Mind over Monsters, page 2
The younger kids—the puke-prone boy and the girl, who kept rising on her toes like she was preparing to sprint for the exit—were next to Ava. The girl spoke up. “I’m Catherine Llewellyn, and this is Owen. We’re in sixth.”
Owen nodded but said nothing.
It occurred to Lena that she was an extra seventh grader and an extra white kid in the group. She brought nothing to the diversity ad / review panel but worry in its purest form. Which meant one of her teachers had looked at the list of prospective members and said something like, I know we’ve got a good representative group here, but poor Lena Lennox is clearly a wreck. Can we squeeze her in?
“I’m Lena Lennox, seventh,” she said to the group, almost apologetically.
“Sam Shah, also seventh.” Inexplicably, Sam accompanied this with the kind of wrist-turning wave royals give from balconies.
Sofie removed a finger from her mouth and swallowed the fresh cuticle strip she had bitten off. “I’m Sofie Guerrero, I’m in seventh, and I have no clue what I’m doing here,” she announced. “I don’t need to meditate. Meditation is for tense people. Do you see a tense person when you look at me?”
Lena, who had seen Sofie draw blood biting her cuticles during a history test, chose to remain silent.
“Ahem,” said Sam, making a different choice.
“Yes?” Sofie said. Her long, glossy braid whipped around as she turned to him.
Sam coughed into his fist while muttering, “Cuticles.”
“I bite my cuticles because they taste good,” Sofie said. “And they’re an excellent source of protein.”
“Maybe you’re here as the control subject,” Tom offered diplomatically. “If they’re testing this app rigorously, they would need a non-tense person as a control.”
“That must be it,” said Sofie. Her hand went back to her mouth.
* * *
The app had already talked them through a muscle-relaxing sequence that had them tighten various parts of their bodies and release them, from toes to scalp, and Lena felt like a soft stick of butter. In her head, she was relaxing in the woods. There were no bugs flying into her eyes or crawling unexpectedly across her legs, and no squirrels scolding her. There were no traffic sounds or airplanes buzzing. It was perfect. If this was meditation, she was in favor. But the voice wasn’t done.
Now gently close your eyes, it said. Which was weird, because weren’t her eyes already closed? But she guessed it meant that the eyes looking around in the woods were supposed to close too. Which was like closing your eyes squared. But she went with it.
Let the outside world drift away. Let your thoughts drift away as well. Concentrate on your breathing. If she’d been a soft stick of butter before, now she was melting around the edges. Pooling, even. She was a pool of melting butter in the woods. But didn’t that mean a raccoon could come along and—
If any stray thoughts enter your head, the voice advised, notice them, then let them go as you return your attention to your breath.
That was better. No butter, no raccoon. Only Lena, her head empty, breathing slowly in and out, in and out.
The voice went silent for what felt like a long time. Long enough for her to wonder if there was something wrong with the app. She opened an eye and checked out Sam, who was lying to her right. He was completely still, breathing regularly. He let out a tiny snore. He was asleep.
A while later, a tiny gong sounded in her ears. Great job, said the voice. Session one of “Calming and Clearing Our Minds” is complete. Gently open your eyes and stretch out.
Lena opened her eyes as gently as she could, which was harder than it sounded, and sat up. So did the other kids. Except for Sam, who was still asleep. Sofie reached over and poked him hard.
“Mom!” he complained. “Quit it. I’m awake.” He rolled over, and it was only when he tried to pull a nonexistent blanket over his head that he opened his eyes. “Oops,” he said. “What’d I miss?”
The door opened, and Call Me Barb stuck her head in. “So?” she asked, beaming encouragingly. “Are we feeling nice and relaxed?”
No one was sure who “we” was. Call Me Barb, for one, seemed over-caffeinated. But they all nodded.
“So that was the first session of part one of the program,” Call Me Barb said, “ ‘Calming and Clearing Our Minds.’ There are four more sessions in part one, then we move on to part two: ‘Finding and Facing Our Fears.’ There’s a third part, but we’re going to see how you do with these, determine if you feel they’re helpful. If they are, we’ll roll them out for the whole school. And then who knows? The company will take it to schools nationwide, I would think. The sky’s the limit!” Barb’s head retreated from the doorway like a turtle’s.
As Lena put her phone away in her locker, she noticed that she felt… good. Which was unusual and kind of interesting. Her body was relaxed—not soft butter anymore, but not frozen butter, which was her usual condition. And her mind was clear, as if she’d woken up from a good night’s sleep.
Some of this was pure relief. Overnight she’d managed to work Regina’s ideas about meditation into full-blown worry that not only would they have to chant “om,” but there would be a guy with a man-bun burning smelly incense and making them stand on their heads.
Now that she knew meditation only involved lying there and breathing and gently opening and closing her eyes, Lena found she was looking forward to the next session.
CHAPTER 4
Tea-and-toast night,” their father announced when Lena and Spike arrived downstairs at dinnertime. “Pizza’s on the way.”
Whenever Valerie Lennox had an important court appearance the next day, she would hole up in her office and refuse all food except tea and toast. She said eating light kept her mind sharp the next day. Tea-and-toast night meant pizza-and-TV night for the other three Lennoxes, so no one complained.
It was Lena’s turn to choose the show, and she picked a favorite from the DVR archives: the 2019 World Gymnastics Championships’ women’s individual all-around, Simone Biles easily winning with moves that most others wouldn’t dare try. An oldie but a goody.
Spike lolled his head against the sofa cushion as she cued up the recording. “Could we maybe watch a movie?” he pleaded. “Something with the tiniest crumb of suspense?”
“My night, my choice,” said Lena.
“I wonder how it will come out this time,” Spike said. “Who will take the gold?” He flopped onto his side.
“Simone Biles is the world’s greatest gymnast,” Lena reminded her brother. “Ever. Eh. Ver. Sit up and pay attention to history.”
He didn’t, of course. Spike never really sat up, and he rarely paid attention. “Ooh, and the world’s greatest gymnast takes a nasty tumble climbing onto the balance beam!” Spike fake-narrated in a cheesy announcer voice. “I don’t see how anyone could come back from a fall like that. But look, Chet! She’s fallen again walking across the mat! Is it possible to get a negative score in gymnastics? Because I think Simone Biles might be going for it here today, folks. This is a totally new kind of world record. History indeed!”
“You’re just jealous,” Lena said. “Because she’s got more athletic talent in her baby toe than you have in your entire body. She’s the GOAT, and you’re a sloth.”
Spike was undeterred. “Biles is one tough competitor, though,” he continued in his annoying voice. “She bounced back after flying off the bars and getting tangled in the cables. Good thing her coaches brought those wire cutters. She’d still be dangling there if they hadn’t.”
He took an enormous bite of pizza and yelped at the hot cheese. He gulped his water and coughed for a while.
“You’re too right, Chad,” he said in a different obnoxious voice when he’d recovered. “And she must have been crushed after that disastrous vault. Not as crushed as the poor fan she landed on, though, am I right?”
“Shut up, Chad.” Lena threw one of the olives she’d picked off her pizza at Spike.
“That was Chet talking, not Chad,” said Spike. “Keep track of the announcers!”
The olive had lodged in his hair. He ate it.
“Gross,” Lena said.
“Five-second rule,” said Spike.
“I don’t think that applies to hair,” their dad said.
“My hair is clean,” said Spike. “If anything, I got olive on my hair, not hair on my olive.” He dabbed at his hair with a napkin.
“Lena,” said Spike when he was satisfied that his hair was de-olived, “you don’t even take gymnastics lessons anymore. I seem to recall you wimping out pretty early in your gymnastics career.”
This was true, if mean. From the moment Lena saw Simone Biles on TV, she couldn’t wait to get into a gym and start flipping around. But the flipping around came much, much later, it turned out. And building up to it involved a lot of muscles Lena didn’t seem to have. Plus, and most important, the equipment was a lot higher off the ground than it looked on TV. Especially the trampoline, which they were expected to jump around on even though you never saw Simone Biles doing that.
The trampoline was high to begin with, and the gymnasts were encouraged to bounce even higher. What if she bounced so hard she hit her head on the ceiling and got a concussion? What if her head poked through the ceiling and she ended up dangling there by her neck, waiting for an emergency crew? What if she had to pee while she waited?
Once these worries had entered her head, she couldn’t get them out. She gave up well before the session ended. Her mother was still annoyed about the money she’d spent on the wasted lessons and sparkly leotards.
“So what if I stopped lessons?” she asked Spike. “I can still like watching.”
“What I’m asking is this,” said Spike, sounding a lot like their mother in lawyer mode. “If you quit gymnastics, why are you still obsessed with Simone Biles?” He swept the olives off the rim of Lena’s plate and popped them into his mouth.
“I’m not obsessed,” said Lena. Spike didn’t need to know about the inside of her locker. “I just have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for her.”
Lena paused here to grab the crusts from the rim of Spike’s plate and think about the answer to the question behind his question. There were other GOATs—even other great gymnasts. Why Simone Biles in particular? “I admire her, in a totally normal and un-obsessed way, because she did these amazing, terrifying things,” Lena began. “In front of a gazillion people. If she messed up, she wouldn’t only have been embarrassed, she could have gotten hurt. But she never seemed scared. She was even brave enough to take a break when she needed to.”
“And here I was thinking she was having fun,” Spike said through a mouthful of olives.
CHAPTER 5
Spike’s real name was Glen Lennox Jr. But he’d been called Spike ever since he became a volleyball star in seventh grade. He hadn’t led the Cranberry Bog Warriors to victory—he was only one person—but he’d gotten them closer than usual a few times. Now he was a sophomore in high school and already on the varsity team. He didn’t answer to Glen anymore.
Spike’s legend lived on among Cranberry Bog Middle School’s current volleyball players, so Lena shouldn’t have been surprised when, the next morning as they were rolling out their yoga mats, the eighth-grade boy, Tom, asked, “Are you Spike Lennox’s sister?” He smoothed the back of his neck once before adding, “You mentioned your last name yesterday.”
She was surprised, though. Not at the topic, but at the fact that an older boy was speaking to her. Older boys tended to look, and sometimes try to walk, right through Lena.
“Yeah,” she said. Which didn’t seem like enough of a response, so she added, “He’s my older brother. I mean, of course he’s my brother if I’m his sister.” Lena felt her face warming up like a toaster. Hoping more words would dilute the awkwardness, she threw in, “And of course he’s older—he’s in high school. And…” Her face could have toasted a bagel. “Yes. The answer is yes.”
Tom smiled. “I’m on the volleyball team. I knew Spike when he was in eighth grade and I was in sixth. He’s cool.”
Lena couldn’t deny it: Spike was cool. Tom was probably wondering if Spike and Lena were biologically related, based on how uncool Lena was. “I know,” she admitted. “But don’t tell him I said so.”
Tom laughed as he put in his earbuds.
Lena lay down, put in her own earbuds, and waited for her face to cool off.
* * *
Session 2 of “Calming and Clearing Our Minds” was almost identical to the first one. But this one lasted longer, and it had music in the background. It was the kind of music you heard in gift shops that had wind chimes and Birkenstock-wearing salespeople. It didn’t have a tune, really, just some calming synthesizer with a sprinkling of noodly piano.
This time when the voice went silent, the music continued, and Lena found that she could time her breaths with the synthesizer swoops, which helped keep random thoughts from cluttering her mind. The music faded into silence, and the tiny gong noise told her the session was over.
The music hadn’t kept Sam awake. He was out cold, curled up like a cooked shrimp.
“Sam!” Sofie whispered loudly.
“Wha?” he muttered. “It’s Saturday. I need my sleep, Mom….”
“It’s Tuesday,” Sofie said in her normal voice. “And I’m not your mom.”
Sam’s eyes opened. “I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Yup.”
“I should quit this and start a napping group. That’s what I need.”
“Maybe you should go to bed earlier,” Sofie suggested.
“Too much homework,” said Sam. “And I can’t start it till I’m done with cello or debate or whatever.”
Lena knew what he meant. The days she had Climate Change Club or ceramics after school were long. But her mother insisted she turn off the light by nine thirty whether her homework was done or not. Usually she could finish up in homeroom. Except now she didn’t have homeroom. How was she going to keep up? Suddenly she was a frozen stick of butter again, and her hand was in her hair. She looked at the clock. It had taken her twenty minutes to relax and mere seconds to tense back up. So much for session 2.
The seven of them put their mats away. Homeroom wasn’t over for another ten minutes. After some quiet awkwardness, Catherine said, “Is Call Me Barb going to come back and dismiss us? Or can we leave?”
“I’m for leaving,” Ava announced, hoisting her backpack. “Maybe I’ll make it to science on time for once.” The labs were on the second floor, in the school’s outer reaches. In case of explosions, Lena figured. Almost everyone was almost always late for science.
“Wait a sec,” said Tom. “Speaking of science…”
Ava let her backpack sink to the floor. “Guess I’ll be late as usual,” she murmured.
“If we’re supposed to be testing this program,” Tom went on, “as a review panel, shouldn’t they be asking us to take notes? There should be surveys for us to fill out, so they can collate our responses and—”
“If you want my response, I think it’s a waste of time,” Sam blurted.
“You slept through both sessions,” said Sofie. “How would you know?”
“I’ve been awake at the beginning,” said Sam.
“I bet you haven’t even made it to your happy place,” Sofie said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Case closed,” said Sofie. “I like it. Even if I don’t need it and I’m the control subject, I find it very relaxing.”
Call Me Barb never did appear. They dismissed themselves when the bell rang. Except for Ava, who had sprinted for the door as Sam and Sofie bickered.
CHAPTER 6
There you are,” said Lena when Regina finally arrived at her locker that afternoon.
“Sorry,” said Regina. “I can’t walk home with you today.”
“Why not?”
Regina grimaced. “I got detention.”
“Detention!”
A cold shot of dread ran up Lena’s spine. Neither of them had ever gotten detention before. Lena wasn’t even sure how it was done. She fiddled with the friendship bracelet Gina had made her in fifth grade. Gina had a matching one in different colors. The bracelets’ central beads spelled out “GinaLena” (Gina’s) or “LenaGina” (Lena’s). They never took their bracelets off except to add a few beads when they got tight.
“What happened?”
Regina rolled her eyes. She didn’t seem as freaked out as Lena would have been. Or even as freaked out as Lena was on her behalf. “I was laughing during bio.”
“Was it funny?”
“The class wasn’t funny, but Jared kept flicking my arm. I couldn’t help it.”
“Which Jared?” There were a few possibilities.
“Kent. He got detention too.” Regina didn’t seem upset at all.
“Why was he flicking you? Was there a bug on your arm?”
“He was trying to get my attention.”
“Why didn’t he just talk to you?”
Regina flipped her hair behind her shoulder. This was something she couldn’t have done last year, but she made it look natural. Maybe she’d been practicing. “My mom says boys our age can be inarticulate,” said Regina. “See you tomorrow!” And she rushed toward detention as if it featured a waffle bar and karaoke.
Lena was left to walk home alone, thinking about how Jared Kent didn’t seem inarticulate when he was dominating the discussion in history class. Which he did often, even when he clearly hadn’t done the reading.
* * *
It was Spike, not their parents, who asked Lena how Meditation Group was going. Not that he was nice about it.
“So, Lene,” he asked over dinner that evening, “how’s meditation working? Are you mindful yet? I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference.” He smirked.
Lena hated smirks. She even hated the word “smirk.” And she hated Spike’s obnoxious Lena-directed smirks most of all. “It’s fine,” she said primly. “It’s very relaxing.”
Owen nodded but said nothing.
It occurred to Lena that she was an extra seventh grader and an extra white kid in the group. She brought nothing to the diversity ad / review panel but worry in its purest form. Which meant one of her teachers had looked at the list of prospective members and said something like, I know we’ve got a good representative group here, but poor Lena Lennox is clearly a wreck. Can we squeeze her in?
“I’m Lena Lennox, seventh,” she said to the group, almost apologetically.
“Sam Shah, also seventh.” Inexplicably, Sam accompanied this with the kind of wrist-turning wave royals give from balconies.
Sofie removed a finger from her mouth and swallowed the fresh cuticle strip she had bitten off. “I’m Sofie Guerrero, I’m in seventh, and I have no clue what I’m doing here,” she announced. “I don’t need to meditate. Meditation is for tense people. Do you see a tense person when you look at me?”
Lena, who had seen Sofie draw blood biting her cuticles during a history test, chose to remain silent.
“Ahem,” said Sam, making a different choice.
“Yes?” Sofie said. Her long, glossy braid whipped around as she turned to him.
Sam coughed into his fist while muttering, “Cuticles.”
“I bite my cuticles because they taste good,” Sofie said. “And they’re an excellent source of protein.”
“Maybe you’re here as the control subject,” Tom offered diplomatically. “If they’re testing this app rigorously, they would need a non-tense person as a control.”
“That must be it,” said Sofie. Her hand went back to her mouth.
* * *
The app had already talked them through a muscle-relaxing sequence that had them tighten various parts of their bodies and release them, from toes to scalp, and Lena felt like a soft stick of butter. In her head, she was relaxing in the woods. There were no bugs flying into her eyes or crawling unexpectedly across her legs, and no squirrels scolding her. There were no traffic sounds or airplanes buzzing. It was perfect. If this was meditation, she was in favor. But the voice wasn’t done.
Now gently close your eyes, it said. Which was weird, because weren’t her eyes already closed? But she guessed it meant that the eyes looking around in the woods were supposed to close too. Which was like closing your eyes squared. But she went with it.
Let the outside world drift away. Let your thoughts drift away as well. Concentrate on your breathing. If she’d been a soft stick of butter before, now she was melting around the edges. Pooling, even. She was a pool of melting butter in the woods. But didn’t that mean a raccoon could come along and—
If any stray thoughts enter your head, the voice advised, notice them, then let them go as you return your attention to your breath.
That was better. No butter, no raccoon. Only Lena, her head empty, breathing slowly in and out, in and out.
The voice went silent for what felt like a long time. Long enough for her to wonder if there was something wrong with the app. She opened an eye and checked out Sam, who was lying to her right. He was completely still, breathing regularly. He let out a tiny snore. He was asleep.
A while later, a tiny gong sounded in her ears. Great job, said the voice. Session one of “Calming and Clearing Our Minds” is complete. Gently open your eyes and stretch out.
Lena opened her eyes as gently as she could, which was harder than it sounded, and sat up. So did the other kids. Except for Sam, who was still asleep. Sofie reached over and poked him hard.
“Mom!” he complained. “Quit it. I’m awake.” He rolled over, and it was only when he tried to pull a nonexistent blanket over his head that he opened his eyes. “Oops,” he said. “What’d I miss?”
The door opened, and Call Me Barb stuck her head in. “So?” she asked, beaming encouragingly. “Are we feeling nice and relaxed?”
No one was sure who “we” was. Call Me Barb, for one, seemed over-caffeinated. But they all nodded.
“So that was the first session of part one of the program,” Call Me Barb said, “ ‘Calming and Clearing Our Minds.’ There are four more sessions in part one, then we move on to part two: ‘Finding and Facing Our Fears.’ There’s a third part, but we’re going to see how you do with these, determine if you feel they’re helpful. If they are, we’ll roll them out for the whole school. And then who knows? The company will take it to schools nationwide, I would think. The sky’s the limit!” Barb’s head retreated from the doorway like a turtle’s.
As Lena put her phone away in her locker, she noticed that she felt… good. Which was unusual and kind of interesting. Her body was relaxed—not soft butter anymore, but not frozen butter, which was her usual condition. And her mind was clear, as if she’d woken up from a good night’s sleep.
Some of this was pure relief. Overnight she’d managed to work Regina’s ideas about meditation into full-blown worry that not only would they have to chant “om,” but there would be a guy with a man-bun burning smelly incense and making them stand on their heads.
Now that she knew meditation only involved lying there and breathing and gently opening and closing her eyes, Lena found she was looking forward to the next session.
CHAPTER 4
Tea-and-toast night,” their father announced when Lena and Spike arrived downstairs at dinnertime. “Pizza’s on the way.”
Whenever Valerie Lennox had an important court appearance the next day, she would hole up in her office and refuse all food except tea and toast. She said eating light kept her mind sharp the next day. Tea-and-toast night meant pizza-and-TV night for the other three Lennoxes, so no one complained.
It was Lena’s turn to choose the show, and she picked a favorite from the DVR archives: the 2019 World Gymnastics Championships’ women’s individual all-around, Simone Biles easily winning with moves that most others wouldn’t dare try. An oldie but a goody.
Spike lolled his head against the sofa cushion as she cued up the recording. “Could we maybe watch a movie?” he pleaded. “Something with the tiniest crumb of suspense?”
“My night, my choice,” said Lena.
“I wonder how it will come out this time,” Spike said. “Who will take the gold?” He flopped onto his side.
“Simone Biles is the world’s greatest gymnast,” Lena reminded her brother. “Ever. Eh. Ver. Sit up and pay attention to history.”
He didn’t, of course. Spike never really sat up, and he rarely paid attention. “Ooh, and the world’s greatest gymnast takes a nasty tumble climbing onto the balance beam!” Spike fake-narrated in a cheesy announcer voice. “I don’t see how anyone could come back from a fall like that. But look, Chet! She’s fallen again walking across the mat! Is it possible to get a negative score in gymnastics? Because I think Simone Biles might be going for it here today, folks. This is a totally new kind of world record. History indeed!”
“You’re just jealous,” Lena said. “Because she’s got more athletic talent in her baby toe than you have in your entire body. She’s the GOAT, and you’re a sloth.”
Spike was undeterred. “Biles is one tough competitor, though,” he continued in his annoying voice. “She bounced back after flying off the bars and getting tangled in the cables. Good thing her coaches brought those wire cutters. She’d still be dangling there if they hadn’t.”
He took an enormous bite of pizza and yelped at the hot cheese. He gulped his water and coughed for a while.
“You’re too right, Chad,” he said in a different obnoxious voice when he’d recovered. “And she must have been crushed after that disastrous vault. Not as crushed as the poor fan she landed on, though, am I right?”
“Shut up, Chad.” Lena threw one of the olives she’d picked off her pizza at Spike.
“That was Chet talking, not Chad,” said Spike. “Keep track of the announcers!”
The olive had lodged in his hair. He ate it.
“Gross,” Lena said.
“Five-second rule,” said Spike.
“I don’t think that applies to hair,” their dad said.
“My hair is clean,” said Spike. “If anything, I got olive on my hair, not hair on my olive.” He dabbed at his hair with a napkin.
“Lena,” said Spike when he was satisfied that his hair was de-olived, “you don’t even take gymnastics lessons anymore. I seem to recall you wimping out pretty early in your gymnastics career.”
This was true, if mean. From the moment Lena saw Simone Biles on TV, she couldn’t wait to get into a gym and start flipping around. But the flipping around came much, much later, it turned out. And building up to it involved a lot of muscles Lena didn’t seem to have. Plus, and most important, the equipment was a lot higher off the ground than it looked on TV. Especially the trampoline, which they were expected to jump around on even though you never saw Simone Biles doing that.
The trampoline was high to begin with, and the gymnasts were encouraged to bounce even higher. What if she bounced so hard she hit her head on the ceiling and got a concussion? What if her head poked through the ceiling and she ended up dangling there by her neck, waiting for an emergency crew? What if she had to pee while she waited?
Once these worries had entered her head, she couldn’t get them out. She gave up well before the session ended. Her mother was still annoyed about the money she’d spent on the wasted lessons and sparkly leotards.
“So what if I stopped lessons?” she asked Spike. “I can still like watching.”
“What I’m asking is this,” said Spike, sounding a lot like their mother in lawyer mode. “If you quit gymnastics, why are you still obsessed with Simone Biles?” He swept the olives off the rim of Lena’s plate and popped them into his mouth.
“I’m not obsessed,” said Lena. Spike didn’t need to know about the inside of her locker. “I just have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for her.”
Lena paused here to grab the crusts from the rim of Spike’s plate and think about the answer to the question behind his question. There were other GOATs—even other great gymnasts. Why Simone Biles in particular? “I admire her, in a totally normal and un-obsessed way, because she did these amazing, terrifying things,” Lena began. “In front of a gazillion people. If she messed up, she wouldn’t only have been embarrassed, she could have gotten hurt. But she never seemed scared. She was even brave enough to take a break when she needed to.”
“And here I was thinking she was having fun,” Spike said through a mouthful of olives.
CHAPTER 5
Spike’s real name was Glen Lennox Jr. But he’d been called Spike ever since he became a volleyball star in seventh grade. He hadn’t led the Cranberry Bog Warriors to victory—he was only one person—but he’d gotten them closer than usual a few times. Now he was a sophomore in high school and already on the varsity team. He didn’t answer to Glen anymore.
Spike’s legend lived on among Cranberry Bog Middle School’s current volleyball players, so Lena shouldn’t have been surprised when, the next morning as they were rolling out their yoga mats, the eighth-grade boy, Tom, asked, “Are you Spike Lennox’s sister?” He smoothed the back of his neck once before adding, “You mentioned your last name yesterday.”
She was surprised, though. Not at the topic, but at the fact that an older boy was speaking to her. Older boys tended to look, and sometimes try to walk, right through Lena.
“Yeah,” she said. Which didn’t seem like enough of a response, so she added, “He’s my older brother. I mean, of course he’s my brother if I’m his sister.” Lena felt her face warming up like a toaster. Hoping more words would dilute the awkwardness, she threw in, “And of course he’s older—he’s in high school. And…” Her face could have toasted a bagel. “Yes. The answer is yes.”
Tom smiled. “I’m on the volleyball team. I knew Spike when he was in eighth grade and I was in sixth. He’s cool.”
Lena couldn’t deny it: Spike was cool. Tom was probably wondering if Spike and Lena were biologically related, based on how uncool Lena was. “I know,” she admitted. “But don’t tell him I said so.”
Tom laughed as he put in his earbuds.
Lena lay down, put in her own earbuds, and waited for her face to cool off.
* * *
Session 2 of “Calming and Clearing Our Minds” was almost identical to the first one. But this one lasted longer, and it had music in the background. It was the kind of music you heard in gift shops that had wind chimes and Birkenstock-wearing salespeople. It didn’t have a tune, really, just some calming synthesizer with a sprinkling of noodly piano.
This time when the voice went silent, the music continued, and Lena found that she could time her breaths with the synthesizer swoops, which helped keep random thoughts from cluttering her mind. The music faded into silence, and the tiny gong noise told her the session was over.
The music hadn’t kept Sam awake. He was out cold, curled up like a cooked shrimp.
“Sam!” Sofie whispered loudly.
“Wha?” he muttered. “It’s Saturday. I need my sleep, Mom….”
“It’s Tuesday,” Sofie said in her normal voice. “And I’m not your mom.”
Sam’s eyes opened. “I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Yup.”
“I should quit this and start a napping group. That’s what I need.”
“Maybe you should go to bed earlier,” Sofie suggested.
“Too much homework,” said Sam. “And I can’t start it till I’m done with cello or debate or whatever.”
Lena knew what he meant. The days she had Climate Change Club or ceramics after school were long. But her mother insisted she turn off the light by nine thirty whether her homework was done or not. Usually she could finish up in homeroom. Except now she didn’t have homeroom. How was she going to keep up? Suddenly she was a frozen stick of butter again, and her hand was in her hair. She looked at the clock. It had taken her twenty minutes to relax and mere seconds to tense back up. So much for session 2.
The seven of them put their mats away. Homeroom wasn’t over for another ten minutes. After some quiet awkwardness, Catherine said, “Is Call Me Barb going to come back and dismiss us? Or can we leave?”
“I’m for leaving,” Ava announced, hoisting her backpack. “Maybe I’ll make it to science on time for once.” The labs were on the second floor, in the school’s outer reaches. In case of explosions, Lena figured. Almost everyone was almost always late for science.
“Wait a sec,” said Tom. “Speaking of science…”
Ava let her backpack sink to the floor. “Guess I’ll be late as usual,” she murmured.
“If we’re supposed to be testing this program,” Tom went on, “as a review panel, shouldn’t they be asking us to take notes? There should be surveys for us to fill out, so they can collate our responses and—”
“If you want my response, I think it’s a waste of time,” Sam blurted.
“You slept through both sessions,” said Sofie. “How would you know?”
“I’ve been awake at the beginning,” said Sam.
“I bet you haven’t even made it to your happy place,” Sofie said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Case closed,” said Sofie. “I like it. Even if I don’t need it and I’m the control subject, I find it very relaxing.”
Call Me Barb never did appear. They dismissed themselves when the bell rang. Except for Ava, who had sprinted for the door as Sam and Sofie bickered.
CHAPTER 6
There you are,” said Lena when Regina finally arrived at her locker that afternoon.
“Sorry,” said Regina. “I can’t walk home with you today.”
“Why not?”
Regina grimaced. “I got detention.”
“Detention!”
A cold shot of dread ran up Lena’s spine. Neither of them had ever gotten detention before. Lena wasn’t even sure how it was done. She fiddled with the friendship bracelet Gina had made her in fifth grade. Gina had a matching one in different colors. The bracelets’ central beads spelled out “GinaLena” (Gina’s) or “LenaGina” (Lena’s). They never took their bracelets off except to add a few beads when they got tight.
“What happened?”
Regina rolled her eyes. She didn’t seem as freaked out as Lena would have been. Or even as freaked out as Lena was on her behalf. “I was laughing during bio.”
“Was it funny?”
“The class wasn’t funny, but Jared kept flicking my arm. I couldn’t help it.”
“Which Jared?” There were a few possibilities.
“Kent. He got detention too.” Regina didn’t seem upset at all.
“Why was he flicking you? Was there a bug on your arm?”
“He was trying to get my attention.”
“Why didn’t he just talk to you?”
Regina flipped her hair behind her shoulder. This was something she couldn’t have done last year, but she made it look natural. Maybe she’d been practicing. “My mom says boys our age can be inarticulate,” said Regina. “See you tomorrow!” And she rushed toward detention as if it featured a waffle bar and karaoke.
Lena was left to walk home alone, thinking about how Jared Kent didn’t seem inarticulate when he was dominating the discussion in history class. Which he did often, even when he clearly hadn’t done the reading.
* * *
It was Spike, not their parents, who asked Lena how Meditation Group was going. Not that he was nice about it.
“So, Lene,” he asked over dinner that evening, “how’s meditation working? Are you mindful yet? I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference.” He smirked.
Lena hated smirks. She even hated the word “smirk.” And she hated Spike’s obnoxious Lena-directed smirks most of all. “It’s fine,” she said primly. “It’s very relaxing.”
