by Emily France
“I’m so glad you’re home.” Aunt Sophie clutched him like he’d been the one missing and was now found. It was already nine o’clock at night; he’d been gone all day in the mountains. He and Micah had stayed at the ranger station, handing out cups of water and snacks to the search volunteers. Dogs had picked up Puck’s scent about a mile from camp, but lost it again at a creek.
Now, in Sophie’s living room, he let himself be held, thankful to be out of the mountains, away from the frenzy of the search, back into thicker air that didn’t make his lungs ache.
Finally he pulled away, peeled off his shoes, and dropped them by the door. He dragged one of the giant Dinner Pillows into the middle of the living room floor and crawled onto the carpet. Sophie gave him a bowl of soup and a giant cup of water. The soup was full of things he never ate: tofu, chickpeas, lemongrass. It smelled like a car air freshener.
And it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.
He drained the bowl and rested his head on the pillow. Closed his eyes. Sophie crawled onto the floor beside him. “Still no news?” she asked softly. He shook his head.
“They lost her scent by a creek. That’s all they have.” Oliver took a deep breath. Remembering. “We woke up, and she was just . . . gone.”
Sophie slid another pillow into the center of the room and rested her head next to his. “How terrifying to be lost up there. Alone.”
Oliver kept his eyes closed, but he could feel Sophie watching him. He could feel her fear.
“So how are you?” she ventured. “Really. On a scale of one to ten.”
“Bad.”
Sophie exhaled. “Bad like Chicago bad? I have a doctor. A really great counselor who could talk to you at a moment’s notice.”
He hated this. How Sophie was watching, looking at him like he had some sort of hidden darkness that might return at any minute. A side he’d been building and hiding his entire life.
He wondered if she was right.
He didn’t answer her question.
“Have you heard any updates? About Lilly?” he asked.
“No, sweetheart, I haven’t.”
Oliver opened his eyes. Sophie’s little altar was against the wall in front of them. The sitting Buddha statue. The single flower in a vase. The framed saying, All we want is to wake up.
“What’s it mean, anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t know what it all means. I don’t know why all of this is happening to you,” Sophie said. “And I don’t know why a little girl would follow you guys like that and just disappear in the woods—”
“No,” Oliver said. “I don’t mean about Puck. I mean the sign. All we want is to wake up. What does it mean?”
Sophie looked at her altar. She paused for what seemed like a long, long time. “Well,” she said finally. “It’s hard to put into words. Everything in Zen is like that. When you try to explain it, you fall far, far short.”
Oliver studied the Buddha statue’s smile. It was sly. A little mysterious. And for some reason mesmerizing. Even though Oliver’s body hurt all over from the day, even though his mind ached with memories from that night—the brush shelter, the darkness, the cold—he liked looking at Buddha’s smile. He didn’t want to stop. Oliver looked at the single flower in the vase. It made him think of the koan the Zen priest mentioned. About Buddha twirling a flower and his student just smiling, understanding something that none of the others did. “Give it a try.”
“Okay,” Sophie said slowly. She stared at the ceiling, searching for words. “Buddha taught that one of the causes of suffering is that we are ignorant about the true nature of reality. We try to hold on, to force life to be constant, stable, comfortable all the time. We think everything is separate from us, that if we try hard enough, we can arrange it all to our liking. And hold it there.” Sophie looked at the Buddha statue. “And that only then, when we finally arrange life to our liking, acquire what we want and get rid of what we don’t, and stick it all in place, we’ll finally be happy.”
“Really?” Oliver turned his head toward his aunt. “That’s kind of depressing. So the upshot is that we’ll just . . . never be happy? Because life is a giant changing clusterfuck?”
Sophie smiled. “No. Just the opposite. That was Buddha’s main concern: suffering. He was called the Great Physician because he wanted to treat deep dissatisfaction with life.”
“But what does that have to do with waking up?”
True the Buddhist turtle chose this moment to emerge from underneath the white sofa. He slowly made his way toward Oliver, one loop of his pink ribbon undone and dragging along the carpet. He blinked his eyes. Slowly.
Up.
Down.
“We have to wake up from our ignorance about reality. We have to realize that in some ways, we tumble from one unsatisfactory experience to the next. Because we’re always running, always thinking, always in the future or the past. Always trying to anesthetize what feels bad, to get what we think will feel good. And it will never stay still. And we suffer, over and over again.”
Sophie stopped talking. She and Oliver sat there in the quiet. He thought about Lilly. About reality. About Essa’s question whether Oliver and Lilly were ever in the same one. Oliver thought about playing pirate ship with Lilly when they were kids, those moments when they were at sail on the same make-believe sea. He thought about her first delusion. The dryer. How he went along with it just to be close to her. So she wouldn’t shut him out. So the distance between her world and his could shorten, if only for a moment.
He thought about that time with Lilly in Chicago, when he told her he didn’t believe her, when he finally told her how he felt. That she was alone in the world she’d created. That her reality wasn’t real.
But maybe his wasn’t, either.
“So.” Oliver looked up at Buddha’s sneaky smile. “What’s the answer?”
“The answer?”
“Happiness. If we’re suffering under these delusions about life, where is it? Where’s happiness?”
Sophie smiled again. She shifted a little closer so her shoulder was touching his. “That was Buddha’s message: It’s available to each of us. Right here. Right now. Moment by moment. Kalpa by kalpa—the smallest possible units of time. If we wake up. And we’re mindful. The sounds. The colors. The breath. If we follow the Eightfold Path.”
She didn’t say any more. They stayed like that for a long time. Sophie’s windows were open, and the night air wafted through her apartment. Oliver just watched it. Watched the invisible breeze dance with the Tibetan prayer flags hanging against the window. The red flag. The blue flag. The yellow. The white. The square of black outside, the warm glow inside. The sound of Sophie’s breath. The sound of True’s scaly feet slowly dragging across the carpet. Oliver’s breath. The pain in his chest. The pain of loving Essa. The pain of the last night with Puck. The pain of being with Lilly. But never being with Lilly.
He stared at the flower in the vase.
What if Lilly went missing like Puck? He thought about Lilly sitting in the broom closet in the facility, telling him about clues in the Chicago Tribune. He thought about her being dragged back to her room by the guard. He thought about talking to her over FaceTime. How sad it was that he’d only see her a few times like that over the summer. How it wasn’t really seeing her at all.
Then he thought about being home in Chicago. Always watching, waiting for her to spin out of control. Monitoring her for the subtle signs that delusions were building in her mind. Pretending to believe whatever she saw in the world, whatever pieces she was putting together.
“I miss Lilly,” he said, still staring at the single flower.
“I know, sweetie,” Sophie said. “I’m so—”
“But I miss her when I’m in Chicago, too.” He kept his gaze on the flower, petal by petal. “She’s not really there. Even when you’re in t
he same room with her. You know?”
The homesick ache he’d been feeling, the guilt over being gone, over leaving her in the facility, wasn’t really homesickness or guilt at all. It was the realization that he didn’t miss Lilly any more out here than he did at home when they were standing in the same room.
A thousand miles or ten feet. How far apart they were didn’t matter.
The distance between them was always the same.
Maybe Lilly was already missing.
Just like Puck.
Gone.
And maybe Oliver had been gone, too.
“Do you know any decent flower shops in Boulder?” he asked, turning toward Sophie again.
“Sure,” she said. “I get a fresh gardenia for the altar every few days. You can have one.”
“Good. Because I’m going to need it.”
June 25
30
ESSA
Puck had been gone almost three days.
Essa closed her eyes. Across the kitchen table, her mother gently wept. Essa recited her gatha:
Fears are clouds drifting by a mountain.
Watch them. Tend to them.
But know
You’re the mountain.
The pain came rushing at her heart from all sides. Like fat black cattle let loose from a pen, panicked, afraid, charging. It had been three days since Essa had last seen Puck, last seen her crouched on the ground by the campfire, arranging sticks into mountains and stones into the sun. Three days since Puck had slept tucked under Essa’s arm, warm against the Mummy-Range cold, the summer-storm damp. Three days since the person Essa loved most in the world was near.
I’m not a mountain. I can’t survive this storm.
She tried another one:
Breathing in, I know my breath is the wheel of the ship.
Breathing out, I know the storm will pass.
She brought her attention to her breath, forced it there like some unruly child. She realized her breath was coming in short, fast bursts. It wasn’t even filling her lungs. Not really. She realized how shallow it was.
She realized she was crying.
This storm is going to kill me.
I’m going to go under.
She tried another one:
Escape doesn’t work. It doesn’t cure duhkha.
Stay in this moment. Present moment.
Her mother’s cries grew louder. The light above the kitchen table had never seemed so cold, so stark. Had it always been that harsh? That bright? Had the green of the cabinets always been so sickening? Had the mismatched and broken tiles on the floor always been so cold against her bare toes?
Pain and fear rose up behind Essa, like giant mountains suddenly pushed up from the earth. She could almost hear the great groan of an earthquake, the plates moving underneath her.
This storm is going to kill me.
The last gatha. Again:
Escape doesn’t work. It doesn’t cure duhkha.
Stay in this moment. Present moment.
And one last thought:
Bullshit.
June 26
31
ESSA
“It’s day four.” Essa stood on Micah’s front stoop. She glanced down at the reclining Buddha statue by the door. She eyed his smile.
Don’t even.
“I know,” Micah said. His deep brown eyes looked bottomless. Scared.
“It’s going to kill me. The waiting.”
Micah stepped outside and looked up. Essa looked up, too, as if news of Puck would fall from the sky. Like she could catch it in her hands. Like this would all be over. Just like that. A streak of good news racing across the night. A shooting star.
“I keep trying to think of something philosophical to say,” Micah said, keeping his eyes on the sky. “I’ve been reading my books all night. There’s nothing. Plato. Aristotle. They’ve got nothing.”
“I’m done with philosophy,” Essa interrupted. “Theology. Done with all of it.”
“Just give me more time. There has to be something wise . . .”
“Wanna share?” Essa reached into her pocket and pulled out a cellophane baggie.
Edi-Sweets. 500-mg THC. 25 Individually infused 10-mg pieces. Keep from children. No resale.
“Essa, I don’t think you should—”
“Oh yes, you should.” It was Skye. Popping up behind Micah, two long braids hanging over her shoulders. “Are those gummy cherries? Yes, please.”
Essa raised her eyebrows.
“We’ve been listening to Dylan albums,” Micah said sheepishly. He eyed the bag of edibles. “Essa, they won’t help. Trust me. They won’t—”
“Yes, they will,” Skye said. “That’s, like, their job.” She sidestepped Micah and took Essa’s hand. She gently led Essa off the porch and into the darkness of Micah’s front yard. There was a giant trampoline just over a small hill, lurking in the darkness like some sort of UFO that had landed there, a black disc of stretchy fabric and springs. “We’ll bounce it away. All of it.”
Essa followed Skye through the hard, half-dying grass. Skye scrambled onto the trampoline and reached a hand out to pull Essa up. Essa lay there, flat on her back, staring up at the stars. Skye jumped a few times beside her, sent Essa’s body shuddering.
“Pull out a few of those cherries,” Skye said. “Being high on a trampoline is the best. It’s so great. You feel like you’re so weightless. It’ll help. It will. About Puck and—”
“Here.” Essa dug in her pocket and handed two gummies to Skye.
“No, no,” Skye warned. She bounced down beside Essa, and rolled over onto her stomach, the trampoline bowing underneath her. “Just eat one. They take a while to kick in. Two can make you loco. That’s when people jump out of windows and shit.”
Essa knew that. She knew everything there was to know about pot and edibles and timing and getting high. She didn’t care. She just wanted the pain to stop.
Skye popped a gummy in her mouth. Essa stared at the lone sugar-coated cherry left in her palm.
“I want to be bouncing when it kicks in,” Skye said, her eyes bright. She stood up and starting jumping. Quick, small hops at first and then they got bigger and higher. Essa joined her, still clutching the gummy in her hand.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
Essa didn’t pay much attention to where she was landing. She didn’t care if she bounced off, landed on the ground, cracked every bone. She just bounced. Higher and higher. Eyes on the sky.
Come home.
Come home.
Come home.
“Come down.” It was Micah. “Let’s walk.”
“Sure,” Skye answered. “But high walking is totally not as good as high jumping. Ha. Get it? High jumping? Isn’t that a thing?”
“Just Essa and me,” Micah said. “We’ll be back.” He helped Essa off the trampoline, and didn’t let go of her hand once she was down. “This way,” he said, leading her back toward his house.
They walked along a garden path to a picnic table beneath the kitchen window. Essa watched her feet move along the pea-sized gravel, listened to the crunch of it beneath her. It made her think about running through the woods, searching for Puck. Churning her legs as hard as they would go, leaves and brush flying up in her wake. Micah climbed on top of the table. He craned his neck, trying to see into his kitchen.
“She’s not in there,” he said.
“Who?”
“You’ll see. Just give it a minute.”
Essa climbed onto the tabletop and sat next to Micah.
“It’s not you, you know,” he said.
“What? What’s not me?”
“Weed. Checking out. Running. What would Puck—”
“Please,” E
ssa said. “Don’t say her name.”
“You think it’s going to be a break,” he said. “From how it all feels. From reality. You think it’s just going to hit the pause button, you know? Just some relief. And as long as you don’t smoke it as much as your mom does, like as long as you don’t go crazy with it, it’ll help. Right?”
Essa nodded. Closed her eyes as teardrops slid down her cheeks. She thought of how disappointed Puck would be. How ashamed.
“It doesn’t help, Ess,” Micah said. “I smoke and I’m all high and I’m hamming it up like I’m having the best time in the world.” He looked up at the sky again. “But I’m not. The shit is still there. Sometimes getting high makes it worse. Makes me feel like it’s going to eat me alive. Like it’s working a hole in my heart. Like my chest will explode. Or let’s say I have some awesome high. Sometimes I do. But after it wears off, it’s still there. But worse somehow. Like while I was gone, the pain was doing push-ups—”
“Wait,” Essa said. “The pain? You mean about Puck? You’ve been smoking way before she went missing, Micah—”
“There,” Micah said, pointing in the kitchen window. “There she is.”
Essa turned on the weathered wooden tabletop, got on her knees so she could see inside. Her breath hitched in her chest. Her throat knitted tight.
Moving around the kitchen was Micah’s mom. His beautiful Thai mother with her graceful arms reaching to pull a coffee mug out of a cabinet. She had on her signature cherry-red lipstick, the gold bracelets she was never without.
But something wasn’t right.
Her arms were too thin, almost reedy, like Essa could see the bones and muscles and tendons under her skin. And her thick jet-black hair was hidden, wrapped up in a scarf. Not a strand of it peeking out.
“I smoke because of that.”
Essa furrowed her brow, confused. “I don’t understand—”
“She has breast cancer, Ess,” Micah said. “She’s on chemo. She’s got medical weed to help with how sick it makes her. And don’t judge that, okay? It’s not all bad. Not everybody’s an addict like your mom . . .”