Zen and Gone

by Emily France

  The path of peace. The cessation of duhkha.

  Enlightenment.

  Right View

  Right Thinking

  Right Speech

  Right Action

  Right Livelihood

  Right Effort

  Right Mindfulness

  Right Concentration

  June 30

  36

  OLIVER

  I’m at your door. That’s what his text said.

  All Oliver saw were ellipses in response. Essa was typing back. But no message came through.

  Can I come see you? He tried again.

  More ellipses. More nothing.

  I have something really important to tell you.

  He waited. And waited. She didn’t text back.

  But then she opened the door.

  He’d never even known someone who’d lost a sister before. Or anyone before. He wasn’t sure how to act. What to say.

  “Hi,” he said. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry for my loss and you can come in,” Essa said. “If I hear that one more time, I swear I’m going hit someone.”

  He’d been wondering if she’d look the same after a loss like that. And she did . . . mostly. Her hair was still long and wavy and hanging over her shoulders. She was still wearing the same type of thing: a skirt. A tank top. Her tattoo was still there. She hadn’t had it removed or changed.

  But she was different.

  She seemed smaller somehow. Like someone had chopped her spirit in half, stolen the campfire light from her eyes for good. She took up less space.

  He followed her down the hall and thought she was headed for her room.

  She was headed to Puck’s.

  “I stay in here now,” she said, sitting on the floor. “I feel close to her here, you know? I like to look at her kites at night. I like to think of her flying them, wherever she is. Even though I don’t think of it like . . . a place, really.”

  Oliver sat down across from her, bent his long legs into a pretzel shape that he was getting much better at holding. He didn’t know what to say. So he decided to say that. “I’m sorry I didn’t know what to say. After. I’ve never known anyone who disappeared and—”

  “Died. She died.” Essa said it defiantly. Like she was almost angry. “I’m tired of people stepping around it. Just say it. It’s real. It’s what happened.”

  “I’m sorry.” Oliver blushed. Maybe coming here was a bad idea. Maybe she wasn’t ready. Maybe he was making things worse. “I’m not very good with words.”

  Essa paused. She pulled her hair over one of her shoulders and looked at him, her head cocked to the side. “That’s not why I haven’t talked to you.” She started playing with the hem of her long skirt, pulling the fabric through her fingers over and over again.

  “Oh.” He was at a loss for words. Again. “You probably haven’t wanted to talk to anybody. I’m sure it’s hard—”

  “I thought you hurt her.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you did to her whatever you did to your sister.” Essa stretched out on her back, stared up at the owl kite. “But it wasn’t you. It was some beast.”

  “What are you talking about?” Oliver’s eyes were wide. “What do you mean, what I did to my sister?”

  “Well, you hurt her.” Essa leaned up on her elbows. Glowering. “Didn’t you? Before you left Chicago to come here? That’s why your mom shipped you out here. That’s the stuff you said you needed to get away from.”

  “No.” Oliver spread out on the floor next to her. He looked up at the owl kite, too. “She was having a delusion, Ess. About my dad being some sort of criminal or something.”

  Essa rolled to her side and faced him. “Keep going.”

  “And that night, I just couldn’t go along with it again. I couldn’t do it anymore. And our parents were fighting, and Dad had filed for divorce over the stress of it all . . .” Oliver sighed, remembering. Shook his head. “And I just lost it. I told her that she’s schizophrenic. That none of it was true. That she was paranoid. Delusional. That she was causing the divorce. That it was awful, and then she . . .”

  Oliver paused. Essa was looking at him so intently.

  “She tried to kill herself,” he said. “She ran into the bathroom and took my razor and cut her arms. Her wrists.” He motioned where she cut. “There was blood everywhere. And it was all my fault—”

  “Oh my god.” Essa rested her hand on his arm where he’d said Lilly had cut herself. “That’s what you had to tell me. I’m so sorry I thought you hurt her . . .”

  “That’s not what I came to tell you,” he said. “I talked to my sister. And she said something. About yours.”

  Essa furrowed her brow, looked confused.

  “She saw Puck’s picture. She looked up the story,” he said. “And she had this idea. She thinks the clothes . . . the shreds they found. That maybe—”

  “If you’re going to say something that makes me hope, don’t. Don’t unless—”

  “She thinks Puck dropped the pieces of clothing on purpose. A trail. So we could find her.”

  Oliver couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a tiny light in Essa’s eyes. Not bright like a flame or even a small spark. But there. A tiny, persistent glow, like an ember he just found in a fire he’d thought was out.

  The pieces of clothing were in a cardboard box at the police station. There were a few shreds of Puck’s unicorn T-shirt. A piece of her shorts. Essa clutched them close. She never wanted to let them go.

  “But what now?” she asked. “Do we figure out exactly where they found each one? And go there?”

  “I don’t know,” Oliver said. “Can I see one?”

  Essa carefully handed him a piece of T-shirt. He flipped it over and over in his hands. It was dirty and stained brown. A tiny clump of mud still clung to it. He brushed it off.

  And saw something.

  “Look,” he said. He brushed it again and again, trying to get all the dirt off. “There. See that?”

  Essa peered at the fabric. “Is that a stain or . . . ?”

  “Writing. A number?”

  “One zero eight?”

  “Yes. Essa, yes. A hundred and eight.” Oliver put his hand in the box and pulled out another piece. “It’s on this one, too. A hundred and eight. And an N. What’s one-oh-eight N?”

  Essa shook her head. “But I thought this before. I thought she ran away. But even if she did, they think a mountain lion dragged her . . .”

  “But if she wrote on these clothes and left them on purpose, then they weren’t shredded by a bear or a mountain lion or anything else on four legs. They were shredded by her.”

  “Oh my god.” Essa looked at piece after piece. She found 108 N on nearly all of them.

  “Is it a coordinate? Is this some orienteering thing?”

  108

  108

  108

  “Malas,” Essa said. “There are a hundred and eight beads on a mala. It’s like a Buddhist rosary. Puck wanted our mom to buy her one. And I think Puck left one behind. With a note that said, ‘Sticks and stones.’”

  Oliver’s eyes lit up. “So a hundred and eight. And she’s on foot. Maybe it’s one hundred and eight miles to somewhere?”

  “She can’t be planning to walk a hundred miles.”

  “So steps? It’s a hundred and eight steps. From where she left?”

  The ember in Essa’s eyes grew to a flame. “Maybe that’s where the next clue is. A hundred and eight steps from our old shelter.”

  “So we should—”

  “Call Micah. And get in the Jeep.”

  37

  ESSA

  The search team had recorded the coordinates of their campsite. It was a long hike in, but
Essa, Micah, Oliver, and Anish made it just after three o’clock.

  “Okay,” Anish said, sitting on the ground. “We’re here. And this time, we’ve got shit-tons of food, water, flashlights, and batteries. Plus, I brought ten lighters, five maps, and an emergency beacon.”

  Essa scanned the woods. She hated being here. She hated seeing the aspen trees, the brush, the dead leaves underfoot. She used to love the way the forest smelled. Now it smelled like loss. Like fear. Like death.

  “All we know is one-oh-eight N,” Essa said. She pulled one of the shredded T-shirt pieces out of her hiking pants pocket. “Our shelter was against this tree.” The support beam still leaned against it, a few pine poughs still hung from the bark. So maybe a hundred and eight steps north from here? Or a hundred and eight feet?”

  They measured it in all different ways. They walked 108 Puck-sized steps. 108 Essa-sized steps. 108 Micah-sized steps. They went 108 feet north. Then tried south, east, and west just to be sure. They looked up in the trees at those spots. They dug in the ground.

  Nothing.

  Micah pulled a fire pan out of his pack. “I’m going to build a fire,” he said. “We can sit and stare at it for a while.”

  Essa started scraping along the ground with her hands. She overturned every leaf pile, every stick she could reach. “There has to be something,” she whispered. Tiny beads of sweat started rolling down the back of her neck.

  “Help me collect some pine sap?” Oliver knelt beside her. He asked it softly, gently. “Some kindling?” He held out a hand for Essa and stood up.

  She looked up at him. His hair had gotten longer since he lived in Boulder. He’d gotten sun on his face and arms. “You know, you almost look like an outdoorsy guy,” she said with a sad smile.

  “Maybe I am,” Oliver said, grinning.

  They collected small sticks and twigs for kindling. Oliver scraped off a fresh glob of pine sap from a nearby tree. They stood by Micah as he started to build the fire. Essa thought about that last night with Puck. How Micah had built a fire in the firepan. How Essa had boiled a cup of pine needle tea and burnt her finger.

  But then a painful memory came.

  Puck, hunched over a few feet away, making art on the ground. Puck asking Essa to come see it, and Essa forgetting all about it. Forgetting to go see what might be Puck’s last art project ever.

  Maybe it’s still here.

  Essa walked a few paces away from Micah’s burgeoning fire to look for Puck’s artwork. If it was still there, she wanted to take a picture of it. She could frame it. Hang it on the wall. She looked and looked, and her heart sank. It was gone. Probably washed away in an afternoon storm or dismantled by a curious raccoon.

  But then her foot struck something.

  A stone.

  A small circle of them.

  She’d found it. Puck’s forest artwork on the ground. Two mountains made of sticks with a stone sun above it. One of the mountains was barely recognizable; the sticks had gone askew. But it was Puck’s work to be sure. Mountains and the sun made of sticks and stones.

  Sticks and stones.

  “You guys, come here.” Essa waved them over. “It must be a hundred and eight steps north from this! The clue in Mom’s bathroom was sticks and stones. And look. This is what she made that last night. And told me to be sure to come see it.”

  “Sneaky, Puck. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky,” Micah said, wiping his ash-covered hands on his pants. “I’ll count off the steps. Oliver and Anish—you guys dig. Essa, you take the trees.”

  They followed Micah 108 steps and stopped. Essa scanned the tree cover above them. She narrowed her eyes and studied every branch, every pinecone, every twisted trunk. She was looking for a note, another mala, for anything out of place.

  Talk to me, Pucky. Talk to me.

  “I found it!” Anish was pulling something out of the ground. It was buried and covered with a pile of leaves. He held it up, wiping off the dirt.

  It was a clear cellophane bag.

  From Pure Buds.

  “Edibles?” Micah asked, reading the label.

  Anish opened it up. “Nope. A note.” He slid out a piece of paper and read it. “Puck + Ayden equals . . . a bunch of circles. What the hell?”

  “Let me see.” Essa held the note. “She had a crush? On a boy named Ayden?” She clutched the paper. “She didn’t tell me,” she said softly.

  “I’ve seen that before,” Oliver said, looking over Essa’s shoulder. “When I started at Above the Clouds. It was in the storage room. On the computer desk.”

  “She was planning this at the beginning of the summer? And she knew some boy named Ayden back then?”

  Essa thought back to the night they first met Ronnie. When Puck ran ahead and ate one of the chan seeds he’d held out for her. When Essa discovered that Puck had stolen the Puzzle Kite. When she reminded Puck about sneaking stuff on the computer.

  I made her promise to tell me everything.

  I made her promise.

  “I have no idea what this means,” Essa said. She looked at Micah, a desperate feeling started to build. She felt shaky. Unsteady. “I didn’t really know her like I thought I did.”

  Micah walked over. “Don’t say that. You know her well enough to get this far. Let’s make some dinner. Refuel. We’ll figure it out.”

  “And put up a tent,” Anish piped in. He ran back to the fire and picked up the tent bag. He looked at Essa, his fake smile an obvious attempt to distract her and cheer her up. “Which is carefully tucked and perfectly folded in this handy-dandy tent bag.” He held the large canvas bag, its seams bursting from the pressure of the tent inside. “No brush shelters tonight, yo.”

  “Excellent. Let’s eat and stare at a fire,” Micah continued. He started to walk Essa closer to the flames. “Then we’ll get some sleep. Maybe something will hit us in the morning?”

  Essa nodded and watched as Anish struggled to pull the tent out of its bag. He yanked the drawstring open. Oliver grabbed one end of the bag while Anish started pulling out folded-up poles and canvas.

  The tent bag.

  Essa looked back down at the note. And the cellophane Edi-Sweets bag. “Maybe the note isn’t all there is,” she said slowly.

  “Huh?” Micah asked as he poked at the fire.

  “The bag. From Pure Buds. Maybe it’s a clue, too.”

  Micah’s eyes got wide. “And who would know about something to do with Pure Buds?”

  No, Essa thought. Please, no.

  But she knew the answer.

  “My mother,” she said.

  “Exactamundo. The Queen of Edibles herself.” Micah forced a smile, tried to look upbeat. “This is great. Maybe she’ll know what this is about right away?”

  “Have you met my mother? The woman who is spaced out ninety-nine percent of the time? Who can’t get to work on time? Who never listens? Who pays more attention to weed brands and boyfriends than to her own daughters?”

  “Hey,” Micah said, dropping another stick on the fire, “if it’s up to me, I’m going to choose to be optimistic.”

  Essa sighed. “But if it’s up to my mother, I can’t be.”

  Essa’s mom was in bed. A lumpy mound under her purple velvet bedspread.

  “Mom.” Essa nudged her shoulder. Clicked on her mother’s bedside lamp. They’d driven all the way from the wilderness. It was the middle of the night.

  “What time is it?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Her mother didn’t respond. Essa put her bag down and stared at the ratty carpet. She got down on all fours and peered underneath, just to make sure Micah hadn’t missed anything. Another box. Another note. Another . . . something.

  “What are you doing?” Her mother’s head was hanging over the side of the bed as she stared at her daughter, blinking in the bright light of
her bedside lamp.

  There wasn’t anything under the bed. Except Ronnie’s boxer shorts.

  “I’m trying to ignore Ronnie’s disgusting boxer shorts and—”

  “They’re under there?” Her mother huffed. “That’s all the bastard left.”

  Essa paused and looked up at her mom. The disappointment on her mother’s face made it clear: Ronnie had taken off.

  “Said he couldn’t handle everything. With Puck,” her mom said. “That there was bad energy.” She ran a hand over her face, like she was trying to wipe away her exhaustion. She shook her head. “But why are you looking under there in the first place?”

  Essa put her head close to the floor again, scanning the darkness and the dust bunnies under the bed, willing something to be there. There wasn’t. She sat up. “I was looking for what Puck might have left behind.”

  With that, Essa’s mom pulled the covers back over her head, like a heavy lead blanket during an X-ray, as if the purple velvet could stop any harm from coming through.

  “Mom.” Her mother didn’t stir. Essa sat back on her heels, reached up, and slowly pulled up the covers. Their eyes locked. Essa took a breath.

  Tell her.

  “I think she could be alive.”

  Her mother’s eyes widened. Like her velvet shield had failed her, like it hadn’t managed to keep the danger on the outside. “Essa, you’ve got to stop. If she ran, she didn’t make it, honey. She didn’t—”

  “A mountain lion didn’t shred her clothes. She did.”

  Her mother sat up. She was wearing a new necklace. A long gold chain with an open locket. Puck’s picture. “What do you mean, she shredded them?”

  “She wrote a message on each piece of fabric. And dropped them in the woods like breadcrumbs.” Essa stared at her sister’s picture. At the intelligence in her eyes. She wondered what other mysteries lay behind them. Other boys she’d had crushes on. Past runaway plans that maybe she’d never acted on. More ideas for treasure hunts that lead to her. “They led us to this.” Essa reached in her bag and pulled out the Edi-Sweets package from Pure Buds that Anish had unearthed. She pulled out the note. “‘Puck plus Ayden equals circles.’” She locked eyes with her mom. “Does any of this mean anything to you? The note? The bag? I’m thinking she left this clue for you. That maybe you’d understand.”