Zen and the Art of Faking It

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  I had a sad feeling that neither of us would get what we wanted.

  In my locker, I found another Zen note:

  HOW SHALL I GRASP IT? DO NOT GRASP IT.

  THAT WHICH REMAINS WHEN THERE IS NO

  MORE GRASPING IS THE SELF.

  —PANCHADASI

  What did that mean? Who had put it there? And why? It hit me that Peter had gone into the school before everyone else. He must have been my secret note-stalker. Which meant he must have seen me that night in the library. So why was he putting these stupid messages in my locker? Was he trying to make me crack and admit I was a total phony? Then why didn’t he just confront me? I needed to know.

  I sat steaming-mad all through English class, which was interesting because we spent the whole period talking about a big idea in The Tao of Pooh: wu wei, or “without doing, causing, or making.” Wu wei is a lot like “thinking without thinking.” The idea is that you have to let things roll off your back and go with the flow. This was strange: “Wu” means “without,” and the Chinese symbol for wei comes partly from a grasping claw. So you should relax and stop grasping—like the quote in my locker. According to Taoism, things will always work out if you do that. Yeah, right. When someone is trying to sabotage your whole life, how can you let that roll off your back?

  Well, I’d show him. Nobody stops me from washing dishes if I want to wash dishes. My mom couldn’t stop me, sprouts couldn’t stop me, and I’d be darned if some demented stepbrother was going to stop me. I had to come up with a plan to get me and Woody back into the soup business. But first I had to confront Peter, even if he was scary huge.

  I caught up to him in the hallway on the way to lunch. “Hello, Peter,” I spat. “Visited any interesting lockers lately?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I think you know.”

  “Uh, I don’t.”

  “Oh, sure you don’t. Listen, Peter, I know you know.”

  “What?”

  “About my secret. Just tell me what I have to do to keep you from blabbing it everywhere.”

  “What? You’re ashamed of your secret, San?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then why can’t I mention it to my own mom?”

  Dang. His mom knew too?

  “And why does Woody deny the whole thing completely? What are you two ashamed of? How great is your little relationship if you have to pretend it doesn’t exist?”

  Oh. Ooooohhhhhh. Peter didn’t know about my Zen act. He just really thought Woody and I were going out. “We’re friends, Peter. OK? Haven’t you ever heard of that? It’s when two people just enjoy each other’s company. And why is it your business? Why do you hate your sister so much, anyway?”

  Now Peter looked mad. “Hate her? Hate her? I love her, San. We’ve been living in the same house for four years, and we were friends before that too. How could I hate my own sister? Geez.”

  “Then why would you go around making trouble for her on purpose?”

  “I’m not making trouble for her—I’m saving her from trouble.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because you’re trouble, San. Stay away from my sister. You have no idea what she’s been through, OK? She doesn’t need some Zen weirdo to come breezing into town and mess her up all over again. And it doesn’t take a big mystical insight to realize that that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “Peter, it’s not like that. I—”

  “It’s not like that? Then why can’t you just admit you like each other? And what’s the big secret about your locker?”

  Oopsie, guess that might come back to haunt me.

  “Look, I’m just saying, I know you’re going to hurt Emily. And then I’m going to hurt you.”

  “You’re wrong, Peter!”

  “No, I really am going to hurt you.”

  “Not about that—I’m sure you could crush me. But I’m not going to hurt your stepsister. I care about her.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then ask her why she started calling herself ‘Woody.’”

  “I know why she started to call herself that. She didn’t want to be named after anyone from her mom’s family, so she changed her name to Woody.”

  “Yeah, but why Woody? Why not Jane? Why not Jennifer? Why not, I don’t know, E-Lo? You don’t know as much as you think you do, Buddha. You just don’t.”

  And that was it. He walked away, leaving me with a threat and a riddle. My heart was pounding and my palms were soaked, but I couldn’t waste any time sitting around and worrying. I had to put my “Save the Wednesdays” plan into motion. I put on my game face, and headed over toward the jock tables.

  twigs

  After school I had way too much to think about. I was feeling way hyper, so I took a long, slow path home around the library and through what passed for a downtown in Harrisonville. I found myself on a street I’d never seen before, with a bunch of townhouses leading to a dead end. Just past the end of the street, there was a little hidden park with a stream running through it. I figured I’d cut through and try to find my way back home, but then I decided to sit on a rock by the water for a while. There was still a pretty big chunk of time before my mom would be home, and I didn’t feel like being cooped up in the apartment alone.

  No, it was much better to be sitting in a random park alone.

  The rock wasn’t quite as comfy as “my” rock, but I had to admit the setting was nice. I must have spent twenty minutes watching two twigs tumbling around in the current between a stone and a little peninsula of mud and getting lost in my worries. First, there was the ELL thing. Woody’s first and last initials were E and L, so it crossed my mind for a second that she might be ELL—but she’d said her middle name was Jane. I toyed with the idea that maybe I’d seen the letters wrong on the back of her assignment sheet. Could I have mistaken a J for an L? But there was just no way, especially since it was next to another L, and the whole thing was written several times.

  I sighed. Maybe she hadn’t finished writing when I’d come across the paper. Maybe she was filling in each heart one letter at a time, the way little kids copy their spelling five-times-each homework words. So I started thinking of some names that started with “ELL”: Ellington. Ellery. Ellbert.

  Ellvis?

  Nah. Woody had to be a better speller than that. Plus, I knew from my mom that nobody liked the Beatles AND Elvis; it was always one or the other.

  OK, maybe “ELL” was the end of the person’s name, and she was going backward: Tyrell. Martell. Shell. Smell. Bell.

  Roswell.

  This was ridiculous. I had no clue. I started thinking about the other issues of my busy day, like what I had gotten myself into at the athletes’ table, and what Peter had been trying to tell me about Woody’s name, and what it would feel like when he finally got around to smashing my face in. My thoughts were tumbling as aimlessly as the two little twigs.

  And then I heard a shuffling sound. I looked up, and there was a shrimpy little kid standing next to the rock, carrying a backpack that might have weighed more than he did. “Excuse me?” he said in a little not-yet-changing voice.

  “Uh, yes?”

  “Umm, that’s my rock. I mean, I don’t own it or anything, but it’s where I come to sit sometimes when…”

  “When what?”

  He looked at me with total despair. “When I can’t go home.” Oh, boy. The little guy was bumming big-time about something.

  I moved over. It was a big rock. “Here,” I said, “Have a seat.”

  He did.

  We stared at the twigs for a while, and then he spoke. “Hi, my name is Justin. I’m in sixth grade. You’re that Buddha guy, San Lee, right?”

  I just looked at him.

  “I can tell by your, um, shoes. I mean, you’re the guy with the three-pointer, aren’t you? Oh, man, everybody on the bus was talking about it. They said you totally schooled Peter Jones. That must have been so awesome.” He paused. “But, uh, weren’t yo
u scared to beat him?”

  I looked at the kid some more.

  “I mean, I sometimes go to the YMCA after school. And I remember last year when Jones was in seventh grade, the basketball team got killed in a home game, and Peter missed like seven of his last eight shots. This eighth grader laughed at him at the Y the next day, and…”

  Justin shuddered. “Oh, man. I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”

  There was a long pause before he continued. “I have to say, though—those janitors at the Y did a really good job of mopping up afterward.”

  Excellent. This kid was a total bundle of joy. I was starting to get light-headed. It was definitely time for a subject change. “Hey, Justin, you said you can’t go home. How come?”

  He stared at the water for so long that I thought the twigs might get waterlogged and sink before he answered. “Well, you have to promise not to tell anyone, OK?”

  Uh-oh. Did this little kid have abusive parents? Or maybe they had a drug problem. I couldn’t promise not to tell if Justin might be in danger. On the other hand, maybe this was the one time when he was willing to talk about it.

  Good God.

  I didn’t say anything, but Justin plowed ahead with his confession: “I have this big sister. She’s in high school. And she has this boyfriend. And he likes to come over after school sometimes. And then they kick me out for an hour. I set the little timer on my watch—see?” He held it out to me. “And if I ever come home early, my sister said she would yank out my liver with a fork and serve it to me for dinner.”

  Nice. This was, like, the blood-and-guts family.

  “So here you are,” I said.

  “So here I am.”

  We watched the twigs some more while I tried not to giggle about Justin’s problem. Then he said, “There’s another thing bothering me too. It’s even worse than the first thing.”

  I worked on keeping a straight face. “Tell me,” I intoned.

  “Well, there’s this girl in my homeroom. Her name is Amber. I think she might like me, but I’m not sure. I mean, sometimes she acts like she hates me. And sometimes she acts like she likes someone else. But then sometimes she’s, like, all flirting with me. The other day I think she was purposely touching my shoulder in the lunch line, and she was kind of singing under her breath, ‘I have a secret. I have a secret.’ But the next period, she threw a tic tac at my head in math.”

  Justin looked at me. I looked at the twigs.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, does she like me or not?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Duh. You’re the Zen guy. Everyone says you have wisdom and stuff. This should be an easy one for you to solve, right?”

  “You’d be surprised. Girls are tricky.”

  “Even for you?”

  “Even for me.”

  “Wow.” He looked awestruck. “So, what should I do?”

  “Have you tried asking her?”

  “Asking her?”

  “Yeah, you know, like, ‘What’s your secret?’”

  He looked even more awestruck. “So, you’re saying I would just ask her the secret?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  “And she might, like, tell me?”

  I nodded again. “Sometimes, things need a little push in the right direction. Look, do you see those two twigs?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, they’re spinning around and around, kind of trapped in each other’s orbit, right?”

  “Uh, OK.”

  “Watch.” I grabbed a stone from the ground next to me. I took careful aim, and then tossed it into the water, right between the twigs and the little peninsula. The waves from the rock nudged the twigs away…away a little more…and then the twigs spun out from behind their rock and into the open water.

  “Whoa. That’s…that’s…whoa. You really are the Zen master, aren’t you?”

  I smiled. The twigs glided away downstream.

  one hand washes the other

  When my mom finally got home from work that night, she had a big surprise for me. “Guess what, San?” she said, breathless from climbing the stairs with packages. “I got my first big overtime bonus check today, so I went shopping at lunch. I finally got you a winter coat. I just wish we could have afforded this sooner.” She whipped out a bright green-andyellow parka that looked like the uniform for a special all-blind unit of the ski patrol. “Since we’re already partway through the season, it was on clearance. I can’t believe nobody grabbed it up—we’re so lucky! And that’s not all—I got you gloves too.”

  Great—these were a brilliant white. Who wears white winter gloves? What was it, winter mime season? But I knew she was really excited to be able to get this stuff for me, so I tried to look cheerful about it. At least until she busted out with one final item.

  “And…ta-da! Sneakers! Good ones! Remember when you made me promise I wouldn’t buy you sneakers until we could afford name-brand ones? I still think you were being ridiculous, but—I got you real Nike high-tops. Your favorite color, red. I remember you saying that you have basketball in gym right now, so these should be perfect!” Mom stopped when she glanced at my face. “Uh, honey, what’s the matter? You look like you just swallowed a lemon.”

  They were nice basketball shoes. Very nice basketball shoes. And, other than the revolting color scheme, my mom had totally come through for me. But how was I supposed to be all Zen with this deluxe set of spanking-new, name-brand outerwear? “Oh, it’s nothing, Mom. My stomach hurts, that’s all. I must have gotten a bad carton of milk at lunch or something. But this is great. Really. Thanks. I think I’ll just go lie down now, if that’s okay with you.”

  She looked kind of crestfallen, like I’d ruined her whole shopping victory parade. But I couldn’t help it. How on earth was I going to explain this at school? I took the packages and retreated to my room to think. While I was thinking, I tried everything on. The sneakers felt so incredibly soft and warm that it was like my feet had died and gone to heaven. But I didn’t care about that; all I cared about was how I was going to change out of them every day on the way to school, hide them all day, and then change again on my way home. OK, I was a smart and crafty individual. I would come up with something, right?

  The first thing that came to mind was just stuffing my sandals in my backpack before bed, wearing the sneakers out of the apartment, changing back into the sandals outside, and then doing the reverse in the afternoon. Except that my stupid backpack was see-through. Darn that stupid school security! Then I thought maybe I could somehow stuff the sandals in between notebooks or something in the middle of the backpack so my mom wouldn’t see them. So I tried that, and it worked great…until I realized that the gigantic new sneakers would have to fit in there once I changed out of the sandals. Plus, what was I going to do with the coat? It was huge and puffy, and the color was bright enough to be seen from outer space.

  Nothing is ever simple.

  But after about twenty minutes of pacing the six feet of available floor space in my room, I did come up with something that might work. I needed to take a walk in order to try it. I threw on the toasty new coat and headed out with my sandals hidden in my armpit. Mom stopped me, naturally.

  “Where are you going, San? I thought you didn’t feel well. I’m making you some broth with rice.”

  “That’s great, Mom. I’ll eat it when I get back. I’m just going for a little stroll. I thought the exercise might help. You know, work the poisons out of my system. And, uh, try out my awesome new clothes.”

  I think she knew something was fishy, because her forehead was all wrinkled up, but what was she going to do—keep me inside to punish me for saying I didn’t feel so hot?

  Yup, she was. “Sanny, are you going to meet with your little girlfriend or something? Because you’re grounded, remember?”

  “Mom, Jesus, I’m taking a walk. A plain old ordinary walk, by myself.
Even grounded kids get to take a walk. Even prisoners get exercise time.”

  Oh, crap. I did not just mention prisoners.

  She sighed. “That’s true. But if you’re not back in ten minutes, Warden Mom is going to come find you.”

  Wow, she had just made a prison joke. In some ways, we were getting pretty used to our little situation. “Thanks, Mom. I promise I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  “Fifteen,” she snapped back at me.

  “Deal,” I said, and got out of there.

  As soon as I was on the stairs, I started scouting the terrain. What I needed was a hidden place where I could stash the winter gear every morning, and pick it back up every afternoon. This was ridiculous: I found myself feeling along the wood paneling of the staircase wall, like there might be a secret hidden parka compartment. But all I found was a splinter.

  Then I had the brilliant idea that maybe there was a safe little alcove or something outside. I walked around the whole perimeter of the apartment house, but at least in the early winter darkness, I didn’t see anything obvious. Not that I’d expected a steel-reinforced camouflaged shed with EMERGENCY FOOTWEAR SHELTER on the side or anything, but a hollowed-out space in the side wall of the building would have worked fine. Oh, well. I crossed the street to see whether there was anything in the playground—like maybe I could bury the stuff in the sandbox every morning. But as I was kneeling and poking the sand with a stick to see how deep it was, the same old lady who’d yelled at me when I was stealing sand the last time I’d been there came around a bend in the hedges and said, “You again? What are you doing this time?”

  “Checking the depth of the sandbox with this stick I found.”

  “And why are you doing that, young man?”

  Well, I thought, I’m looking for a place to hide my secret stash of high-grade cocaine, because my mom only lets me keep bombs, guns, and heroin in my room. I said, “Well, I’m looking for a place to hide my coat, gloves, and sneakers because everyone at my school thinks I’m a Zen master. Is that OK?”