NINE

. . .

Surrender to the guru is the birth of enlightenment; the truth and the teacher are one and the same.

I stayed there watching till the sun sank down and the sky turned white with just a bottom rim of gold. More cooking, more cleaning, more beard guy sitting in his chair. I wondered what he thought about when he was alone. Did he watch the red bars of the digital clock and think, “Ah! Time for pretty incense ladies to come in!” Or “Almost time for Love Boat!” Or did he worry whether he was right to make Jayita leave her boyfriend? What was it like to have a thousand people plan their lives and feelings based on just the way he looked at them? If that were me, I think I’d spend every single second freaking out about every single flicker of my eyes.

That night my mom didn’t come back until super late, and I was glad. It took an hour just to get the mud out of my sneakers. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially her. I had a secret that I didn’t ask for. Not like Colin, not even like the letters to my dad. This wasn’t a secret that I chose. It got forced on me, and knowing it felt dirty.

There wasn’t any reason for Jayita to break up with Chakradev. The Guru was making her do it just because he felt like it, and she was doing it because he said. Even though she didn’t want to. Like she was a little kid, except she’s not. It scared me to see it. And it scared me even more to see him touch her after.

And I wondered: did the beard guy get to say what everyone here was supposed to do about every person in their lives? What if he told my mom it was better for her karma to get rid of me, leave me alone forever? Would she be strong and tell him no, or would she crumple like a stepped-on blade of grass?

I practically hold my breath all the way to the lot. I make myself imagine it empty so I won’t be disappointed; I squeeze shut that little space of maybe from the start. The hope pushes at me, but I steel myself against it. When Colin’s face pops into my head I shove it away, picture a plain gray stretch of gravel, no one there.

When I come around the bend the yes rushes in so fast I almost make a sound. His Converse sneakers are sticking out from underneath the bus. And then his jeans. And then the bottom of his shirt. He hears me coming, swivels out from under.

“Hey!” he says, and grins. And I start crying.

All of yesterday swells up inside me like a water balloon, and his face is the pin that pricks me. I’m so relieved to see him it just gushes out. I can’t believe what an asshole I am and I try to hide it—laugh over the tears just to cover them with something, then choke it all back into my throat as fast as I can. It doesn’t work very well. I think I might actually look crazy.

“Hey,” he says again, his voice softer, worried. He sits up straight. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Snot is streaming from my nose; my cheeks are hot and damp. I shake my head, my face tucked down. I can’t look at him like this. My chest hitches and I breathe in hard and slow, try to get a grip.

It seems like forever till the tears slow down, but I know it’s not even a minute. I wipe my face on my T-shirt and look up. His eyes are soft and worried like his voice.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Okay. Sorry.” It’s a reflex.

I almost do it again but he stops me, smiling. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t say, Is everything okay. Are things okay. He said, Are you okay. Somehow that difference matters. I open my mouth to say, Yeah—another reflex—but it won’t come out. I shake my head again.

He pats the gravel beside him. I crouch down, and he wipes off his hands with a rag. I don’t know how to start, and he doesn’t ask me any questions. Just sits there, leaned up against the side of the bus, next to me.

Finally I ask him: “Have you ever had a secret that you didn’t want?”

He says, “Sure.” He doesn’t tell me what it is.

The quiet yawns between us. He stands at the edge of it on purpose, waiting, and finally I dive in. I tell him about pillars and marble, steel pots and NO TRESSPASSING, white silk and gold. I tell him how I watched my mom through thick heavy windows, didn’t knock. And then about Jayita and the beard guy.

His eyebrows knit; he curls his lip. “That’s fucked up,” he says, and it makes me so relieved to hear it. “Nobody has the right to tell someone else who they can be with.”

Be with. “Yeah,” I say, shaky. “Yeah,” I say again, surer.

We work for a while, quiet, tools clinking on metal, grease smearing on hands. When the sun’s high in the sky he stops, flips the top off a gallon jug of water, drinks. He squints at me. “What were you doing walking all that way, anyway? That entrance must be four or five miles up the road at least. That’s way more than an hour even if you go pretty fast.”

So much stuff happened since yesterday morning that I almost forgot about that part, but now it comes right back. I went because he wasn’t here. I went because he has a whole life I don’t know about, and all I’ve got is this lot. I waited and I freaked out and all I could do was walk, away and fast, get to someplace different, far from here. How am I supposed to say that stuff?

“Um, I was bored, I guess.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” I stick to my story. “Just bored.”

He leans back. “Bored, huh?” He thinks something, but I can’t tell what. All of a sudden I feel like he’s looking at me through a lens. Like a magnifying glass. I feel like a bug on the hot ground.

“Well, you weren’t here, so—”

“Ahh.” He cuts me off. “Ah. I see.” His eyes spark; the corner of his mouth twitches up. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to smile back. I’m not sure I could, though, regardless. I hardly explained anything, but somehow I said too much.

Colin sits there twinkling at me for a second, stretching things out so I’ll have to say something. My cheeks are hot. I know they’re red. I feel like a naked baby bird. He isn’t being mean, just teasing me. It should be no big deal. At school people made fun of my almond-butter sandwiches and the dolphin stickers on mom’s car, and it always bounced right off my skin; I never cared. Now I do.

My eyes well up again. Ridiculous. Just a little, but come on. I try to fake like I’m gazing thoughtfully into the distance, but he sees.

“Wait,” he says. “Hang on. Are you crying?”

I have to look at him to answer. I shake my head no, but a tear spills out of one eye, streaks down my cheek.

“You are. God, I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay—” I start to say.

“I wasn’t laughing at you. You know that, right?”

I nod, small.

“I really wasn’t. Okay? I just thought it was—Crap. Sorry.”

Another tear drips on my nose.

“Oh, Christ,” he says. “Come here,” and he leans over and puts his arms around my shoulders. We’re sitting down, so it’s a weird halfway kind of hug. Still, this shudder of electricity goes into my shoulders and down my spine. His T-shirt is soft under my palms, and past that is his skin, and muscle underneath. I hang on.

I hung on a long time, till it was almost weird. The funny thing is, he did too.

I think. Maybe he was just waiting for me to end it, the way you do when you don’t know how long the hug’s supposed to last and you don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings. But usually you can feel the question in the other person’s fingers: they loosen their grip, hold on halfway till you let go. But he didn’t pull away.

Finally I had to. I was starting to blush hard and even sweat. I moved back, and he tilted his head, thinking something. I couldn’t tell what. After a second he said, “C’mon,” picked up the socket, and got back to work.

Now six hours later, hair washed, dinner eaten, and mail fruitlessly checked and checked again, I sit in Evening Program. I can’t look at my mom; I feel like she’ll know that I know things I’m not supposed to, things that she doesn’t even know. And I don’t want to tell her. Just because it’s in my head doesn’t give her the right to know it. I want to keep it for myself.

Jayita’s up in front now too, closer even than my mom and Vrishti. She has a red dot on her forehead. Chakradev is nowhere to be seen. It’s weird to me that she’s still here. I mean, the beard guy said that if she didn’t want to dump Dev, she could leave. Well, he told her she would have to leave, but still. If that was me and I had someone that I loved, I wouldn’t let anybody split us up. I guess she loves the Guru more than Chakradev. Except it didn’t really seem like love.

I watch Jayita sway, eyes closed, off inside her head somewhere. I can’t tell if she’s blissed out or she’s really sad. She must miss Dev, I know. And I wonder if she misses herself, too. I stare at her hard, hoping she’ll feel my eyes and open hers and meet them. I want to see inside her. I want to know if she’s still there.

A swami strides up to the podium and I stop watching her. “Welcome!” he says. “We have a very, very special gift for you tonight,” he says. “The Guru will grant darshan.” Darshan: that thing that made my mom feel like an electric ocean. Sharing presence with the Guru. This means I’m going to have to look him in the face.

After the murmurs of excitement, the room fills with the low thunder of mass rustling. “Please line up in a centered and orderly manner,” the swami says into the mic. I try to keep my eyes on Jayita, to see what happens to her when she gets up close to him again, but she just disappears into a mass of paisley skirts and patterned shawls and drawstring pants.

It’s ten minutes till we get to the head of the line. Two swamis stand between us and the beard guy like bodyguards, nodding when the next person has permission to go.

“Go ahead,” a lady swami finally says, and nods at me.

I don’t want to bow. I’d have my doubts even if it weren’t for yesterday, but when you add that to it too, my knees are locked, like my legs are made of long, unjointed bones and if I try to bend, they’ll break. Everyone is staring at me. Some of them are glaring. I cannot bow down to this guy. Finally my mom puts her hand between my shoulder blades and shoves, hard enough that if I don’t go in the direction she’s pushing me I’ll fall. Fuck you, I think at her hand, and fold over.

When I look back up, the beard guy’s beaming down at me. Up close you can see all his pores. He stares like he can see all the way through my clothes to my skin, and through my skin to my bones. I want to cover up my insides, but there’s no blanket that could do that. His eyes are lasers. I feel hot.

“You have a new friend,” he says. I don’t know what he’s talking about, except I kind of do. How would he know that, though?

We’re there for a long minute; I can’t move. Finally he lifts his gaze off me and it’s like cool air floods in, like a door opened in an overheated room. He turns to the lady swami, says something underneath his breath that I can’t hear. She nods and walks behind his chair, bends down. When she comes back she’s holding out a red-and-pink stuffed teddy bear, the kind you get for five dollars at the drugstore for Valentine’s Day. On its stomach is stitched, Someone Loves You!

I feel gross taking it, but I wonder if it’s some kind of sign.

. . . . .

On the way out of Evening Program, Mom and Vrishti want to see my teddy bear. It’s like they’re cheerleaders at school and the bear is from some football jock. I hate cheerleaders.

Mom and Vrishti want to have girl talk, except about the Guru. Who did he look at and for how long, who got special gifts and You are so lucky he gave you that. It’s just a drugstore stuffed animal from an out-of-date holiday, made in China and thin at the seams, but their eyes light up like it’s a diamond.

“It holds the Guru’s energy,” Vrishti says. “Now you can keep his spirit with you at all times!” I don’t want to keep the Guru’s spirit with me at all times. I don’t think I want it with me ever. But he knew I had a new friend; the bear says someone loves me. If there’s even any chance at all that it’s true, I have to hold on to it.

“It means you’re special, you know,” says Vrishti. “He recognizes something in you.” She and my mom both look at me, jealous. I clutch the bear tighter to my chest.