“Where was I going with this…?” Granny Max tapped her temple. “Forgive me for a brief mental lapse. Oh yeah, here we go… The messages that need to come through to us have a passageway, and sometimes it takes an enemy to break it open. In my case, that enemy is cancer. And you can be darn sure I’ll find meaning in the teachable moments ahead. Otherwise, I refuse to give the situation more power. As the saying goes, ‘What we resist persists.’ The students at West Coast will remain my number one priority with every precious breath left to me. There’s no finish line, Marjorie. Many of the changes that may or may not take place as a result of my teaching will do so after my death. Until then, I hope to touch as many students as I can.”
“It’s the ultimate sacrifice,” I said.
“Sacrifice? Are you kidding? What I do is no sacrifice. The students are my window to the sacred, and when the window swings open, love rushes in.”
Chapter Forty-eight
MOTHER AND I WALKED from my house to the Church of the Nativity for Sunday Mass as we had thirteen and a half months ago. This time, however, it was at my suggestion not hers, a Mother’s Day gift but so much more. After my conversation with Granny Max on Thursday, I wanted to reopen to the church’s message from the perspective of an adult rather than a child. But as we neared the Gothic Revival building with its spired steeple ablaze in sunlight—so white, so pure it appeared illuminated from within—I feared the fabric of my religiosity had grown so thin I’d never again experience the sense of community, solidarity, and unity I once did.
My mother—normally so rigid and controlling—took my hand as we ascended the brick steps to the church threshold. My heart raced as I recalled my last visit here, the shock of finding my ex-fiancé waiting in the vestibule and my mother’s betrayal in inviting him. Instead, it felt as though I’d been transported to a place as soothing and sacrosanct as Granny Max’s classroom. I dropped Mother’s hand, blessed myself with holy water from the entry font, and headed for the pew next to the Sixth-Station-of-the-Cross. Of the fourteen carvings representing the slow and painful journey from Jesus’s condemnation by Pilate to His crucifixion and burial, the one picturing Veronica wiping the blood and sweat from His face affected me most. Little had I known when I first sighted this plaque, that I had a sister named Veronica, a woman, who like the Veronica of biblical times, would step out of the crowd and offer her help.
As the pipe organ burst into the first, deep notes of “How Great Thou Art,” I knelt and brought my hands together in thanks for Morgan, Joshua, and my soon-to-be van Dyke family; for my adoptive parents, Truus and Gerardo; for my birth family, Antonia, Bob, Veronica, and Maya; and for Granny Max and my seven students at West Coast Middle School.
“You haven’t lost your faith,” my mother whispered from where she knelt next to me. “And that’s the best Mother’s Day gift ever.”
Lost my faith?
If by faith she meant turning off the brain and relying solely on the heart, if she meant squashing reason in favor of emotion, then her definition of faith differed from mine. My understanding of the universe and my place in it, even my concept of God, contrasted with hers and likely with the rest of the congregants currently expressing their devotion. Acceptance of the big bang theory, in my opinion, didn’t exclude me from being a Christian. I saw no contradiction between belief in God and belief in scientific theories regarding the evolution and the expansion of our universe. God and science could, and did, work together.
While I focused on the stained-glass windows that sparkled like translucent marbles, Granny Max’s words merged with those of the choir expressing wonder at all the worlds God’s hands had made. “If science can’t find defeating evidence of a reported event such as the Ascension, then it can’t say one way or another whether it truly happened or is miraculous.” I found comfort in visualizing science and religion as two sides of the same coin, one side representing the realm of the physical, the other the realm of the spiritual, the boundary between signifying the intersection occupied by my students and me.
The steeple bell rang, announcing Mass was about to begin, and my thoughts continued to whirl. Until science came up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, how could it claim to be free of faith? According to Granny Max, quantum physics and its application of mathematics was not only compatible with God’s existence but even made it more likely, by illuminating some of His most creative work. As far as I could tell, religion and science were both founded on faith.
I belong to the religion of love.
My loyalties, my aspirations, and my faith were my own. I squeezed my mother’s hand. “No, I haven’t lost my faith.”
The priest entered, paused in front of the altar, and made the Sign of the Cross. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
I belong to the religion of love; I belong to the religion of love; I belong to the religion of love, I repeated between the hymns and prayers leading to the part of Mass I’d been waiting for: The Homily.
The priest stepped from the altar and opened his commentary with a question that, as far as I could tell, bore no relationship to the day’s scripture readings. “Do you reflect the glory of God out of limitation and fear? Or do you reflect His glory out of love?”
The priest scanned the congregates as if expecting one of us to raise a hand and blurt out an answer. Though I intended to follow the upcoming sermon with the same focused attention I’d offered Granny Max three days before, I, along with the rest of the parishioners, kept my hand down and mouth shut.
Limitation and fear? Hell, yes. Love causes pain. It takes away the freedom to do what I want. Choosing love is illogical, yet… I belong to the religion of love.
“If the answer is fear,” the priest said, “don’t resist it or try to overcome it. Instead, see through it with the eyes of love.”
Was love the only way to get what I wanted? Was it that simple? That hard?
“Be love and act from love in alignment with your faith.”
There it was again, the question of faith.
“Spiritual power comes from faith in a power greater than yourself, a power that can be used for the good of the world.”
That sounded like what we’d been discussing in class. I could hear Tessa now. “So much violence. Can’t we just make the world a better place?”
“You are better than you know and more than you believe.”
Wow. I should share this with my students.
Just as I was getting into what the priest was saying, I mean, really getting it and feeling it, he concluded with, “Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in attendance today. You are the very embodiment of God’s limitless and fearless love.” Then he stepped back onto the altar, the missive of his sermon impressive, its brevity disappointing.
I stood and joined the rest of the congregation in praying the Nicene Creed— “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…” —all reciting the same Christian truths from different perspectives. How could I align this statement of belief with my concept of faith, a faith that was fluid instead of concrete and observable, unsolidified by the mold of tradition? My students and I had experienced, and continued to experience, the impossible. How did God fit into this?
“God is love,” I whispered. The answer science can’t provide.
A nudge to my side. “What did you say?”
I glanced at my mother and smiled. There was so much about her I didn’t and would never know. She, like God, transcended my thoughts.
“I love you,” I said.
Chapter Forty-nine
ON MONDAY, SHAWN—JACK of Diamonds, perceptive, shrewd, original thinker—once again took the floor. I settled behind my desk to listen, which, I’d come to discover, beat trying to figure out everything on my own. He paused near the center of our power circle, the perimeter of which existed only in our minds. “The results of our experiments have so far been
positive. No surprise, right? We pretty much knew all along how they’d turn out. Except for our prayers for Granny Max. Which shouldn’t be considered an experiment, anyway. As she said, her recovery depends on God’s will, not our good intentions. No matter how powerful.”
No one responded to what sounded like the prologue to a one-man discourse by an exceptionally intelligent and insightful thirteen-year-old. Shawn was opening up for the second time in a matter of days, as if the bedrock of his resistance to our united cause had loosened due to our talk about teamwork and using our God-given skills. Maybe his silent opposition had already been prone to dissolution, but my guess was that we’d worn him down with a stream of discussion too large to ignore, yet too insignificant until recently, to take firm hold in the riverbed of his conviction. By assuming center stage, he’d finally been dragged into the flow. The attack of wind-driven twigs and debris against the windows failed to distract us from what he had to say. “My vote is for no more experiments. We need to move on.”
Move on to what? was my first question. The second: Who’ll be in charge?
“We don’t know enough and will never know enough to figure out who we are and what makes us different,” Shawn said. Followed by a pause which the wind filled with distorted street sounds and its continued battering of the windowed wall, as if cautioning us to allow for the opposite of our desired understanding. “Why not just live life instead of trying to explain it? Admit that we all want the same thing. To be safe, to belong, and to matter. Right Ms. Veil?”
I nodded. That about summed it up, especially the part about wanting to matter.
“Maybe, someday, we’ll know what to do with our gifts,” Shawn continued, “but I doubt all these experiments will get us there. Let’s focus on our next step instead of trying to map the whole road.”
Not good enough, was my unvoiced response and, apparently, that of the rest of the students. Our silence was one of resistance as strong, if not stronger, than that of the single-paned windows battling the impact of the wind. Shawn’s sigh hardly registered compared to the tumultuous display outside, but on the Richter scale of inner turmoil, it probably measured a magnitude of six points or higher. “We might not like the way some people treat us,” he said. “But you know what? It depends on the stories they’ve been told. Our stories tell us they’re wrong, even evil, but we’d probably do the same in their shoes. How about we accept that their stories are different from ours and use that as a start in making the world a better place?”
“I don’t follow you,” Codi said, honesty one of her best, and most irritating, traits.
“How do we make the world a better place?” was Tessa’s gentler response.
Shawn glanced at Luke. “By using our combined intentions to actually do some good.”
“How do we know if our intentions are doing any good?” Tessa asked.
“We don’t. But we’ve done enough experiments to know we’re onto something. Guess, it’s just time to believe.”
Codi fingered the skull medallion hanging from the chain around her neck, a chunk of steel so large and heavy it could serve as a hood ornament. “Since we know we’re onto something, I agree, let’s give it a rest.”
“The experiments, but not our intentions,” Shawn said. “We still need lots of practice.”
The medallion slid from Codi’s hand and hit the table with a clang loud enough to make one’s teeth ache. “What for?”
Ethan popped in as if he knew something the rest of us didn’t. “In case we need it.”
For some reason, I shivered.
“We’re still not very good at what we do,” Tessa admitted.
“Actually, that might be for the best,” Luke said, not as upset about Shawn’s suggestion to drop the experiments as I thought he’d be. “It keeps us from accidently blowing something up.” He smiled at Tessa’s startled expression, acknowledging he’d hit his mark. “Like unleashing a genie from a bottle and not being able to put it back.”
“Or opening a pandora’s box,” Jason added.
Tessa’s intake of breath suggested dismay at Jason’s analogy. She glanced at the bracelet she’d worn on her right wrist since Angelina had tossed it to her during our trip to the Lick Observatory. “The box was filled with special gifts from the gods. Pandora got curious, and I don’t blame her. I would’ve opened it too. Then all kinds of nasty stuff came out, and when she shut it, hope got locked inside. It reminds me of us…”
“Pandora gets blamed for everything,” Codi snapped. “Why give her a box full of gifts and not let her open it?”
Luke frowned as if regretting his contribution to the conversation, opening his own Pandora’s box. “I’ve read that our intentions can warp the universe in some way.”
“Good God,” Codi said.
“That somewhere else a distortion appears and something…or someone…will push back to restore things to the way they were.”
“I swear, this discussion’s getting spookier and spookier.” Apparently, Codi was in no mood to go where Luke was leading. “How about an early dismissal, Ms. Veil?”
I, too, was having difficulty following the conversation, from no more experiments to practicing our good intentions to unwise interference causing warps in the universe.
“Like the Butterfly Effect,” Luke said, unwilling to let go of a subject once he got started, “the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a twister to touch down in Texas.”
“Like a punishment,” Tessa said, inserting more weirdness into the conversation.
Luke grinned as though delighted to have regained a prominent role in the workings of the classroom. “More like consequences, which can be good and bad. We need to decide once and for all if our gifts were meant to be used or kept hidden.
“Or you could call the Butterfly Effect a form of balancing,” Jason added. Good ol’ Jason. “And then there’s the theory of the Hundredth Monkey. Spread good and other people might start copying our behavior.”
Codi zipped up her backpack as if preparing for a quick escape. “Can we change the subject, puh-leeze? My head is spinning.”
“Why don’t we form a circle and use our intention for world peace?” Tessa suggested.
The skull medallion Codi had been twisting in her hands like a coping tool slammed against her chest with enough force to cause whiplash. “Oh Lord.”
Luke shot Tessa a look that wavered between compassion and exasperation. “How about we start on a smaller scale, like peace in our school?” He paused as if googling his mind for a way to put his suggestion into practice. “Remember, how back in January we had ‘School Violence Awareness Week,’ and no one seemed to be listening? A few assemblies and guest speakers and then all the talk of violence prevention stopped as if it never happened.”
“Okay, then we’ll set an intention to stop school violence,” Tessa said with a spark of determination I hadn’t noticed in her before.
And from that moment and throughout the next five class sessions, my six students had the motivational willpower to kick into what Luke called “Intention Training,” sensitizing themselves to undercurrents lying beyond language and external appearances.
As homework, they applied what they’d practiced in class to their daily lives, tuning into the thoughts and emotions of family and friends, and whenever possible, defusing explosive situations.
“Notice more and judge less” became their catchphrase as they continued to train their brains and supersize their powers. Day after day, their confidence grew.
Until, of course, disaster struck.
Chapter Fifty
IT’S CALLED RUG RAT Rage, this anger epidemic in preteens and teens, where dead-eyed kids beat up siblings and classmates, attack opponents in sports, and yell profanities at anyone who sets them off. Circumventing such rage was one reason Dr. Matt had instigated our after-school class, an antidote to aggression and despair.
On May 22, on
e week before Open House, a young man burst into our classroom, shoving the door with such force it slammed against the book-shelved wall with the boom of a cannon. “You’re evil, the Antichrist,” he screamed at no one in particular. He looked like an avenging angel—an angry, angel-faced innocent. The intruder stood silhouetted inside the entrance with what appeared to be a red-tinted halo. He waved a handgun as if it were a pennant flag instead of a lethal weapon, causing my heart to hit the wall of my chest with the force of a baseball hitting a catcher’s mitt. “You’re promoting paganism, reverting to the primitive.” Though the revolver shook in the teen’s hand, he appeared determined, self-righteous, and secure in his mission. “Mr. Lacoste said you need to be stopped.”
Bits of previous conversations with my students floated up from memory like scrolling text on a brokerage wall: warps in the universe; distortions; push backs; consequences; balancing; punishment. I felt a crawling sensation on my arms, my face, my scalp. Dear God, help us. This is so wrong. Then it struck me. This was Wyatt, the young man I’d given a plus for good behavior on my first day substituting at West Coast. Could he be an Indigo—invisible, ignored, explosive, expressing a messed-up call for help?
“Shut up and put down the gun,” Ethan said, jolting Wyatt’s focus to the kids.
He glared at Ethan. “What’s your problem? I thought we were friends.”
“Me, too,” Ethan said. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Fuck off,” Wyatt said. “You’re one of them. A bunch of hand-picked, spoiled, have-it-alls, living on easy street.” He hesitated on noticing our circular formation. “What’re you doing? Playing ring around the rosy?” He had a powerful grasp on everyone’s attention; I felt the pull. Had our actions drawn him to us like a homing device? Too late to worry about that now.
“Don’t be stupid,” Ethan said.
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