The lights dimmed and the tables began to shake.
“Jason,” Codi snapped. “Cut it out.”
He looked confused, even frightened. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?” she asked.
Me.
“Maya,” I whispered.
For the first time since she’d died, I saw my sister as she’d appeared when we first met: arms outstretched in welcome, face the mirror image of mine—except for the puckered red skin disfiguring her right cheek.
“Oh, dear God,” I said. And then instead of bursting into tears, I got mad. “Don’t you dare fade out on me again.”
Maya smiled and did just that.
“Maya!”
“She s-says you know what to do,” Tessa said.
“But I don’t.”
The way the six Indigos stared at me you’d think I was trying to beat a traffic ticket.
“What?” I asked
“T-tell us about Maya,” Tessa urged.
“It can’t be all that easy for her spirit to keep hanging around,” Luke said. “She must have a good reason. Did you have unfinished business before she died?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, like twenty-nine-years-worth. “Maya told me she would reach out to me after she was gone.”
“Did you believe her?”
With my mother haunting me from the grave, I knew it was possible, but I didn’t know if Maya could break through. “Yes.”
“What was the last thing she said to you before she died?”
“What is this, an inquisition?”
“Just answer the question, please.” Luke sounded like the prosecutor in a criminal trial accusing me of breaking the law.
“She said to love him.”
“Love who?”
“The plastic surgeon who removed the birthmark on her face. The birthmark she treasured, the birthmark that gave her the power to heal herself and others, the birthmark that gave her life meaning. She wanted me to get in touch with my anger, rage, and hate, so I could be whole again. She said that when the time was right, I’d know what to do.”
“Maybe the right time is now,” Luke suggested.
“She told me to cry every time I experienced a little death in my life,” I said, finding it hard to stop venting now that I’d cracked open the door to my past.
“Like now?” Luke asked.
“Sorry, my friend, I never cry.”
“I think she wants to teach you about forgiveness and trust,” Tessa said.
“You know what the priest said at her funeral?” My voice vibrated with pent up emotion. “That Maya’s contribution to society took humility, inner strength, and surrender. He said she was humble enough to know that one needn’t be perfect to make a difference and that her deepest demonstration of inner strength was her love. ‘Look at love long enough,’ he said, ‘and you will become lovely.’ Then he told us that when Maya was stuck, when nothing seemed to be moving along, when people weren’t doing what she wanted, she took herself out of the way, and miracle of miracles, things always seemed to work out fine. ‘The goal of life is not to win,’ he said, ‘but to play the game with love.’ I’d been searching for Monarchs since my arrival in Pacific Grove and, at Maya’s funeral, there they were, clouds of them, veiling the setting sun, their wings quivering and reflecting the fading light like precious jewels. They’d escaped their cocoons, just like Maya.”
“I thought you never cried,” Jason said.
“Shut up,” I said.
Chapter Thirty
STARTING THE NEXT DAY, instead of concentrating on the outcome of my work, which I couldn’t measure anyway, I would concentrate on the work itself. And today that meant visiting the nature area.
“You’re kidding, right,” Codi said, eyeing the span of windows that revealed bare trees swaying under overcast skies. She clasped both arms over her thinly clad body and shivered. “It’s frigging cold out there.” I took in her Alice in Chains T-shirt—cut to hang off her right shoulder—her pinstriped cotton pants, and black canvas sneakers. Though stylish, in a gothic way, her outfit offered no thermal protection for a cold February afternoon.
I pointed to the rack of coats I’d set up for such an occasion. “Ugh,” she squealed, her face contorting dramatically. She had the facial structure and skin texture of a model, from the apples and hollows of her cheeks to the tip of her perfectly rounded chin. With the right makeup, she could melt seamlessly into an incarnation of myriad characters from Snow White to Elvira. Today, however, she looked more like one of the walking dead, with charcoal shadow and black liner accentuating her eyes. “Are they from Goodwill? I’m no homeless person.”
“Go out there without a coat and you’ll feel like one,” I said.
“Codi, Codi,” Jason tutted. “You’re so out of touch. Second-hand stores stock some great funeral vintage.”
She regarded his J. Crew jacket, linen shirt, and broken-in chinos with the mouth-pursed disdain of a fashion critic. “As if you’d know.”
“Pretend you’re dressing up for Halloween,” I said.
She sorted through the coats with outstretched hands as if staving off the cooties she imagined inhabited there. She squinted, stepped closer, sniffed the fabric. “Hey, these aren’t half bad.”
Thinning out my closet had felt good, and my mother, believing she was helping to clothe the poor, had been equally generous.
Codi squealed and held up a black trench coat. “I’ve been wanting one of these.”
Giggles followed as Tessa joined in the search.
“Look,” Tessa said, holding up a yellow anorak. “It’s from the Gap.”
Yellow didn’t suit her, not with her light blonde hair and pale blue eyes, but who was I to spoil her fun? I draped both of my female charges with a wool scarf—black for Codi, blue for Tessa—as my mother had when I was their age. Unlike me, however, they didn’t seem to mind. The boys waited, arms crossed, heaving impatient sighs. Cold wasn’t an issue for them. They wore so many layers they were more likely to burn up from the heat.
When we stepped through what to me had become the door to the magic kingdom, we were welcomed by a blast of cold air.
“Explore,” I said. “Hands on. Hands dirty.”
Codi and Tessa scurried off, screeching like banshees. Jason and Shawn followed at a more leisurely pace. Luke and Ethan, however, stayed put, eyeing their surroundings like astronauts on the moon’s surface.
“Go,” I said, shooing them with both hands. “Nature is full of missing information. Find it.”
Ethan blinked and said something under his breath before venturing forth. Luke, however, stood firm. “Contact with the natural is called the eighth intelligence.”
Impressed, as usual, by his encyclopedic knowledge on just about any subject, my thoughts wandered to my future adoptive son, Joshua, petting a newborn calf, swinging from trees into the Cosumnes River, vaulting over hay bales. Luke needed to experience life outside of his know-it-all state of mind and learn to trust his inner guidance.
“Being out here is like being in a giant Wi-Fi zone,” he said, “where you can plug into nature.”
“Right, kiddo. So, plug in with both hands and feet. Nature is alive. Become part of it.”
A smile. A salute. “Your wish is my command.”
The nature area was wet and by most standards a mess. The paths were crude and uneven, not a manicured shrub in sight. Yet, the students acted like visitors to a foreign land, peeking behind bushes, scavenging anything that appeared remotely interesting, and climbing some of the sturdier trees. I let them play, yes play, something neglected these days by most teens and adults. Tessa scooped up pebble-sized rocks from a gravel path, held them to the light, and pocketed those that passed her inspection. Codi retrieved a small branch and twirled it like a baton. Shawn and Jason chose larger branches to use as swords. Luke appeared to be inspecting the variety in flora and fauna, and Ethan wandered a
bout talking to himself.
Half an hour later I waved them in and instructed them to form a circle in a paved alcove between the brick wall of the classroom and a thicket of overgrown bottlebrush and pine. My charges breathed hard, and with every breath, clouds of moisture formed in front of their faces.
“Look what I found,” Tessa said. She wore leather engineer boots today with her jeans tucked in, very Maya-like, except Maya would have worn a beaten-up military jacket instead of a yellow anorak. Tessa held five colored stones in her open palm. When I leaned in to inspect them, she closed her hand and snatched it away. “Guess what colors.”
I started to answer but changed my mind. Though these kids weren’t all capable of probing minds, they could communicate telepathically by sending out their thoughts. It was time they started using their gifts. Yellow, white, black, and rust, I said silently.
Tessa smiled.
My skin tingled. She’d heard me.
After dropping the pebbles into the pocket of her anorak, she held out her right hand. Scissor-sharp pain sliced through me when I saw the strawberry hemangiomas birthmark on her palm. The same shape and color of the birthmark that had disfigured Maya’s face.
“Mom wants to have it removed,” Tessa said.
Words couldn’t pass the blockage in my throat. I wanted to kiss her hand and plead that she not allow it. No. No. Look what happened to Maya when Dr. Shane Donovan tried to remove hers.
But Tessa was way ahead of me. “Maya said we all have a right to our own beauty.”
I swallowed hard and rubbed my eyes. Then why hadn’t she practiced what she preached?
I knew you’d get around to the important stuff sooner or later, someone said.
Which of the six had spoken? Shawn sat, hands spread on knees. You? I asked, brows raised.
He gave nothing away, other than his silent response. Good call.
Birds gathered in the surrounding bushes and pines as if eager to witness the show. Their chatter took on a loud, serious bent, their chirps becoming shrieks. Even traffic sounds from the nearby street grew in intensity, horns honking, tires hissing. Clouds gathered; the sky darkened.
I’d know if I were an Indigo, wouldn’t I? I asked silently.
The narrowing of Shawn’s eyes. A surge of heat.
Most people don’t realize they’re Indigos, someone said. Only that they don’t fit into a nice neat box.
Luke! I could tell by the way his words came out in lecture mode.
Grandstander!
Ah, Codi. I closed my eyes, no longer concerned about who was speaking. I wanted to join in their experience, figure out how to help. Three and a half months until the end of my tenure here. Three and a half months, three and a half months, I repeated like a mantra, until I sensed a pull in my head. Colored squares formed inside my lids and shifted like pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope. I was light as air, floating through what appeared to be the warps and wefts of a cloth on a loom. I was the size of a molecule, the open weaves as large as doors. Soft pinks, blues, lavenders, and pale yellows swirled and shifted around me. Everything existed where it should be. No questions. Just right.
I’d experienced something similar last April while listening to Native American chants around a campfire in the Los Padres National Forest. Guided by the music, I’d entered a serene state of stillness with no separation between my physical and spiritual reality. I followed the drumbeat and journeyed out of my body, expanding and becoming less dense like warm air rising. The heavens and earth merged into a nacreous-like cloud, curling and uncurling in the semi-darkness, an iridescent gap appearing like a ladder between. As if drugged, I floated toward the thin white opening. The drumming stopped; the flute and chanting continued. And just as I was about to pass through the shimmering portal, I sensed a tug on my arm. I resisted. Another tug. No! Someone was blocking the closest I’d ever come to complete and total freedom. I opened my eyes, irritated, angry.
Joshua knelt next to me, his face the manifestation of love.
Now, again, I’d entered another dimension, and I didn’t want to return. Everything was good. I was good. I loved and felt loved. Why couldn’t real life be like this?
He’s hurting my sister.
Damn!
My focus snapped back from my escape into the realm of imagination.
Birds. Wind. Distant traffic. Otherwise silence.
I longed for background music. Even a song parodying the situation—Springsteen’s “Wages of Sin” or Rascal Flatts “My Wish”—would have been preferable to this. The words, He’s hurting my sister, could have come from me. My biological father had hurt Veronica through his drunken rages and empty promises. Dr. Shane Donovan had hurt Maya by removing the birthmark on her face. Two men mistaking love as the permission to overpower and suppress.
Not physically or anything, the voice said, but with yelling and put-downs. Dad’s really messing her up, and I don’t know what to do.
Someone was cracking open his heart.
Jason cleared his throat but responded silently. I know what you mean, Ethan. My dad calls me a loser and good-for-nothing freeloader at least once a week. It gets to you after a while. You think you’re adjusting, when, actually, you start believing it.
A loser and good-for-nothing freeloader? Could this be the same man who had visited my classroom and expressed his sincere love for his son, the same man who had organized and chaperoned our trip to the Lick Observatory and procured rare observation time on the 3-m Shane telescope? How could Ron say such painful things one moment, yet act so loving the next? Were his actions the result of a brain-heart disconnect, a slip into irrationality, or suppressed fear for his son bubbling to the surface?
Mom says he’s high strung and doesn’t express himself well, Jason said. Maybe the same goes for your dad.
Geniuses aren’t known for their patience and common sense. This from Luke, his words magnanimous, since he bordered on genius himself.
That doesn’t make it any easier on my sister.
A lull. A rush of energy.
Ethan sat up straighter.
“Your sister can choose what she wants to experience,” Tessa said out loud, looking like a doll child, all hope and innocence.
“She can shield herself with her thoughts,” Jason clarified.
Ethan’s stubby hands tightened into fists. “How? How? How?”
“She can ask herself what he’s trying to say,” Tessa said.
A shake of Ethan’s head, Tessa’s suggestion apparently too hard for him to swallow.
“What can your sister learn from him?” she asked. Was that a Pandora bracelet peeking from the cuff of her anorak?
“How not to treat your kids,” Ethan said.
“What else?” she asked.
Ethan looked at her blankly.
That sometimes your parents want to help, but don’t know how. This from Angelina. Yes, the child who was still absent from school. No one besides me seemed surprised that she had joined us remotely. Something left unsaid clung to her words like a shadow. But like a shadow, that something was elusive. I recalled how she had talked about death and dying and sensed an added chill riding on the wind. Ten of Clubs, moon card, elegant, dramatic.
In the silence that followed, I marveled at how well the Indigos had interacted as a group, searching for and finding Ethan’s higher self and then sending him their energy and love. The whole process had pretty much proceeded without me. I’d served as a catalyst, sure, but they’d taken it from there.
The power of eight minds—seven students and one teacher—working together.
Chapter Thirty-one
THE CLASS FUNCTIONED IN relative peace for two days. Day one, some of the kids caught up on work for other classes, the rest listened to CDs. Not mine, mind you. They’d had enough of Bruce Springsteen and Rascal Flatts and had brought in selections of their own. Tessa, bless her heart, selected organ music in honor of Angelina, who, s
he claimed, liked church music. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor wasn’t exactly what I’d call church music, but Tessa meant well.
“Best organ music ever made,” Codi said, eyes dilated as though in a music-induced trance.
“Of the haunted mansion variety,” Jason added.
Day two, we talked about judgment, freedom, and security. I started by saying, “Let’s treat this classroom as the poet Rumi described a field where he wanted to meet a friend, ‘…beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing…’ In other words, as a place without judgment. Judgment sets parameters. It’s limiting. It locks us in.” I, in particular, needed addressing on this issue, since I found myself judging Ethan, who’d taken my mouse totem, though he knew how much it meant to me. “Did you ever like someone, regardless of his or her faults?”
Ethan, the kid who could look into the future, squinted at me as if aware I’d been thinking about him. “My sister. She’s mean and selfish, but I love her.” He’d taken his ceramic owl out of the cabinet and held it as though saying goodbye to a dear friend.
“How does it feel, loving her no matter what?” I asked.
He didn’t take his eyes off the owl. “Good, I guess.”
“How do you think it makes your sister feel?”
“Probably good.”
“And free, I suspect. Free to be herself. Because she knows you’ll love her anyway.”
He looked up, forehead creased, mouth pinched. I’d hoped he would be beyond the scowls and sneers by now, but they appeared to be back in full force. Too much black bile. My Ace of Spades. “So, in this classroom, let’s not encumber ourselves with judgment. Let’s allow our souls to meet here in freedom and oneness.”
Ethan regarded me with the wisdom of an ancient but said nothing.
“You mean love each other?” Codi asked. “Like Tessa? Her love has medicine in it.”
“Yep.”
“That means Codi has to love me, too.” Jason’s grin was that of a confident flirt.
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