by Amy Joy
Sure enough, as we were preparing ourselves the next day, Dorm Sergeant Garret made an announcement. “Today you’ll have the opportunity to participate in a number of social and recreational activities.” Her voice bellowed over the sound of the girls shuffling in the bathroom and at their bedside. “These activities are a privilege granted to deserving students. If you cannot behave properly at these events, you will join me here for the day. If you choose not to participate in the activities, your options are to spend the day here or in the library. The first activity begins after breakfast.”
I looked at the clock. Half-past seven. How about that? They actually let us sleep in an hour on weekends.
“So what is the activity?” Stevie asked as we gathered for our morning meal.
“I heard we are going outside,” Ruby said.
“For real?” I had almost forgotten there was outdoor space inside the fence.
Robert cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “Well, I may have heard from a certain Dorm Sergeant Kavasic, that there are games.”
Shara set down her fork. “What kind of games?”
“Icebreakers.”
“What’s that?” Stevie asked, scanning the group to see if she was the only clueless one.
I poked at my eggs. We did icebreakers at college orientation. It was more fun than I thought it’d be and I made some friends, but I wasn’t in the mood for it today. “Icebreakers are ‘get to know you’ games.”
“Oh. Well, that should be fun.” Always the optimist. It’s what I liked about Stevie. I watched her glance around the room. A wide grin spread across her face.
“Some people you’d like to get to know?” I asked.
She blushed.
Robert smiled and shook his head.
“Okay, so icebreakers in the morning. Then what? Any more news from your sources, Robert?” I asked.
He grinned. “Nothing yet, but I’m working on it.”
The icebreakers were worse than I expected. Rather than introduce me to new people, they reacquainted me with people I’d known in high school—people I was trying to forget I was in school with again. Not that they were bad people. It’s just that I thought that I’d moved on. Seeing them reminded me: I hadn’t.
Lunch was uneventful, unless you consider tacos with mushy shells appealing. I still hadn’t figured out how others seemed to be enjoying the food when I found most of it repulsive. On the upside, I was losing weight—not that I really needed to. Mostly I survived on chocolate milk and Cheerios. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And I found ways to stash extra Cheerios in my stuff to help when I got hungry between mealtimes—which is inevitable when you’re living off cereal.
At the end of lunch, Fitness Instructor Fratelli stood with a megaphone to direct us to our next activity. “This afternoon has been designated for sports.”
Oh, no. Not that…
“Several games will be played concurrently.”
“Concurrently?” Stevie whispered.
“At the same time,” Robert whispered back.
“If you want to play baseball, meet at the south entrance to the cafeteria.” She pointed to a Sergeant I didn’t recognize, who waved his hand in return. “If you want to play flag football, meet by the north entrance.” Another Sergeant responded as she pointed. “If you want to play volleyball or basketball, meet me on the courts.” She pointed behind her.
Were they serious? Tacos for lunch and sports for the afternoon? It was my own personal hell.
“What are you gonna do, Allie?” Ruby asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing sounds good. Not a sports person, remember? Well, I didn’t hear them mention fencing…”
Ruby smiled. “That’s a shame. I’d like to see the skills you’ve been bragging about.”
“I could kick all your butts,” I said, grinning.
“Come on, Allie. It will be fun,” Stevie said. “And we might get to meet more people.” She glanced around the room again.
“Stevie, Stevie, Stevie…” Robert shook his head.
“What?”
He smiled but continued to shake his head.
“I think I may go back to the dorm,” I said.
“Me too,” Shara added.
“You too?” Stevie looked pained.
“I don’t believe in competition.”
“Fine.” Stevie turned to Robert. “Where are you headed?”
“I’m gonna have to agree with the ladies on this one. This looks like a good time for me to get some studying in.”
“Seriously?” She looked at Ruby. “You’re going to play, right?”
“Of course. I’m thinking volleyball.”
“Me too!”
“Well then, I guess we’ll see you all at dinner,” Ruby said, picking up her tray.
I waved them off. “Enjoy.”
Stevie smiled, grabbed her tray, and followed Ruby out the door.
“Well ladies,” Robert said, giving us a bow, “enjoy your time off.”
“See you at dinner.” I turned to Shara. “So, what do you think you’ll do for the next couple of hours?”
“I was thinking about reading. We could meditate first though, if you want.”
“I’m in. I really don’t have any other plans yet, and I could use to clear my head.” Or fill it with a certain someone… “Think Garret will throw a fit if we are there but not studying?”
“Doubt it. She acts tough, but if you don’t make trouble I’ve noticed she doesn’t seem to care.”
We placed our trays on the conveyer for cleaning and headed up to the dorm.
I grabbed a blanket on the way to Shara’s bunk area. “So, is the only way to meditate to focus on clearing the mind?” I asked as we laid our blankets on the floor.
“No, there are a variety of practices. Some focus on the breath, others on a mantra. The one I have been practicing lately focuses on balancing yin and yang.”
“Yin yang. That’s the symbol with the two tadpole things, right?”
She half-smiled and nodded. “The Tai Chi symbol. It’s an ancient symbol, representing the duality of nature. The belief is that there are two forces operating in nature: the yin, which is the positive, male side, represented by the white on the Tai Chi symbol, and the negative, female side, represented by the black side.”
“This sounds like Sunday School—women are bad because Eve ate of the forbidden fruit…”
“Oh no, it’s not like that. Negative, in this case, isn’t bad. It’s good.”
I gazed at her, confused.
“Think of it more like the protons and electrons in an atom. A stable, uncharged atom has an equal number of protons and electrons. Neither is better and both are necessary to create a stable atom.”
“Okay…”
“That’s what you want to strive to be: the stable atom.”
I smiled and shrugged, still not getting it.
“Chinese medicine says that health is achieved when yin and yang are in balance. So being a stable atom is the way to be.” Now she was smiling.
“Where did you learn all of this?”
“I’m blessed with really open-minded parents. Some they’ve taught me, some I’ve learned from people and places they’ve introduced me to over the years, and some I learned on my own from books, retreats, you name it.”
“Wow, that’s really cool….So is it safe to say that your parents aren’t big fans of The Academie?” I had to ask.
“No, not at all.” She laughed in an unhumored sort of way.
“Lucky. My parents…ugh…” I decided not to get into it.
“Sorry.”
“How are you so good about everything then, if you’re not into it—The Academie, I mean. You never seen unhappy here.”
“Like I said before, I’m trying to practice contentment. The goal is to be content despite suffering.”
“Well it looks to me like you are doing a great job,” I said, genuinely impressed.
“Oh, ther
e’s one more thing I wanted to say about yin yang. This part I find really interesting. If you remember what the Tai Chi symbol looks like—Here, I’ll get some paper.” She grabbed a notebook from her stack of books and a pen from her desk drawer, then met me again on the floor. She proceeded to draw the circular image with the black and white tadpoles. Last, she added eyes.
“So you’ll notice, in each half, there’s a dot of the other color. In Chinese philosophy, the belief is that each contains a seed of the other. So, if you think of each side as a polarity—or opposite—then each contains a seed of its opposite. In destruction, for example, there is a seed of creation, and vice versa. Some say that it also means that everything contains the seeds of its own destruction….or redemption—depending on if you are a glass half empty or half full kind of person.” She smiled again.
“That’s pretty deep.”
“I love this kind of stuff. I read all kinds of philosophy and metaphysics.”
“I think it’s great.” I had never known anyone like her. Why hadn’t I met her in high school?
“What year are you, Shara?”
“In Academie terms?”
“No, in the real world. In college. Were you in college?”
“Junior. Chinese Studies major, naturally.”
“I was just wondering how we never met in high school.”
“Big school.”
“Yeah, too big maybe.”
“Maybe, but if it weren’t, then we might not be meeting now either.”
“I guess….So, you’re a glass half-full type of person, huh?”
“I try,” she said.
“Me too, but it doesn’t always work.”
“Stevie’s a glass full kind of a person,” Shara said.
“Definitely. It’s what I love about her!”
“Me too. She’s great.”
“Okay, I think I’m ready to meditate now. Balancing the yin and yang. I can do this.”
“Do you think you can do ten minutes?”
“I don’t know. What have we been doing so far?”
“Five.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it always seems like longer, doesn’t it?”
“Definitely.” Though with thoughts of Bryan, I didn’t mind…
She crossed her legs and laid her palms face up on her knees. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled and closed her eyes.
I closed mine and at first I felt a great calm. In that moment I felt content, happy. Then I tried to focus on balancing my yin and yang, but I realized that I hadn’t actually asked Shara how I might do that. Thoughts of what she had just told me began to swim in my brain, followed by thoughts of the five page paper I now had due Monday. I tried to focus back on the stream Shara had mentioned before, to wash the thoughts away, but I found my heart beating faster from the thoughts of the paper. So, at last I gave in. I went to my happy place.
I was back at Bryan’s.
19. the corn graveyard
“They are really great,” I remember saying, breaking the silence that had followed Bryan’s parents out of the kitchen.
“Yeah. I told you they were.”
“I’ve never met anyone like them.”
“Yeah, but my mom; she sure can get worked up, huh?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows in an expression that said ‘sometimes I just don’t know what to do with her.’ “But enough of them,” he said, suddenly moving away from the island counter he’d be leaning on and moving around to my side. “What do you want to do tonight?”
“Great question. Hmm… I don’t know. There are so many things…. I mean, my gut reaction is to say that we should watch a movie, since it’s late anyway. But then we can’t talk and we’ll probably get tired and fall asleep.”
“And I really don’t want to fall asleep any time soon. I don’t care if I sleep at all tonight.” He was close to me now and his chestnut eyes were right there, looking ever so gently at me.
“Me either.” I said, smiling up at him. I liked the way that neither of us actually mentioned that we had to use the time as wisely as possible since it was our only time together. This was better. This way I could imagine that tonight was just the first of many days and nights like this to come.
“Oh! You know what I could go for?” he said, his expression suddenly filled with the excitement of inspiration.
“Huh?”
“Homemade chocolate chip cookies!”
“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. “Yeah, actually, that sounds great,” I added, realizing how long it’d been since I’d had homemade cookies last. “But wait, aren’t you guys supposed to be a bunch of health food nuts? And we already had cake tonight.”
“Oh come on. You have to live sometime! And I’ve been dying for these and who knows when I’ll get another chance. Besides, that was carrot cake. Does that really count?”
“I don’t know; you tell me.”
“As far as I’m concerned, if it doesn’t have chocolate, then it doesn’t count.”
“Oh, I like the way you think. Well then, I guess we’ll have to make you some birthday cookies,” I said, grinning again.
“Hmm… I’m not sure if they’ll have the stuff,” he said, now rummaging through the cabinets. “Yeah, no chocolate chips or butter.” He closed the refrigerator and turned to look at me. “It’s one of the downsides to living with health nuts. Up for a late-night shopping run?”
“Sure.” At the moment, I loved the idea of going anywhere with him. I think he could have asked if I wanted to go garbage picking with him, and I would have agreed. Looking at the clock though, I couldn’t help but ask, “Will anything be open? It’s after eleven.”
“There’s an all-night place not too far away.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll go get the keys.”
He came back minutes later, keys and cash in hand. “Luckily, I remembered to ask for cash too. It felt weird asking them for money. I’ve had a job and earned my own since I was about fourteen. But now…” he trailed off but it was obvious that the rest of the thought explained that The Academie of course does not let students have outside employment.
I quickly tried to shift the conversation away from The Academie. “Where’d you work?” Somehow we had never gotten into his employment history before, probably because when he was at The Academie it would surely remind him of his life out here and depress him more than he was already. Typically I tried to steer our conversations away from anything that might lead in the direction of real life.
“I had a lot of different jobs. I worked at an ice cream stand, as a computer programmer and web designer of course, and I had a job at a nursery.”
The first two made sense. Ice cream stand was a typical teenage job and being adept at computers he naturally would have had jobs related to them, but the nursery…. It’s not that I didn’t think he’d be good with kids, but picturing him surrounded by a bunch of infants—it’s just not something I would have envisioned.
“—a nursery at a garden center.”
“Oh.” Still, this surprised me since he’d never mentioned an interest in plants before.
“Yeah, my grandfather was an avid gardener, and he ran a small nursery as a retirement thing. I think he gave away more than he ever sold, but he brought me on part-time to help him out for several summers. I learned a lot from him. I can’t wait to have my own place to start my own garden.”
I had never seen this side of him before.
“Here, on our way out I’ll show you where I used to have my garden. I’d like to see if anything re-seeded itself anyway.” He walked to a drawer on the far side of the kitchen and grabbed out a flashlight. “Let’s go out the back.” He held out his hand for me to join him. I took it and butterflies fluttered inside me as we headed outside.
Through the light of the back patio, I could see the Allen’s yard was actually quite large despite the fact that it was seated in a subdivision in the middle of
suburbia. Bryan led me to a back corner, where the light of the porch could not reach. As he shined the flashlight around, I could see that the grass in this area was different from that around it. In the center, a small section was tilled and small sprouts poked out sporadically.
“Well…” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “This is where my garden used to be. You can still see the outline of where it was. It looks like they tried to keep a bit of it going, but…” he looked up and in the glow of the flashlight I could see his smile, “they aren’t very good gardeners. They try, but it just doesn’t seem to work out for them.”
He released my hand, stepped inside the small garden, and crouched down for a better look. “It was probably my dad that did this. You can tell because that little one’s a pepper plant; he loves those.” The plant beside it seemed to catch his attention then, “This one they hate. I wonder why they planted it. I’m the only one who likes these.”
It was sweet to see the little ways his parents showed affection for their son. His dad was certainly the quieter and less outspoken about his feelings, but it was clear through what was unfortunately a pathetic little garden, that he had done it for Bryan.
It was clear too, watching Bryan look closely at the garden, that he knew it well. I couldn’t tell a weed from a vegetable, but Bryan seemed to know immediately—even with what little light we had to view the area. I watched as he tore open the stalk of one tiny plant, took a small stick and scraped out what looked like tiny worms and then piled the soil up around the plant until the open spot was covered. “Vine borers,” he said as he finished. “Nasty little things. They kill the plant from the inside. I don’t know if it will live.”
It was fascinating to watch him work. He went from one plant to the next, examining each. He took such care—so unlike anyone I knew growing up or anyone I had met in the past year at college; he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. I had often wondered if most of the people I went to school with ever actually ventured outside except to get into a car and move from one indoor space to the next. (After all, you don’t even have to go outside for a tan anymore.) But here was this gorgeous, smart, unusual boy, crouching in a garden in the middle of the night to care for plants that he clearly loved. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.