Between Now and Forever

by Margaret Duarte

  Forty-five minutes later, I had difficulty herding them in.

  After we’d formed a circle in our outdoor cove, I held up the SoulCards and waited until I had everyone’s attention. “I’m going to pass this deck around, and when it gets to you, I want you to shuffle it and pick a card, face down. No peeking till I tell you to.”

  I handed the deck to Tessa, who shifted the cards from back to front in an overhand shuffle. She then made her choice and passed the cards on to Codi. Codi repeated the process and handed the deck to Luke. “According to math,” he said, “you’d have to overhand shuffle ten thousand times to get a random card distribution. With the ‘riffle method,’ you only have to shuffle—”

  “Not now, Luke,” I said. “Move it along.”

  Jason was next, and with the finesse of a magician, he bowed halves of the deck and got the cards falling and interlacing so fast, I couldn’t keep track. He gave Luke a high-five before making his random selection and passing the rest on. Ethan declined to shuffle, probably figuring Jason’s masterful card redistribution need not be repeated. Instead, he took a deep breath and drew from the collection. Shawn, the last member of the circle, shot me a look I could only define as wary while shuffling and making his pick.

  “Your energy is powerful but undefined,” I said once everyone held a SoulCard, “and you need to learn to control it at all times.”

  Shawn exchanged a glance with Jason before focusing on his hands.

  “Dr. Matt believes we can use this energy in a group situation to uplift others, and since you communicate telepathically more easily than most people do with words, today you’ll do just that.”

  Silence. Even the birds and late afternoon breeze drew into it and took up residence there. Codi pressed her face into her coat sleeve. The remaining Indigos sat in rigid expectation, their reluctance a jet of cold air. A chill settled over me like a netting of ice, but I wouldn’t back down now. I was about to carry out not only what I’d been hired to do but was destined to do. I sensed it in my ice-cold bones. “Think of an issue in life you’d like to get in touch with, then flip over your card.” I wrapped my arms over my chest to quell my trembling. “Don’t think too hard about the picture’s meaning. Just pick a theme or pattern it presents and how it relates to the issue you’re exploring.”

  I stopped talking, not only to allow the kids time to follow my instructions but also to pull myself together. The shaking had grown so intense that my insides hurt. I feared what I might learn about these kids—and about myself. That I was a coward, for instance. And the reason I always buckled under authority was because I didn’t have the stomach to take life head on or deal with the disillusionment of failure in case I chose wrong. Help me, Maya, help me, Mother, wherever you are.

  Six intelligent but insecure Indigos looked at me through narrowed eyes, puffing out cloudy bursts of air like chain smokers.

  “Look at the images on your cards and receive their messages from a knowing beyond your consciousness.” I pulled a card out of the deck and before looking at it said, “Quiet your mind. Open to the stillness.” I flipped the card and felt a rush of relief. It showed seven figures locked arm in arm, with serene facial expressions.

  Seven?

  A jolt zipped up my spine. Who’d been excluded? Angelina, or me?

  By this time, I was a trembling mess. In contrast, my students appeared calm and in control. “Okay, now we’ll share what our pictures bring to mind.” I expected a string of complaints, but not a word or gesture to clue me in to what they were thinking or feeling. “You can start with ‘Once upon a time,’ if you like, as long as some kind of story emerges. Let your picture speak. Does it present a question? Does it offer a gift?”

  While all six students waited for further instruction, I sensed myself drifting into my own private space. Tessa took my hand and warmth seeped into my veins as if her blood were transfusing into mine. God, how she reminded me of Maya. I closed my eyes and the netting of ice melted.

  I’ll start, Ms. V.

  I opened my eyes and smiled. Jason was communicating telepathically. He held up a card showing a figure crouched next to a bare tree. Branches twisted in the wind, debris swirled, and a what appeared to be a coyote peered from its hiding place nearby. When my father comes into my room, the air shifts and the walls close in on me. I hold my breath and wait, the way birds do before a storm, afraid to move, not wanting to set things off. Vibrations build up around me like an ocean of energy to the point where I can hardly stand or breathe. And when my father talks to me, I don’t answer, and he gets mad.

  Is that why you steal people’s energy? Codi cut in.

  Sometimes I borrow it.

  Use your own!

  Sometimes he shares, Tessa said. If it weren’t for him sharing his energy with Ms. Veil in Ms. Goldsberry’s class, we wouldn’t be here today.

  True, though I would have preferred that he’d directed his sharing in a more constructive manner than burning up an overhead light bulb and disrupting class.

  Can you believe Dad wants me to play football? Jason asked. I can’t kick or throw a ball to save my life. I’d get squashed like an October bug during my first game. That is, if I ever made it off the bench. Dad has no talent for sports either, so why put his hopes on me? Does he think I inherited the sport gene from my mom, Miss Universe?

  Our parents don’t mean to hurt us, Shawn added to the silent conversation. It helps to know that.

  Tessa held up a card of a woman with blonde hair, hands stretched in front of her, light streaming from her fingertips like garden hose spray. I have a trick I use when I get too close to someone else’s pain, she said, minus the stutter. I usually don’t talk about it because people think I’m joking or telling a lie. I put my hands where it hurts and concentrate on the heat coming from my fingertips and palms. I relax and absorb the heat, then slowly lift my hands, pulling the heat back out again. The pain follows the heat, attached to my hands like a magnet.

  Codi cut in, with no other direction than intuition that the time was right. Like Tessa, I’m sensitive to other people’s pain to the point I take on the pain myself. You name it, chest pain, stomach pain, cramps in my legs, headaches, nausea. Codi’s SoulCard depicted a woman with her belly on fire. She had her arm draped over a child who, untouched by the flames, was reaching for a bird flying above. When people say something feels like the stab of a knife, they’re right on. Sometimes, when I hold babies, I close my eyes and send them my love, you know, tell them silently that I love them. They get sleepy and hold on to me and don’t let go. I also attract birds. They circle around me, and sometimes I tell them where to land. Mom thinks I do black magic. She thinks I’m in a coven and wander around at night doing bad stuff.

  The person in my card is crying, Ethan said without raising his card. There’s gray light around him and what looks like leaves and twigs. I don’t know what it means, and that’s all I have to say.

  Luke held the face of his SoulCard up close to his glasses and studied it like a lab specimen. Mine’s of a person with the top of his head missing. I hope it doesn’t mean what I think it does or I’m in big trouble. I don’t know if the card holds a gift or a question, but since you’re always telling us that what we think becomes reality, Ms. Veil, I guess I’ll consider it a gift. I just don’t know what the gift is. My parents say I get downloads from the universe because I know stuff I didn’t learn in books or at school. Oh, and I’m gay. Figured I’d throw that in for Ms. Veil’s sake, since the rest of you already know. No secrets in this class, right? Luke looked at me with a blend of pleading and relief in his eyes. In fact, I’d like to say it out loud. “I’m gay. I’m gay. I’m gay.” He dropped his head and said no more.

  I managed a smile. There was so much about the students I didn’t, nor would ever, know, but at least this was progress. “We accept, support, and love you, Luke. Live as your true self.”

  My turn.

  I twisted tow
ard the voice but saw nothing except for swooshing branches and open sky. All the Indigos, except Shawn, sat perfectly still, eyes closed. Shawn picked up the deck, reshuffled it, and drew out a card of an angel holding a harp. This one’s for Angelina.

  “I’m sorry, Angelina,” Tessa said out loud.

  “Hang in there, girl,” Codi added.

  Luke pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, out of habit, it seemed, because his eyes remained closed. “Tell the doctor to look into positive thinking and how it acts on brain neurons to—”

  Let her talk! Jason said, the only one, besides Angelina, still using his telepathic powers.

  I love organ music, Angelina said, her voice faint, as though our mental dials weren’t set to the right frequency. So, I like eleven o’clock Mass at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in San Jose with the traditional choir and organist. It isn’t torture for me like for other kids. Sometimes I lift out of my body and touch God. I don’t like the drums and guitars played during other Masses. They hurt too much. Mom says my heart changes rhythm with loud music and it causes me pain. Anyway, there’s nothing to be sorry about, Tessa. You cured me. If only I could convince Mom and Dad…

  I willed Angelina to say more, to explain what was happening, why she wasn’t back in school. I wanted a plot, a theme, a happy ending to her story. Then I realized, her story wasn’t a box office hit full of action and climatic endings, but the story between; just as meaningful and exciting, if not more so, than the ones played out on a stage or Hollywood movie set.

  We walked back to the classroom in silence, and in silence the students strapped on their backpacks and left for home. What this exercise had accomplished or where it might lead was uncertain, but at least the students had had their say and a chance to uplift one another; if only through their undivided attention.

  ***

  Two days later marked the first day of spring, a full year since I’d entered the office of my psychologist, Dr. Tony Mendez, believing I’d lost my mind. How things had changed since then. Another two days until Spring Break, aka Easter vacation, a time of rebirth and regeneration, of resurrection into new life—of becoming. Yet I wasn’t prepared for the students’ enthusiasm when they entered class that day. I could have left the room for all it mattered. I was no more than a fly on the wall.

  “I’m going to set up an information booth about marijuana and inhalants at Spring Faire,” Luke announced. “And charge a couple of books for buttons with slogans like ‘Grass and gas, not a laughing matter.’ Then donate the profits for a special program here at school, maybe a drop-in center for troubled kids.”

  “Where they can escape their parents for a while,” Codi said, passing her hand over the votive candle nearest her on the table.

  “And we can be there for them like brothers and sisters,” Luke said. His red hair wasn’t spiked today but trimmed and combed into a soft, tousled style.

  “Or friends,” Tessa added.

  Jason was digging into his backpack as usual, looking for his phantom pencil, no doubt. “I’ll do a booth on cosmology and sell stardust for a buck. Pop will help me… If I ask.”

  “Where will you get stardust?” Cody wanted to know, while dripping candle wax onto a sheet of lined paper. “You could get slapped with a lawsuit for fraud.”

  “If you’d been paying attention at the Lick Observatory, you’d know,” Jason said.

  Codi rolled her eyes. “Like I really care.”

  The prospect of these kids taking on projects for Spring Faire with only two weeks to prepare worried me, but since thinking positive and expressing themselves was what I’d been encouraging them to do for the past eight weeks, there was little I could say or do to stop them.

  “I’ll make fortune cookies and sell them for fifty cents,” Tessa said, her voice high-pitched and stutter-free. “With messages inside. They’ll be upbeat and sound so real, people will believe them. I bet Granny Max will help me get started, and my mom will help, too.”

  “I’ll make miniature Medicine Wheels out of beads and hoops and feathers and stuff,” Codi said. Apparently, she’d forgotten about the votive candle, saving it from further abuse. I made a mental note to move it out of her reach first chance I got. “Kids can hang them in their bedrooms or from their backpacks like dream catchers, and I’ll include URLs, where they can learn about the wheel’s symbolism and how it represents the cycle of life. I’ll make twenty of them for the cause and sell them for eight bucks.”

  Ethan looked up from the spot on the table that had absorbed his attention until now, his expression cookie-dough soft, his eyes like melted chocolate. “I’m going to make buffalo totems and put them in those mini zippered bags old people use for their pills. And I’ll put cards inside explaining that the buffalo symbolizes survival. Since the buffalo is our school mascot, I know they’ll sell.”

  “Tell them it’s for good luck,” Jason said. “It’ll work better than explaining” —he glanced at Codi— “what the buffalo symbolizes.”

  Shawn leaned forward in his chair, his fingers working circles on the table. “I want to talk about Indigos, so kids quit thinking we’re weird and work something like tarot cards into the conversation so they don’t get bored.”

  “You mean tell people’s fortunes,” Tessa asked, looking like someone had just stolen her favorite toy. “Like my fortune cookies?”

  “More like explaining what the cards mean. You know, take the mystery out of them, without destroying the mystery.”

  “How will that make any money?” Jason asked.

  Shawn hesitated before answering. “It’s not all about money, but I get what you mean. We’ll need cash for the cause.”

  “You could sell the cards,” Tessa said.

  Shawn’s brow wrinkled. “The best cards, like the Grim Reaper, would sell right away.”

  “How about making your own and laminating them?” I said, overstepping my new role as silent observer. “Make them colorful and mysterious, so their images help trigger the imagination like SoulCards.”

  I hesitated, half expecting Shawn to nix my suggestion. Instead he said, “Cool.”

  The more they planned, the more I worried. What if they were getting in over their heads? Only seven weeks ago, Jason had asked what would happen if this after-school class set them apart. Would their unique approaches to taking part in Spring Faire do just that? Maybe I should put a stop to this before it was too late; then again, maybe not. Before hiring me, Dr. Matt had said, “To see Shawn and kids like him happy again, to hear them ask questions and show enough interest to seek out the answers, would be the culmination of my career.” But when push came to shove, would Dr. Matt again fail to back up his own words?

  Next day the kids put their technological tools to the test, nearly frying them in the process. They brainstormed, argued, researched, and laughed. While I fretted.

  “Thought equals form,” Shawn reminded me while I hovered like a helicopter mom, “and mind manifests form.”

  “Think always and only about what you want,” I said with the enthusiasm of a snail.

  Shawn laughed. “I mean it, Ms. Veil. You’re thinking negatively and that affects things.”

  “I know. But next week is Spring Break, and you’ll be on your own.”

  “No, we won’t,” Jason said. “We’re meeting at my house. Dad already called everyone’s parents for their permission.”

  The news made my stomach burn. They were doing exactly what I’d been encouraging them to do, stepping into their own stories, walking their own paths, but it hurt that I hadn’t been included.

  Shawn looked at me and smiled.

  I squinted at him. “You were supposed to teach me how to keep people out of my head.”

  His smile grew wider. “And deprive myself of access?”

  “You dog,” I said.

  “Brown bear, remember?”

  Symbol of wisdom, insight, introspection, protection. “Yeah, I
remember…Will someone at least give me a call during Spring Break to let me know how things are going?”

  “This will be a lesson in trust, Ms. Veil,” Luke said.

  “You do trust us, don’t you?” Tessa asked.

  I answered from my heart. “You guys are awesome, and I trust you.”

  But it didn’t take long for my monkey brain to kick back in. No sooner had I gotten home that night than I started worrying again. What if this turned into a major fiasco? Not only would I get my ass kicked out of Dodge, but the kids would suffer. “Change sucks,” I said. “Uncertainty sucks. The unknown sucks.” I wanted to crawl back into my cocoon and hide.

  Instead, I packed my bags and headed for the farm.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  THE KIDS RETURNED TO school on April first, heads hanging.

  So much for positive thinking.

  “Um, Ms. Veil…” Luke tilted his head to peer at me like a red-haired, bespectacled Einstein—minus the moustache. “We’ve changed our minds about Spring Fair.”

  I sat on the edge of my desk, the coward in me relieved, the teacher disappointed.

  Tessa put both hands over her mouth and giggled, earning her a jab from Codi. Jason cleared his throat and stretched out his arms like an orchestra conductor, minus the baton. “A one, and a two, and a three…”

  “April fools.”

  I pressed my hand to my chest to keep my heart from leaping out.

  “For a minute there, you looked relieved,” Shawn said, his brown eyes bright as glass beads. “You’re trying to trust us, but we’re only thirteen, compared to… How old are you Ms. V?”

  “Twenty-nine and proud of it.”

  Codi grimaced. “Practically an old maid.”

  “She’s getting married soon,” Tessa announced. “A double wedding. Ms. Mask told me so. Is your fiancé as cute as Ben, Ms. Veil?”

  I rolled my eyes. As cute as Ben? Hell yes. “They’re practically twins.”

  “Will we be invited?” Ethan squinted at me as if memorizing my face for a future lineup. “Your sister said it would be okay with her, if it was okay with you.”