Zen and Gone Page 4

  “Did you take this from the store?” Essa asked. She sat down on the bed next to Puck. “Seriously, you’re going to get me fired.”

  “I’m just borrowing it,” Puck said, her hands sliding over the wooden puzzle pieces. They gently clicked as she shifted them into place. Her bright red tongue snuck out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. “I’ve been telling Mom forever that I wanted a new one. She never listens.”

  Her little hands danced over the puzzle pieces like ballerinas. She was good at these. She was good at everything. The walls of her room were loaded with awards and certificates that proved it. Spelling bee champion two years in a row. First place in the reading challenge. First place at the social studies fair for her project on Eastern religions. “I’ll tell Jan to take it out of my next paycheck,” Essa sighed. “But you have to pay me back. By helping me at the store. Okay?”

  Puck was still laser-focused on the box. “I wonder what this one will be,” she said. Her tongue shifted to the other side of her mouth. “I’m hoping it’s the horse kite. I really want the horse.”

  Essa kicked her legs onto the bed and stretched out on her back. After a few more pieces clicked into place, Puck stopped fiddling with the puzzle box and curled up next to her big sister. They snuggled close on top of her lumpy purple comforter.

  “Puck?” Essa asked. A strand of Puck’s hair had fallen out of her bun. Essa twirled it around one of her fingers. She breathed in Puck’s scent. She always smelled like candy. Like gummy bears. Like cherry lollipops. “Don’t keep secrets, okay? Like the computer today. And taking the Puzzle Kite.” Essa twirled her sister’s hair. And twirled and twirled. “Tell me stuff. Tell me everything. Every little thing. I want to know. Okay?”

  Puck didn’t say anything at first. But finally, “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “Let me come with you to the woods this weekend?” Puck was using the baby marmot squeak again. She never gave up. On anything.

  “No. But you have to promise to tell me everything anyway.”

  Puck exhaled a tiny puff of a sigh and pressed a little closer against Essa, curling into a ball and gently nodding against her big sister’s chest.

  June 8

  7

  OLIVER

  “What have you done today?”

  It was 3 p.m., and Sophie had just arrived home from her afternoon yoga class. She raised the blinds. The too-bright sun poured into the room, highlighting the fact that Oliver was sprawled on the sofa with a (now empty) bag of veggie chips, a few cans of “all natural” ginger ale he found in the fridge, and his cell phone. Which was about a thousand degrees in his hand because he’d been streaming videos on it. And playing games with his friends back in Chicago. All day. For three days. He’d also been waiting for his mom to tell him Lilly was stable enough for a phone call. So far, she wasn’t.

  He blinked in the painful light. And shrugged. “Stuff.”

  “Have you even been outside? On the trail I told you about?” She set a cloth bag of groceries on the kitchen table and lit a stick of incense.

  Oliver shook his head.

  “You’re in the Rocky Mountains,” she continued. She pointed out the window, past the incense smoke that was snaking into the air. There was a trail right across the street and a winding dirt path that disappeared into wide-open nothingness at the foot of the Flatirons. He knew he was supposed to want to get out there, like he was in a granola bar commercial, but something about the emptiness was creepy. He liked it better inside. Always had.

  “In Boulder, people like to go outside. It’s good for you,” she said as if she’d just read his mind. She took what appeared to be several hundred thousand vegetables out of her Whole Foods bag and put them into their respective bins in the refrigerator.

  “I’m not really a nature-type guy.” Oliver turned up one of the ginger ale cans, and a few last burning drops of ginger landed on his tongue. “And this stuff sucks.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes. “After I get these put away, we’re going out. Down to Pearl Street. I’ll introduce you at the kite store.”

  He sat up. The veggie chip bag crinkled underneath him, and the empty cans of ginger ale tumbled onto the white carpet. “About that,” he said. “I was thinking. I don’t think I really want to. You know. Work there.”

  “You were thinking, huh?” Her voice was muffled. She was still bent over a vegetable bin, her head fully in the refrigerator.

  “Yeah. That maybe I should just—”

  “There’s a saying.” She straightened up, returned to the cloth bag, and pulled out a vegetable that looked like a large, bloated comma. Oliver guessed it was an eggplant. Or maybe an exotic squash that had magical healing powers. She waved it in the air as she talked. “You can’t think your way into happiness. You have to act your way there.” She turned and tossed the shiny purple comma into the fridge.

  “Huh?”

  She sighed. “It means we’re taking action. We’re going out. And please take a shower. It smells like teenager in here.”

  How she could smell anything over the incense haze that was rapidly blurring Oliver’s vision was beyond him. But he knew he’d be a fool to stand behind the argument that he didn’t stink.

  “Okay,” he said, tossing the blanket on the floor. “I’ll shower. And go to Pearl Street. But that’s it. No kite stores, okay?”

  Sophie grinned, but didn’t say a word.

  Oliver found the People of Boulder. They were teeming down Pearl Street. All kinds. He expected to see a mass of all-natural types like his aunt, but he didn’t. He felt like a lot of these people could be straight out of Chicago neighborhoods. He saw a group of mainstream girls in huge sunglasses who were very Lincoln Park. Older people who looked stuck-up and rich. Kind of Gold Coast. A high school artsy type pushed past him, carrying a wooden case with paintbrushes sticking out. And people decked out in college swag dotted the crowd. University of Colorado. Regis. Naropa U.

  “What’s Naropa?” he asked Sophie. He pointed to a guy in jeans and a T-shirt: Too Zen to Deal With Your Bullshit. Naropa U.

  “Buddhist university a few blocks from here.” She was eyeing a pile of crusty handmade soaps in a shop window. “A lot of famous writers hang around there. They’ve got the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.”

  “Disembodied poetics?”

  “They take a contemplative approach,” she said. Which helped Oliver understand exactly zero. Sophie moved past the soap shop, and they walked along the wide brick street. “You into poetry?”

  “No way,” he said.

  “You sure?” She looked at Oliver like she knew something about him that he didn’t.

  “Yep. Real sure.”

  Like his mom, he hated poetry. It was one of the first things Lilly started doing that had given them a clue something wasn’t right. She showed Oliver her first poem when she was sixteen. It made no sense. He was fourteen at the time, so it would be logical for it to be over his head, but it wasn’t an age gap in comprehension levels that was the problem. The poem actually made no sense. As in, the words didn’t go together in any conceivable way. It was gibberish. Word salad. She explained it to Oliver, which only made it worse; he could tell she understood it perfectly. He showed his mom, and she chalked it up to his sister being in a confusing teen phase.

  She was wrong. Way wrong.

  Sophie shrugged. “It’s a shame. There are amazing poets around here.”

  They kept walking. They passed all sorts of stores: ice cream, falafel, yoga gear, handmade books, Native American art. There were street performers, too. Everywhere. A barefoot dude in a ratty red blazer played a fiddle. He smiled and bounced as he sang. He looked out of it, but also like the most intensely stoked human being Oliver had ever seen. He stared. He couldn’t help it.

  A girl jumped in front of him, blocking his view of the fi
ddle guy. She was holding a ratty cardboard sign, free hugs. Her sequin pants were too long; they were frayed and dragged the ground. And her hair was down to her butt. She paused, looked in Oliver’s eyes, asking. He shrugged. And she hugged him.

  “Love,” she said as he was enveloped in her cloud of BO and flowers. Except she held him too long. Her hips pressed into his, and his face started the burning thing again.

  “Let’s go, Oliver,” Sophie said like she was singing it. She tugged on Oliver’s arm and quickly escorted him away. He turned and glanced back, but the girl wasn’t looking. She was staring up into a giant tree in the middle of the plaza. Her eyes were wide, like she had seen the most amazing thing in the branches. A giant bird. An angel. A miracle.

  Oliver looked.

  And saw leaves.

  “Check your wallet,” Sophie said. “Some are out for love. Some are out for your debit card.”

  He slapped a hand against his back pocket and thankfully, his wallet was there. “People just . . . hug people like that?” he asked. “Is that normal?”

  “Welcome to the People’s Republic of Boulder,” Sophie said. “It’s an emotive place.”

  Oliver shook his head and looked down the street, checking for more Random Huggers headed his way. He didn’t see any, but something else caught his eye. In a row of shop windows filled with boring sage green and beige, one store was blaring with bright colors. It was all reds and blues and yellows. He went closer. And stopped in front of the store.

  It was full of kites.

  If he had seen this store when he was ten, he would’ve freaked out. And begged to move to Boulder so he could go there every day. Below the kites, there was endless stuff: plastic dragons, remote-controlled snakes, pirate map puzzles in bottles, solar-powered waving Einsteins. Hover racers, rocket launchers, mini catapults.

  But still, it was a kite store. And he was seventeen—not ten.

  Sophie stood next to him with a signature I told you so smile.

  “I’m just going in,” he said. “Don’t introduce me or anything. Okay?”

  “Sure.” The smile was still there.

  “I’m serious.” He tried to put emphasis on the word serious, hoping to get his point across. He didn’t like the way Sophie kept looking at him like he was her project for the summer. Like she was super confident that she could fix something he didn’t even know was broken.

  He opened the door and headed straight for the hover racers. He was checking out the most expensive one when he heard someone laugh. A little girl.

  He turned. She was eight or so. She was peeking around the display of dragon figurines, and she had a red lollipop in her hand. “Hello,” she said. She was still giggling.

  “Hello.”

  She had this long, tangled blonde hair, and her shoes were black and shiny like little tap shoes. Her blue eyes practically glowed in the store light, and Oliver’s throat felt tight. She was so small. So cute. She reminded him of old photos of Lilly. When he was way younger and so was she. When they felt like pirates in the same crew. When he’d never heard the words “schizophrenic” or “paranoid delusions” or “for life.”

  “I have a secret to tell you.” The girl rounded the dragon shelves and came closer, her shoes clicking with each step. They were tap shoes.

  He bent down. “Okay,” he said. “Is it a secret about the dragons?”

  “No,” she said. “But you know which one is my favorite?”

  He surveyed the shelves and took a guess. “Him?” He pointed to the bright orange one.

  “Nope,” she said. She pointed to a large blue dragon with her lollipop. “Her.”

  Oliver walked over and picked up the dragon. It was about five inches tall and painted a flaming hot blue. And it had these awesomely huge wings that were wide open. “He—I mean she—looks pretty cool . . .”

  “Her name is Badass.”

  “Badass the Dragon?”

  She nodded. “And you want to know the secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your fly is open.” Her giggles erupted, and she took off running, filling the store with the sound of rapid taps.

  Oliver looked down. She was right. His fly was gaping open. Roughly a third of him died of embarrassment as he zipped up and prayed that no one—

  “Sorry about that.”

  It was a girl. But not the little one from before. This was a girl girl. In a long, green sundress. She had a name tag—Essa—pinned just beside her right boob. Her lacy black bra was showing.

  And Oliver’s face was five thousand degrees.

  “My sister Puck,” she said. “She loves telling customers when their flies are open. Or when there’s toilet paper stuck to their shoes. Stuff like that.”

  A tattoo was just below her collarbone. It was simple. One word: SANCTUARY. With a single blade of green grass beside it. She caught Oliver looking.

  “It’s from my favorite . . . story,” she said. She gently tapped it, like she was touching a memory. Or maybe a dream. “Hard to explain.”

  Oliver’s first thought: She seems half-annoying. A carefree kite girl with zero problems and an insanely cute—and perfectly healthy—little sister in tow.

  Must be nice.

  But still, a hundred questions slammed into his head. He wanted to ask her what it was like to live in Boulder. What she did on the weekends. Why the word SANCTUARY was beside a blade of grass. Why it was hard to explain. Why he felt like he could stare at her for ten days straight without food or water. But all he could manage was:

  “Cool.”

  Much to his horror, Sophie joined them. She leaned in and read Essa’s name tag. “Essa, I’m Sophie, and this is my nephew Oliver from Illinois. I talked to Jan about hiring him for the summer?”

  Oliver glared at Sophie as the temperature of his face doubled to a scorching ten thousand degrees. He was pretty sure he could melt metal on it. “Um, I’m stuck here for the summer,” he blurted out. “But I don’t really think I—”

  “You’re stuck here?” Essa cut him off. Her eyebrows went up. “From Illinois? Because that’s such a badass place.”

  Now he knew where her little sister got her word choices.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Oliver absentmindedly grabbed a Mini-Penguin out of a bin and started fiddling with its little arms. “I’m just used to a real city . . . I mean, where there’s real stuff to do.” Essa looked even more pissed. And he didn’t even understand what was coming out of his mouth. He was talking like he was some dude who spent all his time clubbing every other night in Chicago. Or previewing the latest exhibit at the Art Institute. Mostly he played video games in his room.

  So shut up, Oliver. Shut. The fuck. Up.

  Essa rolled her eyes and tucked a strand of her long brown hair into the butterfly clip just above her right ear. “The penguins are twenty-five cents. And my boss Jan will be in tomorrow. You can talk to her about working here. But I really don’t think we need any more help.”

  Other than the fact that she seemed like a carefree Boulder kite girl, one thing was inescapably obvious:

  She hates me.

  “Can you at least tell her I stopped by?”

  Oliver was 99 percent sure that he’d actually said this out loud, and he was 100 percent confused by it. He was now begging the Boulder girl who hated him to help him get a job she clearly didn’t want him to have and which he didn’t even want. It was like his awkwardness was going through some process of rapid cell division and multiplying at an unstoppable rate.

  “Sure. I’ll tell her,” Essa said, unconvincingly and most likely out of sympathy. Then she bailed. And in her wake, Oliver smelled coconuts. And something he couldn’t place. Something spicy, like Sophie’s incense. But instead of choking on it, he caught himself sucking in a deep breath, wanting more. Like a maniac.

 
Maniac.

  He reminded himself that he shouldn’t use that word. That’s what he called his sister that night. But really, at this moment, he felt like he was the one who deserved that title.

  “That didn’t go so well,” Sophie said, crinkling her forehead.

  “Why’d you say Illinois?” he hissed, tossing the Mini-Penguin in with the Mini-Monkeys. “Say, Chicago.”

  He headed for the door. But just before he reached it, he caught Puck out of the corner of his eye. She had this sneaky smile going, and she was waving at him. It kind of killed him.

  He half-smiled. And waved back.

  Sophie followed him out as he pushed into the Pearl Street crowd. His smile vanished as Sophie walked next to him.

  She’s so annoying.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not a mom. I’m not very good at this. I shouldn’t have pushed you to take the job. It’s just . . . I think what happened with Lilly happened because you were pushed beyond your limit. You need some fun, you know? Some normalcy. I just so want you to have a great summer.”

  She played with the end of her long braid as they walked, and she looked genuinely bummed. Now Oliver felt bad for making her feel bad. On top of making Essa feel bad. Plus, he hated thinking about that last night with Lilly. Hated.

  “Am I a horrible person?” he asked.

  Sophie looked at him like she was about to deliver the most serious news. “Absolutely not.” Her feather earrings swayed in the breeze. She kept her eyes directly on his. “Believe me?”