistent now that she was no longer impersonating a gray ghost.

  “Because this isn’t about me.”

  “Sure, it is,” Jason said. “You’re our teacher.”

  “And that makes your story our story,” Tessa said.

  “Maybe someday,” I repeated.

  I took five stones out of my pouch and set them on the table in front of Luke. “I use these to mark the five directions of my Medicine Wheel, which, by the way, is another one of my shifters.” I positioned four of the stones in a circle, yellow for the East, red for the South, black for the West, and white for the North. Then I placed the green stone in the center. “When I feel the need to conquer some critical self-attacks or seek answers to seemingly unanswerable questions, I construct a big circle, sit inside, and meditate.”

  “A magic circle?” Luke asked.

  “Only if by ‘magic circle’ you mean a place to bring out desired changes. The Medicine Wheel is more like a circle of knowledge. When my sister’s fiancé, Ben Gentle Bear Mendoza, comes with her in March, he’ll explain.”

  The room grew quiet, and I wondered at the cause, until Dr. Matt cleared his throat. “I hope you planned to run that by me first.”

  He’d come in unannounced, which was fine. He had every right as principal to observe my interaction with the class unrehearsed. But for him to interrupt a lesson to enquire about guest-speaker logistics was another matter.

  At my tight-lipped silence, Dr. Matt added, “I came by to check on your progress.”

  “So far, so good,” I said.

  Dr. Matt frowned.

  “Our purpose today, Uncle Matt, is to find our shifters,” Shawn said.

  At the lift of Dr. Matt’s brows, Shawn hurried on. “We’re going to find out what we can use to pull our energy from a frequency of negativity to one of happiness. We’re going to find out what we want and believe we deserve it. Then use that information to dig ourselves out of some deep, black holes. In other words” —Shawn took a shaky breath— “apply the knowledge to circumstances outside ourselves and beyond this room.”