Zen and Gone Read online

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Yeah. How much is your canvas per yard? And your dowel rods?”

  I knew it.

  He told Essa he wanted to build a kite that looked like a giant bicycle wheel for his son, and he wanted the spokes to be wooden rods. Essa tried to explain the weight and balancing issues he’d have if he went that route, but he wasn’t listening.

  After he left, the customer flow died down. She headed to the back to pull Puck off the computer. She’d been on it long enough. Essa pushed on the swinging door and saw Puck sitting on the high stool in front of the screen. Just as Essa stepped into the room, Puck quickly closed her browser window.

  “Hi,” Puck said, spinning around. There were two empty lollipop wrappers on the desk. Now Puck’s lips were not only blue, but also red and green.

  “What were you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” Puck said way too fast.

  “You know the rules. Scoot over.” Puck slid off the stool, and Essa opened up the browser to see what the last window was. But it opened to the Above the Clouds homepage. Essa hit the back button. And got nothing. “How’d you do that?”

  Puck shrugged.

  “Seriously,” Essa said. She gave Puck the Older Sister Eyes. “You shouldn’t be able to delete your browser history. I disabled it. How’d you hide your last page?”

  Puck twisted a chunk of her not-brushed-in-days hair around a finger. “I don’t know.” She dragged out her answer in a high-pitched, singsongy voice.

  “Mom is going to be so mad if I tell her you’re hiding stuff again.” Last year, Puck managed to buy a year’s subscription to a Candy of the Month club without a credit card. She’d gotten busted when Essa found several five-pound boxes of candy in Puck’s room. And a letter from a collection agency in their mailbox.

  Puck’s eyes pooled with tears. Essa suspected her little sister was stalling. But still. The tears were real. “Mom won’t care,” Puck said. “She won’t even notice. She’s too busy making out with half of Boulder. And you’ll probably fall in love with Micah any minute.”

  It was a low blow. Essa’s chest filled with the falling feeling she got whenever Puck was sad, like her heart was a mountain climber who’d carelessly forgotten to clip in and had just slipped over the side. Essa got off the stool and bent down so she was face-to-face with Puck. She looked directly into her sister’s eyes. They weren’t sparkling anymore.

  “No, I won’t,” Essa said. First of all, Micah was just a friend. Second, Essa didn’t date. Ever. Puck knew this. “I’m here for you. Always.” Puck glanced at the floor. “Look at me, Pucky.” She did. “And no matter what Mom does, we’ll be okay. You and me. We’re solid. No matter what. Okay?”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” Essa licked her thumb and tried to wipe some of the candy stain off Puck’s face. It didn’t work. Puck flinched and pulled away. But at least she was grinning a little.

  “Then let me come with you sometime,” Puck said. She was so sneaky. And using her Tiny Begging Voice. It was a killer. The closest thing to it Essa had ever heard was the sound a baby marmot makes when it crawls on top of a rock and calls for its mom. Essa nearly buckled every time Puck used it.

  “No,” Essa said firmly.

  “Pretty please? I’ve been reading about it. All the orienteering stuff. I’m great with a compass. And survival. Did you know you can make a Band-Aid out of pine bark? I’d be a good teammate. You’ll see.”

  Recently Puck had been begging to go on one of the wilderness orienteering treks with Essa’s friends. They had to find their way from Point A to Point B in the backcountry with nothing but a topographic map and a compass.

  “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. Maybe when you’re older.”

  A pout clouded Puck’s face like a quick-moving summer storm. “Pretty please with sprinkles on top?”

  “No. We go for three days. You can go on one of our day trips. Close to town.”

  “Meanie,” Puck said. Then she stormed off.

  But just before she made it through the storage room door, Essa remembered. “Hey. Seriously. What were you looking at on the computer?”

  The sparkle returned to her sister’s eyes. “Just a game. With kites. Really pretty kites. But you’re too old to play it. You wouldn’t understand. Maybe if you were younger.” A devilish smile spread across Puck’s face, and she ran off, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

  5

  OLIVER

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

  Aunt Sophie was touching his shoulder. He was in the guest room. He’d come in here to unpack his stuff and ended up sprawled on the bed asleep. There was a long line of dried drool on the side of his face, and he tried to sit up, but couldn’t; he was tangled in a blanket, and his left arm was completely asleep.

  Sophie leaned in, flipping her braid over her shoulder. He closed his eyes as she kissed his cheek, her feather earrings tickling his nose. When he opened them again, he caught a view down her top and got an eyeful of middle-aged-aunt boob. Which was about the worst thing ever. Then he felt like a sick weirdo for even looking.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “Wait here.”

  She disappeared down the hallway but came back a minute later and plopped something in his lap. At first, he thought it was a dark green football, but when he tried to pull it out of the folds of the blanket, it was hard. Really hard.

  And then he saw a leg.

  “Get it off!” he screamed. He backed up and tried to shove whatever the hell it was off the bed.

  “Go easy,” Sophie said. She swooped in and gently grabbed the green-legged football. She held it up. “Oliver, meet True. True, meet Oliver.”

  It was a turtle. He had mostly retreated into his shell, but he was peering at Oliver with his beady black eyes. All four scaly legs were moving on either side of Sophie’s hand, like he was trying to air-paddle away from the reality of his life. Oliver didn’t blame him.

  “Oh,” Oliver said, trying to act cool. “Hey, True.”

  Sophie pulled a hot pink ribbon out of her pocket. She gently put True on the floor and wrapped the ribbon around his shell, tying a large bow on top. “That’s so you don’t step on him,” she said. Like it was a totally obvious thing that Oliver had seen a million times before.

  “So he . . . roams the house?”

  “Truth is everywhere,” she said, flashing a thousand-kilowatt Boulder-sun smile. “And it’s slow moving.”

  Oliver raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s a Buddhist,” Sophie added.

  She wrapped her legs like a pretzel underneath her, settling on the soft white fuzzy carpet. She patted the spot next to her, motioning for Oliver to come down and sit. He couldn’t make his legs bend like hers did. It kind of creeped him out. But he slid off the bed and sat down. Legs straight.

  They both watched as True the Buddhist Turtle slowly made a circle on the carpet, leaving a path of tiny little turtle shits the whole way. Oliver looked at his aunt, who remained completely unconcerned about what was happening to her carpet. She just lovingly smiled at the circling reptile. It was obvious to Oliver that his aunt was sweet and all, but still. He felt like the turtle taking a dump on the floor highlighted the magnitude of his mistake. I have to get back to Lilly. I have to explain what I did. I have to make things right.

  Sophie left the room and came back with a rag. “Let’s go check on dinner,” she said as she cleaned up after True. She scooped him up and headed for the kitchen. Reluctantly, Oliver followed.

  The minute he hit the hallway, he was whacked in the face with the scent of dinner. Which smelled roughly like a thousand boiling skunks. Sophie had covered the kitchen counter with an epic amount of crap. There were metal bins full of vegetables, glass bowls of spices, jars of chopped-up mystery items. She informed him that
she didn’t use plastic of any kind. That it was full of some evil chemical called BPA that acted like a hormone in the body. Oliver briefly wondered if the plastic soda bottles he frequently drank out of could explain the inordinate amount of time he spent thinking about sex. (Which he’d never had.) But he was pretty sure that was due to the fact that he was seventeen, not to the fact that he drank insane amounts of Mountain Dew.

  “Smell this,” Sophie said, waving a chunky brown stick in his face. “It’s burdock root. It’ll help your acne.”

  He put a hand to his bumpy face, which felt like it was hovering around five hundred degrees, scorched by humiliation. “Um, thanks?”

  “Don’t be embarrassed.” She shredded the root into whatever horrible pot of horribleness she was cooking on the stovetop.

  Easy for her to say. Her face didn’t intermittently look like a crime scene. Then he remembered his mom’s ominous warning: be a good houseguest. He told himself that he needed to be on his best behavior so he could get Sophie on his side and have her convince his mom to fly him home ASAP. “Can I, um, help set the table?”

  “You’re so sweet.” She ruffled his hair. Which brought his scorched cheeks back. “But we eat on pillows here.”

  And they did. She pulled these giant pillows into the center of the living room, handed him a bowl of Steaming Organic Hell, and told him to sit.

  He was so uncomfortable. And it wasn’t just the pillows. Sophie started asking him questions. About his life. About Lilly. About the divorce. They didn’t do this at his house—eating and talking about real stuff. His mom never cooked and usually wasn’t home from her law firm until eight or nine o’clock on a good day. Even if they all miraculously ended up eating a meal together, they didn’t actually talk about anything.

  “Has it gotten worse? Since he filed?” Sophie was still on the divorce.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look up from his bowl.

  “That must be hard.”

  Oliver shifted on his Dinner Pillow.

  “The divorce,” she continued. “And Lilly. And next year is senior year for you.” She paused and looked him right in the eye. “I understand what happened, Oliver. You can’t blame yourself forever—”

  “Dinner was good,” Oliver interrupted her with a lie.

  She took the hint and changed the subject. She put her empty bowl on the carpet and started playing with one of her feather earrings. “Listen, I know I’m your boring old aunt, but I really, really want you to have an awesome summer here, okay? You deserve it. After . . . everything. So I have a surprise for you.”

  Oliver braced himself and expected her to pull out another reptile. A lizard named Lie. A snake named Bullshit.

  Oliver, meet Bullshit. Bullshit, meet Oliver.

  “I didn’t get you an internship at a startup, like I promised your mom. I got you a job. A paying one.”

  Now Oliver was listening.

  “Where?”

  “At a really cool shop in the middle of Boulder,” she said. “On Pearl Street. Which is sort of like the social heart of things.”

  Oliver scooted off his pillow, careful to make sure he didn’t see a pink-beribboned turtle anywhere nearby. Or a ring of turtle turds. “What’s the shop?”

  “My friend owns it. It’s a kite store. Above the Clouds.”

  “A kite store?” he asked. Sophie nodded and smiled like she had just delivered the greatest news he’d ever heard. “I can’t work at a kite store. I was supposed to do a tech thing. So I could put it on my college app—”

  “I know, I know. But kites sort of take technology . . . physics? Engineering? I mean, you have to know how to build them so they fly right.”

  “Um, no,” Oliver said. “Just, no. Gluing kites together is not a tech internship.”

  “I’m worried, Oliver.” Sophie stopped fiddling with her earring and leaned in a little. Her eyes looked watery. “I think you need some fun. Some lightness. You know? With all you’ve been through . . .”

  Oh, right. Because the cure for the nervous breakdown I’m pretty sure I had before I left Chicago is to become a kite salesman.

  Sophie stood and held out a hand to help him up. “And there are kids your age who work there. Including girls. Very. Cute. Boulder girls.” She sported another isn’t this great smile.

  Chicago Oliver. With a Boulder girl.

  Yeah, right.

  6

  ESSA

  After Puck and Essa got home from Above the Clouds, they waited in dread for Mom’s new guy to show. He didn’t. Their mom claimed he got caught up at work and couldn’t make it. The details she gave about his supposed employment were extremely vague. Something about weed yoga studios. How if you do yoga high, you have all sorts of realizations.

  Or something.

  Essa didn’t bother to ask for clarification. She and Puck were happy to eat frozen pizza and watch TV.

  Around one in the morning, a tap on Essa’s bedroom door woke her. She lifted one eyelid. Her door was open just a crack, a slice of yellow light cutting through her room. She sat up.

  “Wake up. I think that guy is here.” It was a whisper. Essa reached for the lamp and clicked it on. Puck crawled onto the end of the bed, her red pajama pants bunched around her legs. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a knotted, messy bun. She looked excited, like she’d just started a Spy Club, and she was sending them on their first mission.

  “Who?” Essa asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “I think it’s the new guy who was supposed to come for dinner. Come see.”

  She clambered over the bedspread and took Essa’s hand. Puck’s was soft and warm and small. Essa gripped it gently and followed her little sister down the hall toward the living room, her own too-long pajama pants dragging the floor. She heard voices, so she stopped and peered around the corner. It was a good thing Essa wasn’t wearing her favorite old nightgown that had become half see-through because there was a guy sitting cross-legged on the floor. A middle-aged guy in ripped-up jeans and a gauzy linen shirt. He and Essa’s mom were next to each other on the ratty orange carpet. Her mom was leaning against the couch, and he was handing her something.

  “Dried chan seeds,” he said. “Sacred. From Costa Rica. They ward off evil spirits. And relieve constipation.”

  “Really?” her mom asked, popping a few in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully. Then wrinkled her nose. “They’re not very good.”

  Essa could tell Puck was trying to keep it together at the mention of constipation, but she lost it. Her shoulders started shaking, and she made it another five seconds until her giggles exploded.

  “Girls?” They were busted. Essa kept Puck close to her as they emerged into the living room.

  “Hey there,” said Seed Guy.

  “Hello,” Essa said. He glanced at Essa, but then looked back to Puck.

  “Girls, this is Ronnie,” their mom said. “Ronnie, that’s Puck and Essa.” She pointed to them one at a time.

  Ronnie reached for the bowl of seeds again. “You want one?” he asked as he held the bowl in Puck’s direction. He shook it a little, and the seeds rustled together. Before Essa could react, Puck was gone from her grip, like a slippery little ghost. She was at his side, taking a few seeds out of the bowl.

  “No, Puck,” Essa blurted out. She stepped forward. “Don’t eat that.”

  “Relax, Essa,” her mom said slowly. She tucked a stray dreadlock behind her ear. “They’re just seeds. They’re healthy. They don’t mess you up or anything. They’re like flax. Or chia. That I put in our bread.”

  Puck popped a few into her mouth.

  “Ronnie is an expert on seeds,” her mom went on with a dreamy look her in eye. Ronnie watched Puck chew. He smiled as the seeds crunched and popped in her mouth. Essa hated his smile. It was fake somehow. Like it was a smile on the outside but something totally different o
n the inside. Then again, she hated all her mom’s boyfriends.

  “I studied with a shaman in Costa Rica,” he said. “He taught me about all the seeds there. Seeds are power, you know. If you have seeds, you have everything. You have the world.” His dirty blond hair fell in his eyes a little. But he wasn’t looking at Essa. He was still looking at Puck. “Do you know what that is? A shaman?”

  Essa grabbed Puck’s arm and pulled her close. “Yeah, it’s like a medicine man,” Essa answered. “We’ve gotta go back to bed.”

  “Bummer,” he said, shrugging.

  Before Puck could do or say anything else, Essa shepherded her down the hallway and into her bedroom. Essa flipped on the overhead light and closed the door behind them. She pressed her back against the cool wooden door, relieved to be away from the whole situation. “Ugh,” she grunted. “Creepy guy. Right?”

  Puck flopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling. Essa looked at the kites Puck had hung there: a monarch butterfly, a soaring heron, an owl, a pirate ship. The owl was blue and yellow with gigantic white eyes. Instead of wise and chill, he looked spooked. Sort of shocked or terrified, like he’d seen something horrible that had silenced his hoot.

  “I don’t know,” Puck said, shrugging. “Seems okay to me. The seeds were nasty, though.” She reached for a cup of bright red Kool-Aid by her bed—which she wasn’t supposed to have so late at night—and gulped it down. Essa furrowed her brow in disapproval, and Puck gave her a super innocent, giant red Kool-Aid grin.

  “You realize you get everything you want?” Essa asked. “You get that, right?”

  Puck shrugged like she didn’t agree, but maintained her stained-lip smile. She leaned over the side of her bed and pulled something out from underneath it. She sat up and started fiddling with it in her lap. Essa took a step closer to see what she was holding. It was a Puzzle Kite, Puck’s favorite thing from Above the Clouds. It was a honey-colored wooden box that functioned as a puzzle. The outside was covered with little pieces of wood that had to be moved around just right until the box snapped open. Inside was a kite to put together. Every puzzle and every kite was different, and the shop had twenty-five Puzzle Kites in all. But they were pricey. Like, fifty bucks a pop.