Better Than the Best Plan

by Lauren Morrill

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  For Adam, who never stopped believing in me

  PROLOGUE

  The day my mother left, I was mostly thinking about a chemistry test. Mr. Hearn’s most fearsome exam wasn’t his final, but the exercise in torture he inflicted on us two weeks before. Armed with nothing but a pencil, a ruler, and a blank legal-sized piece of white paper, we were supposed to draw the periodic table from memory. Elements, atomic weights, and all.

  So when I woke up that morning and stumbled into the kitchen of our tiny apartment, I barely paid any attention to the note scrawled on a personalized notepad from a bank my mom must have wandered into once. I was too busy trying to burn the various metals and nonmetals into my brain. I blame that stupid test for my not reading that note and not realizing for nearly a day that it said my mom had gone to Mexico. It didn’t say when she’d return, or if she’d return.

  I bombed that test, by the way. It’s like my brain rejected the information, because who is ever going to use that knowledge? Even chemists have big posters of the periodic table on the walls of their labs, and you know, iPhones. And since I had no interest in being a chemist, it felt doubly ridiculous.

  When I did finally read that note, sitting alone at the wobbly wooden table shoved next to the stove, eating ice cream to soothe the sting of my shellacking in chemistry, I wasn’t even sure I believed it.

  My mom has always marched to the beat of her own drummer, and that drummer is a white guy with dreads playing bongos in a public park. For my whole life, or as long as I’ve had memories of my life, my mom has been searching for her place. She’s limited her search mostly to a specific corner of the world, the corner populated by handicrafts and people who earnestly discuss karma. She’s never afraid to try on a new kind of enlightenment, even if that enlightenment lives on a commune in Oregon or at a yoga center in Arizona or requires her to eliminate gluten and sugar and happiness. And she’s never had a problem shaking that enlightenment right off when it starts to feel like a wool sweater shrunk in the wash.

  Because of this, she’s never been the kind of mom who will proofread your papers or make dinner and ask you about your day. But it’s never bothered me much. My mother’s free spirit means plenty of freedom for me, too. Curfew is a word that’s never been in my vocabulary, and I’ve never had to answer for any failing test grades (of which there have only been two) or questionable boyfriends (of which there have been zero). She’s one of those moms who I’m always surprised doesn’t insist I call her by her first name, because “Mom” always feels like a dress that doesn’t fit her quite right.

  Which is why when she first told me about the Bodhi Foundation, it wasn’t a shock. It was early May, the cool spring just starting to turn warm. It was my favorite time of year in Florida, when it was warm enough to be outside without sweating to death, and we had the doors to the deck open to let in the cool night air and the sound of traffic from the interstate. I was at the stove making a pot of store-brand macaroni and cheese while Mom paged through a yoga magazine she found in the recycling bin, dog-earing an article about newer, better sun salutations.

  “I’ve been thinking it’s time for me to set some intentions,” she said, and my stomach flipped. Here we go, I thought. We’d been living in Jacksonville since just before the start of my freshman year. We’d come so Mom could apprentice with a friend who did massage therapy, but nearly three years later, she’d yet to enroll in any kind of certification program. Instead, she’d been working with her friend Rose, otherwise known as Rose Renee, roadside psychic and purveyor of the finest goods to help predict your future (activate eye-roll sequence now). We usually would have moved on by this point, but after I started high school, I begged her to let me stay put for a while. I’d jumped schools every six months to a year for most of my entire life, doing brief chunks of “unschooling,” which is what my mother called her brand of homeschooling when her newest vision quest didn’t leave room for a formal education for me. But to my surprise, she’d managed to keep her restlessness at bay these last three years, letting me make my way through Southwest High, build up a pretty good transcript, and actually have a shot at getting into college. She’d bopped around in a few different jobs (receptionist at a yoga studio, cashier at a craft store, and a brief stint selling mead at a Renaissance Faire), but hadn’t said anything about leaving the city.

  I should have known it was too good to be true.

  “I’ve been turned on to this new program through an organization called the Bodhi Foundation,” she said, as if I hadn’t heard some version of this monologue a thousand times before. Somehow, she managed to be giddy and full of excitement each and every time. Her belief that this might finally be the thing never ceased to amaze me. “It’s all about working toward your own personal level of enlightenment and not conforming to anyone else’s standards. It’s about knowing yourself. The program itself is a path, and each level of the path is a stone. So at the retreat center, I’ll study and devote myself to working through each stone.”

  “This sounds like Scientology,” I replied, stirring the neon-orange powder into my pasta.

  She scoffed. “No! This is nothing like that. Once I’ve reached the tenth stone, I can go and run Bodhi workshops anywhere in the world, teaching new followers the method so they can go teach the method, and onward it ripples like a pebble in a pond.”

  And apparently, she’s swallowed the brochure.

  “So it’s a pyramid scheme. It’s basically spiritual Tupperware.”

  Mom sighed, then crossed the kitchen in this very deliberate way, like she was walking on water. She had this calmness to her that was unnerving. She took my chin gently in her hand.

  “Oh, Maritza, I’ve tried so hard to raise you to be a person with an open mind and an open heart.”

  Now it’s my turn to sigh, because what she’d really done was raise me to be a person skeptical of the open mind and open heart, because it was usually followed by a request for an open wallet.

  “Where did you hear about this place?” I asked instead.

  She dropped my chin and returned to the table, where she continued flipping through her magazine as if it were an act of meditation.

  “I attended an info session,” she replied.

  “Where?”

  “The Hilton by the airport.”

  I had to stop myself from snorting. Of course.

  “The workshops are at the Bodhi Foundation’s retreat center in Mexico. It’s a lovely place, truly, right on the water,” she said. “The program begins in June, though they like you to arrive early to really connect with your surroundings, and the program can take anywhere from four months to a year, depending on your dedication to the path.”

  It took me just a moment to calculate that math. “Mom, we can’t go to this Bodhi place for four months!” I said. “I have senior year, and you promised we would stay here long enough for me
to graduate!”

  “And you will, Ritzy,” she said, but then she was noticeably silent. I felt that little itch in the back of my brain, something telling me that there was more.

  “So you’re starting next summer?” I asked, even though I think I already knew the answer.

  Once again, she was out of her chair, crossing the floor in a deliberate choreography. This time, she came and gripped my shoulders like she was trying to prove the connection between us.

  “You’re on your own path, Ritzy,” she said, her voice low and breathy. “And I honor that.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can stay here for your senior year if you want, and then when you graduate, if you’d like to join me on my path, the Bodhi Foundation will be there for you, too. By then I’ll be qualified to be your sponsor!”

  I shook her hands from my shoulders. “Gross, Mom. Don’t try to recruit me to your multilevel marketing scheme masking itself as religion.”

  That was exactly the wrong thing to say. She shook her head, clearly disappointed in my lack of vision. I was losing her. “I wish you’d join me now,” she said. “I’ve always felt it was important to reject the traditional schooling model in favor of a more self-directed brand of education.”

  Only my mother would encourage me to drop out of school the summer before my senior year and ascribe it to virtue.

  “Okay, well, we both know that’s not going to happen, so what then?” I asked. “Are you saying I’m going to stay here … by myself?”

  “Why not?” she said. “I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen…”

  “Oh, so I’m supposed to go bang a tambourine at an airport, that’s what you’re saying?” I asked, referring to Mom’s favorite story about her first foray into spirituality as a teenager. I was going for a joke, but it seemed to miss the mark, because she looked wounded. Again, I redirected. “How am I supposed to pay for stuff?”

  “The universe provides, Ritzy,” she said. “So does your job.”

  I knew the fact that I handled all the bills was going to come back to bite me eventually. She had absolutely no idea how our finances work if she thought twenty hours a week making tuna melts at Roasted is going to come close to covering the rent. This whole thing was sounding more nuts by the second.

  When she got like this, with one of her new schemes gripped tightly in her psyche, there was no talking her out of it. Not right away, anyway. Sometimes I could wait her out and hope she came to her senses before she dove in. It worked when she decided we were going to go live in a “silent community” for six months. I knew my mother wouldn’t last six minutes in a place like that. Talking is definitely her favorite pastime, after searching for higher power. I’d simply said, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow” for several days until she let the idea go completely.

  “Can we talk about this more tomorrow?” I said. “I really need to study for my chemistry exam.”

  The smile on her face told me I’d made the right move. “Ritzy, you know I love you, even when I don’t understand you.”

  “Ditto, Mom.”

  She leaned in and touched her forehead to mine, reaching her hand behind my neck to hold me close. It was a gesture she’d picked up at some Zen retreat somewhere, and even though she ditched that particular path a long time ago, I’m glad she hung on to this. It made me forget, for a moment, that my mom was a hippie flake who was proposing abandonment. It was a gesture that felt full of love and connection and protection, which was ironic, truly.

  “I trust you and I believe in you,” she said finally.

  She smiled and kissed me on the forehead. A bowl of macaroni and cheese in my hand, I shuffled out of the kitchen and back to my room, where I spent the next several hours flipping flashcards and trying to make my brain hold on to the atomic weight for antimony. The next day I went to school, where I flailed my way through my exam, and when I got home, she was just gone. She’d left a note, a brochure on the Bodhi Foundation, and her house key. When I checked her room, I found her suitcase gone, along with a good portion of her wardrobe and toiletries.

  Ritzy,

  I’ve gone to journey down my path. I wish you well on yours, and will see you soon. I love you. Stay true.

  Love,

  Mom

  There was four hundred dollars cash in tens and twenties in an envelope, which would almost cover a month of rent. Did that mean she’d be back by then? I reread the note several times a day for the next several days, looking for clues, still not quite believing she’d actually gone to Mexico. Sure, the Bodhi Foundation sounded exactly like the kind of nonsense my mother would be into. But she’d never undertaken a path or a vision quest or any other quirky scheme without bringing me along. Even though I had no interest in organic farming or sheep shearing or goat yoga or freecycling, I’d still been happy to be included. Our Odd Couple dynamic had been honed through each of her wild journeys, and even when I was eating bean sprouts while sitting cross-legged by a bonfire, I found comfort in it. I maybe even liked following my mother down her own path.

  But now, for the first time, my path was the only path, and I had no light to see where I was going.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, is this really happening?”

  Every part of me feels warm and clammy, and it’s only partly because I’m standing on blacktop in 90-degree weather with 100 percent humidity. If I stand here much longer, my shoes are going to melt into the pavement.

  “Josh told me during third period that Ali told him during homeroom that he was going to ask you out after school.” Lainey scans the parking lot and spots Ali coming out of the main entrance of the school. “There he is. Okay, are you ready?”

  “For my eternal crush of forever to finally ask me out? I don’t know, how do you get ready for that?” I have to will myself not to look at him, just in case he sees me and we have one of those awkward staring moments. I want to turn around and be all fresh-faced and Hi! about this, like I’m in a face wash commercial or something. I want awkward to have no part of this, which, let’s be real, is going to be an uphill battle.

  Lainey’s eyes dance from me to somewhere over my shoulder. She looks as giddy as I feel, but she’s got the freedom to let it out. “I could slap you in the face. Do you want me to slap you in the face?”

  “Why would I want that?”

  “I don’t know, it’s a thing people do on television. Maybe it calms you down?” She shrugs.

  I casually turn and bump her hip, like maybe she just said something funny or we’re having a moment of solidarity or something. It brings me around to her side so that I can see Ali across the parking lot without staring over my shoulder, you know, like a weirdo.

  “Smooth,” Lainey whispers.

  “I try,” I reply.

  She returns the hip bump. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she says, then trots off.

  I see the exact moment when he spots me. He gets a wide grin on his face and gives this adorable little half wave, two of his fingers up in a lazy peace sign. His pace picks up to a trot as he heads for me. Ugh, he’s so pretty. Tall and lanky from year-round soccer, with deep tan skin and dark wavy hair. He’s got this great smile that uses his whole face in a way that you can’t help but smile back. It’s the most contagious grin I’ve ever seen.

  “’Sup, Ritzy? Happy summer!” His eyes drop to his shoes, those black flat sneakers that all the soccer players wear, before flicking back up to me. It’s the only indication that he, too, might be a little bit nervous.

  “Thanks,” I reply. “Back atcha. Big plans?”

  He cocks his head and shrugs. “The usual. Beach. Soccer. Working at the restaurant.” His parents own this amazing Indian takeout place near the mall. His mom is super nice and always gives us discounts or free samosas. Ali has worked there since he was old enough to make correct change. “Probably doing college stuff. You know the drill.”

  “Tot
ally,” I say, though I won’t be going on any college visits or taking SAT prep like Ali or some of my other classmates who just finished junior year. Even though we had to endure endless lectures from our teachers and an hour-long assembly in the gym where the guidance counselors acted like if we didn’t tour at least five schools before the fall we might as well give up and join the circus, I have no plans to go anywhere. My future is a little up in the air right now, and all I know is that I need to spend the summer working as many hours at Roasted as Mr. Reynolds will give me. And I may even try to score a second gig, though the only places still hiring are probably the string of fast-food restaurants that line the road up from our apartment complex, and I really don’t want to go there. The thought of spending the hot Florida summer smelling like a deep fat fryer kills a little bit of my soul. And I’m not totally convinced it won’t clog my arteries by osmosis.

  Still, rent is due at the end of the month, the electric bill a week after that, and I have no idea how long paying those will be my responsibility. But that’s a lot of backstory that I definitely don’t want to get into with Ali, especially if he’s about to ask me out.

  “Hey, I was wondering if you had plans for tonight?” The words come out in a rush of a single breath.

  This is it! Okay, be cool, Ritzy. Be. Cool.

  The mental reminder keeps me from barking out, Yes, I’ll go out with you anytime anywhere AWESOME! Instead, I manage an only slightly cooler, “Um, no, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could hang out. Grab food at the Mexican place on Division? Their queso rocks.” He pauses, kicking at a pebble on the blacktop between us. He bites his lip, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. When he glances up at me with those deep brown eyes, I nearly melt into a puddle right at his feet. “Just us?”

  And there it is. Ali Anikhindi, my crush since freshman year, who has been solidly in my friend zone since we were first paired up for a group project on To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade, is asking me out on a date. An actual date. Just. Us.