by Emily France
A look of worry passed across her face. “I’m not sure you’d like it.”
“Oh.”
“But I mean, of course you can come.” It wasn’t convincing.
“No. It’s cool. I get it. It’s okay.”
Essa didn’t turn to walk away. She didn’t step back. Oliver worried this was his last chance to lean in, to touch her face, to kiss her. The pull was so strong, as if he did it, all the world would right itself. Every problem, every trouble, every bad memory, would slip into the night and be carried away by the dry Boulder mountain breeze.
“Night,” she said. And turned to go.
Oliver watched her walk away, wondering if he’d imagined that she’d leaned in before. That it felt like she might kiss him.
But she doesn’t date.
Her baggy pants billowed in the breeze as she walked farther and farther away. Her butterfly hair clip blinked under the streetlights. They were only fifty feet apart. It had only been a few minutes since they stood under those tall trees, beside those wildflowers.
He didn’t care.
He missed her already.
June 16
16
OLIVER
I have my cell.
That was what the text said. Oliver squinted at his phone. He’d been sound asleep, having a nightmare. He was locked in Micah’s Jeep, and it was headed straight for the edge of a cliff. No one was in the driver’s seat, but the car was speeding, driving itself somehow. He looked out the window and saw Essa dancing by a bonfire, surrounded by people from Boulder High. They were all watching her, mesmerized by the arch of her back and the curve of her legs as she moved in the firelight. He recognized Anish and that stoner girl Skye in the crowd. No one could see him, though, trapped in the speeding car. Or if they could, they didn’t seem to care. The Jeep’s tires reached the edge, and the car started to pitch down a thousand-foot drop—
The text had woken him up.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at the screen again. Formulated a response.
Obviously. Bc you’re texting me on it, he typed.
I stole it back from Fitzy.
Oliver sighed, his brain kicking into gear, his thumbs flying across the cell screen. You’re not supposed to have your phone.
Not supposed to talk to you, either.
True.
Oliver’s thumbs stopped. He didn’t have an answer to that one.
He looked out his bedroom window at the Flatiron Mountains. They were coated in a soft pink glow as the sun rose, chasing away a low-hanging fog from the jagged granite. Alpenglow. That’s what Sophie called it. The way the mountains lit up in the sunrise. It was only six in the morning.
His phone jingled again, and he looked back at the screen. It wasn’t a text this time. Now she was inviting him to a FaceTime call. He didn’t know if he should take it. He didn’t think about it very long. He answered. A little wheel spun at the top of the screen.
Connecting . . .
There she was. Her face filling his phone. Her long brown hair tangled and tumbling down to her waist. Her blue eyes bright and smoky, her skin pale and perfect, almost as white as the wall behind her. He thought she looked like some sort of fairy. Like her giant glittery wings were tucked just behind her, out of sight. That they might unfurl at any moment and beat their magic into the air. Sometimes it was so clear to him that she wasn’t from earth, that she’d come from some other mythical world and desperately needed to get out of this dull, cold real one. She was dying here.
Lilly.
“They think I’m ready to get out of here,” she said.
He wanted it to be true. He peered at the screen, into her eyes. Sometimes he could tell just by looking. They seemed flat, calm. Like maybe the medicine was working. Like maybe it had closed the door to whatever world she’d been in the last time he saw her. Like maybe it had brought her to this one.
“They said I shouldn’t even be here in the first place,” she added.
The little bit of hope that had risen in his throat turned sour. Of course she should’ve been hospitalized. After what happened last time, no doctor would tell her she shouldn’t be. She was lying. Or delusional.
“Tell me,” Oliver said. It’s what he always said. It was code between brother and sister. A request for her to let her guard down, to open up, to tell him what was actually going through her mind instead of the song and dance she always gave their parents and her psychiatrists. He hoped she didn’t ask him any questions, that her mind was moving too fast to think about how life was going in Boulder. He wondered what he’d say if she did ask. He’d tell her it had been almost a week since he’d seen Essa. That their shifts hadn’t overlapped in the kite store. That she hadn’t invited him to any more bonfire parties or Cheba Hut meals or meditation sessions in the Zendo. He would tell her he hated being out here, that he wanted to come home, that Boulder was turning out to be super boring.
He’d be lying, too.
“Why would I be thinking anything special?” Lilly opened her eyes wide, faking shock. He saw a hint of resentment scurry across her face.
It reminded him of her Angry Pirate Face. Their Chicago townhouse had large stone walls on either side of the driveway. When they were kids, one side was Lilly’s pirate ship and the other was Oliver’s. Of course she took the side that had the better stones; Oliver’s ship was crumbling and moss-covered. They would march up and down the walls for hours, barking orders at imaginary crew members, staving off invented mutinies. He could still see Lilly’s long hair flying behind her as she marched a sailor off the gangplank. He could still hear her voice as she called over to his ship for more supplies. They’d made up the entire world, but at least they were afloat on the same ocean, at sail on the same sea.
When her delusions started in her teens, all that changed. They weren’t on the same anything.
“I can’t believe what you did to me,” she said now, her face still dim on Oliver’s iPhone. She recoiled a little when she said it, looked away from the screen. Like an animal suddenly afraid, trying to make herself smaller so she wouldn’t get hurt. Again.
“I’m sorry, Lil. I lost it that night.”
“Whatever. Did you see all that blood?”
The scene from the last night with Lilly back in Chicago flashed in his mind. Like a horror film. Flickering. The way his head had pounded with rage. The way he’d clenched his fists. The screaming. “I’ll believe you, Lilly. I will. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You won’t believe me.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “I just wish I’d died that night. Next to you.” Oliver imagined her glittering fairy wings turning dull, drying out, cracking and falling to dust.
There is no torture like mental torture. And I can’t help her.
“Don’t say that. It’ll get better. It will.” He knew he didn’t sound convincing. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“He’s coming—” A door behind Lilly opened and flooded her room with light. Except it wasn’t her room at all. It was a closet. Now Oliver could see brooms and cleaning supplies stacked on the wall to the right.
“Found you.” It was Fitzy, the hulking night guard at the psych hospital who Lilly knew all too well. “Time to go.”
“Five more minutes,” Lilly pleaded.
“Nope.”
Oliver saw Fitzy’s large hand come down over the screen as he took her phone back. He could hear Lilly’s voice in a hiss close to the receiver.
“The crossword answer in the Trib. Twenty-four down,” she said. She was frantically trying to get a message to Oliver before Fitzy ended the call. “Felony. I’m right, Oliver—”
The call went dead. His screen went black.
He held the phone in his hand for a few minutes more. He stared at it as if she might appear again at any moment. Sane. Fixed. The Lilly he knew as a ki
d. An old familiar ache saturated his chest, an urge to find an answer, a cure. But they’d been to the best psychiatric hospitals in the country, talked to psychologists of every stripe, tried every medicine twice over.
Schizophrenia.
It would be better sometimes. And then it would be worse. And it would tumble over and over itself like that most likely for the rest of her life. It was a thing to be managed, to be suffered, to be endured. There would be bright spots; there would be life for her. But it would never be constant; it would never stand still.
He thought of the word the Zen priest used.
Groundless.
He tapped the screen of his phone and knew who he wanted to text.
Essa.
He had this feeling that maybe somehow she had an answer he hadn’t thought of. Or that maybe one of those people in the Zendo would know what to do. Maybe the Zen priest. Maybe he’d understand somehow.
It was only six-thirty.
Essa would probably want nothing to do with him if she knew how messed up his life really was. How messed up his family was. How messed up he was. She already hadn’t texted him in a week. He should probably give up and just go back to Chicago.
He looked back at his phone.
He’d text her after noon.
17
ESSA
“There are a hundred and eight beads on a mala.” Puck tugged on her mother’s shirt. “Do you know what those are? Malas?”
“Yeah, honey.” Her mom was staring in the window of a llama wool shop. “Do you think that vest is cool?” She looked over at Essa. “Or no?”
“A wool vest?” Essa asked. She eyed the burnt orange llama wool and the large wooden buttons. “Not cool.”
Not that they could afford anything made of llama wool, anyway. But it was a Friday. Essa’s mom didn’t have to work at Pure Buds; Essa didn’t have a shift at Above the Clouds. So they’d decided to go “shopping” on Pearl Street. They did this every now and then, walking past the shops, acting like they could buy anything they wanted. Getting in heated debates about which clothes to buy, which pieces of art to acquire. It was a crunchy town, but not a cheap one. These shopping trips were pure conjecture.
“Maybe if it was in a different color? Like maroon? And it was fall?” her mom asked.
Essa eyed it again. Cocked her head to the side. “Nope. Not even in maroon. Not even in November.”
“Moooom.” Puck tugged at her mother’s shirt again. “I want a mala. From over there.” Puck pointed at a store on the other side of Pearl Street. Above the large shop window was the store’s name, painted in thick golden letters:
old tibet
spiritual gift shop
The shelves in the store’s front window were slightly bowed and sagging from the weight of everything they held. There were golden singing bowls of all shapes and sizes, each sitting on a multicolored pillow. Wooden racks held countless malas with fluffy tassels at their ends. The beaded necklaces gleamed in the sunlight. Some beads were wooden, like honey-colored sandalwood or a dark chocolate rosewood. Others were made of gemstones: jungle green jade, turquoise amazonite, rich blue lapis lazuli. There were intricately carved boxes of incense, brass lamps, embroidered wall hangings. Dotted throughout were small Buddha statues in all positions. Sitting Buddhas, laughing Buddhas, reclining Buddhas. Buddha with his hands in different mudras, or positions. Dhyana mudra, hands resting on one another, thumbs gently touching. Bhumisparsha mudra, a hand pointing toward the earth. A teaching mudra, Vitarka, with the tips of thumbs and index fingers lightly touching.
Puck took her mother’s hand in hers and pulled her in front of the Tibetan shop. “There,” she said, pointing to a mala with teal-and-white beads and a brown tassel. “I want those. They’re amazonite.”
“Amazonite? Did you make that up?” Her mother squinted at the string of beads. “Is that a real stone?”
“Yep. See how the turquoise is kind of swirled with white and yellow? So awesome.”
Her mother wrinkled her brow and looked for a price tag. “Seventy dollars? What are mala beads again? They better be magic for that price.”
Puck looked at Essa and rolled her eyes. “See, Essa? She never listens. Plus, we’re supposed to be pretend shopping anyway.”
“Go easy,” Essa said. “Just tell her what they are.”
“I’ve told her three times,” Puck whined. She turned to her mom. “They’re used by several religions. In Buddhism, some sects use them to count mantras, to meditate. In others, they’re not as important. It depends. Zen is different from Tibetan Buddhism. Anyway, there are a hundred and eight beads because—”
“Ooh, I love that embroidery of the tree. We could hang that in the living room. Behind the couch?” Her mother looked at Essa for confirmation.
“Um, no,” Essa said. “These aren’t really decorations; they have meaning. Like, religious significance. That’s the bodhi tree. Where Buddha attained enlightenment.”
“Ficus religiosa, to be precise.” Puck held one finger in the air to make her point. Essa smiled; her sister looked like a little professor badly in need of a hairbrush.
“I grew up in Boulder, remember?” their mother said. “It’s practically a Buddhist town. I’ve seen all this stuff for years. I know about it. Sort of . . .”
“So there are lots of explanations for the hundred and eight beads,” Puck said, more urgently now. “See?” She pointed to a yellowed piece of paper that was taped inside the store window. It listed the many meanings of the number 108, everything from its significance in Vedic mathematics, to Tantric systems of physiology, to the claim that there are 108 human feelings.
Essa’s mom squinted to read it. “The first manned spaceflight lasted a hundred and eight minutes? And there are a hundred and eight stitches in a baseball? What the hell does that have to do with Buddhism?”
Essa stared at the amazonite beads. Each one was exactly the same size; they looped around the display, on and on, bead after bead, seemingly endless.
“My favorite explanation is that the beads represent our desires,” Essa said, still gazing at a string of them. “They remind us that if you fulfill one desire, another is right behind it to take its place. We always think if we get what we want, we’ll be happy. But they’re inexhaustible, the things we want. And we know it. At some level we know that it will never be enough.”
Experience is unsatisfactory.
“That’s duhkha,” Puck chimed in. “And the way to make it stop is to follow Buddha’s Eightfold Path.”
“What if we put this Buddha in the garden?” Their mother was pointing at a small stone statue. It was a laughing Buddha with a generous belly. “I’ve seen these in people’s yards. They look cool. Or maybe this wheel?”
“That’s the wheel of the Dharma, Mom. Each spoke represents a step on the Eightfold Path. Steps like Right Effort, Right Mindfulness . . .” Puck didn’t finish. It was obvious their mother wasn’t listening and Puck was giving up. She shook her head in apparent disgust. “I don’t even want to go in anymore.” She jogged ahead of Essa and her mom.
“Stay close!” Essa called. Puck was already ducking and weaving through the crowd, in and out of the dappled sunshine coming through the trees on Pearl. Essa’s eyes locked on her sister’s blonde hair, tracking the flashes of gold like a swimmer watching a coin tumble through the water on its way to being lost in the depths.
“Just let her sulk,” her mother said as she wrapped her dreadlocks in a loose rubber band. Her ponytail was as thick as Essa’s forearm. “I just said I liked the tree stitchery. What’s she so pissed about?”
Essa kept her eyes on her sister and contemplated a response to her mother’s question. “Most likely? Cultural appropriation and the commodification of a religion. But that’s just a guess.”
“Huh?”
Essa wanted to explain. H
ow Zen centers started cropping up in California in the 1960s and 70s, popularized by Beat poets and a countercultural “hippie” fascination with meditation and Eastern religions. How some people said Buddhism had been Americanized and segregated by race in many communities. Or commodified and obscured by the mindfulness movement. But she couldn’t say any of that because she had to go. Puck had disappeared in the crowd outside the Boulder Cafe.
“Gotta catch Puck,” Essa said as she took off after her sister.
The Boulder Cafe sat in the grand curved corner of a large building on Pearl Street. It resembled a large slice of yellow cake with fluffy white icing on top. It was three stories of yellow brick, and at the very top just under the eaves, a giant white wooden mural of flowers and garlands wrapped around the entire structure. Above the antique wooden door hung a glass lantern that gently creaked in the nearly constant Boulder summer breeze. The line to get in to the café stretched around the corner and spilled onto the brick plaza of Pearl. It had been a popular city landmark for over twenty years.
Puck wriggled her way through the snaking line and disappeared inside. Essa tried to follow her, but being considerably larger than her tiny, elflike little sister, she had a much harder time getting past the crowd. She bumped into a tall tourist dressed completely in black who was holding a cup of Starbucks coffee.
“Quelle folie!” the woman shouted as her coffee spilled on her shirt. Essa had no idea what the woman had said, but guessed it was French and not a compliment.
“Sorry,” Essa said. “Just trying to find my sister. She’s inside.”
The French woman did not look amused. Essa kept moving, pushing past several couples, a few more tourist types, and then found herself snagged in a large group of girls her age who were dressed in matching Western wear. They all wore white cowboy hats with sparkly bands, purple vests, and bolo ties. Essa knew immediately who they were.
Westernaires.