Zen and the Art of Faking It

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Of course, every nerve in my body was screeching, THROW THE BUG! RUN! RU-U-UN! But Dowd was watching. Woody was watching. Peter was watching. Very carefully I sealed the tent by crumpling up the edges in one fist. I waved a jaunty good-bye to the class with the other hand and headed out of the room into the hall. Once out of sight, I allowed myself to sag against the lockers for a second and gasp desperately for air. Newsflash: I was HOLDING A CENTIPEDE! One minute I’d been having a deep heart-to-heart with Woody, and the next I was stuck in a wildlife documentary. I just hoped it wasn’t going to end like that horrible one where the bear researcher gets mauled by grizzlies.

  I took one last deep breath, and then ran like a madman for the stairs. You could probably have heard the smack-smack of my sandals against my soles from about a mile away as I booked it out of the building, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the little popping noises the centipede’s body was making as it bounced around inside my paper trap. I stopped on the grass just outside the back door of the school and looked at the paper, realizing that I was totally alone out there. I could put the whole thing down and then jump up and down on it until it looked like the world’s goriest art project. Or I could just leave it there, run back in, and say I’d taken care of everything.

  In fact, I admit it: I did drop my little package and take a few steps backward away from it. But then it occurred to me that I was supposed to have this reverence for all living things. I mean, Woody really believed I had it. I couldn’t just walk away and leave the poor little bug to die in his paper prison.

  I stepped back up to the paper. I tried to sort of prod it open with my foot. But of course that didn’t work in the least. The only way I was going to free my venomous little amigo was with my hands. “Stupid freakin’ reverence for all living things,” I muttered. Bending way down, my fingers trembling, I reached for the paper.

  got zen?

  Spring came early in my eighth grade year—or at least that’s what everyone told me. In Texas we hadn’t particularly had seasons, so this was a bit new to my experience. But the trees got leaves again, the flowers bloomed, birds were suddenly all over the place—and I found myself thinking about Woody even more than usual. Teachers everywhere talk about spring fever, but I’d always thought I was immune, that I was just sort of mildly annoying to my teachers all year-round in an even kind of way. That year proved me wrong. It sounds like some cheeseball movie montage, but every bird song reminded me of Woody’s voice; every flower was the blossomy scent of her hair; every chirping insect made me feel—

  Well, OK. I have to say that every chirping insect still pretty much made me want to climb up in my mom’s lap and cry. But the rest of the spring stuff was true. Woody had really changed me. I had faced a horrible childhood fear because of her belief in me. She had taken a massive risk by mailing her mother that DVD because of her belief in me. I guess one thing I was understanding for the first time is that faith is contagious. And Woody and I had such a bad case of it that we’d been infecting people everywhere we went. Except for Peter, who seemed to be immune.

  The rest of the school, though, had a serious, critical case of faith-itis. The sickest people of all were the members of the basketball B team. In fact, they were in the late stages of Zen fever, so much so that they’d done something insane. They had challenged the A team to a game—a game they planned to win. It was like I had started a snowball rolling down a hill, and now the snowball was growing and growing as it tumbled out of my grasp—toward a humongous cliff.

  Nobody told me that any of this was going on, of course. If the guys had come to me and said they planned to beat the A team in a basketball game, I would have told them there was no way, that they were the B team for a reason. All right, maybe I couldn’t tell them that all of my Zen teachings were a total load of BS, but I could have tried to talk them out of this team suicide mission somehow.

  But the first I knew of the whole thing was when I walked into school one day with Woody and saw a poster of a yin—yang on the stairwell doors. It was black and white, on a brilliant red background, with no writing whatsoever. I said to Woody, “Hey, check that out. What do you think it’s for?”

  She looked away. “I don’t know, a club maybe?”

  “Wait a minute! You know what this is about, don’t you?”

  “I might.” She was trying really hard not to smile, but not quite hard enough.

  “Come on, tell me! What’s it for?”

  “You’ll see, San. For now, how about using your famous Zen detachment and patience?”

  “But…but…”

  “You’ll see, San. I promise!” And with that, she slipped into homeroom.

  There were three more of the posters on the hallway walls between Woody’s door and mine. I thought hard. Maybe my English teacher had put them up to coincide with the end of The Tao of Pooh. Maybe somebody in one of Dowd’s classes was doing this as a project. But on the other hand, maybe Peter was putting them up to increase the amount of pressure and attention I was getting. And maybe a strange race of alien beings had sent them as a message of brotherhood to all earthlings.

  All I could do was wonder.

  In English class, we had our end-of-book essay test for The Tao of Pooh. It was bizarre how all the parts of my life were overlapping all of a sudden; one of the questions was: As you have learned, the essence of Taoism is the idea that one should walk the middle path between extremes, as symbolized by the yin—yang sign. How might this apply to your own experiences? I had to roll that one around in my mind a bit, so I answered everything else first. Then I came back to it and started writing about my dad. And Woody.

  The next day when we got to school, the yin—yang posters all said GOT ZEN? Woody raised an eyebrow at me. I said, “Are you ready to tell me what this is about?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you ready to give me a hint?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know, the yin–yang isn’t even originally a Zen sign. It’s Taoist.”

  “Wow.”

  “Are you going to tell me anything? Anything at all? Are you even listening to me right now?”

  “Nope. Nope. Yup.”

  She blew her hair out of her eyes, grinned, and popped into her homeroom.

  In gym that day, my disciple, Bison Mike, finally laid the truth on me: The posters were advertisements in the making. He told me that the team, along with Woody, had come up with this plan as a fund-raiser. Then he looked at me like I was supposed to pat him on the head and give him a cookie.

  I argued that the whole thing was nuts, that they weren’t ready to play the game. He argued back that this wasn’t about winning or losing; it was about making money for the cause. I asked, “How much money does a middle school basketball team need anyway?”

  He looked hurt, then maybe a little mad. “WE don’t need the money, San. You know that. But we thought—I mean, Woody said—I mean, we and Woody—”

  “You and Woody what?”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise for you. We thought how great it would be if we could raise a lot of money for the soup kitchen. Don’t you think so? Woody said you’d be pumped for this.”

  Oh, great. Now if I kept fighting against the idea, I was fighting directly against feeding the poor. So it looked like I had to be pumped. I turned to Mike and slapped him on the back. “Pumped isn’t even the word,” I said.

  The game was on.

  One night in the midst of all this, I came home and found my mom was there early. “Hi, San!” she said brightly. “You’ll never guess who called today.”

  “Uh, the Pope? The Dalai Lama? Aunt Marlene?”

  “None of the above. It was your friend’s mom.”

  “Which friend?” Yeah, like I had so many.

  “You know, the girl you’re always with. The one with the 1950s Boy Scout name—Chippy? Gopher? Spanky?”

  “Her name’s Woody, Mom.”

  “I know. It’s just so hard to keep track of th
e names of people I’ve never even met. Anyway, her mom told me she’d been hoping to get to know me. She asked if I was going to the big game. I said, what big game? She just laughed, like I had to be kidding. So I have a date with Jippy’s mom to see some basketball thing at your school next week. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Exciting isn’t even the word,” I choked out.

  “Will Lippy be there, do you think? Apparently she arranged this whole event. She must be some girl! Well, I always figured that when my Sanny fell in love and completely hid it from his mother, the girl who stole his heart would have to be pretty special.”

  She looked at me with that look moms have, like I dare you to deny what I just said. But I wouldn’t crack. The stakes were too high. She sighed and then gave a little laugh. “The funniest part, though, is what her mom said when I first got the phone. She said, ‘You don’t sound like I’d imagined you would.’ What did you tell these people about little old me, San? I just wonder about that.”

  She glared some more. But I was unbreakable. “Well, Sanny, I guess the whole Woody family will get to find out exactly what I’m like at the game next Tuesday. Won’t it be wonderful when I go to your school and meet all the interesting new people in your life? I can’t wait! It should be very…educational for me.”

  And for some other people too, I thought.

  This was starting to remind me way too much of the day my dad’s lies had started unraveling. We were in Houston, and I thought things were going great. But out of the blue, Dad sat down at breakfast and announced that we’d be moving in a few weeks. My mom didn’t even bother to ask why. I’d never asked why before either, but this time I needed to. I had done a poster project on the ancient Incas for Mrs. Brown’s social studies class, and I was supposed to present it at a history fair the next month. I had never been honored by anyone before, for anything, and I had a weird feeling that Mrs. Brown really cared about me. Dad was always saying not to get too attached to people—which was actually very Zen of him but for totally wrong reasons. Still, I’d let myself get attached to this lady, and I didn’t want to let her down.

  Can you believe it? My dad was in jail because I’d gotten carried away with some Sharpies and glitter glue.

  But I’m getting ahead of the story. I asked my dad why we were always moving, and he said, “I’m your father, and I know what’s best for this family.”

  Maybe it was just too early in the morning for me to think clearly, or maybe I was temporarily insane, because I shot back, “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “You have to trust me, San.”

  “You always tell me I should never trust anyone, Dad.”

  As Mom gave my hand a little warning squeeze under the table, Dad said, “San, I’m telling you, there are reasons why we can’t stay too long, opportunities I don’t want us to miss out on.”

  “Opportunities? What about the opportunity for me to be a normal kid? What about the opportunity to stay in one school for more than a year? What about the opportunity to be part of a community? My social studies teacher says that—”

  “Your SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER? Is he putting these crazy ideas in your head? That you should disrespect your elders? That you should defy your own father?”

  “She, Dad. My social studies teacher is a she. Which you would know if you ever bothered to listen to your only son instead of spending all your time gambling on the Internet when Mom’s not—”

  POW! Not for the first time, my father knocked me out of my chair. But for the first time, he left a visible mark—when I saw the fist coming at my shoulder, I had turned to avoid it, but in the wrong direction. I pushed myself up from the floor, bolted out the door before he could stop me, and ran all the way to school. I didn’t know what to do when I got there; I just knew I couldn’t make it through the day, much less another move. Like a zombie, I shuffled upstairs and somehow found my way to Mrs. Brown’s room. She was sitting at her big old-fashioned wooden teacher desk drinking coffee, and when she looked up at me she spilled about half the cup on the floor. She asked what had happened to my eye and I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t say anything. I was just crying and crying until I couldn’t even breathe.

  The next thing I remember, I was in the counselor’s office with Mrs. Brown and a lady from the Texas Department of Child Welfare. The lady wanted to talk to me alone, but Mrs. Brown refused to leave. When the woman finally gave in and let Mrs. Brown stay, I decided to talk.

  You know what’s funny? According to the child welfare office, the one black eye I was sporting wasn’t enough to prove what they called a “persistent pattern of abuse.” And in some technical sense they were right: Dad only hit me maybe once or twice a year, but that was only because I was usually so good at staying out of his way. So Dad would have gotten away with the whole thing. But apparently when they ran his name through their computer, they came up with warrants from California. And Alabama. And Connecticut.

  You know the rest. My dad’s last lesson to me was that it’s always the random little stuff that gets you busted. Like a charity basketball game, for example.

  slam, dunk, crack—part one

  So the tide of karma rolled over me, and I had no choice but to flow with it. If my mom was going to meet Woody’s mom, and Woody was going to hate me forever for being a liar, and my favorite pet basketball team was lining up to get slaughtered, I could at least do my best to make the game interesting.

  I called the B team eighth graders together in gym a week before the game and asked about their practice schedule. It turned out that both they and the A team had their practices cancelled for the week by the basketball coach, who had said each team should practice by itself at least twice before the game. I told the guys I thought we should practice every day except Wednesday, because of the soup kitchen. Mike turned to me. “We?” he asked. “Does that mean you’ll help us after school too?”

  It just amazed me that these people still thought I was helping them get better at basketball. All I did was make up crazy psychological stuff to do with them, and then call it Zen. On the other hand, the game was in seven days, and no traditional method was going to put the team on top in that amount of time. So I decided to go full Ninja with this thing. I pulled Woody aside and told her my plan. Then we got the boys in a huddle.

  That week we had some crazy practices. Tuesday was “Dodgeball Drill Day.” The team did all of its usual practice drills—which were totally mystifying to me—but with an added twist: Woody and I ran up and down the sidelines lobbing big red rubber dodgeballs at them randomly in the middle of each play. Thursday was “Laser Tag Fest”; Woody borrowed some ancient, dusty laser tag vests and guns from the gym department. The players wore the vests, and Woody and I shot at whoever had the ball throughout the practice. The rule was that if the ball carrier got hit, he had to pass the ball at that very second. Friday was “Water Balloon Follies” on the outdoor court: nothing but shooting drills, and if a player missed three times—SPLOOSH! Good thing it was a lovely, warm fifty-two degrees that day. Saturday and Sunday were three-on-three games at the outside court, but Sunday’s game was on roller skates. On Monday, the last practice before the game, we played indoor court hockey and soccer instead of basketball. At the very end of the workout, Mike got everyone together and gave a pretty inspiring little speech. His theme? B is for Brotherhood. I didn’t point out that B is also for Bison. Then Woody said a few words too, about pulling together, but also about having fun and remembering that the game was a fund-raiser, not a blood match. Finally everyone looked at me. I stood at the center of the team, at the center of the court, looked each member right in the eye, and nodded at them in turn.

  Mike said, “That’s it? Just a bunch of nods? Don’t you have anything for us?”

  I thought for a minute. “All right, Michael, I give you each two strong legs.”

  “We already have those.”

  “OK, I give each of you two strong arms.”

  “We have t
hose too. I mean, can’t you give us anything that we don’t already have?”

  I smiled. “No. I can’t give you anything you don’t already have. You don’t need anything else.” I bowed to him, and then he smiled too. I started to walk away. Woody called me back and dragged a big box out from behind the bleachers. “San, I have a surprise for you. We made T-shirts for tomorrow. They’ll be our uniforms, and we’re going to sell them to the crowd too. I think we’ll make at least another few hundred bucks for the soup kitchen with these.” She reached into the box. “Here’s yours.”

  I looked for a long moment as she held up a black shirt, and then turned it around. The front said GOT ZEN? under a yin–yang. The back had a picture of a guy shooting a bow and cracking up at the same time. I frowned, and Woody must have thought I was missing the meaning.

  “See, San? It’s a laughing archer—you know, like the words on your notebook. We thought your mysterious name might give us luck. So that’s the name of our team: The Laughing Archers. Catchy, right?”

  “Wait, Woody. You guys don’t actually, uh, believe all that stuff Peter’s been saying about The Laughing Archer, do you? The whole seventh coming of Buddha thing? Signs and wonders?”

  They all gave each other quick little glances of embarrassment. Mike piped up, “No, San, of course not,” which led to a whole chorus of denials. But just from their sheepishness, I got the shocking feeling they sort of believed it. Mike locked eyes with me. “That’s just kind of a joke, right?” he asked.

  I looked down at myself: the stained, sweaty gym shirt; the shorts so big I could have shared them with a friend; the cracked and peeling sandals. I wanted to shout, Are you freakin’ KIDDING me? Could I look LESS dignified without, say, wearing a chicken on my head? If I’m a reincarnated god, then Mr. Dowd is secretly Britney Spears’s love slave.